Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  He pulls me closer, squeezes me tight, and lies back. I rest on him and glide up and down, up and down, savoring the tenderness of his touches.

  Yet I want more.

  Animal lust throbs in my chest. I slide off of him, wincing at the feeling of him leaving my body and the hollow he leaves behind. I crawl across the bed and rest there on all fours, leaning down onto my elbows, presenting myself.

  Conrad rises behind me, takes hold of my hips, and enters me, all in one thrust. My head jerks up and then I fall back down, savoring it, thrusting back against him as he pushes deep into me. His strokes are long and slow, and when I try to speed up he digs his fingers into my skin and holds me still, savoring the way I tremble as he slowly, slowly, slowly fills me again.

  “Harder,” I breathe, rising up on all fours.

  I wriggle in his grasp, enticing him.

  “Harder?” he repeats.

  I let out an “oof” as he pushes and pulls me, giggling as he picks up speed, but soon my giggles fade into slack-jawed pleasure. When I start to sink down he roughly throws me on my back, spreads my legs apart, and dives into me.

  Shuddering, I take him in and wrap myself around him. He thrusts harder and faster and I dig my heels into his thighs to urge him on, trap him against me.

  He slows, then stops, filling me completely. I arch under him and cry out as ripples of sensation flow through my body, tightening around him. The fullness is so urgent as I peak and crash, peak and crash, savoring him.

  One more thrust and he grunts, finishing inside me as I melt under him, splayed out on the bed.

  He rains soft kisses on me, on my lips, my chin, my neck. I clench up and push him off when he touches my nipples, now too sensitive. He pulls me into him anyway and I spoon back against him, wrapped up in the blankets, our breath puffing the cold air.

  He pulls the curtains closed and Conrad lies back with me. I crawl on top of him and flop there, sighing with exhaustion.

  I’m still tired, even with the afterglow singing in my veins. I yawn against him. He yawns, too, prompting a little giggle.

  I play with his hair, twining it through my fingers. He does the same.

  When I am with him I can sleep peacefully. No nightmares, no dreams, no voices demanding things of me.

  I wake in the night. Conrad is already awake, but hasn’t moved. I rise and fall slowly with his breathing.

  “I was promised to another,” he says. “To Katerina. Her father was a great man. He must be hundreds of years dead now. I had no love for her but that I would have for a sister. She lived with us from twelve, grew up among us. Manfred always hated her, for father treated her like a daughter more than he a son.”

  “So when you married, um, me, that meant you couldn’t marry her.”

  “Manfred took my place, to secure the alliance.”

  “Wow. He must not have liked that.”

  Conrad shakes his head. “No, he always resented me. It was not long after I… After my father’s death that the castle was broken and destroyed. The first time.”

  “What happens?”

  He swallows. “I am always the last survivor. When it is over I lay dying, and it comes for me, a sweet release, a blissful moment when it seems I might at last be free. I may hear your voice, see your face, smell your hair, just a taunting hint, and then I wake, here, and the moon is about to turn again. It comes time I ride. Then you return to me and it starts.”

  I shudder.

  “I dreamed, or remembered, dying. Someone stabs me in the back. Who is it? Do you know?”

  “No. I always wake up and find you dead after I’ve been…hurt, lying on the table before the tree. It is an evil place. There were human sacrifices there, not just my father’s, but going back.”

  I shift to rest my head next to his.

  “Do you know where any of this came from? It was all already there when the rock was dug out, even the tree?”

  He shakes his head. “No one knows who built the original courtyard, the table or tree or any of it.”

  “I saw another table like it when I was wandering out in the wilderness,” I tell him. “It had stones around it, and these little lights.”

  “There are many strange things in these lands. This place is old. Even in my time, we felt like intruders here. The village was a tiny place when we arrived; most of the people there now are settlers.”

  I sit up.

  He touches my back, never letting his hand leave me.

  “There has to be a way to stop this,” I say.

  “There is. If I can save you, it will break the curse. You must leave this place.”

  I don’t know how I know, but I know. I am as sure of it as the sky over my head, the ground under my feet, the air that I breathe. Fleeing will do nothing. I won’t make it. I’ll trip and break my neck or die of starvation or I’ll reach the borderland and it just won’t let me leave even when the damn moon goes black or whatever.

  I’m not leaving this place alive unless we beat this thing.

  “There’s a way,” I tell him. “Something has changed. I have. I’m not going to let this happen again.”

  Conrad looks away, sadness falling off him in waves.

  “We’ve had this conversation before,” I realize.

  “Too many times,” he says. “Sometimes you learn the truth. Sometimes you don’t. In the end you always remember. So many times I’ve heard you scream my name. God forgive me.”

  I slip out of the bed and walk out through the sitting room, grabbing his jacket as I pass. Shrugging into it, I wrap it around myself and step out to look down on the balcony.

  “I choose these rooms so I can always look down upon it,” he says.

  I almost don’t hear him.

  The sword moved.

  It put itself back on the stone table, lying beside its scabbard. Something about that unnerves me more deeply than I could have anticipated. I want to throw up.

  Conrad’s touch calms me.

  “Have you ever tried destroying it?”

