Not anticipating the wait with which they were now faced, all guards had been assigned duties with no planned force to relieve them as fatigue set in. They were commanded to not leave their post under any circumstances. Now that the enemy finally approached, not one of them held to the order to wait before firing. Caught unaware, their instincts overwhelmed their reason.
As soon as the horses’ heads appeared climbing the slope toward the castle, the guards let off their arrows. They shot at the riders, aiming at the figures’ chests and heads. The arrows sprayed upon them, and yet, they kept coming.
They loaded and reloaded their crossbows and continued to shoot. None of the riders fell, even after multiple arrows penetrated their bodies.
“They are still coming!” Glanel yelled.
Other guards appeared above the gate and atop the wall on either side. They lit their arrows with torches and fired at the riders. Some of the figures caught fire, but, still, none fell off the horses. The charging rebels appeared like wild beasts possessed by an otherworldly force running out of control.
“The horses!” another guard cried out. “Fire upon the horses!”
The galloping attackers still charged. The guards aimed their arrows at the horse’s heads and sides, hitting a few and causing them to fall.
Then, Glanel noticed the peculiar way in which the riders stayed on the horses even after the animals hit the ground. When several riders’ heads came off their shoulders, it confirmed his speculation—the horsemen were not men at all, but rather figures of straw.
“They are not real!” he yelled over the commotion that had built within the castle. “The riders are not real. It is trickery. They have tricked us.”
Not long after this discovery, Glanel heard the cries of hundreds and the clashing of swords as a battle broke out inside the castle walls, near the stables.
“They have breached the northern wall,” he cried out.
“No,” another guard shouted. “The east.”
From across the courtyard, behind them, came yet another voice, “They are climbing the eastern wall!”
Chapter Forty-four
Delcan waved a small group of rebels onward and took by surprise the four guards who stood with crossbows in front of the old entrance to the stables. From atop the wall arrows rained down upon them, piercing their shields and slowing their progress.
When the first rebel went down—a merchant from Berest—Delcan saw the body fall from the corner of his eye. When the second rebel was run through by an arrow in the chest, Delcan stopped momentarily; it struck him at once how quickly these men—common men, not soldiers or warriors—would die if he and the others failed to lead them decisively and effectively.
With the four foot-guards out of their way, Aria urged the remaining rebels forward as they breached the castle wall and entered the stables.
As they made their way into the fortress, a surge of guards rushed at them. As the first swords clashed, the real battle, and their most trying time, began.
Sandrion and Roimas breached the castle through the hidden entrance to the dungeon. Their band of one-hundred ran through the underground corridors as the guards fired the first of their arrows at the straw-men who charged the castle gate.
Once inside the barracks, they split the force. Nearly one half followed Sandrion through the barracks’ door into the courtyard and fired upon the men guarding the southern wall, overtaking them with an overabundance of arrows. Roimas took the others and broke into the castle’s inner corridors.
As Sandrion’s archers rushed into the courtyard, a small group of commoners fired their hooks and ropes upon the fortress and began their climb of the southern, and most vulnerable, wall. With the sense of confusion and chaos afflicting not only the castle guards but the inexperienced rebels as well, ten of the climbers were lost before arriving at the platform that ran alongside the top of the wall.
When Delcan ran into the courtyard, he saw that all of the rebels’ target points along the castle walls had been breached.
He glanced beside him and saw Aria fire an arrow at an oncoming guard just as another ran toward him. He met the guard’s sword with his and disarmed him in short order. As he drove the blade home, he noticed the front gate nearly abandoned. That is when a third band, well-armed, even if with makeshift weapons, charged through the gatehouse.
“The portcullis!” a voice yelled from somewhere in the courtyard. “Close the portcullis!”
On top of the gatehouse, stood Sandrion, triumphantly waving the rebels to flood into Castilmont. It was this group who first combated the knights.
Sword fights erupted throughout the yard. As Delcan clashed with guards and knights alike, skirmishes between rebels and royal forces broke out all-around him.
While his mind commanded his sword with precision and without hesitation, it also kept him well aware of the swirling activity surrounding him. As he looked about, he felt caught in the center of a spinning storm. Everywhere he looked men struck down other men. Bodies fell and voices shouted—some crying out in pain while others cheering in triumph. The sensation lifted his feet off the ground and pulled him into the whirlwind. The sounds became sirens. The sights became blurs.
A sharp pain on his arm snapped his mind back into one whole.
He found himself on one knee with a wide slash stretched across his shoulder. Above him, a knight—one who was not fully armored—looked down upon him with his sword in the middle of an upswing. With a cry, Delcan stood and raised his sword against that of the knight’s. As soon as the metal blades clashed, he lunged forward and ran the knight through.
The large wound on his shoulder bled generously but was not deep. Attention to it could wait.
He looked about and saw Aria defeat the last of the guards protecting the castle keep. He ran to her, and when she saw his wound, he only nodded and waved a hand in front of it.
“It is of no great concern,” he said. “Come. Let’s go.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded and the two ran into the keep, toward the Royal Quarters.
