by Finley Aaron
Ella grinned with relief. Not only did it sound promising that she might be able to keep her identity from the others, but Henry seemed intent on convincing her to stay. She’d never heard him talk so much, or so quickly. “If you don’t think I’ll be in your way—”
“In my way?” Henry spread his arms wide. “Nonsense! This tent can sleep six grown men.” He untied something at the ceiling as he spoke. “And if you’re worried about Jerome’s snoring—which is frightful, I assure you—these panels create privacy walls that help keep out the sound.” Fabric unrolled from the ceiling, creating a curtain that fell to the floor. Henry’s slightly-muffled voice came from the other side. “Can’t drown it out completely, but I’m sure it will be quieter than any room you’d find in town, with more privacy, too.”
Henry began to roll the curtain back up to its place at the ceiling.
“So, what do you say? Will you stay here?”
Chapter Eleven
“Yes, I would love to stay, then,” Ella agreed, confident her secret would be safer in the tent than in town. “Thank you so very much for inviting me. I’ll carry in my things and then get registered.”
Henry finished tying up the curtain, then helped Ella carry in her things, situating her with one side of the tent more or less to herself, with little Sigismund’s spot beside her. Then Henry accompanied her to the registration table, where they learned that, indeed, both Ulster brothers were registered to compete in the axe.
Though Henry frowned as she did it, Ella registered for the event. “I’m not guaranteed to fight either of them,” she reminded him.
“I doubt either of them will be eliminated early,” Henry predicted as they walked back to his tent. “If you stay in long enough, you’ll fight them. They may not recognize you in your new armor, especially if you keep your face covered—and while we’re on the topic, for that reason, I think you should keep the chain mail over your face as often as possible, especially if there’s any chance of them seeing you. Raedwald holds a double grudge. He won’t forget.”
Henry pulled in a deep breath. “But the point is, even if they don’t know who you are, they’re not fair fighters. They’ll injure and kill anyone just to win a round.”
“I’m not that bad with an axe,” Ella assured him, almost insulted by his lack of confidence in her skill. “Really. I expect to do well.”
And she did, believe it or not.
The details of that first tournament have blurred in my memory, but Ella made it almost to quarter finals in sword, and was eliminated a single round before that in axe, in spite of rushing around to make her events for both.
Uliad was eliminated from the axe even before Ella was, and Einhard took sixth place in that event. The way the random round assignments fell, Ella didn’t have to face either of them.
Raedwald competed in sword only and took sixth without ever once competing directly against Henry—which, Henry theorized to Ella later, may well have been because the organizers knew who Raedwald and Hugo really were, and wanted to avoid pitting them against one another.
Henry, as Hugo, got third place in sword, and seemed almost as pleased that Ella didn’t place, as he was with placing, himself.
“If you’d made quarter finals, they’d have announced your name with all the other finalists, and not just ring-side,” Henry explained to her as they sat at the tent later, tugging off their gloves and inspecting their blisters. The sun had set even before the final sword rounds, but torches burned at every corner and nearly every tent. Henry had lit two.
“It’s better this way,” Henry continued. “Raedwald and the Ulster brothers don’t yet know you’re here—and if you can keep away from them in the melees tomorrow, we might make it through the weekend without them seeing you.”
“You’re right, of course,” Ella agreed, more concerned about the three new blisters on her hand than she was with her final results. She was not at all disappointed with her performance, especially considering she’d been out of practice for a year (dodging Madame De Bouchard’s blows hardly counted as practice, even if it had improved her reaction time).
“My whole point in joining you is to help keep you safe, not draw additional ire,” Ella added.
“Eventually, they’re going to figure out who you are,” Henry reminded her. “Then you can win all you want. But it’s not a bad idea to keep your head down until then.” He leaned in and looked at the blisters on her hands. “Ouch! Three? How did you get so many?”
“New gloves.” Ella told him, not bothering to mention she hadn’t held a sword a year. “They’ll break in eventually. The swelling should be down by morning.”
Henry clucked his tongue. “They’ll still be a mite painful for a few days.”
“I’ve had worse,” Ella assured him.
Henry chuckled. “I’m famished, and I promised to pay all your expenses, so what do you say we find supper before all the food tents close down?”
The two of them went off and ate, then returned to the tent. Henry peeked inside, holding the torch carefully away from the flammable fabric. “Shh. Sigismund is already asleep.” He pointed inside so Ella could see where the page boy lay.
Henry returned the torch to its post outside. Only a small amount of the light made it through to the inside of the tent.
“I’ll lower the partition so Jerome doesn’t bother you when he returns,” Henry volunteered.
By the time Ella had picked her way around to her bags, Henry had the curtain down.
The curtain was still down when Ella awoke the next morning. She could hear the rumble of voices and sounds of the camp outside, but no one had bothered her. She suited up in her armor, put her things away and rolled her bedroll, and raised the curtain herself, tying it in place.
