He held the bow in his left hand, drawing the bowstring back with three fingers of his right hand, two fingers below the arrow and one above, until his hand touched his chin. He raised the weapon and aimed for the tree ahead. A moment later he released the arrow, and felt the bow recoil in his hands.
The arrow missed its target, overshooting by at least twenty paces. Peter broke into a grin. The bow was far more powerful than any he had ever in the Scouts! He reached for a second arrow, adjusting his aim to allow for the unexpected strength of the bow. This one sank deep into the center of the tree with a satisfying thud. Julia broke into applause.
“It’s marvelous Peter—marvelous! Come, we have to get Lukas’s men to help us carry them back to camp!” She grasped his hand and fairly dragged him back onto the path. At last—at last!—they were getting somewhere.
As the sun was sinking in the west, Lukas’s band of outlaws returned to the forest camp leading twelve horses heavily laden with the weapons. Peter supervised the stringing of the bows and the assembling of sets of bows, quivers, and arrows, marveling anew at their pristine condition. More of the magic of this place, he thought.
Julia watched approvingly for some moments, pleased that her brother’s talents had finally been put to good use. She was confident that they would defeat the army of Aedyn and take control of the castle. If only that would be the end of this matter! But she knew it was not.
Gaius sought her out that evening as the small group of outlaws was bedding down, exhausted and eager for the rest. The children were huddled together as Helen told them bedtime stories, all of the young ones eager for the day close at hand when they would be with their parents again. As the fires sank low, Gaius motioned to Julia and she joined him, perched on a log beside one of the fires. Together they watched the embers glow and crackle with heat.
Julia picked up some fallen leaves from the ground and rolled them in her hands. They were highly fragrant, with hints of lemon and cinnamon. A smile came to her face. Why were wonderful fragrances so healing? They seemed to lighten her mood and heighten her awareness of the natural splendor of the forest around her. Why, she wondered, did such evil exist in the midst of such beauty? What had gone wrong? It was the most beautiful place she had ever seen, but it had become home to violence and treachery. Was it that people were weak and foolish, and failed to recognize evil when it arose? Or was it downright rebellion against the laws of nature, the deeper structures of the world?
“You remember the question I asked you,” said Gaius softly. Julia nodded, her hands still turning over the leaves. The monk seemed to read her thoughts.
“How evil could happen here,” she murmured. Gaius nodded, his gaze on the dying embers.
“I want you to keep that in mind in the coming days,” he said. “As we fight to restore this land, remember what it can become.” Julia nodded, unsure precisely what to say. She would watch and remember—but why this question? And why her?
CHAPTER
18
The next day dawned as beautiful as the one that preceded it. The rising sun bathed the castle in its soft, warm light. A gentle wind tugged at the flag of the Lords of Aedyn, high on the battlements of the citadel. And far away the same sun filtered through the leaves of the great forest of Aedyn, waking those who would do their best to tear down that flag and replace it with the emblem of the Lord of Hosts.
Peter woke early from a dreamless sleep. He swiped away a spider that had spent the night as an uninvited guest inside his blanket and sat up to stretch his arms. Today he would train his troops for battle!
Peter threw his blanket to one side and went to a nearby pool to wash his face. Afterwards, he sat by the edge of the clearing for some moments. This was where the training session would take place later. It was ideal. The archers would stand at the north end and shoot southwards. He stood there for some moments, the early morning sun flaring in his golden hair while the soft, cool wind disheveled it. He must tidy himself up before the training session, he decided. After all, he wanted to command the respect of his troops—just like his father, who never appeared before his men in a less than pristine state.
And command them he did, as many hours of sweat and hard work found him, at the end of the day, at the edge of the forest clearing watching fifty novices practicing their archery. It had been a difficult day, but Peter knew his archers had become as expert as he could hope. There would be one last volley before they broke for the evening meal.
“Draw! Aim! Release!”
The air filled with hissing as the arrows sped on their way, thudding into the ground at the far edge of the clearing. Their shooting was not perfect, but it would serve. It would cut enemy troops to pieces and destroy their morale. Especially if they were expecting to fight slaves armed only with their fists and wooden staffs.
“Stand down! Collect your arrows!”
The archers walked to the far edge of the clearing to retrieve their arrows, and returned them to their quivers. They stood milling around, exchanging stories of how they had come to the forest and anticipating the battle that would take place on the following day. Some drank from the pool of clear blue water at the north end of the clearing. It had been a long, hot day.
Two figures, radiant even in their dull forest garb, emerged from the forest. The chatter died away as Julia and Gaius entered the clearing. They had been observing the final volley.
Gaius raised his hands. “My friends, I am entrusted with the story of our people. I have told you its past. How the Lord of Hosts called us out of Khemia to this paradise. How this paradise was lost. And soon I will be able to tell the story of paradise regained! For tomorrow we shall again make history. We shall march on the citadel and overthrow the lords who have enslaved us all these centuries. Your children will tell this story to your grandchildren, and they will tell it for many generations to come!”
