by J. Kirsch
The other two giant trolls crashed through the center of the battlefield, sending our own forces retreating headlong in all directions. A sizeable chunk of our army ran directly for the forest. The bristling formation of soldiers saw our trolls coming their way, and at first I imagined they probably felt elation. But when the giant trolls swerved to follow, each step pounding the ground like an earthquake, the line of spearmen wavered. A few more heartbeats and then they broke ranks altogether, hoping to reach the relative safety of the trees before their human-sized troll counterparts.
Chaos was unfolding all around us, and with it a hope flared in my chest.
I looked up at the ridge and saw the figure of Lady Agwen. She still sat astride her horse, her bearing stiff and proud. She was so close, and now that the Green Knight's forces were melting away in panic…A thought blossomed from a kernel to a conviction, and I reached for my sword, ready to spur my horse to a gallop.
A hand gently folded around my wrist.
"Princess, this is our opportunity. We go now, while we can."
I turned back to him, my eyes pleading. "Come with me. We can kill her in the confusion." I understood this sudden need in my heart, to see this woman dead. The more I thought of what her son had done to me, done to others, the more she became the surrogate for everything I hated. For what had taken my innocence.
"Killing her isn't going to take away the pain, Naji." He used my familiar name, and his eyes were stern at the edges but somehow soft at the center.
"I'm sorry, but this is something I have to do. If she had just told the truth, Father wouldn't have disowned me. My life wouldn't have been completely ruined. I need to finish this."
Drake glanced up at the giant troll up on the ridge. He had uprooted several trees and was swinging them back and forth, using the archers as targets. The mounted knights who tried to charge the beast did no better. One mighty swing swept them away like powder, and the troll's roars of grief filled the air. I suddenly wondered if the thing had a concept of family. If it had a father, mother, wife, or children left behind when the Horn of Calling ripped it from its own time and brought it to ours.
I shook my head clear of the thought, refocusing my mind on the woman I needed to kill.
I urged my horse forward and Drake kept up. He put his hand on my reins, bringing me up short as I glared at him, my voice filled with rage.
"I've made my choice, Drake. Join me or don't, but don't try to stop me!" He looked at me carefully, as if I was as fragile as a clay figure, and he leaned over, his hand grasping the nape of my neck.
He put his forehead softly against mine, bringing our eyes so close. I saw the genuine ache in him, and he said the words slowly, as if trying to penetrate through many layers of rock. Or in this case your thick skull, stupid girl. My brother's voice echoed in my head as I felt Drake's lips softly brush against mine and then pull away.
"I understand. You hardly know me, and it's easier to grieve the life you've lost than start from scratch. But that's what I'm offering you, Princess, and if you go up that ridge I can't help you. There are over a thousand hostile knights and archers on that ridge and a rampaging troll taller than a castle wall. You may think you can do this, but let me tell you—you can't. And even if you could kill Lady Agwen, what would it change? Would it ease the gash in your heart?"
It can't, but maybe he can, said a little voice in my head. I looked up at him. This was it. I needed to decide, now or never. I turned back to the ridge and watched as Lady Agwen galloped clear of the bloodbath. It took me a moment to realize that there were tears streaming down my face. That the choking sobs torn from my chest were really mine.
I didn't try to go back. Not anymore. I took Drake's hand and used it as leverage to jump behind him on the saddle. My hands curved tightly around his chest.
"Hold on tight. We're getting out of here, Princess." I sniffed, blinking and smearing tears on the Black Knight's back as he swerved between obstacles, narrowly avoiding a dead horse which almost tripped up his mount and brought us all sprawling.
The sounds of dying and of battle receded behind us, and then we were free—just two people on a horse with a sea of waving grass to urge us on.
Chapter 7
"Any ideas?" I asked.
"Plenty. The problem is none of them are all that good," he replied.
Drake eyed the narrow bridge over the gaping chasm of Greyrock Pass. If two sea monsters had lain end to end, it still wouldn't have been as wide as the gap. Drake's people called it the Bridge of Sorrows because of the weepy fog that always hung over it like a funeral shroud.
