“The witches,” I said. “We never did anything about the witches Nimuë has locked in her dungeons.”
“We aren’t going to go back there,” Piers started.
“We have to,” I insisted. “There are innocent people there being held against their will. There are families just like ours who’ve had the people they love ripped from them.”
James nodded. “She’s right. We have to rescue those people.” He stood up, followed by the rest of my brothers and me.
I looked around. Sir Dagonet was sitting by the fire, staring into the flames looking sadder than I’d ever seen the jolly old knight.
Aron was sitting with his back to one tree, Dylan a few feet away sitting on the far side of another. Scai was still nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Scai?” I asked no one in particular.
Sir Dagonet perked up. “Haven’t seen her, don’t you know?”
“Who cares?” Dylan grumbled.
Aron just shrugged.
I steeled myself. I didn’t like the idea of this anymore than anyone else would, but it had to be done. “We have to go back for the witches.”
“What?” Dylan asked incredulously, twisting around to look at me.
“We have to go back and rescue those witches Nimuë has in her dungeons while she's not there,” I repeated. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“And how do you propose that we do that?” Aron asked, standing up.
“I say we just go in there and attack. I know we’re not all properly armed,” I added quickly, looking over at my brothers, “but Dylan went into battle with the Danes with only a sword and managed to do all right. Dylan and I have our magic, and you all can get swords to fight with somehow.”
“There’s a whole pile of them in the armory,” Aron offered.
“Excellent! Then we’ll sneak in there first, arm you all and then attack.”
“And what about Lady Nimuë?" Peter asked.
“I don’t know where she is, but we should take advantage of this opportunity while we have it,” I answered.
“Maybe she won’t be there tomorrow either,” Sir Dagonet said.
“What are you feeling from her, sir?” Thomas asked.
The old man shook his head. “She’s not happy, but I don’t sense any strong emotions coming from her. Don’t think she’s anywhere nearby though, wot?” He thought about it some more, playing with the bracelet around his wrist. “No. I’m certain that she’s quite far away.”
“She’s probably still on Avalon,” I said. “Lady Morgan said she was there.”
“That’s right,” Dylan said. He stood up, too, and came closer.
“So now would be a good time to attack,” Piers offered.
“Well, not just now. It’s too late and we’ve all had a really long day,” Sir Dagonet said. He yawned to prove his point. “I think first thing in the morning—early. We should attack then."
“It’s worth a try.” I nodded to the old man.
“All right, then,” Thomas said. “First thing in the morning.”
“And Scai should be back by then,” Aron offered.
I scowled at that thought, but he was probably right.
“We don’t need her.” Dylan gave Aron an angry look.
“Yes, we do,” I answered. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you, Dylan, but we still have a job to do. We have to free the witches and defeat Nimuë, and it’s only going to happen if the three of us work together. You know that.”
Dylan just frowned at me.
I stood my ground in front of him. “We will work together. We will fight those knights—together. The three of us, along with Aron, Sir Dagonet and my brothers. And then the three of us will take on Lady Nimuë because it’s the only way to stop her. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to like me. But you will do it.” I stared him in the eye to emphasize my words.
He was the first to blink. “Fine.” He then turned away and settled himself down on the far side of the fire away from all of us.
I slept close to my brothers. Some time during the night, Scai joined us.
<><><>
Dylan took care of the guard at the gate easily. The rest of us followed him on to the castle grounds. We all quietly made our way to the armory where Aron knew there to be a stockpile of weapons.
“Perhaps we can surprise them while they’re still asleep,” Scai whispered as we went.
“We’ll see. Wouldn’t count on it, though,” Sir Dagonet answered just as quietly.
And he was right. There were already three blacksmiths at work making more swords and repairing armor. Aron motioned for my brothers to go ahead of him. He didn't seem too eager to attack his fellow blacksmiths whom he knew to be innocent, so Peter, Piers, and Thomas took care of them. Each man took one blacksmith, knocking him out and tying him up, but otherwise not hurting them. The men were helping themselves to weapons when a knight walked in carrying his armor.
“Hey! Who are you?” he shouted. He then did a double take when he saw Scai and me. “You were here yesterday. You knew that fellow Patric killed.”
Dylan took a step forward.
“And you’re the one who took Patric's head!”
“You don’t remember us,” Dylan said, his voice laden with magic.
“What? Who are you? What are you doing here?” The knight shook his head as if to clear it of the suggestion Dylan had just put in. The man stumbled, dropped his armor, and tripped back outside before breaking into a run. He may not have remembered exactly who we were because of Dylan’s suggestion, but he clearly knew that we shouldn’t be there.
“Damn! That’ll do it,” Peter exclaimed.
“Yes, I imagine it will,” Sir Dagonet agreed. “Well, lets see how many there are.”
“Hopefully not too many,” Scai said, as we followed the men outside.
Knights were striding out of the gate from the inner bailey. Some of them in mail and pulling on their helmets, others in no armor at all. The problem was that there were a great number of them—many more than I expected. There had only been about twenty to thirty watching the fight the day before so I was hoping that that was all there was, but today there seemed to be many more, perhaps as many as fifty knights.
