by Bo Burnette
Mrs. Fidelma’s stark expression stood out among the sea of faces, and Arliss rushed to her.
“Princess! What’re you doing here?”
“I’ve come back to try to stop this madness. What are the people doing?”
Fidelma tossed her head. “You can’t stop it. Not one of us can. That’s why we’re evacuating—makin’ for the forest. Queen’s orders, if it came to this point. It seems that it has.”
“Where are my parents?”
“Your father’s leading the troops on the other side of the city. They may be fighting already.”
Arliss’s heart dripped down into her feet. “And my mother?”
“She was headed for the castle.”
Arliss nodded. “Thank you. Take the people just within the forest, in a straight line from the city. I have a secret place there. You will find a small store of provisions. I hid them just in case.”
“Yes, my dear princess.” Fidelma hurried off.
So, her mother had stayed with the castle, even when all others evacuated. That meant she had a plan. It also meant she needed help. Arliss pounded across the wooden bridge, pushing through the last of the fleeing villagers.
She rounded the corner of the first tier just as a massive sphere of rock catapulted into the side of the city.
No… Arliss doubled her speed. The murrey dress swished around her knees as she ran, and the chain mail crunched beneath her armpits. She could smell wood burning. That odor mingled with the freezing scent of snow and burned her nostrils.
Another projectile hurtled through the flaming sky and into the tier above her. It crushed the roof of a house, and the entire structure collapsed atop it.
“No,” Arliss said the word aloud as she hurried through the second tier. This couldn’t happen. It could not. They had spent months, years, building these homes and stores. Now a chunk of rock could destroy them in an instant.
Thane had every possible advantage: the massive swath of an army, the destructive war machines, flanks of cavalry, and the element of surprise. No one, least of all Arliss, had expected him to come so soon. Now, Reinhold was laid bare to his attack—untrained and unprepared.
Arliss barely climbed the ascent to the third tier soon enough. Behind her, another boulder shattered the wood and brick of Lord Brédan’s house. She restrained the urge to stop and weep. She had spent so many of her childhood days playing with Brallaghan and Ilayda in that house. Now the moments were beyond memory.
A band of young archers confronted her the moment she pulled herself onto the city’s flat hilltop. Several leveled their bows at her, until their faces relaxed in recognition.
“Princess Arliss!” A teenage girl younger than Ilayda hurried forward. “We have to leave with the others. The city’s going to be crushed.”
Arliss’s entire body shook with frustration. “No! We must stay and fight.”
“Don’t you see what it happening?” The girl stretched her hand out away from the city. Arliss finally looked out at the battlefield in the west.
A line of six catapults bisected Thane’s infantry. They vomited boulders towards both the city and the Reinholdian ranks. Those ranks, which stood some distance in front of the moat, looked pitifully few in comparison to the darkly armored soldiers who bore down on them. Thane was making his initial charge, and with it he hurled a second wave of destruction into the city on a hill.
Arliss swallowed. “You’re right. Take the archers and protect the refugees. Or join the battle from afar. Do whatever you can.”
Another catapult spit its stone into the city. The rock crashed across the third tier, barely missing the group of archers.
“Go!” Arliss ordered.
“But you?” The girl squinted through the haze of dust.
“I have to help the queen.”
The band scattered, all placing arrows on their bows. Arliss pushed through the mounting haze of smoke and catapulted debris. She stumbled out of the next missile’s range and reached the doors of the great hall. Another boulder rocketed past her, pummeling the base of the castle tower itself. Arliss’s skirt rippled as the disrupted wind tore past her.
The great hall trembled as she closed the double doors behind her. Candle sconces toppled to the floor, their tarnished copper clanging against stone. Frames and tapestries hung askew on the walls.
A hideous crunch gashed through the roof of the hall. Arliss spun around in time to see the horse-sized boulder fracture the ceiling to bits. She threw herself to the ground as the ball of destruction slit through the hall and tumbled to a halt by the windows. The impact rumbled through her chest.