  Standing behind me, he says, “Yes. After I took hold of it, that very night, I called all my smiths and journeymen and had them work the forge until it was so hot I thought it would melt the walls, and only I dared approach it. I thrust the blade into the coals and had them work the bellows and feed the fire even more, until it was so hot I had to draw it out with horsehair mittens as thick as my arm. The metal was cool. I took a hammer to it, and the steel broke the hammer. Eventually it cut the anvil in two.”

  “Jesus,” I whisper.

  “I threw it in the ravine next. It came back the very next day, lying there like it does now, taunting me. That wasn’t my last attempt. I threw it in streams, down wells, buried it. Nothing mattered; it always returned.”

  “What about taking it past the border? Why don’t you just make everyone leave as soon as you can?”

  “And let that evil out into the world? What if this whole place is here to keep it in? And I, its jailer, doomed to guard it.”

  I can’t stop thinking about it. It came from inside the mountain?

  “Has anyone ever tried putting it back?”

  Conrad looks at me, confused.

  “Oh. If only I knew how. The doors never seem to open when I want them to. Besides, I fear to tread in that place. What else might I find there? Some evil to corrupt me, as it corrupted my father. No. This is my burden to carry.”

  He rubs my arms, and I frown.

  His burden to carry.

  “We should sleep again,” he says. “Enjoy what time we have. Sleeping with you is the greatest pleasure. Almost.”

  I smile at that, but dread is a cold ball in my stomach. I walk to bed like walking to the grave, and our embrace has an urgency to it that sours my mood. So desperate to hold on to what I have in the present, but I can only think about the future and what it brings, the inevitability of it.

  It is Adrian who wakes us.

  “Father,” he calls from the sitting room. �
�Father, you must hurry.”

  Conrad leaps from the bed and hurries to dress. I move beside him, around him. It’s cramped in here and I bump into him constantly as I fish out clothes from the trunk.

  I grab a pair of riding pants and boots and a bloused shirt to put on. Conrad looks at me strangely.

  “I don’t like dresses,” I inform him.

  He smiles sadly.

  We join Adrian in the sitting room. He looks pale, drawn, and tired.

  “Go lie down,” his father commands him. “Sleep, Adrian.”

  “Father, you must, to the battlements.”

  “I will. Rest here.”

  Conrad descends the stairs quickly, charging forward with his head down, his shoulders set, like an angry bull. He crosses the yard, through the throng of peasants, and storms up the stairs. I follow breathlessly behind, rising to the top of the wall with him.

  His brother is here.

  13

  Siege

  Roxanne

  “Who the hell are those people? Where did they come from?”

  There must be hundreds of them on the valley floor, gathered around the burnt remains of the village. They’re already on the move, kicking up clouds of dust as they approach the base of the mountain road. Conrad stares down, jaw set.

  A lone rider approaches, sweeping back and forth on the serpentine road. Manfred reins up far enough from the gate for his voice to carry.

  “Hello, brother!” he shouts, tugging the reins as his horse canters from side to side. “Such a joy to see you again. Are you ready to die?”

  Manfred looks wild, unshaven and dirty, his hair a tangled mess. What’s wrong with him?

  “What do you want?”

  “Surrender the castle. I’ll execute you and your bastards and that boy-hipped slattern you’ve taken into your bed, but I’ll spare the rest. We’ll, I’ll do my best. My men are hungry for a bit of pillage, I think.”

  “You won’t harm my family,” Conrad shouts back. “I’ll see you dead first.”

  “So you think, I’m sure. You have a sword. I have an army. Your personal guard numbers, what, sixty men? Minus the twenty I took with me when I left. I was prepared to negotiate, Conrad, but then you threatened my person and humiliated me. Again.”

  Conrad takes my hand.

  “I offer terms of my own. The castle, keep, and all are yours. The sword, all of it. Take it. Let us go free. Me, my wife and family.”

  “Wife? Have you married that one, too?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You have my offer. You have the castle and all that goes with it so long as we may leave in peace.”

  “We already have the castle. We have the mountain road and there is no other way out, and you know it. My men are already preparing to storm the walls. You can’t hold us all.”

  “I can cut you down like the dog you are,” Conrad bellows back. “Assault this fortress and you’ll pay with your lives. I will unleash such terrors upon you as you can never imagine.”

  Manfred laughs. “Will you? I think you’ll find yourself surprised very soon, brother. Surrender now, or everyone behind the walls dies. Them or you and yours.”

  Conrad looks at me. He turns back to Manfred.

  “Go fuck yourself, brother.”

  Manfred laughs and wheels his horse, trotting back down the mountain at a jaunty pace, throwing us a sarcastic little wave as he descends.

  Conrad turns to me and frowns.

  “He’s planning something,” he says as we descend. “He can’t hope to take the castle by storm and we have enough food behind the walls to last all winter.”

  His jaw sets.

  I stop him at the bottom of the stairs and take him aside.

  “Do you remember anything that happened last time? Do you know what he’s going to do?”

  Conrad shakes his head. “I’m sorry.” His voice cracks with desperation as he takes my arms in his hands. “I don’t remember. I only remember the horrors, and…” he caresses my cheek, “and the beauty.”