When Roimas saw where Delcan was headed, he followed.
Sandrion, preoccupied with leading the continuing attack, remained in the courtyard. Grainer, his mentor, stood beside him.
Delcan and Aria ran through the empty corridors of the castle keep. Each of them carried a sword; prepared for any confrontation they might encounter. Surprised, at first, to find that no guards stood in their path, Delcan soon realized all guards were likely engaged in defending the castle out in the courtyard.
When they reached the King’s chamber, a voice called out to them.
“Wait.”
Both turned in a defensive posture, pointing their swords outward. They lowered their weapons as they saw Roimas running toward them.
“I am to come with you,” he said.
“Father—”
“If Orsak is to die, it will be by my hand.”
Delcan had not thought of the King’s death. Every step he and the others had taken so far led them to a confrontation with the King, but not once had he considered what would be the outcome of that confrontation. Their aim was freedom for the Paraysian people; justice. And revenge, he thought. Is it not? The thought of it, the recognition of it, gave him pause.
Purpose propelled their revolution. But what of the revolution, once their purpose was achieved? What of the fight, then? If another king’s head were thrust upon a spike before a cheering people, will not the times of decades past begin again with different players?
Delcan wanted to tell Roimas that wishing this king’s death would not banish the kingdom’s evils, but did not. In the courtyard below them, under the radiant, morning sun, people were dying. Dying and taking the lives of others, all for the precise purpose of ridding Paraysia of its evils.
Why should he protect the life of a tyrant King, while so many of the ordinary, yet extraordinary, people of Paraysia were dying at that very moment?
In a
scholarly dispute, death solved nothing. But, in the thick of battle…
“He may not be inside,” he said, instead, and lowered his head.
Roimas nodded toward the door and pointed at it with his sword.
Delcan tried the handle; it was unlocked. He gave Roimas and Aria one last glance before pushing it open.
Orsak was not in his chamber, but the room was far from empty. Four knights in full armor, helmets off, descended upon Delcan; three others stood behind them. He raised his sword to block a blow to the head and shuffled into the room. Roimas rushed in behind him, lunging at two of the knights advancing on his son. Aria entered last, pushing her sword through the fourth knight’s midsection where the upper and lower sections of the armor left a small gap.
As Delcan drove the knight against a bedpost, he recognized him as Liebert, Stanlo’s trainer. He drove the hilt of his sword against the knight’s nose and knocked him unconscious.
He turned just as one of the three knights who had stood deeper in the room moved in, swinging a large broadsword toward his head. He shuffled out of the path of the sword, and at once, recognized Sir Merson as his assailant—one who had promised Delcan he would die a young squire. As Merson stopped briefly to relish in the squire’s recognition of him, Delcan drove his sword through the knight’s throat and the soldier fell, almost immediately. He took hold of the knight’s shield and turned to face yet another knight, one who stood swinging a double flail.
As Aria struggled with a knight who had her pinned against the wall, two others emerged from the shadows of the hallway and entered the chamber, distracting Roimas and making him a victim to the swinging flail. It struck him on the shoulder and he fell on one knee.
Delcan lunged. The knight stopped Delcan’s blade with his own shield, then returned the attack with a sweeping swing of the flail.
Delcan took a wide step to his left as the flail swished past him. With a decisive swing, he struck the back of the knight’s head with the sword and the man fell.
He glanced up, across the room, and saw Aria outwit the one who had only a moment ago overpowered her. Aria pushed the knight’s face against the stone wall and pinned him with the arrow nocked in her bow pressed against the side of his neck.
The two knights who last joined the disport had Roimas on the ground, with one kicking his stomach. He looked up at Delcan and grinned as the other knight brought a battle axe up over his head, intent on bringing it down on Roimas. Delcan cried out in fury and ran toward him.
The axe came down. As Delcan’s sword came between the axe blade and Roimas’s head, a numbing pain flowed up his arm. He had pushed the sword up in an arc with all his strength to block the downswing of the weapon. He knew he would not be able to block it again if the knight decided to raise the axe and bring it down once more.
The pain in Delcan’s arm reached his shoulder and he groaned as he brought the sword up, then down on the man holding the axe. The knight raised his arm and blocked the blade with the axe handle, then swung it in a tight circle at Delcan’s ribs. Delcan stepped back and stopped the blow, nearly stepping on his father in the process.
As Delcan struggled to regain his balance, the knight lunged forward, aiming to puncture the squire’s chest with the spearhead on the top of the axe. Instead, his forward momentum impaled him on Delcan’s longsword. Delcan stood there a moment as the knight glared in disbelief at the sword that had passed through his body.
Blinded by his urgency at defending first Roimas, then himself, Delcan had forgotten about the last knight. He blinked twice as he looked around the room and found Aria sitting on the King’s bed, out of breath, looking at yet another fallen body at her feet. Delcan helped his father stand then walked over to the princess.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes on the body before her. After a while, she looked up at Delcan. Tears welled in her eyes and her hands shook. Delcan sat beside her and put his hands on hers.
