by D. R. Rosier
Katy asked, “What about the elves? My family asks no more than your oath for all our protection. You do rule here already without interference from Summerhaven in all but our protection and soldier movements. By the way, you’re making a mess of it, Brightmill is out of control. Do you not care, or did you just not notice a serial rapist is marquis? Now you want to risk your commoners and soldiers in a war they might not win for a title? A title that is empty since you already have the power with one exception?”
He wanted to shake her for being so aggressive. He also thought she was incredibly sexy when mad about something. She’d figured it out pretty fast, and he wouldn’t make this asshole a king either.
Katy went on when the duke just turned red in the face.
“And now you ask these good soldiers to either commit treason by touching their queen apparent, or to ignore an order from their duke? What kind of man are you? And you think I would release you from your oath?”
Oh shit, this was going to be bad.
He finally opened his mouth, “How dare…”
“Silence,” she said in a bored voice.
He worked his mouth and seemingly couldn’t talk. He’d felt her magic, it was a spell of some kind, the only question was why wasn’t he reacting. Then he figured it out, and started laughing.
Katy looked at him and winked, “We’ll be leaving now, take care of Brightmill, I’ll be checking up on it.”
Gabby and Erin had a confused look on their faces as they reached the gates and rode through.
He laughed again, “It’s simple, since he was completely bluffing. Once he recognized her as the queen apparent by trying to make a deal for an oath, his hands were tied. His own oath wouldn’t allow him to commit treason since he knows she’s really the princess and heir. That’s why the soldiers were there but didn’t attempt to stop us, it was a show of force that he couldn’t use. All part of the bluff”
Katy nodded, “The only other way it could have gone badly is if we tried to fight our way out, he’s entitled to self defense. Still, it worked because he believed I am who I say. That won’t work on soldiers or people who believe I’m not my parents’ daughter. Still, I could have been more politic about it, but he pissed me off.”
He frowned, “What about food, isn’t it six days to… what was it, Highwater?”
Gabby chuckled, “Katy, perhaps you could send a little coin to the tavern when this is all over. I… acquired some of their foodstuffs. We should have plenty to make it since I took mostly vegetables. Erin and I can hunt for the meat.”
They all looked at her in surprise.
Gabby said innocently, “What, it isn’t the first time I’ve left a place in a hurry, I only forgot to grab food once, and trust me, I never forgot again.”
He snickered, “Sounds good, we should get moving though, he may not be able to attack you, but he can contact your uncle to report your presence.”
They all sobered up at that, and left at a canter after he created illusionary headlights so the horses could see where they were going. They made good time, and weren’t tired from their evening to early morning rest, and just kept going after the sun came up a couple of hours later.
His wishful thinking had been a bust when Gabby contacted Aria, as the scepter was definitely in the vaults. It was perhaps the first job he couldn’t just willingly walk away from, and he had no idea how they were going to pull it off. They certainly wouldn’t be able to do it without any force, though some stealth would definitely help.
No… stealth and thievery had to be the answer, didn’t it? Why the hell else would the gods choose him?
He rode up next to Katy.
“Can you tell me more about the spells and locks on the treasury, royal treasury and the inner treasure room? How would you for instance get by it all as the queen?”
She looked over concerned, “Are you okay? You look upset love.”
He took a deep calming breath, didn’t really help.
“I’ll figure it out, but from the plans I read this will be even tougher than I expected. It’s fine really, I’d just pinned more of my hopes on the blueprints than was wise. We have time to figure it out, but I need to know what wasn’t in those plans, the spells and locks.”
She studied him for a minute longer with a smile on her face, and he knew she had more faith in him than he did in himself.
“The locks are physical. The spells on the treasury prevent anyone from using magic to open it. You’ll need the key itself to open it.”
He frowned, “The key, or just something non-magical? I mean, could they be picked?”
She thought about that for a minute, “Maybe that would work, yes. The keys themselves are held by the regent, and the treasurer. There are only two.”
Now all he’d need is lock picks. Where would they get those?
“How about the royal treasury?”
She smiled throwing off his train of thought, “It has the same spells, but also another spell which requires someone of the royal line to be present. If they aren’t, the keyhole is completely blocked. That room has only one key that I know of, and my uncle has it. I don’t know if he carries it with him or not.”
He frowned, “Well, if you’re there, I can probably pick that one too. What about the third door?”
She looked up at him through her eyelashes innocently and asked, “What do I get if I tell you?”
He’d been in planning and determined mode, and her flirting look and words kind of threw him for a minute.
“Umm, what do you want?” he said in a confused voice and a smile.
She laughed, “That’s for you to figure out…” she said suggestively.
He realized she was just trying to cheer him up, he supposed he was being a little gloomy earlier. So much so he wondered when he told her they’d figure it out, if she felt it as a lie or not. But they would figure it out.
He smirked, “I’ll have fun trying to figure it out later.”