"I'm assuming we can't just cut our way through?" I gave Drake a bold look, then glanced back at the knights guarding the bridge. They wore the Green Knight's unicorn crest on their breastplates, which meant they were in league with Lady Agwen. Why the Green Knight had decided to help her try to kill me I didn't exactly know, but the Green Knight was known as an opportunist. I was sure whatever it was, Agwen had made it worth his while. They deserve each other. The not-so-charitable part of me was already imagining ways to torture them. But seeing as I was the fugitive and they had two entire Kingdoms under their control, maybe I was getting ahead of myself.
"We could wait until nightfall," Drake mused, but the way he chewed on his bottom lip didn't look hopeful.
"We could fall over the edge, not seeing where we're going, and never be heard from again," I said. "When I asked about ideas, I meant ones where we don't die horribly."
Drake shot me a look. "When I first saw you naked and beautiful bathing in the waterfall pool, I didn't know you had such a mouth on you." My cheeks flushed and my mouth fell open, but I wasn't going to give the idiot the satisfaction of being speechless.
"Maybe if you'd let me kill Lady Agwen in the first place we wouldn't be in this mess!" The sudden flare of anger surprised me. It had been a few hours since we'd been separated from Drake's surviving knights in the confusion of the battle. The bridge was the quickest way to cross over into the Black Kingdom and safety, but the question was 'how?'.
"For all I know Bronwyn might be dead. What if she didn't make it out?" My thoughts sobered as I worried about the only friend I had in the world besides my supposed husband-to-be. My emotions skittered like stones in a rock slide. She was my best friend and I'd abandoned her back there. I had let the Black Knight rescue me when I should have stayed to fight.
"If you'd stayed and fought, then gotten yourself killed trying to find Bronwyn while giant trolls rampaged in all directions, how do you think she would have felt?" Drake said. I hadn’t realized I'd verbalized my last thought. My face crumbled, and for a moment I felt sick. I wanted to throw up.
"Bronwyn's best chance of escaping would have been to slip away unobtrusively, and from what I can tell she's a pretty resourceful girl. Like someone else I know. I wouldn't write her off just yet."
The warmth crinkling at the edge of Drake's eyes made my breath hitch. Suddenly I was acting with blind instinct. We were hidden inside a cluster of aspen trees as if nature had made a tiny room just for us. Abruptly I leaned over, my lips finding his. For an instant I felt him stiffen, startled as if a lightning bolt had whipped its way through every vein in his body. Then Drake melted into the kiss, his hands fisting in my hair as his mouth responded voraciously to mine. His smell enveloped me, making me forget that I was a runaway prisoner banished from my own Kingdom. It was a sweet taste of forgetfulness that burrowed into my head.
"Princess." Somehow our mouths had finally disengaged. Drake was looking at me carefully, as if I were a breakable thing. Which I wasn't. For some reason it both enflamed and annoyed me, the soft way he looked at me.
My gaze hardened, and I tried to forget my lapse of reason. What in the sweet mercies were you thinking, Naji? You hardly know this man. Yet he'd saved my life. If a person's actions were a good shortcut to knowing someone, then I already knew Drake on a level I couldn’t claim for most people.
"I knew it," he
said.
"Knew what?" I folded my arms across my chest, my stare cooling.
"That kissing you again would be sublime," he said simply. It was hard to know how to respond to that. But he seemed able to turn it off, sensing the panic in my face the longer we stood within bowshot of who knew how many knights who had orders to kill or capture me.
"I want more of those kisses…and if I can get you to the Black Kingdom where I rule, I plan to demand them," he said, a teasing humor in his voice. His eyes were already clouding over in thought, however, and his mind seemed to be sifting through one idea after the next.
We stood in silence, the occasional chittering squirrel in the tree branches giving us unhelpful advice. I took stock of what we had. I still had my sword, a long knife, the bow and iron-tipped arrows in my quiver. Drake had his great-sword and not much else, but as a new idea sparked in my head, I thought what we had just might be enough.