He smiled as the cheers resounded throughout the clearing. “And now—” he broke into his twinkling smile—“Now you must eat! Fruit and bread are to hand. And then you must rest, for at sunrise we fight!”
He had barely ceased speaking when the familiar aroma of fresh bread began to spread through the clearing.
Peter was enjoying a particularly succulent piece of rare and refreshing fruit when he noticed Julia coming towards him. He scooted over on the log so that she could sit down beside him. She looked serene here, he thought—more at peace with herself than she had ever looked back in England. But then, he realized with a start, he had never really paid a great deal of attention to her in England.
They were silent for a long moment as they sat together, enjoying the fresh night air and the excited sounds of the freed slaves all around them. And then Julia asked something that Peter would never have expected:
“What happens if we die here?”
He looked up at her, startled. “We won’t die here.”
“How do you know? We’re going into battle tomorrow. And we both know what those lords are capable of.”
“Yes…” Peter nodded, and then put on his brave-older-brother face. “I expect we’ll be fine, Julia. Just fine. And once the battle’s over we’ll find a way to get home.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
And there was silence again. Julia leaned her head on Peter’s shoulder and sighed heavily. “Sometimes I miss home,” she said. Peter nodded wordlessly. “I miss Grandmother and Grandfather and I miss Scamp and I miss clean sheets and warm blankets. And I miss Mother.”
“I do too,” said Peter.
They spent another moment like that, sitting together and watching the fire burn, and then Julia lifted her head up and smiled at Peter. It wasn’t easy to be a hero, they silently agreed, but the time had come to grow up.
CHAPTER
19
The sun was high in the sky as it beat down on Aedyn. The lords were gathered in the Great Hall, which offered a view of the approach to the citadel from the forest. This was the field
on which the Lords of Aedyn expected the battle to take place. They had planned their strategy with meticulous care, but their ultimate triumph depended on the rebel slaves making a mistake.
If the slaves approached the castle from the west, they would walk straight into an ambush. They could easily be surrounded and picked off one by one. It would be a massacre. If they came from the north, however, they would be in a much stronger position. Yet even then the guards would be able to defeat the rebel slaves. After all, they had no weapons. And most of the slaves were still trapped inside the castle and had no way of taking part in the battle.
Solon rushed into the Great Hall, not pausing even to knock. “They come!” he cried. “They’ve been sighted leaving the forest. I’m mobilizing the troops, and the Lord Chamberlain has locked the slaves in quarters. They won’t cause any problems inside the citadel.”
The Wolf looked out the window, trying to follow what was happening on the ground in front of him. But the slaves were too far away to be seen properly.
“From what direction do they approach?” he asked.
“It’s a little early to say, my lord, but it looks as if they plan to attack from the west.”
The Wolf smiled beneath his mask. “Ah,” he said briefly. “And so they will die.”
Solon bowed his head. “Yes, my lord.”
The Wolf turned from the window, his mask somehow more hideous than Solon had ever seen it.
“I want no prisoners but the fair-haired traitors. I think”—he looked at the Jackal and the Leopard—“I think we will rather enjoy hanging them at the end of the day.”
Solon bowed and went to give the orders.
Peter watched the groups of rebel slaves marching towards the castle, puzzled by Gaius’s strategy. They were going to approach the castle from the west. Even from here he could see the castle’s defenses, the guards in place exactly where they ought to be. Surely Gaius must realize that he was marching into a trap? But his protestations had fallen on deaf ears, and Gaius had merely looked at him in that amused and all-knowing way of his. Peter walked along with a growing sense of doom: the guards would ambush them from two sides, closing off any avenue of retreat.
But he had his instructions. He was to march his archers north, keeping just inside the forest as long as possible. He was then to approach the castle from the north, and wait for Julia’s signal before firing. He marched on, sullen but determined.
Another guard entered the Great Hall and held a hurried consultation with the Lords.
“Solon sent me with news,” he said, breathing heavily. “A second column approaches from the north. The main column is still coming at us from the west. What do you want us to do?” He waited as the Wolf turned from his station at the window.
“Deploy the reserve guard on the south side of the citadel. They can block the advance of this second group. Once we’ve wiped out the main column, we can turn our attention to them.”
The guard hesitated, unsure of the procedure. Who was he to question a Lord of Aedyn? But this was too risky.
“My Lord, that means our entire guards corps will be deployed outside the castle. We’ll be left with only a handful of guards inside.”
“We are not expecting an attack from within, are we? We need our forces outside to make sure that none of these outlaws escapes alive.” The guard nodded.
“Of course, my lord.”