Arliss pushed herself up hesitantly. Everything had turned eerily still. Dust fogged the hall—or what was left of it. Then she saw where the rock had hit.
By the windows, the thrones had been crushed to bits. Elowyn and Kenton’s former seats were now indistinguishable beneath a chunk of rock as tall as Arliss.
Yet her throne—the simple throne of the princess of Reinhold—stood unscathed.
It was insignificant, of course, Arliss told herself. A few more catapults would do their work, and the throne would vanish. Still, it somehow gave her hope.
A voice filtered down from the steps that led up the tower. The spark of hope suddenly ignited into a flame. The strong voice, confident yet strained, made its way down the steps. Arliss rushed up the stairway in search of the singer.
“A princess on a smooth-hewn throne…” her mother murmured.
Arliss raised her voice and answered, “Clothed in linen raiment.”
“A queenly look is in her eye.”
Arliss rushed through the doorway of the library. Her mother had collapsed on the floor, her arms draped across a metal chest. Elowyn murmured the last line of the stanza.
“And grace is on her forehead.”
Chapter Forty-two: The Fall of Reinhold
ARLISS DROPPED TO THE FLOOR BESIDE HER MOTHER. “What is happening?”
Elowyn’s hands trembled atop the chest. Her glazed eyes stared into nothing. “Thane has come. He made his way from the north, far sooner than we expected. It is over. Reinhold will fall.”
Arliss gripped her mother’s shoulders, forcing her to look her in the eye. “No—it will not! Did you not tell me that, once? That the line of Reinhold would never be broken?”
Elowyn’s eyes flashed. “Perhaps I could not see the end.”
The ground shook beneath their feet, and Arliss thought she could almost feel the tower sway slightly. She stared into her mother’s eyes.
“There are many stories and many ends. Perhaps you didn’t see them all. But you did see some of them. You saw Thane’s fate, that he would be killed by the child of a king.” Arliss’s neck tightened. “By me.”
Elowyn forced herself up. “You are right. Many stories and many ends…and now this story must have an end. Here, help me with the chest.”
Confusion and terror seized Arliss’s innards and turned them cold. “What are you doing?”
Elowyn heaved at the steel trunk. “I am saving the books, the maps, the documents—anything I can. We cannot lose our history.”
Arliss leapt to her feet, pushing herself away from the chest. “We won’t lose our history. We won’t lose anything. This city cannot fall! I am going to kill Thane—right now—myself—no matter what it takes. Unless he will stop and bargain, he has to die.”
Elowyn shook her head. The wide neckline of her brown dress hung upon taut, weary shoulders. “You cannot. You would be killed if you tried to reach him now. And the city would be lost before you found him.”
Arliss stared around at the emptied bookshelves. She reached for her quiver. “I will not accept that.”
“Arliss, look out the window.”
Arliss forced her feet to carry her to the window. Below, past the moat and past a stretch of snowy plain, the two armies had collided. Thane’s initial forces swallowed up Kenton’s. Did Orlando fight among them? Beyond the Anmórian infantr
y, a line of archers readied their bows. Their grip hands seemed to be on fire, and for a moment the sight puzzled Arliss.
Then the archers released their arrows. Lines of flame and smoke arced into the Reinholdian ranks and into the empty city.
Arliss bit back the wave of anger that mounted in her throat. What irony. Thane was shooting fiery arrows into Reinhold.
“You have a choice to make.” Elowyn echoed her words from a month earlier. “What is more important to you: your life, or that of your country? Some of us might survive this battle, if God works a miracle. If any of us do, we will need that history.”
Arliss’s hands tightened around the stone windowsill for a moment. Then she turned and faced her mother. “Thane must be stopped. Father needs help. I have the vial of Reinhold in my satchel right now from the waterfall vault. I also bear the crown. Eamon still carries the sword, so if he returns perhaps we can bargain with Thane.”
