by Diane Magras
Drest sprang to her feet and pulled Emerick up.
“This is the way,” he murmured. “It’s very tight here—it always has been—but with any luck—”
“Keep going!”
The steps went down. And soon the two were running, stumbling, holding the walls to keep on their feet.
Behind them, there was a scrape. A deep voice swore.
The stairway curved and split into two. Emerick followed the one on the left—which became another passage, straight and long. Now they ran freely.
Suddenly, Emerick halted.
“This is it. The way out. Here, Drest, help me push this stone. It’s a drop, not too high, onto grass—” He paused. “Wait. I’ve thought of something. You’ll be noticed when we jump. Oh, God, they’ll see a lass with a sword and they’ll know—”
Drest grabbed Emerick’s arm. “Aye, I will have my sword, and I’ll draw it as soon as we hit the ground. They’ll be afraid of this wolf’s head when they see me. And then we’ll run to the curtain wall. You can climb a wall, can’t you?”
He was quiet.
“You will climb that wall, Emerick. Are you ready? Where’s the stone?”
She felt for his hands. They held hers for a moment, then guided them to the panel. Together, their hands side by side, they pushed.
The stone block scraped, jolted, and then it was out, sailing through the open air. Before it thumped on to the grass, Drest hooked her arm in Emerick’s and leaped, pulling him with her.
The sky was blindingly bright, and at first Drest could not see. It wasn’t a high drop, but she hit the ground awkwardly. She was on her feet in seconds, though, her hand on her sword. Beside her, Emerick was struggling to rise.
Two guards on the other side of the green were racing toward them.
Drest’s fingers closed over Tancored’s grip. Any one of her brothers would have drawn his sword and stood ready to fight.
But Gobin’s voice murmured deep in her mind:
What do you do best, lass? Run. So run while you still can.
She let Tancored go and hauled Emerick to his feet. He crumpled, his weight upon her. Drest threw his arm over her shoulder, looped her arm around his waist, and started sprinting toward the curtain wall.
21
AT THE CURTAIN WALL
The field was open, its grass cropped short by grazing sheep, but brown flashed everywhere on the bailey: the guards.
Drest focused on the towering curtain wall ahead. She tried to fly as she had always flown on the headland, but Emerick’s weight slowed her. The fall had harmed him; he was leaning heavily, as he had in the days of their journey when his rib wound had plagued him most.
“Almost there,” panted Drest.
Almost there, but now there were four guards—and a splash of blue on white ran alongside them.
Drest’s boots pounded on the grass, her desperate energy keeping them ahead.
At last they were at the curtain wall, a shadowy stone giant covered with cracks, sprigs of moss, and crumbling mortar.
Drest propped Emerick up. “Start climbing!”
He pressed his pale, pain-clenched face against the wall. “I can’t climb.”
“I’ll be right behind you. Start climbing, quick!”
“Go, Drest. Save your own life. I’ll hold them back.” He cast a frantic, hopeless glance at her. “I can’t climb walls. Even when I’m well. I don’t know how.”
All feeling rushed out of Drest.
Emerick’s pale blue eyes fixed on her in despair.
“Why did no one teach you to climb a wall?” she bellowed.
But she knew that shouting would do no good against the guards and knight who were closing in on them. She stepped away from Emerick and drew her sword.
“Drest, I—I order you to go,” he stammered.
The lowering sun lit the steel. Tancored’s weight seemed to thrum up her arm, through her body, and to her heart.
She settled herself into a fighting position: one foot forward, the other to the side, knees bent, ready to pivot.
All her years of training had prepared her for this moment. Drest took a deep breath.
A bleating cry pierced the air.
A sheep ran wildly past them as if buffeted on a wave.
Another sheep called out, running just as fast. Then another. A chorus of deafening bleats.
Drest stared. A flock of sheep was flooding the grounds, pooling frantically around the guards.
“Get out of the way!” shouted the Faintree Castle knight, but the sheep only pressed closer.
Sheep are not easily stirred, said Thorkill’s voice. Someone’s alarmed them.
Tig? Drest’s heart lifted. Using animals instead of weapons—that was like him.
But a tall, cloaked figure—not Tig—was weaving among the sheep. It was a woman, and she veered to the wall and dashed alongside it toward them. Her cap slid off in her rush. A wave of gray hair streamed in her wake as she drew near.
Merewen.
Her silver falcon’s eyes were wild. “Sheathe your sword and I shall help you,” she gasped. “Hurry, child!”
“I won’t leave Emerick—”
“Why do you think I am here?” She darted around Drest to Emerick’s side and pulled him to his feet. “Listen to me, lord: I shall kneel, and you shall climb upon my shoulders. Drest—climb first and grasp his hands from above so that I can rise, and from there you will take him. Do you understand?”
It was a method of climbing that Grimbol had made the lads practice: a means to help an injured brother.
Drest sheathed her sword, thrust her fingers into the wall’s cracks, and scrambled up.
The crumbling mortar gave her many easy holds. Within seconds, she was at the top, a wide surface pitted with stone battlements. She slipped between the merlons, hooked her feet on the other side, and turned and reached down.
