by Bo Burnette
“Thane won’t buy it for long,” Philip said. “We’ll have to be fast.”
“We will be.”
The four councilors paused, each standing like pillars at a corner of Elowyn’s makeshift bed. Arliss watched their collective breath mingle with the spatter of snow.
“Oughtn’t you take more helpers?” Kenton said at last. “That assassin won’t be alone.”
“Of course he won’t. But if more than two of us go, Orlando will see us too soon. The plan won’t work.”
“Who is going to free the prisoners from the ship?”
Arliss reached for her chin. “You.”
Kenton’s blue eyes flicked desperately to Elowyn. “And who will guard your mother?”
“The young archers will protect her.” Arliss looted through her stash of arrows. She had recovered a few from the battlefield, but still had only seven. “Our ten minutes is almost up. Quickly—pitch a tent, stall for me!” She turned to Philip. “We don’t have much time.”
Orlando’s gaze scoured the ruined city as the ship rounded its moat. Despite the vessel’s small size, it still scraped sludge along the bottom at times.
They had come almost parallel to the battlefield. Any moment, Thane would send a single flaming arrow as a signal for him to set the ship on fire. Orlando and his small band would escape the vessel as it cracked and flamed.
Something moved in his peripheral vision.
He jerked his neck in the direction of the city, searching for something irregular. Near the top of the hill, near the toppled ruins of the tower, a rich, reddish plum color flashed brazenly in the middle of natural hues of earth and flame. Something else complemented the purplish wash. A splash of gold?
An arrow whistled through the air and imbedded in the mast, a few feet in front of where Orlando stood at the helm. He started. The arrow had been shot from high above. Even on the ship, the city’s top tier towered over him.
Arliss was in the city’s ruins.
Here she lurked right within his grasp. If he could find her and catch her, his mission would be complete. Thane would look upon him with new respect. He would rebuild this city and rule it.
Orlando released the helm and turned to the warrior beside him. “Steer the ship, and set it afire at Thane’s command. Then go and join the battle.”
“And you, Sir Orlando?”
Orlando pulled his burgundy cloak around him and reached for the empty places where his knives should have been. “I have another mission.”
Soon enough, his knives would be back where they belonged. And—perhaps—there would be fresh blood on them to wipe clean.
Arliss tried to retain her focus, but she could not. The farther they crept into the ruins of the castle, the more her sorrow distracted her heart. Most of the castle lay fully on its side now. The top floor of the tower had broken to bits and collapsed all over the hillside, but the first two floors lay lengthwise across the top tier’s flat terrain. Now, as she and Philip picked their way through the stony ruins, the walls had become floors and ceilings, and the ceilings and floors were crumbling passageways.
But one wall of the castle still stood mostly upright—but shattered and shaky. Remnants of a staircase snaked a treacherous path up the stones.
Snow piled atop the ruins, but only a few drifts had made it into the fallen castle within. Arliss stepped through a cloud of dusty snow and hauled herself into a room which took her a moment to recognize.
She staggered backwards into Philip. He reached out to steady her as she wept. “Philip, the library. It’s gone. It’s all gone.”
She turned her face into his shoulder, her tears flowing uncontrollably. She felt she oughtn’t be doing it—that she should restrain herself from giving into Philip’s comfort—but she had no choice. Soon the shoulder and chest of Philip’s jerkin were wet with tears.
He smoothed out her hair. “The books were saved. That’s what matters.”
Arliss shook her head. The tears tried to stop her from breathing. “No—you don’t understand. This library is my childhood, my life.”
She felt his thick chest heave as he sucked in a breath and prepared to say something. But the words never left his lips.
A cry arose from the battlefield. Arliss strode away from Philip and to the crevice that split through the former window.
Outside, chaos had erupted. Bowstrings twanged, swords sizzled. The armies were preparing for another clash.
How? Had Eamon been unable to stall? Did Thane not believe she was coming back?