Sir Dagonet sighed heavily, then looked at our scraggly group of ten people. “Well, can’t say it hasn’t been done before.”
“We’ve got magic on our side,” Scai said, with her eternal optimism.
“Right! First to take out those in armor.” Dylan laughed. He looked up at the sky. There were a good number of large gray clouds overhead and within moments they were pouring down their contents on us.
Sir Dagonet laughed. “Good thing I just oiled mine yesterday.”
And with that we all swung into a very wet, messy battle.
Many of the knights in armor found themselves rusting and unable to move. They retreated quickly, leaving only thirty or so knights for us to fight.
It was almost as if yesterday had never happened, I thought, as I watched my brothers, Aron and Dylan get to work fighting the remaining knights, while I and Scai hung back to see where we could do the most damage.
The fact was, we all just worked well together. Clearly, when I had told Dylan the day before that he didn’t have to like me to fight with me I was right—even more so than I had actually realized. The words had just come out of my mouth, but now I saw that it was true. When we fought, we didn’t think about how well we liked each other; we just fought for the common good.
And just as the thought entered my mind, I noticed a knight approaching Dylan from behind. He was already fighting off two knights at once and keeping the rain falling.
I formed a strong fire ball in my hand and aimed as well as I could. It hit the knight squarely in the back, sending him falling into one of the knights Dylan was fighting.
“Woo hoo!” I shouted. “Two in one!”
Dylan must have heard me for he shouted back. “Well done, Bridget!�
� He turned, and I caught his eye for just a second before he thrust out at another knight who had come up to replace the knight I’d taken out. Was that a grateful look in his eye? One of appreciation? Dare I hope one of friendship?
A man went down just next to me. I turned and saw Scai with a sword in her hands.
She gave a shrug. “They’re heavy, but not that difficult to wield when helped by a little magic.”
I gave her a smile. “How about some lightning? What do you think that would do to a man in chain mail?”
She laughed. “Nothing good, I’m sure. But aim well.”
I gave her a nod and then focused my magic up to the cloud and then back down again to a knot of knights whose armor hadn’t succumbed to rusting in the rain. They were attacking some of my brothers. I couldn’t even see which or how many brothers were in the center of the group; there were too many knights.
With a shot of strong magic, I managed a multi-forked lightning strike, taking down three of four men all once.
“Well done!” Scai said approvingly. “Let me try.” She dropped the sword in her hands and swooped her arms up. A huge gust of wind barreled through the bailey, knocking a good number of men off their feet. Unfortunately, some of them were ours.
“Maybe a little more targeted?” I suggested.
She nodded, frowning. As she tried again, I caught sight of a number of knights running toward us. I sent another bolt of lightning into their path. They veered but continued approaching. Another bolt got one of them, but it didn’t look like they were going to be so easy to take down.
I grabbed the sword Scai had forgotten about and ran at them the way I’d seen Sir Dagonet do a number of times. Shouting and swinging the sword. That thing was heavy! Luckily, the sight of a girl running at them shouting made the knights pause in their advance on Scai.
She turned and saw them. In another swoop of her arms they were blown away by a huge gust of wind. I was knocked off my feet as well, but it was worth it to see the knights lay sprawling on the ground in a heap. I sent another shot of lightning down into the group, removing a number of them from this world and causing the rest to rethink attacking us.
“Thanks,” Scai said, giving me a hand up.
“Anytime.”
“Really?” she asked. The look in her eyes was truly sad and not a little worried as well.
“Of course!” I dropped the sword in my hand and threw my arms around my sister. “Oh, my God, Scai, how can you think otherwise? I love you. You’re my sister!” I pulled away. “Besides, it’s probably you who are furious—and rightly so—with me.”
She looked deeply into my eyes. I didn’t know whether she was reading my thoughts or what, but finally she said, “I was. I was angrier than I ever have been in my life, but it was a misunderstanding, and you were hurt by what you thought you saw. I get that.”
“Duck!” I said, quickly forming a fire ball in my hand and lobbing it over her head into the chest of the knight approaching her from behind. I should have made it stronger, but luckily he was wearing mail, which was a very good conductor of my fire. He dropped to the ground twitching.
Scai glanced behind her. “Thanks.”
“Do you forgive me?” I asked.
“Yes, just don’t ever do it again. If you see me doing something that upsets you—not that you will—just talk to me, please!”
“I promise, I will,” I said to no one because Scai had scooted around me. She pointed at the sword that had been lying on the ground. It was now shooting through the air toward a knight who’d been advancing on us from behind my back. The man just stood there, shocked that a sword could fly on its own. I didn’t look to see if it embedded itself into the man or not. I turned back around to find where else my lightning or fire balls could be of help.
“Bridget!” the cry came from somewhere off to my left.
I ran around to see who was calling for me. A knight standing in front of James was raising his sword in a way that looked too much like the way Patric had raised his just before he decapitated Matthias. I was too far away to form and throw a fire ball so I threw out my hand and thought, “Freeze!” The man stopped mid-swing, his sword inches from my brother’s neck.