She grinned naughtily, “The third door is the same as the second, just a different key. Now don’t forget your promise…”
He nodded slowly, “Alright, I can work with that, now all we need is a way into the public side of the castle, and something to take care of the guards by the stairs down into the treasuries. I think I have an idea for the latter part, but it would be a risk. Do you trust Aria with your life?”
There was a moment of silence, and then Katy nodded, “I do.”
He nodded soberly, not sure if he did, “Alright, going to talk to Gabby.”
Aria could be playing a game, he didn’t think Gabby was an intentional part of it but… he didn’t know Aria, not really. But then, Katy could read the truth of people, so no matter how much it pained him, he’d have to squash his mistrust of a stranger. He pulled up his horse a bit and rode next to Gabby.
“Gabby, Aria is in charge of the guards in the castle is she not?”
Gabby nodded curiously.
“We may need her help then, can you find out if there are any… guards that hold her sentiments. We could just take out the guards by the stairwell down but eventually a patrol would find them and set off an alarm. We may need some time to get past all the locks. We need someone on the inside to let us pass, if we have any chance of making it undetected and without a fight.”
He left off the part, if that happened they’d be screwed. Without shadow magic all he’d have to work with is illusion, and Erin can’t beat all the guards, and as powerful as Katy was, her uncle was older, more experienced, and had a second grand sorcerer at his side. He’d never pulled off a job with an inside person before preferring to work alone, but they were common enough on Earth and he knew it made all the difference on a more complicated task.
She grinned at him shamelessly and tilted her head cutely, “If I do… what do I get out of it?” She’d obviously been listening to his earlier conversation with Katy.
He winked and said teasingly, “If you’re good for me you’ll find
out.”
Well he was officially cheered up, Gabby was a submissive little minx and really liked it when he took control, was rough, and aggressive. The tender affectionate cuddling after could be very nice too…
She interrupted his salacious thoughts and said faux reluctantly, “Oh, alright. I’ll ask her tonight.”
Now all he needed to figure out was how to get in the castle without anyone stopping them. He’d come up with something, he just didn’t know what yet. Then they could plan it all out and figure out what night to pass on to Aria so she’d know what guards to post, assuming she could help them of course.
Chapter 17
Erin growled, “How do they know?”
Gabby looked over, “What do you mean?”
Erin said in exaggerated patience, “How do they know we’re in the area? There are too many for this to be random.”
They’d run into a wall of elves early on the next morning, a little over a day after they rode out of Ashbridge. They’d retreated away from scores of them and had to move farther north off the road, currently they were planning. It was suspicious and his mind was turning.
He said softly, “Someone close to Katy’s uncle is working with the elves, or maybe is one.”
Katy looked at him sharply, “Even my uncle wouldn’t work with those evil…”
He held up a hand for peace, “I didn’t think he was Kat. There’s an elven spy though, high enough up that he must have gotten the report of our location moments after the duke passed it along. It would take them at least a day to gather all the troops they moved here.”
Gabby frowned, “There is one other possibility, but I doubt Aria is a spy for the elves, or passing along any information we give her. But… I suppose anything is possible.”
Katy shook her head, “No, let’s not get paranoid. The most likely reason is my uncle is being deceived somehow by one of his advisors.”
He frowned thinking it through, “We can’t let them get Katy by any means, I thought she’d be safe if kidnapped to keep her uncle from using the scepter, but I was wrong.”
Erin barked angrily, “Explain that!”
Since he loved her, and it was concern for Katy, he let it pass.
“Simple really, they’re playing us against each other, but if they get Katy in a position where she’s imprisoned and helpless, whoever is in the castle will assassinate the regent, and then these elves would execute Katy. It seems obvious now that we know they have an agent there, before I knew that…
“Anyway, after that the scepter would be nothing but a paperweight. The question I have though… is what they are accusing Katy of being even possible? Could there be an elven shape shifter of some kind there? Or are we looking at a human traitor?”
Gabby nodded, “It is possible, sort of. Elven magic is different, they would have to be very careful about not getting caught out, but it is possible.”
He shrugged, “That shouldn’t trouble us too much, once Katy has the scepter she’ll know who it is and be able to stomp him or her with a thought. All it really changes is we can’t depend on the elves needing her alive for more than a few hours. Unless of course, it’s a human agent, then finding them later on is going to be much more difficult.”
Erin snorted, “Is that all? So how do we get by them?”
He frowned, “I’m sure Lendaran soldiers are on the way too, probably the reason they have so many elves here. Even for us a few hundred is overkill. We could wait and sneak through during the battle, or we could head farther north, and fight through the edge of their lines and make a run for it. There’s one other possibility, my moving shadow idea.”
Gabby asked curiously, “Moving shadow idea?”
“Yeah. I speculated if I created an illusion of a bird, and then hid in its shadow it wouldn’t take the extra magic for travel, merely the magic for hiding. When the bird flies miles away, the shadow is dragged along, so we wouldn’t be travelling from shadow to shadow, merely moving the shadow we were hiding in. But I never tried it.”