"Sometimes you're right, Drake. The direct method doesn't always pan out. If I'd gone after Lady Agwen I probably would have gotten myself killed," I admitted ruefully. His eyes snapped up to meet mine, surprised at my confession.
"But now I need you to trust me." I began to strip out of my armor.
"Najika, what are you doing?"
My eyes arched, daring him to ask me again. "Trust," was all I muttered. Soon I was in just my tunic and leggings. I rolled my shoulders, feeling the stiffness in them finally loosen now that I was out of the restrictive hug of the armor. I picked up my bow and secured the quiver of arrows.
"You want to protect me?" I asked.
Drake nodded slowly, trying to determine where this was going, and his hesitation told me he didn't expect to like the destination.
"Good, because I'm about to give you the chance. I want you to circle around. I'm going to provide a distraction. You're going to attack from behind."
Drake put his hands on my shoulders and shook me to add emphasis to his words. "We don't know how many there are, Naji. We've seen at least ten men lounging on this side of the bridge. For all we know, there could be more."
I pulled free of his grip, ran out into the open, nocked an arrow, and fired.
The projectile spun in a perfect dovetail, piercing the hide of the horse underneath one of the patrolling knights. In the fog I didn't have a prayer of hitting an exposed gap in a knight's armor, but a horse made a decent target. The poor beast reared with a loud shriek, sending its rider slipping backward. As the horse spun and raged, the knight was thrown clear and the rest of the knights responded. They came at me, their armor clanking. Two of the onrushing knights were mounted, and my arrows whispered harmlessly through the fog, unable to snag those fast-moving targets. Not that it mattered. I turned and fled, angling towards the denser but not too dense part of the forest. There were small clearings here and there where avalanches or rock slides had cleared out some of the forest's old growth. I ran, easily able to outpace the laboring knights and even the two mounted knights, whose horses had to carefully pick a path through maples and aspens.
I led them ever deeper into the woods but made sure the ones at the head of the pursuit didn't lose sight of me. No easy task as the fog caressed my arms and face.
Come on, Drake. See the opportunity and take it. From a logical standpoint my plan could work, but the odds against us would have had Drake trying to convince me out of it. Was the plan insane on some level? Maybe. But it was a plan, and in theory it would work.
Perhaps all those strategy lessons with my father's war historian had rubbed off on me. Who knew?
"Halt! Surrender or we will be forced to harm you!" Those cries were coming from the two mounted knights. Finally I slowed down, whirling around as I stopped in a small clearing. In the middle of running for my life all I had managed were a few backward glances, and it had seemed like at least 15 knights were on my trail. Now there were…three. The two mounted knights flanked me and then began to circle as the third knight came up on foot, his helmed face hidden from view.
"Princess Najika, surrender and you will be quietly taken into the care of our lord and master, the Green Knight."
"The same lord and master who has treacherously allied with the woman trying to kill me? You must think I'm as dumb as your mother," I retorted. I drew my sword with a flourish. In the fog it looked dull and less impressive than I'd hoped. "If you want your manhood handed to you at the edge of a blade, I suggest you come forward." My impudence was having the right effect. The knight on foot angrily drew his own sword and muttered an oath about making me suffer under his attentions in the dungeons for that remark. I prepared for the clash of swords even as the mounted knights looked ready to rush in and take me from behind, but then a shadow unexpectedly parted the mists. A black-armored shadow overlaying pure muscle and desperate rage.
Drake had taken his sweet time, but he'd made his appearance when it counted.
The knight rushing towards me barely had time to register the black-helmed knight as a sword as long as my torso neatly sliced through his armor as if it were made of ice instead of metal. The armor sheared in half, the knight's body along with it, and what strode over the remains was a tall, forbidding figure holding a great-sword, the sword hilt sporting a fearsome dragon whose ruby eyes blazed even through the fog.
I turned back, all too aware of the mounted knights shifting atop their warhorses, sizing up Drake and preparing to run him down.