The red-haired Jerome snored softly from his pallet, but Sigismund’s and Henry’s beds were already rolled up and set out of the way.
She found Henry outside holding a pan of eggs over a small cooking fire.
“You’re just in time. Hungry?”
“Famished.”
“How are the blisters this morning?”
“Going down. Still painful, but not so much that I notice unless I think about it.” She crouched down by the fire, its warmth welcome in the cool morning, and nodded to a pot that sat among the coals. “What’s brewing?”
“Coffee.”
Ella’s eyes went wide with excitement. “Where did you get coffee?” She’d enjoyed the beverage many times. Coffee came from Ethiopia and her father tended to trade east more than south, but he’d always made it a point to look for it whenever he crossed paths with coffee trade routes. Still, she hadn’t had any since before she’d gone to Madame De Bouchard’s.
“You’re familiar with it?” Henry asked, not really answering her question.
“Yes. I love it.”
“Have some. I’ll have to make more.” He set the eggs aside (they were done cooking by then), and poured her drink into a mug, careful to avoid letting too many of the ground beans spill past the pot’s sieve.
Over coffee and eggs, they discussed their strategy for the upcoming melees. The foot melee would, as usual, precede the mounted melee.
“I think you should stay far from Raedwald and the Ulsters,” Henry advised.
“So should you,” Ella agreed jokingly. The coffee put her in a bright mood, besides the victory of making it through the night without being discovered.
“I’d like to, but then again, assuming I last until the end, and so do they, I’ll have to face them eventually.”
“Won’t I have to face them as well, then?”
“Fight them, yes. Face them—I’d rather you didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Henry began, then took a sip of coffee, swallowing before continuing. “They don’t seem to have realized you’re here yet. They’d only know you’re here if someone told them, and I don’t think anyone dislikes you enough to do that.”
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p; “What if they were close enough to one of my rings to hear my name called yesterday?” Ella sipped her coffee slowly, enjoying the taste.
Henry shrugged off the possibility. “They had their own fights in their own rings. It’s possible they may have even forgotten your name after all these months. But if they see your face, they might recognize you and remember. Even if they don’t, if you fight near me like some kind of bodyguard, they’ll purposely decide to take you out.”
Ella chewed a mouthful of eggs, unsure how to respond to Henry’s theories.
Henry sighed. “There’s been a lot that’s happened since you’ve been gone, even before Raedwald’s return. You know how it is with the tournament circuit. Many of the same men face each other week after week. Sure, you’ll get your local heroes out to try their skill against us, but the men who finish at the top in each event are often the same men.” He paused to take another bite.
“If they’re the best fighters, that’s how that’s supposed to work,” Ella noted.
“It’s fine if that’s all that happens,” Henry agreed. “The trouble is that the losers resent the winners. Not all of them, but many. They pay their entry fees, and the winners take home the money, so you can understand why they’d be upset. They hold grudges.”
“Just like Raedwald holds grudges?” Ella guessed.
Henry nodded as he swallowed more coffee, then said. “And just like Raedwald—”
“They want revenge,” Ella concluded. “So, they target the winners, then? Try to take them out?”
Henry nodded. “I’ve seen it more and more in recent tournaments. They’ll rush the winners of the previous tournament. Three or four of them will attack one man and try to eliminate him early while the field is full.”
“That leaves fighters who are easier to defeat,” Ella realized aloud. “And that’s part of why you contacted me?”
“I have been outnumbered, but if they see you’re working with me, they’ll target you as well. It’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes we’re working together, just as everyone knows Raedwald works with the Ulsters. But we’ve got a small advantage that no one knows yet, and I’d like to keep that advantage as long as I can.”
“Makes sense,” Ella agreed as she finished off her eggs. “Okay, where do you want me, then?”
Henry dumped the old coffee grounds over the fire, then used a long stick to draw in the mess of coals and steaming grounds left behind. He drew a rectangle to represent the field, and marked their places in it.
“If Raedwald and the Ulsters line up to my right, as they often do, I’ll want you to my left. I may try to put Dominic between us, but closer to me because they’ve been rushing him, too.”
“They’ve been targeting Dominic?”
“Yes, and he hasn’t won anything. I fear it’s because they associate him with me, which isn’t fair to him at all. He hasn’t taken home any money in weeks, and frankly, I don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to pay his entry fees.”
Ella frowned, unhappy about all of it. “With all these groups working together to target people, you’d think someone like me could sneak up on some of them and eliminate them while their attention is diverted.”
Henry grinned. “You’ve read my mind.”
“No.” Ella pointed to the mess of a drawing in the old coals, which wouldn’t have looked like anything to anyone else. “Just your drawings.” She returned his smile.
Sigismund returned then, and Henry introduced him to Allard before instructing him to go in and awaken Jerome. “But stay back this time. You know how he thrashes.”
This was followed by a racket inside the tent, and shortly after Jerome staggered out, muttered something about finding breakfast before he had to start work, and loped away, while Henry reminded Sigismund to gather fresh hay for the horses, and clean up after them.