The two groups of rebel slaves were closing in on the citadel. The guards watched them restlessly, their swords at the ready. Surely they had nothing to fear from these runaway slaves. They had only a few stolen swords. Their doom would be swift.
Peter led his men forward, estimating range. The guards were in a defensive posture, waiting for them to attack so that they could hack them to death with their swords. He paused. They were in range, but best to be sure. They marched another twenty paces. They could see the guards ahead of them, their swords itching for action. He held up a hand for his men to halt, waiting for the signal from Julia.
And then, from the west, he heard a scream—not as loud as it might have been had he been standing close, but it would serve. He turned toward the men and yelled with all his might:
“Draw! Aim! Release!”
The air was thick with arrows, hurtling down mercilessly on the guards. Several fell dead; others looked around, desperately, trying to work out what was happening.
“Draw! Aim! Release!”
Another withering volley hissed through the air before falling to find their targets. The guards looked around, terrified. They broke ranks, retreating hastily and in disorder towards the castle. As they did so, a series of massive explosions rang out on the east side of the castle. Billows of acrid smoke enveloped the area.
The Jackal, looking down on the scene from the citadel, turned to the others, an expression of utter delight beneath his mask.
“The cannons worked!” he cried. “Even the noise they make will be enough to terrify those fools down there! And just wait until those cannonballs slice them to ribbons. They haven’t a prayer.” The Wolf joined him at the window, and as the smoke cleared the scene below told a different story.
The cannons had not killed countless rebels but had exploded, killing the teams of guards who were operating them. A troop of horsemen seemed to have come from nowhere, armed with swords to finish off the remaining guards. Slaves newly escaped from the castle were swarming everywhere, picking up swords form the hands of wounded and dead guards and using them to fight alongside their brothers. The lords’ ambush had failed miserably.
And what was this? To the south, the guards sent to engage the second column were in total disarray. Some were lying dead on the ground and others were in full retreat, heading for the safety of the castle gates.
The Wolf leaned forward, unable to believe what he was seeing. Slaves were thronging inside the castle, shutting the gates and preventing the guards from getting back to safety. His retreating guards were trapped between the castle wall and the advancing rebels. He watched in horror as a volley of arrows shot upwards and descended on the hapless guards, who had nowhere to run for safety. Where did they get those weapons?
Suddenly there was a noise immediately outside the doors of the Hall. The three lords turned just as the doors crashed open, revealing the bodies of dead guards lying outside. The rebels who had killed them had views about the men inside the room.
It was, perhaps, the first time the Wolf had been taken aback in five long centuries. He gasped as slaves armed with swords approached them and backed them into a corner. They were trapped. They were doomed.
And then the rebels parted as a young, fair-haired woman entered the Hall. She was hardly recognizable as the emissary from Albion, but had a new look about her—a look that knew what it meant to be chosen. And it was in this look that the lords finally found fear.
But the Wolf was no coward, nor was he a fool, and only a fool would enter a battle unarmed. He touched his long fingers to the dagger concealed within his robes.
“So, little girl, you’ve come to take over the world.”
Julia shook her head. “No. Only return it to those who will serve it best.”
One of the rebels approached, his knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. But Julia put out a hand and touched his arm.
“No, Lukas,” she said. “We show them mercy.”
At that word the Wolf struck. No one saw the dagger fly out of his hand until it was too late.
Julia cried out as the dagger struck her cheek. A curtain of blood fell over her face and she crumpled to the floor.
Lukas was with her in an instant. The wound was not deep—that much he could see—although it would leave a mighty scar. Julia blinked up at him. She was in pain, but she was conscious. Lukas rose and stood eye-to-eye with the Wolf. He reached out and took hold of his mask, wrenching it away from his face.
The face exposed there was no longer human. The mouth and nose had grown out from the rest of the face into a sn
out and the lips curling up in a snarl revealed massive teeth. The eyes shone bright and yellow—and angry.
Lukas turned away from him to the Leopard. “You surrender?”
“I rather think we do,” he stammered.
Peter was still outside the castle, organizing his men and dealing with all the thousands of details that come after a battle, when he noticed Helen and Alyce emerging from the forest. They were surrounded by a bevy of children who clung to their hands. Peter grinned and nodded a greeting to them as they approached the massive doors of the citadel, out of which the freed slaves were running.
Perhaps you can imagine the joy they felt at the reunion—the tears, the cries, the long embraces. Perhaps you can picture the jubilation of a child who has been too long without a parent. It was a sight to make the stars dance in the sky.
And Peter, who suddenly missed his mother so much he could hardly breathe, felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and turned away.
It was an hour later that Julia, her face pale and swathed in bandages, and Peter entered the Great Hall of Aedyn together to the cheers and applause of the faithful. After so many centuries, they had never expected this day to arrive. The old order was passing away, and the new would begin. Peter held up his hands for silence and waited for his sister to speak.
The Aedyn Chronicles Page 11