“You can’t be serious,” Emerick murmured.
“You are risking the lives of us all, lord,” snapped Merewen. “Make haste!”
With a muted sob, he stumbled to the wall. Gripping the ridges between the stones, he stepped onto the witch’s shoulders.
“Hold yourself steady,” said Merewen.
Drest reached down, stretching as far as she could. Emerick’s shaking hand rose. Their fingertips brushed.
Not close enough.
She slipped a foot free from its hold on the other side of the battlement and stretched again—and this time, touched his hand. Praying that her one foot’s hold would be strong, Drest seized his hand, and pulled.
That pull took a fraction of weight from Merewen’s shoulders. Bracing herself against the stone wall, she slowly stood, lifting Emerick just a little—
Drest’s hand closed over his wrist, then his forearm, then his elbow.
She crawled back on the battlement, pulling him toward her, until he was close enough to grab the nearest merlon and drag himself into the crenel.
Drest seized his legs and, scrambling over them, thrust them to the other side. “We’ll have to slide. Merewen?” She hooked her feet onto the battlement again and reached down.
The river of sheep was now mostly at the far end of the bailey, tangling the guards who were streaming from there. The other guards were running free.
“Merewen! Grab my hand!”
The witch stepped away from the wall. “No, child. Move swiftly. Help him down, and run. I shall keep them back.”
“But Merewen—”
“Do what I say,” roared the witch in a terrible voice, “and value your precious life for once! I will save myself!” She turned and set off into a run along the curtain wall.
“Drest! How do we get down?” Emerick was pulling at her.
She crawled back to his side.
“Hold on
to my shoulders,” she said, her throat hollow. “We’re going to slide down, and we need to slow ourselves with our feet. Let me get under you. Are you ready?”
Panting, Emerick nodded and grabbed her shoulders. Drest slipped over the edge and down the wall.
Emerick’s dragging feet made up for his weight. Soon Drest’s fingers were raw, but they quickly reached the ground.
Merewen.
But there was no time to see if she’d escaped.
Hoisting Emerick’s arm over her shoulder, Drest dragged him running into the woods.
22
THE WARRIOR’S TASK
“You should have left me.”
Emerick had not spoken for hours. They’d run, then plodded, then staggered along, and now their pace was simply limping. The sky was clear and the waning moon shed an unearthly brightness over the woods like shimmering water. All around them, branches hairy with twigs stood out like spirits in the mist.
“Nay, I did what was right,” Drest said.
A tremble threatened her voice. She’d been thinking of Merewen, and of Tig, whose fates she did not know; and of her family, gone off beyond her reach. Worry about them all, not just the three days ahead, had seeped into her—but she wasn’t about to show it.
“We escaped, did we not?” she went on gruffly. “Aye, and with the lady’s promise, we’ll be inside your castle soon. All we need to do is keep alive for three days. I’ve done well with today.”
“But Merewen—do you think she escaped?”
“She might have.”
“All those sheep,” Emerick murmured. “She must have spooked them for us. I wonder if they helped her as well.”
“They might have.”
“You almost didn’t escape. Because of me.”
Drest halted. “Do you not want your castle back?”
“I do, but—”
“Do you not want to be a true lord again?”
“Yes, but Drest—”
“Sometimes people have to risk their lives. And sometimes people fall. Da always talked about the battles he’d fought along with your castle and the friends who’d fallen and how he’d grieved but knew he had to go on—”
“I don’t want any of that castle if it means you’ll risk your life at every opportunity.” Emerick paused, breathing hard. “Drest, I do not take our friendship lightly. No one in this world matters more to me than you. If ever we should be in that situation again and my death would ensure your life, you must let me die for you.”
In the distance, an owl hooted.
Drest pulled at her sword-belt. “You have to accept what I’ve risked for you if you want your castle back, and stop treating me like a wee lass. I’m a warrior like any of your knights. I have to take risks.”
“I’m a warrior as well, Drest, and I’ve as much right as you to risk my life—”
“You’re not a warrior! You’re a lord, and my task—the warrior’s task—is to keep you safe.”
“But if the warrior has a price on her head—”
“Then it’s my task to keep us both safe!”
“But—but Drest, that makes no sense!”
They stood apart, glowering at each other.
Emerick’s shoulders slumped.
She drifted back to his side. “How are your wounds?”
“I feel horrible. Every part of me aches. You?”
“I feel like running.”
“Running?”
“Aye, but I always feel like running when I’m edgy. Shall we find a place to sleep instead?”
Together, they searched for a spot and soon found a damp hollow beneath a sprawling clump of juniper branches.
The soil was soft, and Emerick sank into it gratefully. Drest crawled after him and drew her cloak over them both, a blanket of green wool.
It was thick, very much like the black wool cloak that had shielded them on their last journey.
The cloak that Merewen had given her.
Drest’s eyes stung.
She wanted to save my life. She asked me to go with her. And when I refused, she risked her own life to save mine.
You risked your life to save hers once, said Gobin’s voice, so this is but a return of the favor.