Each of the knights wearing the Green Knight's crest spurred their beasts forward, aiming to hit Drake in a one-two succession so that even if he somehow recovered from the first attack, the second attacker could smite him from above with his weaknesses laid bare. The knights flung their mounts into the charge. The first knight had his lance leveled and the second knight drew his sword, preparing to finish off Drake after his companion landed the first disorienting blow.
They had forgotten about the little, dainty princess. Poor harmless, helpless me. Despite the fact that most princesses received battle training, some knights had a hard time remembering that even physically weaker foes had brains and knew how to use them.
Like a bucket brigade trying to snuff out a blazing fire, arrows flew from my quiver, each nocked at my bow before flying in a deadly zing, one after the next. I let the smooth motion settle in my limbs, my arm flinging back, releasing, hand gripping the next shaft to fling its iron-tipped 'Hi there!' of death. My arm burned as I let those arrows fly, not at the knights, but at the much easier targets of their mounts. One of my arrows dug into the first horse's mane and it jerked, stumbling as the pain lanced through its concentration. Though I felt sorry for the animal, I didn't have the luxury of hesitation. Its master was about to kill a man, a man I liked…maybe more than liked. A man who had saved my life, and now I was returning the favor.
I sent another flurry of arrows at the knights, and by the time the knight with the lance reached Drake my damage had been done. The first knight's horse had badly altered its original course. Although the knight tried to reposition, his lance shot harmlessly wide as Drake easily sidestepped the puncturing blow.
Now it was the Black Knight's turn. I watched as Drake's sword cut in a vicious arc, spraying blood and other things best left unmentioned. The knight's shoulders shifted as he looked down, unable to believe the work that Drake's enchanted great-sword had done. The body twitched in two pieces as it bloodied the ground with a rasping gurgle.
The second knight hesitated, but his trajectory was already taking him into Drake's path. The knight's sword came down, bashing Drake's helm. The hit disoriented Drake, and I saw him stumble, leaving an opening for the knight to finish him with a killing thrust. My arrows were still hissing through the fog, though, and one of them glanced off of the enemy knight's helm like an irritation. It distracted him for only a pair of heartbeats, but that was enough.
Drake had dropped his great-sword, yet being unarmed didn't seem to discourage him. With a roar that would have made most predators envious, Drake grabbed the enem
y knight by the wrist, hauling him from the saddle. I gaped as Drake threw the man as if he weighed no more than a sack of feathers.
I admired the knight's ability to get up from that still intact, and he lunged at Drake with a deadly thrust. Drake batted the blade aside almost contemptuously, and then he traded the knight blow for blow, his armored fists raining punishment. The knight dropped his sword, trying to shield himself from the blows and return a few of his own. The Black Knight was relentless though, and he picked up his opponent's fallen sword, thrusting for the exposed gap between the breastplate and helm. The green-armored knight stiffened, his body shuddering as a strangled cry tore through the forest. With brutal efficiency Drake rammed the blade the rest of the way through. As the man dropped, Drake dropped on his knees beside him, his breathing ragged.
As I ran up to him I could see the hammering exhaustion of a heart ready to burst. I knelt beside him as he took off his helm. I looked into his sweat-slick face, and his eyes settled on mine with a fury that made me flinch.
"If you ever, ever do that again I'm going to kiss the lips off of you and spank you at the same time," he said between raspy breaths.
I honored him with a cross look of my own. "It worked, didn't it?"
"Worked?" he said between pants. "Worked!?" he cried. "Yes, I was able to sneak up and attack from behind, taking them out one by one in the confusion and the fog, and it was only possible because they were all so focused on you." He managed to get his feet under him, and his arms drew me into a bone-rattling hug, his hand cupping the back of my head. "That your insane plan 'worked' doesn't excuse you of your sins, though. What if I hadn't been quick enough? What if they hadn't been so single-minded in their pursuit?"
"Yet I knew that they would be," I replied. I could have explained to Drake that the Green Knight was known for motivating his soldiers with bounty rewards, that I had been fairly certain that the knights chasing me were seeing chests of gold in the backs of their heads as I ran. But that would have taken all the fun out of tormenting him.