Maxton was the recipient of little arms around his neck as Melisandra launched herself at him, hugging him tightly. He had two happy little girls, declaring their desire to be just like their father, and he was a contented man.
Proud, too.
He never knew life could be so good.
But the excitement eventually faded and the girls fell asleep against him, safe in their father’s arms while visions of fighting angels danced in their heads. As the fire snapped low in the hearth and the snow fell steadily outside, Maxton found more peace than he had ever known with three sleeping girls.
That was his idea of heaven these days.
Eventually, Andressa came back down the stairs, entering the hall to find her husband and all three girls sleeping. At least, she thought they were all sleeping until Maxton peeped an eye open at her. She smiled faintly.
“Well?” she said. “Did you fill their heads with gore and battle?”
He closed his eye. “I gave them a tale of glory,” he muttered. “Isn’t that what this season is all about? Glory?”
“The glory of God, Max. Not battle.”
“There is much glory in battle that God is responsible for.”
Andressa looked at her sleeping angels, shaking her head with regret. “I hope this does not come back to haunt you.”
“What do you mean?”
She gestured towards her daughters. “Do you really want your daughters to grow up to be assassins, living the life of death and blood as you did?” she asked. “Is that really what you want?”
He opened both eyes, looking at her. “They are only stories, Andy,” he said. “You take them too seriously.”
“And you do not take them seriously enough. They are impressionable, Max. They believe everything you say.”
He simply grunted. Seeing that she would get no answer from him, Andressa turned her attention to the sleeping girls.
“’Tis bedtime,” she said softly. “Everyone has had a busy day and it will be even busier tomorrow.”
With a weary sigh, Maxton stood up carefully with sleeping girls in his arms as Andressa bent over to pick up her eldest daughter from the fur on the floor.
“Tomorrow is Christmas morning, Mama,” he whispered. “They’ll be awake before the sun rises.”
Andressa cuddled the child in her arms as they headed for the mural stairs that led to the upper floors. “They are always awake before the sun rises,” she murmured. “Is everything ready for tomorrow?”
Maxton nodded. “Three little girls, three ponies,” he said. “It has been difficult hiding those animals from Danae. She comes into the stable often.”
“That is because she is nosy, like her mother,” Andressa said, mounting the stairs as Maxton followed. “She didn’t see them, did she?”
Maxton took the stairs carefully. “Nay,” he said. “We put them in with the cattle so she has not seen them.”
“Good.”
“I put your gift in with the cattle, too.”
Andressa glanced at him, grinning. “Nay, you did not,” she said. “You have hidden it in your chest.”
He frowned. “Did you go hunting for it, you little minx?”
She laughed softly.
He growled.
Three little girls were deposited in their warm beds, tucked in by doting parents. Andressa lingered a moment, looking over her three adorable girls as Maxton came up behind her, drawing her against him and nuzzling her neck.
“Shall I give you another gift now?” he whispered. “It’s ready and waiting for you.”
She knew what he meant and she started to laugh. “That is a gift you give me almost every night.”
“With pleasure, Madam.”
Bending over, he swept her into his arms, carrying her from the chamber as his daughters slept peacefully.
Maxton gave his wife his “gift” twice that night before finally falling into an exhausted slumber. Outside, the snow had grown worse and the winds began to howl, but inside the master’s chamber at Chalford Hill, all was cozy and peaceful.
At least for the moment.
But that was about to change.
Part Two
Not a Creature was Stirring…
When Maxton opened his eyes, he wasn’t in his bed.
He was in the stable.
At least, he was someone’s stable. He wasn’t sure if it was his. Frankly, he had no idea where he was, only that he was in a livery because he could see the stalls, the tack, and the usual implements that were found in a stable.
But it was dark, so very dark. The floors seemed to lean and the walls bowed. There was hay everywhere but he couldn’t smell it. In fact, there was no smell in a stable that should have been full of such things.
Not a creature was stirring.
It was dead quiet and dead still, and he began to feel uneasy. Something wasn’t right. But then he heard commotion off to his left and he turned to see three small and cloaked figures. They slipped in from a gap in the stable wall, but it wasn’t as if they walked in. They sort of floated in. It was very strange. But they had feet, for he could see them as they walked towards the center of the stable. They paused, removing the hood from their cloaks.
Maxton found himself looking at Danae, Melisandra, and Ceri.
He smiled at the sight of his precious daughters.
“Ladies?” he whispered. “What are you doing out here so late? Your mother will be angry if you do not hurry on to bed.”
They didn’t react to him. In fact, they ignored him completely as they made their way over to the stable entry, peering out into the yard beyond.
“We must make it to the keep,” Melisandra said, sounding much older than her five years of age. “Ceri, you go first. Kill anything that moves. Danae, you cover us from behind.”
Maxton frowned. That sounded very much like a battle command coming from his child’s mouth. But before he could say anything, his baby, Ceri, whipped back the flaps of the cloak and produced two little swords, perfectly made.
One for each hand.
The steel flashed wickedly in the dim light.
Astonished, Maxton’s mouth flew open. “Ceri,” he said sternly. “Where did you get those weapons?”