“There will be no bargain.”
Arliss strode over and felt for a grip on one of the chest’s side handles. “Then I will help you.”
Elowyn allowed her lips to spread into a smile.
The castle shook as Elowyn and Arliss dragged the chest down the final flight of stairs and into the rubble of the great hall. Elowyn’s gaze was one of terror. Arliss could only imagine the pain, the memories that flooded her mother’s mind. She had seen her home destroyed twice. Once was more than enough for any lifetime.
The catapults were sending their wares into the city thick and fast now, with mere seconds separating their collisions. One blasted through the remaining wall of the hall, and it collapsed. Arliss stumbled across shaking ground as the chest continued to drag her arms down.
Elowyn gasped for breath. “We have…to drag it to the far side of the hill. We can slide it from there.”
Arliss felt her arms stretched almost to breaking. The metal handles bit into her fingers and squeezed off her circulation. “Why there?” was all she could manage.
“It will go down into the moat. Protected.”
They staggered their way across the rough hilltop dotted with stones small and large. Thane’s fiery arrows had started blazes up and down the tiered city. Smoke stung Arliss’s eyes and flooded her lungs.
Just when Arliss thought her arms couldn’t bear the strain anymore, Elowyn let her end of the chest plop into the dirt. They had reached the edge. Arliss let her fingers relax, but her arms tensed back into the scrunched-up position. Spikes of pain wove their way up her bones.
Elowyn maneuvered the metal box around and threw her weight into it. She gave a grunting scream, and the box started hurtling down the hillside. It crashed through everything that stood in its path and splashed into the moat below.
A cluster of giant rocks flew through the night sky towards the city.
Arliss yanked her mother’s arm “Get down!”
The three missiles hit the castle’s foundation, one after the other. The ground felt like an earthquake as Arliss helped Elowyn to her feet.
“We have to get out of the city!” Elowyn shouted through the screams of battle and the crash of boulders. With a final glance at the tottering tower, the queen turned and ran down the hill’s sloping incline, stumbling down the same path the chest had taken. Arliss followed, half-falling her way down the knoll.
They reached the base of the hill. The chest had lodged in the shallow moat’s waters, but they managed to tug it onto the shore. The metal sealed together perfectly—airtight and watertight to every degree.
Looking out from hundreds of feet lower, Arliss winced. The battle seemed so much more real. Swords. Shields. Pikes. Bows. Chariots. Shouts. Stabbings. Blood. Yet it called to her. She felt the rush of battle fire raging through her veins. This was her land—these were her people—and she was the best archer among them. While she still had breath, she had an utter duty to help them. To fight for them.
Elowyn pulled at Arliss’s arm. She pointed upwards, her eyes wary but not fearful. “Look.”
The catapults continued to do their work, demolishing empty houses and smashing evacuated shops. But more and more, the boulders focused on the castle itself. The tower, which had for all of Arliss’s life stood for everything that was strong and upright and good, tottered treacherously.
“Mother…” Her words would not come. Elowyn, too, could only stare.
What else could anyone have done? This city had taken a decade to come to full fruition. An entire thirteen years of memories were stored therein. Arliss had done all of her growing, her growing up, in this city. She had learned to put aside a toddler’s gab and take up the educated voice of well-read royalty. She had been taught to shoot a bow by both her parents, how to cook a feast by her mother, and how to govern a city by her father. She had rambled through the streets with Ilayda and Brallaghan, running off on pretend adventures. She had slowly morphed into a woman, at first shocked by her body’s sudden and unusual changes. She had watched as Brallaghan left his old playmates for sword training, and then as she herself had cast aside her old toys and taken up serious archery and sewing and writing. She had met Philip—a commoner whom she had likely seen on the streets every week of her life and thought nothing of. She had defended this city with a single fiery arrow.
Now, the city was falling.
Arliss could only watch in horror. Her heart felt as if it was being ripped from her chest. The world beneath her feet quaked, ready to fall apart.