In the midst of charging armies, rolling chariots, rearing horses, and tense bowmen, Thane and Eamon led opposing charges. Thane wielded a short sword in either hand. Eamon raised a long, beautiful sword engraved with gold and embedded with gems.
Philip had returned the sword of Reinhold to Eamon, and now Eamon was preparing to wield it against Thane.
Arliss’s heart jumped into her throat. Everything Eamon had said, everything he had done against Thane, it had all been for her and for her people. Thane knew it, too. And he hated him for it. No matter how this fight ended, it would not end with both of them alive. It could not.
The chariots raced toward the thick of battle.
Philip swallowed. “Reinhold is doomed. Those chariots will saw through us like wheat.”
Arliss closed her eyes, but nothing could block out the pain of imminent defeat.
She opened them again. On the horizon, a long line of shadows sped across the snowy plains, moving faster than Arliss thought anyone had the right to.
No, she gasped silently. Please, Lord. Not more enemies.
Philip pressed his hand to the crack in the stone. “Reinforcements.”
Arliss’s brow tightened, then softened as realization spread through her face. “Yes, reinforcements. But not for Thane.” She turned to Philip and grabbed his arm joyously. “It’s the carriages! Ríon, Clare, Fiach, Finín, and others—they’ve come!”
Without sound or warning, Orlando rushed at them from within the ruins of the crumbling floor.
The chariot was moving far faster than Ilayda liked. It threatened to spit her off the back. She felt sure the carved frame would shatter to pieces if they kept up this pace.
Erik crouched low, barely moving. His fingers wound through the reins, forcing speed into the pair of horses. “We’re almost upon them.”
Ilayda looked up and surveyed the city and the surrounding plains. A dark fear registered in the pit of her mind. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Of course, enemy warriors and chariots surrounded a hideous clash of soldiers, but that wasn’t all.
The city. The castle was gone. It had flipped onto its side. Their city lay in fragmented, flaming ruins.
If Thane had reached this far, how could she expect to find Arliss alive? Arliss would have protected the city to her last breath. If the city had fallen, she may well have fallen beneath it.
Ríon reined his chariot up on their right. “Any plans?”
Clare pulled up to their left. “Win the battle, of course.”
Fiach, Finín, Arden, and a smattering of other guards drove their carriages into the speeding line. All in all, the company was comprised of nine Reinholdian carriages and two stolen Anmórian chariots.
Erik spoke. “We’re going to circle the battle, inflicting what damage we can and ensuring the safety of the royalty. Then we ride through the fight in shifts, cutting down everything that reeks of Thane’s filth.”
Clare laughed, and her tongue slipped between her teeth. “It’s a bit simple.”
Ríon tossed his head. “But it will work.”
Ilayda closed her fingers around both of the arrow knives and told herself Ríon was right.
Chapter Forty-six: Bearer of the Ring
ARLISS FELT THE CASTLE’S STONES GROAN BENEATH HER as Orlando closed the distance, sweeping a thin sword towards them. Philip drew his own sword, but Arliss was too distracted to nock an arrow. The stones were falling apart beneath them. In momen
ts, the castle would crash down the hillside.
She stole a second’s glance out the wide crack in the stone. The library—or what was left of it—was on the only side of the castle that hadn’t toppled. But it was leaning. The gaps in the floor revealed that this room of the tower overhung the city itself—the side so steep it was nearly perpendicular.
Nausea scrambled her stomach as she realized how treacherous their situation was. The crack of a few stones, and all three of them would tumble down in a squashed, mangled heap.
Stones crumbled two feet in front of her toes. She pressed her back into the wall and nocked an arrow. Philip and Orlando were fighting. She aimed a shot at Orlando.
It missed. They fought too wildly for her to follow, especially without hitting Philip.
Her brain cleared. She dug through her jerkin and pulled out Orlando’s knives. If she couldn’t shoot him down from afar, she would have to join the fray.
Orlando’s sword—ridiculously long and thin—sheared through the air and tore Philip’s blade from his hand. Philip ducked to grab his sword. Arliss saw his mistake too late. Orlando pounded the pommel of his sword into Philip’s temple.
