Damsel Knight (22 page)

But Neven’s right. There’s something very wrong here. Sir Angus doesn’t walk like that. He walks with a glower, and swings his body in a way that makes him look even bigger than his large size. Every movement is a way to express power, and strength. She’s not sure he can show deference if he tried.

Neven steps to her side. His sword is raised though the arm that holds it trembles. “His eyes,” he whispers.

Then she sees it. Then it makes sense. A feeling colder than the lost ones lodges in her belly. She raises her sword.

Sir Angus’s dark eyes are a pale blue.

It’s not Sir Angus, and behind them, many of their eyes greys, blues, and greens. Those are not Sir Angus’s men. Nor she suspects are they men of the circle where darker eye colours dominate.

The barbarians didn’t swap places with the soldiers. They swapped bodies.

“Stop there!” She shouts as loud as she can, hoping someone from the battle or the wall will notice. A sinking feeling tugs at her stomach. There are no men on the wall, and those in battle are too busy taking down their own comrades. “Your disguises don’t fool me!”

Sir Angus laughs, and a wave on unreality washes over her. It’s a woman’s laugh, coming out of the mouth of a man. Looking again at those pale blue eyes, she thinks of the woman barbarian with the red hair who spared them on the way back from the fire. Is that who’s hiding under Sir Angus’s face.

They stand, two boys against over fifty men. Impossible odds. To move aside would let them at the wall, and if they break this one the same way they did the outer one, then the palace will have no protection against man or magic.

“Stand aside,” the woman’s voice says, Sir Angus’s mouth moving. And she sounds… warm, comforting. Like honey cakes and warm milk. Sharp soap and clean clothes. Familiar. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

A high pitched whine shreds the air. Boone glances over at Neven in time to see him rock back as the metal shooters around his arms discharge. His sword clangs as it falls onto the golden road.

Two men either side of fake-Sir Angus are thrown backward in a splatter of blood. A lot of blood. It splashes before Neven’s feet like paint, and seeps from the fallen men, crawling down the golden road toward the battle where the ground is already thick with it.

If they still had their bronze shields, she thinks they’d be blown away at that moment, but they don’t. They advance, swords out that she sees now are too thin and dark to be from the circle. They’re like her father’s sword, only smaller.

She doesn’t want to be cut into pieces by swords that remind her of her father.

Panic claws at her, flashing her whole body from as hot as the slum fire to as numb as her arm. Neven snatches his sword up from the ground, and she grabs him, running for the palace. They’re not running away, they’re - they are running away, but she doesn’t have time to analyse what that means.

All she knows is she doesn’t want to die.

The gate is closed, thick wood, and on the other side of that even thicker iron. They hadn’t marched far before they’d stopped short of the battle like cowards. It still takes too long to get there, uphill and running from barbarians. Her muscles tense for the blow she’s sure is about to fall. Her arm screams at her to turn and swing her sword, while her legs scream to keep moving, keep running.

Neven reaches the gate first, slamming his fists into the solid wood with an ineffectual sound. The shooters stay standing up on his arms. Out of ammo she thinks, or he would’ve tried them again. “Put men on the wall!” He shouts. “We need men on the wall!”

He doesn’t ask for the gates to open, because he can’t she realises, her stomach sinking so far down it feels like she’s standing on it. If that gate opens, then fake-Sir Angus and his-her men can walk through. No one will stop them.

A chunk of wood disappears from the gate and an old man’s face peers out through the gold circles. His wide scared eyes hover over them, then skate over the barbarians approaching. Some of the fear seems to fade, and he leans back to yell “open the gate” to someone inside.

“No!” Neven shouts, shield hanging limply from one arm as his fingers search through his pockets. He digs out small smooth stones and slots them clumsily into the metal shooters. “Don’t open the gate! Don’t open it. They’re not our soldiers. They’re barbarians.”

“They cast a spell.” Boone glances back at the barbarians, close enough to speak themselves. If it were really Sir Angus he could end this all now with one word, but it’s not. One word of that woman’s voice would be convincing enough for the old man to put archers on the walls, and fill the barbarians with arrows.

Instead one of the men on Sir Angus’s right steps forward. “The battle is ours,” he says. The words are rough, with a slight lilt that reminds her of her father’s voice. “You may open the gates.”

“No.” Boone hits her shield against the wood in frustration. “It’s a trick.”

Neven nods earnestly, almost dropping the second stone before it slots into place. “Just look at their eyes.”

The old man narrows his eyes. Suspicion screws up his features as he scans the group of soldiers. He pushes away from the hole with a huff with the words “the city wall doesn’t let magic in.”

The wooden gate creaks open. Behind it the gate with the golden rings starts to do the same.

Boone fights the urge to curse. Apparently being male doesn’t mean everyone listens to you.

Neven squeaks and the metal shooters whine and fire again. This time the barbarians lift the battered shields in time. With a sick feeling in her stomach she wonders where they got them from. The uniforms and faces have to be fake, but if they’re using shields then they have to be real.

One stone hits a shield with a solid bang. The other rides high and gets the man through the head. She’s struck by how no hole appears on his face despite the blood running down, and once he falls, pooling beneath his head. The mask covers some things, but not others.

“Gods,” the old man gasps, appearing in the small opening between the gates. “What are you kids-”

Boone cuts off any further words by slamming her shield down on the man’s head. He slumps to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

There are more voices behind him, questioning and fearful. They can’t go in there. Not to hide, and not to close the gates and man the walls themselves. It may only be wounded and feeble left behind, but they can still put up a fight against two boys.

But they can’t let the barbarians go in there. That’s what they want. It’s unlikely they’d try to take a palace with only fifty men, so she guesses whatever needs to be done to break the spells on the wall has to be done from inside.