Ceri, usually his shadow and his most obedient child, ignore him. She whipped those swords around as if she’d been born with them in her hands, a very controlled and precise movement. Then, she began to move towards the doorway with the foggy yard beyond, and Melisandra producing a large sword with a wicked serrated edge. As she followed her sister, Danae revealed an ax and a shield beneath her cloak.
The girls were ready for battle.
Shocked, Maxton came up behind them.
“Ceri?” he said grimly. “Melly? What is the meaning of this? Answer me.”
“Is this how you envisioned your children, Max?”
The voice came from behind. Startled, Maxton turned to see a man he’d known very well, once, emerging from the shadows of the ill-shaped stable. It was his old master from Kenilworth Castle standing behind him, a man he’d not seen in twenty-five years. Maxton had learned nearly everything he knew from the man, one of the finest knights to have ever served. Stunned, he stared at the man.
“Boone?” Maxton gasped. “Boone Pendleton? God’s Bones, it is you! What in the hell are you doing here?”
Sir Boone Pendleton stepped a little closer, a smile playing on his lips. He was a handsome man, not particularly tall, but he was powerfully built and the best trainer of men in the entire world. He’d trained so many elite knights that surely he’d lost count.
Anyone under Boone Pendleton’s tutelage was better for it.
He was a legend.
“I came to see you,” Boone said simply.
Maxton reached out to grasp the man in greeting, but something stopped him. The smile faded from his face as he peered at him curiously.
“I’d heard you had died,” he said. “I do not remember who told me that, but clearly they were
mistaken.”
Boone shook his head. “They were not mistaken,” he said. “I passed away several years ago.”
Maxton eyed the man, looking him up and down. “You look healthy enough to me.”
Boone cocked a blond eyebrow. “Look at me, Maxton,” he said. “Do I look like an old man?”
“Nay. In fact…”
“In fact, I look as I did forty years ago or more,” Boone interrupted. “If I was still alive, I would be over one hundred years old. Do I look like a man who has seen one hundred years or more?”
Maxton shook his head. “Nay,” he said, suddenly feeling strange and disoriented. “I… I do not understand any of this, Boone. You’re dead, but you’re here?”
Boone nodded, pointing to the little girls who were just stepping forth into the stable yard. “I must say that I’m not too happy to have been called upon to explain this to you, so I will do this only once and you will listen,” he said. “Are you listening to me?”
“I always listen to you, my lord,” Maxton said, becoming the student once again as his old master addressed him. “But why are you unhappy?”
Boone sighed sharply. “Because I rather like where I have been,” he said. “My wife and older son are there with me and we live quite happily, together, but some of those higher placed than I felt this was important.”
“What is important?” Maxton’s sense of disquiet was growing. “I do not understand any of this.”
“You will,” Boone said. “Look around you. What do you see?”
Maxton took a step back from the man, looking around, seeing things that were almost familiar, but not quite. He was struggling against the fingers of fear that were starting to clutch at him, and at his age, there wasn’t much left for him to be fearful of. He hadn’t felt apprehension in a very long time.
But he did now.
“A stable,” he finally said. “I do not even really know where I am. This looks like my stable, but…”
“But not quite,” Boone finished for him. “It is, in a dismal future, something you’ve not yet seen and something I’ve come to help you avoid. It is a shadow of what may be, a hint of what is in store for you just over the horizon. In short, this is your future if you do not amend your ways, Max.”
His brow furrowed. “Amend my ways?” he repeated. Then, he shook his head. “My path is set, Boone. I’ve done things I am not proud of, but they were necessary. I do not regret anything I have done, no matter how unsavory. I resigned myself to a prime spot in hell long ago.”
But Boone shook his head. “You’ve done enough penitence in your life to atone for much of your sins, but this isn’t about you,” he said. “It is for your three bright, lovely daughters.”
Maxton eyed him. “What about them?”
“They need protecting from their loving but foolish father.”
Maxton sighed heavily. “You sound like my wife.”
Boone pointed a finger at him. “She is correct,” he said. “Maxton, when you are a young lad training, we fill your head with stories of bold knights and covert operations. That is to give you something to dream of, to aspire to. Now, you are doing the same thing to your three young daughters. You are telling them stories of death and blood and slicing up babies. Do you really want them to aspire to be that which you tell them?”
Now, Maxton could see what he was getting at. He was feeling defensive. “They are harmless tales,” he said. “Frankly, I do not know any stories that are gentler. I tell them what I know. They are only children, after all.”
“Children who look up to you and love you,” Boone reminded him softly. “These are your precious daughters, Max. If you want them to grow up based on the stories you tell them, then follow them as they go forth on a mission not dissimilar to missions you and your fellow Executioner Knights have gone on. Do you really want your girls involved in death and destruction as you have been?”
Maxton was trying not to feel foolish. “Of course not,” he said. “But they are just stories.”
“Are they?”
“Aye,” Maxton insisted. “They entertain my girls. And it is the way of our world. I suppose that I am preparing them in a sense.”