Henry and Ella then strategized a bit more, but the basic plan was much as Henry had first proposed it. Ella was to stay back from him, picking off attackers at the edges and trying to stay out of Raedwald’s sight. If she saw Henry needed help, of course she could try to come to his aid, but she’d have to weigh the danger to him against the danger of being recognized.
“They’re going to recognize me eventually,” Ella reminded Henry. “I’d rather it be in battle than in line for the latrine, because at least in battle I could use the moment of surprise to my advantage.”
This comment sent Henry to laughing, as many of her statements did. The worry that had clouded his face when he’d first stepped from his tent the day before, had been replaced by a lighter heart, and hope.
The hope wasn’t too badly damaged when they lined up for the foot melee, and Raedwald surprised them by lining up to Henry’s left instead of his right.
Ella spotted him immediately and, as she’d discussed with Henry, headed to his left…where she looked up and saw both Ulster brothers standing across the field, on the opposite side of the line from Raedwald.
She and Henry had not discussed this possibility.
Ella looked down the line toward Henry, and watched his face (or the part she could see over his chain-mail) as he located Raedwald and the Ulsters. His eyes narrowed, then searched the line for her. He gave her a shrug with eyebrows raised, admitting he didn’t know where to place her.
Not that she had time to move again, anyway. The herald in the middle of the field had already shouted most of the rules, and a moment later, he ran to the sidelines while the trumpets blared.
The two lines of men surged at one another. Ella ran forward, but purposely didn’t move as quickly as the other men. She held back, still unsure about the unexpected arrangement and how she ought to respond to it. Besides, she figured, if she was supposed to be a secret weapon, she probably shouldn’t insert herself into the heat of the fray. And from the rear, she could watch the action better, and keep an eye on all the key players.
Her position also worked with their plan for her to pick off distracted members of the other team. Since the men were working in groups, as Henry had warned her they likely would, the lines were more like a row of clusters with space in between.
Ella leapt toward one of these spaces and nabbed a red sash with the tip of her sword, sending a man she didn’t even know sulking away.
Not that she paid him any heed. The flutter of red drew the attention of nearby swordsmen, and two of them turned on her, enraged that she’d cost them a teammate.
Two against one was never fair, especially when the two were each twice the size of the one.
I flew overhead in a fit, half beside myself with concern at the snickersnee shenanigans below me.
But I needn’t have worried. Ella executed a move Gustav had picked up on their travels to the Orient, which he’d drilled with her until she could execute it perfectly, and on the fly, as now. Ella first seemed to hop upward with her right knee raised. At the same time as this, she thrust her sword forward at the attacker on her right, blocking the blow he aimed at her neck.
But the force of the movement wasn’t to her right. All that was a feint meant to gain height, lifting her quite unexpectedly into the air as she kicked out with her left heel to the side, striking the left attacker squarely on his shield, and pushing him back into the men behind him (who turned on him immediately, furious at his imposition).
That left Ella to fight the man on her right, who was the larger of the two, and I daresay, the better swordsman (the other being quickly eliminated by the men he’d crashed into, one of whom was actually on his own team, but who’d been so surprised by the sudden blow, he essentially held the man down while his opponent stole his sash).
Ella’s steps stuttered as she landed from the leaping kick, and her foe swung hard at her shoulder. I knew she could never get her sword raised again in time to block the blow, and indeed, since she was falling forward already from landing her kick, she ducked low.
This might have been a good strategy (if it was strategic at all—she may hav
e been falling, as far as I could see) but her larger opponent lunged at her, obviously intending to crush her with his weight so he could pluck her sash.
But here the martial arts Ella had practiced in the Orient worked to her advantage. As the man bore down, Ella fell back quite on purpose with her knees near her chest, and her feet poised above her like those of a tumbling acrobat. She caught her attacker in the chest with the soles of her boots and rolled backward, heaving him behind her while she somersaulted over.
Upon landing, she rolled to her side and scrambled to her feet, panting from the effort of dislodging the heavy man.
He lay on the ground quite stunned behind her, and Ella staggered forward, intent on claiming his sash.
But another man was already leaping at her from behind.
“Ella!” I shouted, growing large as a dragonfly and pointing as I flew past her face and then up, out of the way (I’d be no use to her crushed, you know).
With this warning, Ella spun right, sword slashing in a horizontal blow, taking this new attacker quite by surprise, for he had no idea she knew he was there, and he may have been slightly distracted by the oddest-shaped dragonfly he’d ever seen.
Whatever the case, he would not remember anything of it the next day, for Ella, swinging blindly with no sense of his true position, caught him in the forehead with the pommel of her sword as he crouched low, and sent him keeling dizzily down in a slump.
She was still trying to catch her breath, and therefore was a bit slow reaching for his sash.
One of her blue-sashed fellows caught it instead as he bounded past, and then leapt further to pluck the sash of the man she’d somersaulted moments before, who was only that moment heaving his portly form upright.