Philip collapsed against a bookshelf that had once bracketed the wall.
With a yell, Arliss threw herself and the knives in Orlando’s direction. Orlando readied his sword with a confident slit of his eyes.
Their blades never met. The walls around them heaved a great sigh. The floor began to buckle, tilting away beneath Arliss’s feet as stones dislodged all around. She flailed for a grip on something, but her hands were full of knife handle.
Philip jerked his head up, his expression dazed. He leaned backward with the sloping bookshelf. Orlando remained standing several paces away, tilting his weight to retain his balance. But even he could not withstand the tower’s collapse for ever.
The foundation groaned. Boulders turned to pebbles. The crumbling library listed over, falling, crumbling onto the city below—
Arliss staggered toward Philip, but she couldn’t reach out to steady him without dropping the knives.
The far wall, which she had used as a window onto the battlefield, had been completely crushed. The moat’s icy waters churned far below.
Arliss wedged her feet in one of the wooden shelves. The tower had turned nearly upside down—or so it felt. In a final impulse as the wall disintegrated across the hilltop, she hooked her arm around Philip’s and stabbed both knives into the shelf.
The shelf had been joined to the wall long ago, and now it absorbed some of the shock as they slammed into the hard ground. Philip held tight to her as the shelf slid down the steepest part of the hill—the part that had once been her secret pass down the tiers.
The shelf crunched to a halt—barely. The slightest shift in the rubble might set it off again.
She held tight to the knives and squinted through the hazy mess around her. Stones had been crushed to powder and now mingled with the smoke, a cremated memory of her city. This must have once been the second tier. Somewhere near the the Bronze Lion. But nothing was as it had been, and it never would be again.
Up on the first tier, Orlando emerged from the haze and climbed his way down to Arliss.
“My knives.” Orlando dodged debris and pointed his sword at her. “I’d appreciate having them back.”
The shelf slid a few feet down the near-vertical incline. She glanced over her shoulder. Below—a drop into the moat or onto shards of rock.
Orlando crept down the hill and leaned over the top of the shelf to look her in the eye.
Arliss steadied Philip, whose brow knotted with pain. “Why are you here?”
“To kill you.”
She swallowed the hate she held for him. “Do you not see the battle that is going on below us? Hasn’t there been enough death?”
He tilted the sword down towards her neck. “Not quite enough.”
“Please, Orlando,” she begged. “Turn away from this dark path. Choose the light. Choose the truth. Jesus will forgive you—even as he has forgiven me.”
Orlando looked ready to slice through her neck. “Enough! Can’t you see reality? Can’t you wake up?”
“Look around! Don’t you see the snow? Feel the fire?” The shelf shook, ready to skid down the hill. “Look into my eyes. Do they not scream that God is real?”
A yell rolled up Orlando’s throat. He swung a sword down at her left side—the arm she held Philip with. Her left hand slipped from the knife, and for one horrifying moment she hung there, clambering to hold onto the other blade.
Then she slipped and fell.
The air felt like nothing—like wind—rushing up her skirt, and every moment felt like minutes passing in sticky slowness. She wondered what the ground would feel like.
Wood jarred up through her knees, and she cried out in pain. Then a hand—gentle, strong—reached out to steady her. A voice murmured through the chaos. She felt a rumble beneath her legs, like something rotating repeatedly. Smoke stung her eyes and nose. The sound of battle had become tiresomely repulsive.
“Arliss,” the voice repeated. “Are you all right?”
Her vision cleared as she steadied herself against her rescuer. Pain seared through her legs, especially the one Merna had stabbed back in Anmór. “I’m alive.”
“Where’s Philip?”
Arliss forced her eyes all the way open. “Ríon—it’s you! But how?”
“We made it. And not a moment too soon. I saw you dangling out of the ruins, and I wheeled over just in time.”