“I am fine. Tired; but fine.”
She smiled and Delcan could see how she strained to produce that smile.
“Aria. All this…”
“He is in the Throne Room,” Roimas said and Delcan turned. “Orsak is likely in the Throne Room. I am going after him.”
Roimas bolted out the open door. Delcan and Aria glanced at each other, then followed him out.
Chapter Forty-five
Roimas came face-to-face with Orsak the moment he entered the Throne Room.
The King sat on his throne with the cane across his lap, clearly waiting for him, or another, to defy his possession of the kingdom’s seat of power. He was alone, with no guards, or knights, in the vast room.
Delcan and Aria ran in after Roimas and stopped beside him, each looking at the King, whose eyes glimmered with what Roimas would later describe as vile fury.
“So it is I who must finish you,” Orsak said, glaring at Roimas. “After all these years.”
The King stood, setting the cane upon the throne and picking up the longsword that rested against the chair. He choked the hilt with both hands.
Roimas walked toward him.
Neither man spoke another word until it was over.
Delcan and Aria looked on as both the former rebel leader and the former knight swung their swords from the hip at one another.
The blades clashed and cried out with every blow. Every swing was a wide arc intended to remove the other man’s head clear off his shoulders.
Aria stepped forward and Delcan held her back.
“They will kill one another,” she protested.
Delcan nodded. “I know.”
For a period of ten minutes, Roimas and Orsak moved around the Throne Room, deflecting one another’s blows. The moments when the blades did not meet, Roimas struck Orsak with the sword hilt, or Orsak pushed Roimas away with a kick. Their movements were continuous and, as the minutes passed, both men’s breathing slowed, as did their steps.
When they stopped at the room’s far wall, both men were covered in sweat and nearly out of breath.
Orsak swung his sword at Roimas’s side.
As Roimas evaded the strike, he pushed the King against one of the large windows that were once meant to bathe the room in glorious sunlight. He threw a fist at Orsak, catching him on the nose. The King raised his hands to prevent another strike from landing on his face and, instead, received a sharp blow in the ribs from Roimas’s sword hilt. Orsak crumbled to the floor and dropped his weapon.
As the tired, defeated King turned on his back, Roimas looked down on him. His shoulders shook and his chest worked to regain control of the breaths that rushed out of him in bursts.
“Come,” Orsak whispered. “Kill me at once.”
Roimas gazed down upon the monarch of Paraysia and, as the weakness in the King’s voice struck him, any thoughts of revenge and death disappeared from his mind. All at once, Orsak seemed old to him and, as his own heart slowed, Roimas felt age settle itself upon him, as well.
“Go on.”
Roimas felt as if he had not slept in days. His head ached. His eyes burned as if he had spent hours gazing into a fire.
“No,” he whispered.
He tossed the sword aside and took three, short steps back.
With a slow, tired blink of his eyes, he turned to look over his shoulder at Aria who stood behind him, holding the King’s cane.
“It is finished,” she said softly. The diamond that sat atop Orsak’s cane, Orsak’s scepter, glowed with a bright, orange light. “Leave him. It is this that will free the kingdom; not his blood on your, or anyone else’s, hands.”
Roimas looked into the eyes of the princess and his own watered. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
Aria turned and held the cane out to Delcan.
“Free us,” she said.
Delcan shook his head. “No. It is your destiny. Not mine.”
She looked at the cane covered in dragon skin. The diamond’s glow now brightened nearly the
entire room with a pulsating light. Warmth built up inside her and as it spread through her body she felt stronger, larger than the world itself.
She raised the cane above her head and then in a swift, smooth motion, brought it down against the marble platform on which sat the King’s throne.
“No,” Orsak cried from the other side of the platform as he crawled desperately toward the throne.
The diamond shattered into a shower of thousands of sparkling, crystal-like splinters that rose and spread across the room.
Aria could not later recall for how long the pieces had floated above their heads. Perhaps it had been for only an instant; but at that moment, it was as if they had stood under that blanket of crystal and light for countless minutes before the particles disappeared into the air itself.
Delcan, Aria, and Roimas glanced at one another, then at Orsak who sat on the floor with his back against the throne.
The former King looked at them for a moment then turned his eyes to the floor. His body seemed like nothing more than a beaten shell. In his face, Aria read not only defeat, but also a sense that he was no longer of any consequence to this world, and no longer cared.
Roimas approached Orsak in slow, hesitant steps.
Watching him, Aria noticed a glimmer on the floor at the foot of the throne. “Look,” she said. Roimas stopped and turned to her. “There.”
The key—the key once held prisoner for so long within the diamond—glowed with a soft, golden light. She picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand, looking at it and wondering if she would finally come to know its purpose.
As Delcan approached her to look upon it, the key dissolved into Aria’s hand as if absorbed by her flesh. She looked at her palm, stunned. With the key gone, the terrifying thought that it had all been for naught passed over her like a shadow.
“Where did it go?” Delcan asked.
“It just vanished,” Roimas said, looking at Aria’s hand. “After all these years, it simply vanished.”
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