“Close the gates!” The voice shouts from behind the barbarians. Sir Julius races up the golden road on his white mare, her flank red with blood, and her sides heaving. “Close those gates!”

It’s enough for whoever’s behind the slowly opening gates to swear, tugging the old man from view, then starting the heavy gates on their way to closed. The fake Sir Angus starts forward with their men, the man who spoke before doing so again, ordering them to open the gates.

Boone looks from her sword to her shield, then digs a hand in Neven’s pocket to grab a handful of stones. Throwing as hard as she can, she aims for faces. Out of her half a dozen stones, only two get around where she wants them to, but it’s enough of a distraction to make the barbarians pause and turn their way.

Neven takes her lead, and turns out to have better aim than she’d expected. Every one of his ammo bounces off somewhere around the eyes, and in one memorable case goes right down the throat of the guy trying to speak, causing him to choke and grasp at his neck. Then seeming bolstered by his success, he takes the blunted knife from his belt and throws that too, landing a solid stick in Sir Angus’s leg.

The fake knight lets out a womanly sounding gasp, then covers her mouth with a huge hand. No red soaks his trousers, at least, no red they can see. Boone suspects the red is staining her tan trousers instead, under whatever magic is covering it.

It takes their attention from the gate long enough for the inner rings of gold to click closed.

The knight’s hands flick through the air, casting small silver somethings. Boone ducks behind her shield on instinct. The knives lodge themselves deep into the wood of the gate just as it shuts. A pained yelp makes her spin toward Neven, who clutches his shoulder tightly, still trying to hold onto his sword at the same time. Red trickles through his fingers. A little more to the left and the knife could’ve lodged firmly in his chest.

All at once they aren’t two boys facing a group of men. They’re two boys, trapped against a wall, while barbarians out of some wives tale come to tear them apart.

Sir Julius bears down on them, swinging his sword. Six soldiers fall before a swipe to the white mare’s chest makes her rear up, tossing the knight from his saddle. He lands, cat-like on his feet as the horse sprints away.

“What’s going on down there?” Calls a lone voice from the wall. Nervous, frightened. No use to them.

If there are any arrows, they’re just as likely to hit her, Neven and Sir Julius as they are the barbarians. And if Sir Julius and they are killed, then who’s to stop the barbarians from asking for the gate to be opened again, or finding another way in?

She stands slightly in front of Neven, shield up to her chest. Her legs tingle, exposed. If she makes it through this with her squirehood attached, she’s going to ask Sir Julius for a shield that she can duck her whole body behind. Some armour too.

Sir Julius slashes his way through the enemy with a speed to envy. Every movement has a purpose and leaves a mark, but only of blood. No other blemishes taint their skin or clothes, not even when Sir Julius’s thin sword cuts right through the top of a man’s skull. The knight has to jump back when the man - still whole - returns the blow. A difference in heights, she thinks, making a note to aim low to be sure to hit flesh.

Behind them the battle has died down enough for some of the few left standing - most from the city she’s glad to see - to glance their way. They seem confused more than anything else. There are fewer glimpses of tan uniforms than there should be, even among the dead. She doesn’t want to try to figure out what that might mean.

The voice keeps calling questions from on top of the wall, and the first few soldiers make their slow shambling way to see why their own soldiers are attacking a knight. She grits her teeth, seeing their pale eyes, their dark swords, and the way wounds fail to show up when they’re injured. How can no one see?

“Look!” Neven shouts to the few peering heads from above the wall. Dropping his shield, he swings his dented sword and lets go, sending it flying through the air.

Fake-Sir Angus ducks, but not in time. The sword cuts smoothly through his thick neck, and out the other side to hit the man behind him in the head. Then he stands again, whole and unharmed.

“Magic!” Boone yells up at the white faces, suppressing the urge to call them some foul names.

They swear, most of them disappearing from the edge. Well. At least the gate won’t be opening any time soon.

Now there’s the small problem of the gate standing firmly between them and safety.

Fake-Sir Angus tugs the knife from his leg, face barely twitching at the pain. He weighs the knife in his hand, then spinning around throws it behind him. It lands in Sir Julius’s throat, right around where his adam’s apple should be. And it sticks. This time it sticks.

His olive eyes widen, not understanding what’s happening. Shaking, his fingers raise themselves to the knife.

One of the fake soldiers grabs the hilt, tugging it out in a swiping motion that opens his neck into a wide smile. The man steps back to avoid the gush of red, then when Sir Julius falls to his knees, helps lie the knight down on his front in a way that almost seems kind.

Neven grips her left arm tightly. She lets him. Part of her wants to grip him back just as tight.

Sir Julius knew things, like that they’d rescued the princess. It’s unlikely he recognised her through all that dirt when her father barely could. So how did he know? She hadn’t had the chance to ask him.

He’d given her the chance to prove herself. A chance to earn a knighthood by her own merits, instead of winning it by whatever dumb luck gave her the opportunity to kill the last family she has left. He fought her with a sword, and rather than telling her she was good, told her he could make her better. He’d given her more than any praise could give. He’d given her a path and a purpose. And now that path is gone.

More than that, he’s gone.

Tears sting at her eyes. Cold fear battles with searing hate, and hate wins.

Shrugging off Neven’s hold, she steps forward, swinging her sword. Her heart thuds loud in her head. “You want to fight, then fight me. Sword to sword, like a man.”

“Sword to sword is no use in war. Not when facing a king who would send a dozen swords to take down one. You can’t fight fair in a battle against monsters.” The fake knight digs into the air around his waist, fingers blurring a moment before they pull out more of those small silver knives. He-she draws back their arm to throw, then pauses, eyes fixing on Boone’s hand. Their face turns as grey as the stone of the wall behind her. “Where did you get that sword?”