She clutched the curved front of the carriage. They were speeding around the battle and across the fields, away from the city. “We have to go back for Philip.”
“We can’t hold anything else. Philip will have to manage.” Ríon’s eyes were clearly focused elsewhere.
Arliss cast him a sideways look. “Where are we going?”
Ríon stared into the middle of the battlefield. “To Thane. Only the child of a king, you know?” He sucked in a cold breath. “I’m going to kill Thane.”
Philip fought for his footing on the slipping bookshelf. Orlando perched several shelves above him, his long sword flicking within a handbreadth of Philip’s heels. He had recovered his knives and sheathed them.
“Give it up!” Orlando taunted. “Reinhold is lost.”
“Reinhold is not lost!” Philip clenched the shelf. A splinter stuck in his hand. “And neither are you.”
“What do you mean?”
Philip reached out and buried his hand in a crack of the stone to stop the sliding. The bookshelf creaked and jerked to a halt.
Above him, Orlando dropped his sword as he fought for a hold on anything to prevent him from falling. The shelves slid out from beneath him. He grasped at anything.
Philip caught him with an iron grip. His shoulder burned with the strain.
Orlando glared up at him. “If anyone’s lost, it’s you and your tedious princess.”
“I’m holding your life in my hands.”
“A moment more and we’ll both be crushed, anyway.”
“Or we could both go free. We could help Arliss. You have the key to stopping Thane.”
Orlando’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
Philip twisted his wrist, bringing Orlando’s hand around to show him his own fingers. He slid down the fingerless glove that had hidden Orlando’s hand so long. “The ring of Reinhold. I knew you were its bearer.”
Orlando’s nose flared. “What does it matter?”
“It matters because we can bargain Thane away! We can stop his evil. You don’t have to be his slave anymore.”
“I’m not his slave!” Orlando pulled out a knife with his free hand. “I have a duty to Merna as well.”
Philip shook his head. “She is a liar and a deceiver. You know in your heart that you are wrong.”
Orlando’s face twisted with innumerable emotions. “Why should I trust you?”
An equal number of emotions—
anger, hate, disdain—burned in Philip’s chest. He bit down on his tongue and doused the flame in his chest. “Because you’re meant to be more than a slave, Orlando. And I believe you could change.”
Orlando pointed the knife at Philip. He could have plunged it into Philip’s back, but his arm froze. The quiver in his eyes said he simply couldn’t do it.
Chapter Forty-seven: Only the Child of a King
RÍON HAD NEARLY MADE A FULL PERIMETER OF the battlefield when Arliss placed a hand on his arm. “Let me off. I’ll search on foot. You keep riding.”
He shook his head. “You’ll be killed if you go out there.”
“Perhaps. But maybe I can find Thane. I saw him from afar—fighting with Eamon. At least let me try.”
Ríon pulled up on the reins. The horses stamped to a halt, and the carriage jarred to a stop amidst a slush of snow.
Arliss dismounted the wide seat and turned back to him. “Thank you for rescuing me. Now please, join the others. Make sure Ilayda is safe.”
He nodded grimly. “I can do that for you.”
She nocked an arrow on her bow. “If you can find me, Thane should be close by. You can have your kill.”
Ríon grinned and snapped the reins. The carriage sped away, back in the direction of the city.
As Arliss strode towards the clash of battle, she felt that her words weren’t entirely honest. If she was going to face Thane, she would face him alone.
Arliss drained her supply of arrows as she penetrated the cluttered field of raging duels. Every fight looked the same: a darkly armored Anmórian soldier expertly combating a Reinholdian guard in chainmail and a red tabard. She ended some of these fights in favor of the Reinholdian combatant, but couldn’t aid them all. She needed to have at least one arrow left.
One arrow was all she had by the time she found Thane and Eamon. Their fight was unmistakable. Amidst the bloody chaos around them, they both fought like expert warriors. The emblem of the moon on Thane’s breastplate gleamed in the snow’s moonlit reflection, and his sumptuous cape swirled as he spun and thrust.