Boone simply shook his head. “Preparing them for what?” he asked. “To become knights and killers? You do not realize the influence you have over them, Max. I understand you have never been around girl children before but raising them on tales of death and battle is not exactly how I would raise my daughters. These are young ladies who will be expected to take their places in society. But if they have been raised to be assassins, they will become assassins. Is that your intention?”
Maxton was frowning deeply by now. “Nay, but I do not want them growing up weak, either. Women are strong, for I have seen that very thing in their mother. She is the strongest person I know.”
“And they will be strong,” Boone assured him. “They already are. But they need your guidance and that does not include filling their heads with things that would give even the hardest man pause.”
Before Maxton could answer, his daughters began to move. They dashed out into the fog, disappearing into the mist. Boone began to back up, back into the shadows where he had come from.
“Go,” he said quietly. “If you want to see what the potential could be for their futures, then follow them. They will not hear you or see you, and you cannot help them, so see the results of what you have sowed. If it gives you pleasure, then continue on your present path. But if not, remember these children only know what you teach them. Teach them well, Maxton of Loxbeare, or suffer the future because of it.”
With that, he was gone, faded back into the shadows. Maxton wanted to pursue him, to ask him more questions, but he could hear his daughters out in the stable yard. He wanted to go with them more than he wanted to speak with Boone.
Quietly, he followed.
Part Three
Not Even a Mouse
The fog began to part.
Maxton wasn’t sure where he was but, more and more, it was looking like a castle he’d once visited, one he’d been held hostage in years ago. It had been a dark and terrible place, full of torture and death, and his daughters were heading right for the keep.
They will not see you or hear you, and you cannot help them.
Maxton didn’t like that in the least.
He picked up his pace.
His daughters were moving swiftly, more swiftly than he had ever seen them move. They were agile, too, in a way he’d never known them to be. Ceri in particular; she was the youngest and, frankly, could be clumsy, but she was moving like a cat. She was the first one up the stairs leading into the keep and the first one to face the man that was standing there.
Maxton recognized the man.
One of his closest friends, Kress de Rhydian, was guarding the door. Tall, blond, and extremely powerful, Kress was one of the greatest knights Maxton had ever known. He was also one of the more deadly knights Maxton had ever known and Ceri’s godfather. Before Maxton could say a word, Ceri raised her swords against Kress, who immediately drew a broadsword that was taller than Ceri was and twice as heavy.
Maxton went into a panic.
“Kress!” he boomed. “Nay! Do not strike her!”
Kress either couldn’t hear him or wasn’t listening. He lifted his broadsword just as Ceri charged him, swinging her little swords. She hit Kress hard enough to knock him back and as he stumbled, she climbed on him like a cat climbing a tree. It was both bizarre and fascinating. As Maxton watched in terror, his daughters charged Kress, who found himself swarmed by little girls who were darting around him and on him with unnatural speed.
Kress lost his grip on his sword and he started to throw punches, wrestling with the children who were attacking him. Maxton heard a scream, not realizing that it was his own. He was screaming at the sight of his children in mortal combat. It was Danae who finally tipped the scales, throwing herself into Kress, ramming him until he fell over the side of the stairs
and down to the ground below. Somehow, Maxton’s girls had managed not to fall with him and they stood at the broken railing, looking over the side at their handiwork.
Maxton ran to Kress as he lay on the ground, going to aid his friend and apologize for his deadly children, but as he reached Kress, the man suddenly turned to dust and faded into the ground.
Bewildered, Maxton found himself looking at a faint outline of what had once been Kress. He had been horrified watching his sweet, gentle, girl-children attack a full-grown knight. He looked up to the stairs to see that they were gone now, presumably inside. Filled with terror, he followed.
The interior of the keep was dark, quiet. The floors leaned a great deal and he struggled to keep his balance.
“Ceri?” he called. “Melly? Christ, I was told you cannot hear me, but I pray to God that you can. Boone must have been wrong. Ladies? Can you hear me? It’s Dada!”
He was met with silence.
Timidly, he moved forward, clinging to the wall because he couldn’t seem to keep steady. He could hear a child’s laughter echoing somewhere. Looking up, he could see that the keep had no roof. He was looking into a large, open area in the center of the building, with stairwells and doorways in the walls, facing out over the void. It was as if someone had taken the keep and broken it into two distinct halves.
He caught a glimpse of a waving cloak on the floor above.
“Ceri!” he boomed. “Melisandra! Danae! Stop what you are doing this instant!”
More distant laughter.
There was a stairwell to his left and he took it, clamoring up stairs that were slippery and shifting from side to side even as he mounted them. He was back to clinging to the green, mossy walls so he wouldn’t fall, straining to reach the floor above.
And then he heard it.
Another sword fight.
Panicked, he made his way up the last few steps, propelling himself onto the landing. Oddly enough, the building wasn’t torn apart from this perspective. He could see a floor going all the way across to the other side where there was a doorway and a window. The sounds of the sword fight were louder now and as his desperate gaze searched for the source, a big body came stumbling through the doorway on the opposite side.
O Night Divine: A Holiday Collection of Spirited Christmas Tales Page 2