James fell to the ground clutching his right arm. Blood was leaking out from between his fingers.
I ran to him and stuck my shoulder under his left arm to help him up and away from the fighting.
“He got a good chunk of my arm,” he panted.
“It’s all right. I’ll fix you up in no time at all.” I smiled at him, not letting on how scared I was at seeing so much blood pouring from my brother.
I couldn’t lose another one. I couldn’t.
I steeled myself as I tore off a strip of material from my shift. I used that as a tourniquet and then moved his fingers away from the cut. It was bad, but I’d healed worse. I gave him a reassuring smile.
“You can do something?” he asked, his eyebrows knit over frightened eyes.
I scoffed. “Of course. A mere scratch.”
“Well, it’s not,” he argued, beginning to relax.
“Oh, okay, not a scratch. But definitely not life-threatening.” I could have used some water to clean the wound, but in a battle situation like this, I would just have to make do. “This is going to hurt.”
“It already does.”
“Good. This is going to hurt more.”
“Good—aaahhhh!” he screamed as I burned inside and around the edges of the gash. I then placed my hands over the wound and closed the skin with my fire as my brother whimpered next to me. As quickly as I could, I cooled the skin, then ran my cooling left hand—the one not coated with blood—across his sweaty brow.
“Ah!” My brother shivered involuntarily. “That hurt like hell.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to. There was a lot cut through in your arm.”
He nodded and took more deep breaths.
“You rest here for a little while,” I told him.
He just nodded. I hoped he would be all right sitting there. But I needed to get back into the fight. It was bad enough to lose one set of hands; we couldn’t afford to lose two.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I was concentrating on my aim a few minutes later when a man fell into me from behind. I turned around to see what was going on as I lay there on the ground.
Dylan reached down a hand to help me back up. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem. I assume he was attacking me from behind?”
“Yes, these knights have no honor.” Dylan frowned.
I gave a little laugh. Dylan and his honor. It was so important to him.
And then it hit me. That’s why he was so angry with me the day before. My not telling him about Scai and Aron had not been the honorable thing to do. Friends told friends things like that no matter how much it might hurt them; that way they could either address the problem or protect themselves from getting hurt further.
I took a deep breath. “Dylan, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about seeing Scai and Aron. That wasn’t honorable of me.” Wow, that was hard to say, but now that it was said, it felt pretty good. It was the right thing to do.
He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right, Bridget. You did what you thought would cause me the least hurt and I appreciate that. I just can’t believe I didn’t see it or feel any of it. I mean,” he quickly amended, “I knew you were hurting, but I couldn’t tell from what. I should have probed further, or spoken to you to see if I could help with what you were feeling. That would have been the honorable thing for me to do. But I didn’t. So I’m sorry, too. We were both wrong.”
I quickly formed a fire ball in my hand and put all my hurt emotions into it. I took quick step to the side and threw it straight into the chest of a knight coming toward Dylan’s back. The man went down. “Friends?” I asked Dylan, who’d twisted around to see what I’d done.
He gave a laugh. “Absolutely, friends.”
We we
ren’t doing too badly, I thought, looking around not too much later. We had reduced the number of knights from close to fifty to a reasonable count. There were still more than one to each one of us, but the odds were beginning to even out.
As I aimed another lightning strike, I saw Dylan and Scai fighting close to one another. Dylan shouted for Scai to duck, and he swung Excalibur over her head to decapitate the knight she’d been trying to deal with on her own. As she stood back up, she gave him a quick kiss before turning back to deal with another knight who was approaching her.
I directed my lightning bolt at that knight and took him out before he could reach her. She turned and gave me a smile and a wave. I just laughed.
“What is going on?” the voice boomed all around us. Everyone stopped what they were doing to turn around and search for the source. Lady Nimuë stood on the battlements of the inner wall of the castle high above us. She began to laugh and then point to each one of her knights. Immediately, where one man had been, ten appeared.
Sir Dagonet took a test swipe at one of them. His sword went right through the man as if he wasn’t there. The knight in turn took a swipe at Sir Dagonet and nearly knocked the old knight off his feet.
“Retreat!” Dylan shouted. “Retreat! There’s no way we’re going to win over such odds.”
We all clearly agreed because, as one, we made a run for the gate. We left to the most unwelcome sound of Nimuë’s laughter reverberating off the castle walls.
<><><>
It was a filthy, exhausted group who struggled into our camp half an hour later. We’d nearly run all the way from the castle, in the center of Saerdbury, to the outer wall of the city. Then we’d had to find our way around to the gate and the bridge leading over the moat. Luckily, neither Nimuë nor any of her knights had followed us.
My brothers and Aron collapsed by the banked fire. Dylan looked for a moment like he was going to follow them, but then he saw Scai looking worried and somehow lost, so instead he put his arm around her shoulders and led her off further into the woods.
Sir Dagonet didn’t quite collapse but sat down with an “oof” against a tree and closed his eyes. Poor old man, I thought. This was getting to be too much for him. I wished there was something I could do, but when I looked down at my hands, they were nearly black with blood and mud.
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