Gabby blinked, “That’s… brilliant. It should work, so you think we should hide all of us, the horses, and the supplies in a shadow? Then just make the illusionary bird fly over the elves?”
He nodded, “They might sense the magic, but if we could get a good enough lead they wouldn’t catch us.”
Katy added, “Even without travel costs, it would take a lot of magic to wrap up four humans, and four horses fully laden with packs. It may also be uncomfortable mentally if not physically, as the shadow moves it will stretch along trees and the terrain, I don’t know what that would do to us. It should work, but maybe we should keep it in reserve, use it as a last ditch effort?”
Erin must have been nervous about his idea, because she said in a relieved voice, “Sounds good to me, so what are we doing?”
Katy decided, “The second one, I’m not thrilled with the idea of sacrificing soldiers to create enough chaos to slip through. Let’s head north until things look impassable, and then we’ll turn west and see what we see.”
They went north, it was only a couple of miles, but it took a long time as there was no good trail and they had to weave around trees and bushes to make any headway at all. It was a long twisty route, and he was sure he’d have lost his direction if the sky wasn’t clear with the sun rising in the east. A couple of hours later it started to become impassable as a large set of mountains came into view as the trees died out. The terrain became deep ravines, crags, and small ridges. He saw no way through them to the mountains.
He suddenly understood the precarious position the humans were in here, it seemed they didn’t hold all that much land between this impassable range to the north, and the elves to the south. It was like a long strip of land perhaps thirty miles wide surrounded by impassable barriers or enemies. Their only relief seemed to be the trading partners they’d found over the western sea which they could hardly use as a retreat.
He’d known it intellectually before, from talks with Erin and Katy, but he hadn’t felt it in his gut until the vista of the northern mountain range was in view. Any war with the elves would literally be a last stand from the first arrow shot; no wonder Katy’s ancestor had developed such a powerful artifact. It also drove home how petty men like Katy’s uncle and the duke were, to put their best defense at risk to grasp at power.
They turned west and moved slowly at a pace that was maddeningly slow. They’d even had to back up a few times and go a little south to get around the odd ravine that protruded farther south than the others. Eventually, they got close enough for him to feel shadows ahead.
He cleared his throat and took a drink of water, it was getting a bit warm.
“There’s about twenty of them straight ahead, I don’t know how far away the next score are in their picket line, actually, hold on a second.”
He extended the limit from two to three miles and considered the new shadows he could now sense.
“It looks like the next score of elves is about a mile south, they must have groups spread out every mile or so. That’s a lot of elves, over seven hundred of them then all told to blockade thirty miles or so of land. We’ll have to hit them hard and fast and then run for it, which is impossible in this forest now that I think about it. If I were them, I’d pursue with the next two groups, and regroup the others on the road and easily out distance us and then move in from in front to surround us.”
Katy shook her head, “So what should we do?”
He pondered that, “We need to misdirect them somehow. I think I have an idea how to get past without worrying about pursuit.”
He told them the plan.
-Nedha
Nedha struck like a serpent when one of the men tried to grope her. She smiled at him viciously when her knife sliced into his forearm and he jumped back. The others nearby laughed as she cleaned and sheathed her blade. Elven men needed to earn their way for her favors, and only if they were faster than her blades. She sneered and turned back to the East,
and hoped the quarry came their way.
The humans were a pestilence. They would be honored as warriors if they were the ones to catch the witch that was responsible for keeping them at bay. Humans were so foolish. She just wished she could kill the witch and be done with it, but if she did, her life would be less than worthless, the witch’s uncle would destroy them all if they acted too quickly.
Still, it would be hard to resist blooding the bitch on her daggers.
She growled, rolled, and looked for the shooter when an arrow came from seemingly nowhere and took the warrior beside her in the throat. She burst quickly into a run along with the elves around her, their worthless wizard taking up the rear, although she supposed he was alerting the other groups to the attack. She caught sight of a human male, pulled her dagger and threw it hard as three more of her soldiers went up in flames.
He moved at the last minute, taking the dagger in his arm and cried out. The sight of his blood put her in a frenzy, maybe she’d let one of the men catch her after battle, and she pulled another dagger from her belt. By then though, there were four of the man and they all jumped on horses and ran from her like cowards. She heard the injured human scream to retreat, the coward. She had the perfect opportunity to kill one of the females, as the one with the bow jumped from the branches a mere fifty yards away, onto her horse, but she didn’t know what the witch looked like, and held her strike back.
She laughed coarsely, running back the way they came wouldn’t save them. By now the wizards were organizing all the other groups to surround them. As they retreated she lost view of them, but it was only a matter of time until they caught up, or another group blocked them in. She hoped she’d have the honor of torturing one of them. After all, she’d drawn blood unlike the incompetent males around her.
-Katherine
She growled, “You almost died damn it.”
He grinned in that way that made her knees weak, but this time it just pissed her off.
“It’s not funny, don’t move.”