Nay, Drest thought, it’s not the same.
She burrowed against Emerick and tried to hear only the slow, steady rhythm of his heart. She also tried to conjure the memory of Elys’s hand again, but it didn’t come that night.
* * *
• • •
Something warm, soft, and itchy rubbed against Drest’s face. She shook her head, and sat up. Her mouth tasted of feathers.
Caa!
A glossy black crow hopped back, out of the juniper branches, and cocked its head to glare at Drest.
“Mordag?” Drest crawled free and soon was inches from the crow.
Caa.
Right to her face.
Drest called into the tangle, “Emerick? Look, it’s Mordag!”
He dragged himself out with more speed that she had expected a wounded man could manage.
“Mordag.” Emerick reached out a shaking hand toward the bird. “Is it really you? God bless you if it is. Where’s your lad? Where’s Tig?”
The crow let out a croak, then flapped hard and was in the air and next on a branch above their heads, a solid black shape against the rising sun.
“Show us,” Drest said. “Will you do that, lass? Show us Tig.”
“Don’t do anything rash,” Emerick warned.
Mordag hopped to another branch, then another, and then was flitting between the trees.
Drest crept with her habitual silence after the crow, steadying Emerick when he stumbled, never letting go of his hand.
Mordag flapped ahead, out of sight, and gave a sharp call.
Drest pulled up short. “That’s the call for enemies,” she whispered. “They must be straight ahead.”
“Don’t rush in.” Emerick squeezed her hand. “Don’t—just don’t, please.”
“Nay, I won’t, but if Tig’s there and needs my help—”
A voice cut through her next word—a man’s voice, rich and low.
“What do you think that means?”
It was a castle voice, one that Drest had never heard.
23
LOYAL MEN
Mordag called again, the same sharp, piercing noise. But then she flew back and landed on a branch over Drest’s head. From there, she gave another call, the softer caa that she had directed toward Drest as she woke.
“And what of that one?” said the castle voice. “Do you know?”
“I do, in fact,” said a laughing voice that made Drest’s heart race.
It was Tig.
“But I can’t tell you that one,” Tig went on. “The first meant ‘enemy.’ I hope you’ll pardon her.”
“Yes, of course I’ll take no offense.”
“May I see where she is? I’ll keep within sight.”
The castle voice laughed. “Why do I have the sense that you could duck out of sight in this very clearing, and none of us would know where you went? Do what you must, lad.”
Silence.
And then the branches were moving, and Tig—his clothes streaked with mud and dirt, his hair full of tangles—was before them.
A grin as bright as sunshine on the sea lit his face. “I thought it might be you.”
Before Drest had a chance to grab and hug him, Tig had his arms around her, then around Emerick.
“I can’t believe that you’re both here,” Tig said. “I kept sending Mordag out to search for you, but—but that’s a bit much even for her.”
“What happened to you?” Emerick whispered. “Who were you talking with back there? We thought you were going to Phearsham Ridge for supplies and had
been delayed or caught—”
“You’re not safe, are you,” Drest interrupted. “Shall we take you away?”
Tig’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “I am safe, if you can believe it, and not just because you’re standing here. Yes, Emerick, I went back to the village, and yes, I did pack supplies. That man—Sir Fergal—had left, and everyone was tense.” Tig’s eyes sparkled. “Guess who I met as I was staggering out the back door in the dark with our supplies? Four knights and eight men-at-arms—and Sir Fergal. I thought my heart was going to drop out of my chest, I was so frightened.”
“Oh, Tig,” Drest whispered. “Did they catch you?”
“Indeed they did. Sir Fergal—that man is as slimy as a slug—he pointed at me and said I knew where the bloodthirsty lass who had murdered Lord Faintree was hiding. So they took off my bag of supplies and hauled me away, bound by my wrists. Drest, you were right: There are bands of knights with squires and men-at-arms prowling the woods and road for you. This band is larger than usual because the man who leads it is important.”
Emerick pointed at Tig’s hands. “But you’re not bound any longer. And just now—that man sounded like Sir Reynard, of all people, the leader of my army. But it can’t be; he never leaves the castle except for wars.”
“Well, he left your castle for something else this time: to hunt for your murderer. Yes, it’s Sir Reynard back there. And the reason that I’m like this”—he held up his hands, apart—“instead of this”—he pressed his wrists together—“is that Sir Reynard is a good, kind, reasonable man who listens.”
Emerick smiled.
“None of them fully believed me, except for Sir Reynard, so I led him back to the place where we rested. If it wasn’t for your footprint, Emerick—I found one in the moss by the tree, sunk deep where you were limping—I don’t think they’d have followed me. But they believed me when I said it was yours, and I’ve been leading them through the woods, pointing out your footprints where I can.” Tig laughed again. “It’s remarkable, really, if you think about it: Five knights, four squires, and eight men-at-arms following me, of all people, through the woods on a wild chase.”
“If Sir Reynard believes you, the rest have no choice but to follow.” Emerick glanced at the trees behind Tig. “Are they all back there? Tig, are they loyal, or—or will they try to slay Drest? Or me?”