  I grasp his hand. He’s already starting to mourn me.

  No.

  “We can’t just sit here,” I protest, even as I rub my cheek against his hand. “There has to be something we can do.”

  “There is. Take my children and my people and go. If you lead everyone through the tunnel, I can stay behind.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  He pulls me into his arms.

  “In my heart I know if you escape it will break the cycle. I’ve known it since I saw you again. It is my curse to bear.”

  I frown. “That can’t be right.”

  “I know it is. Forgive me. I should have sent you away on the first night, when the way was still open, but I took you to the courtyard. I’d hoped you would remember.”

  Remember.

  “I’ll stay,” I say. “I don’t have to leave. Send Adrian. Maybe that’s all it takes. Maybe we all need to go. If Manfred gets the sword and the castle, maybe he’ll leave us alone.”

  Conrad leans on the wall.

  “I can’t leave it to him. How could I? You don’t know what it can do. You’ve barely seen a hint of its power. It’s my burden to bear, Roxanne. Mine,” he almost hisses.

  “It doesn’t have to be. You can let it go.”

  He pulls back from the wall and paces a few steps away from me.

  “What if you’re wrong? What if I’m wrong, and this isn’t a curse, but a test? You haven’t seen, Roxanne, I keep telling you over and over. What if my keeping it is the only thing that prevents it from escaping to the outside world? What then?”

  He grabbed my arms while he was talking, digging his fingers into my skin. I don’t think he realized he was doing it. He looks down at his fingers in shock and releases them, releases me, and steps way, one hand pressed to his head.

  “Hurts,” he says.

  I step closer and take his arm.

  “So what do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” he snaps. “Start arming the villagers. It’s our only chance.”

  He shakes loose and strides across the courtyard, calling for his guards. Over the next few hours he opens the armory and starts handing out weapons. His men take a motley collection of mismatched rifles and pistols while the villagers arm themselves with spears and polearms and old swords, anything that holds an edge.

  This is going to be bad, and it’s going to be bloody. I stride up to Conrad.

  “Give me a weapon.”

  He looks at me strangely.

  “I can fight as well as anyone else. Do it.”

  He takes a pistol and pushes it into my hand, and, frowning, nods at his guards. They bring a shirt of chain mail, interlocked metal links, and help me into it. It’s heavy, most of the weight on my shoulders, and hangs almost to my knees. I feel ridiculous as I belt the gun around my waist.

  Conrad offers me a sword, hilt first. A good, well-maintained, sharp sword, newly forged. I test its weight in my hand, and my head does a little spin, my knees buckling just slightly.

  “Are you alright?” Conrad says. “Roxanne, I don’t want you on the walls. Stay with the women and children.”

  I blink a few times, and frown.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I know, but please. I can’t fight if you’re in danger. I have to lead these people. I have to try to stop this. If you stand with me, I’ll forget all about them and focus solely on defending you.”

  My heart sinks.

  “Don’t die. If you die, I’ll kick your ass.”

  Conrad laughs.

  I smirk. It’s either that or cry.

  As the day goes on, the women and children from the villages gather in the great hall. Conrad has the men erect barricades, fortifying it from the rest of the castle. They nail planks into the doors and shore them up with fence posts, leaving only the front gate open.

  Conrad is everywhere, shouting orders and pointing with a sword of common steel.

  I can’t help but drift
back outside. He doesn’t send me away. Everyone in the gatehouse has come back into the castle, effectively abandoning it. Conrad has the drawbridge drawn up and the steel grates down, and finally the wooden doors inside. Villagers and guards are working together, nailing planks across the doors while they wedge heavy posts against them and hammer them down with iron spikes.

  “The gate is the weakest part of any wall,” Conrad explains to me as we walk the defenses. “Naturally, it becomes the first point of attack.”

  I look down into the deep gully that forms a dry moat around the castle. The base of the wall meets sheer rock. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to climb, and that’s without someone on top trying to stop you.

  Yet…

  This has happened before. We lose. Manfred’s men breach the walls. When I had my dream the place was destroyed.

  No, not dream. Memory. Remember, Roxanne.

  Remember.

  I wear my sword on my left hip. It’s light and balanced. I rest one hand on the grip. The metal pommel and the worn leather grip are familiar, even comfortable.

  There is something here I’m not seeing, not remembering. Something really fucking important, and when I try to reach it, it’s like sticking my hands in scalding water. It’s there, I just have to find it.

  “Roxanne?”

  Startled, I shake my head. Conrad studies me.

  “It’s nearly dark.”

  “My lord,” a guard says, nodding to Conrad. “You should see this.”

  When we ascend the wall, Conrad looks grim. He leans on the battlements and stares out like a general in some painting, glaring.

  I look out beside him, and my heart sinks.

  Manfred’s men are moving up the serpentine road in a column, pulling something with horses. A big wooden and metal contraption on wheels, Manfred’s men have it disassembled so I can’t really tell what it is. Behind it they’re pushing…

  Catapults. I almost giggle. They’re rolling fucking catapults up the road. I’m in a castle and they have catapults.

  “Then it’s a storm,” he says.