The armies on the field paused their fighting, falling back to regroup. They all stared at the city—some in terror, some in triumph. But they were all staring.
The tower wavered a moment, every stone sliding in its place. Foundations splintered. Mortar cracked. Stone crumbled. Then finally, with a horrible sound like a dying groan, the castle of Reinhold fell headlong across its own city.
Arliss’s chest squeezed every bit of air from her lungs. Her senses refused to register the cloud of dust and rubble or the wash of flames.
Everything she had known for the last thirteen years, everything they had built, had fallen.
Chapter Forty-three: The Sound of a Sword
THE RUMBLING OF CHARIOT WHEELS BENEATH ILAYDA’S HEELS had slowly died away until only one pair of wheels—their own—scissored across the snow. So Erik had held back, then, slowly drawing them away from the pack. How he had managed to commandeer the chariot in the first place seemed a miracle to her. And, of course, his not being noticed added another marvel to the pile.
She poked her head through the velvet curtains which separated the chariot from the cart it pulled. “We’re alone?”
“For now.” Erik kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead of them. Snow blustered about, sometimes in thick drifts and sometimes in erratic clouds.
Ilayda pulled herself out of the boxy cart and onto the chariot beside him. The platform was wide and flat with no seat of any sort, so she crouched, mimicking Erik’s position.
He handed her one of his long knives. “Cut the cart free. We don’t need it, and we’ll travel faster without it.”
“But, for secrecy—”
“Cut it.” The smoke from Erik’s breath snapped short.
She bristled but sliced through the leather straps which attached the cart. It clattered behind them, toppling over itself. Wind shrieked about her from all sides now as the cart quickly disappeared into the whiteness behind them.
She rubbed her icy palms together. “What will we do if the battle’s already started?”
“We will slice through Thane’s army quicker than a blink. In fact, it should be easy. They won’t recognize us as their enemy until they are dead.”
She shuddered, grimacing. “Doesn’t it seem cruel to you?”
His lower lip stuck out as he shook his head. “No. They had a choice, as every man has a choice, whether to attack us cruelly and without warning or reason. This is justice.”
Erik scanned their surroundings. The rough landscape had been turned nondescript by ice and snow, an
d even on the sideless chariot nothing much could be seen for a league.
“We’ll have to find Lord Brédan somehow,” Ilayda said.
“And Brallaghan?” Erik probed.
“Yes.” Her voice shook.
He looked at her for the first time. “You’re still—”
“No.” She clenched her teeth. “Do not speak to me about him. I don’t want to speak to anyone about it ever again.”
Erik turned away and focused on urging on the two horses. Ilayda sat with her eyes shut, trying to keep the tears from flooding.
Wheels rumbled behind them, making Erik’s ears twitch. “There’s another chariot out there. Close, from the sound of it.”
The distinct sound of wheels scraping across snowy plains slushed towards them. Erik nodded to the knife which Ilayda still subconsciously gripped. She nodded back.
A Reinholdian carriage emerged from the snowy mist and sped alongside them across the plains. Its driver easily controlled the reins. Ilayda peered through the snow at the driver. She sat upright on the seat, wrapped round with a purplish cloak. Waves of hair burst out from beneath a hood’s vain attempts to restrain them.
“Who is it?” The clear voice split through the clattering silence.
Ilayda gasped in relief. “Pull alongside her.”
“Are you mad?” Erik scoffed.
“Yes, but not this time.” Ilayda turned back to smile at the nearing carriage. “She’s a friend.”
Arliss’s hands still trembled as she draped her cloak across the metal chest. None of this was real. It couldn’t be. She was dreaming—she was in another world—and soon would wake up and leave it all behind.
She stared at the crumbling castle tower once more. It lay on its side like a strong man fallen low. In some places, thick mortar held pieces of walls and rooms together, but nigh half the castle lay scattered in pieces up and down the city.