Secrets at the Keep (Kingdom of Denall Book 2) (12 page)

In the distance, the silent woods were disrupted by rustling leaves and snapping branches, and what sounded like some people bumbling through the underbrush. She moved forward quickly, knowing there was danger ahead, but feeling completely at ease. When she closed in on the noise, she saw something that caught her completely off guard—Mylot. Her pampered half-brother jumped up from the bushes and lunged at a large, foreign man, throwing him to the ground.

Maggie looked down at the gray rock in her left hand and wondered why she had come here. She had no desire to help this spoiled nobleman. But she couldn’t just leave him to die. She lobbed the rock in her left hand up high into the air, knowing it would find its target, just as she knew her arrow would win the tournament in Lexingar before she even drew her bow. As it arched through the woods, a tall man who was dressed like he was from another country pulled out an arrow, drew his bow, and aimed it at Mylot. He released the arrow, firing it directly at Mylot’s heart.

As it travelled through the air, the arrow was deflected by the large rock Maggie had thrown, sending it wide and sinking the arrow into Mylot’s shoulder. He screamed out in pain, dropped to the ground, and Maggie cocked back her right arm and hurled the second stone as the archer was drawing a second arrow.

The stone hit the archer’s elbow, jarring him, and his next shot flew high over Mylot, who was doubled over. The foreign archer turned and looked at Maggie, obviously surprised to see her there in the woods. She gave him a slight smile and waved her hand. Before he realized what was happening, he was bent over with Mylot’s hunting knife protruding from his chest.

Maggie ducked back behind a large tree so she was out of sight. After standing in complete silence for several moments, she peeked around the side of the tree. The large man Mylot had tackled was starting to rise to his feet. He half crawled, half stumbled over to his friend and pulled the hunting knife from him. “He’s going to pay for this!” the man said with a thick accent. “I’m going to kill them both with this knife.”

“No, you are not,” Maggie corrected.

In surprise, the man spun around and saw that he was staring down the shaft of Maggie’s drawn arrow. He lunged forward at the young woman, as if to over-power her. Instead of releasing her arrow, Maggie side-stepped, and the man, unable to control his forward momentum, rammed head first into a large boulder and fell to the ground.

Maggie retrieved the hunting knife, and began walking toward a small cabin in the nearby field. She turned to look into the woods, but could not see Mylot anywhere. It seemed that he had fled into the woods. She looked back to the field, knowing that her work was not yet done.

From her vantage point she could saw a cabin window shatter as a crossbow bolt flew through the pane of glass, then another window, and a third. A group of large men had surrounded it the small home, and were advancing steadily from all sides. She didn’t know who was inside, but she knew she needed to do something to save the person.

She put the hunting knife into her belt and drew an arrow. Without looking, she released it in a high arch over the cabin, then drew and released a second. As the first arrow thudded into one of the men attacking the house, her second intercepted a crossbow bolt in mid-flight, causing it to thud into the wooden exterior of the cabin.

Some of the men turned on her then. With three crossbowmen focused on her, she stood still, slung her bow over her shoulder and instead drew the hunting knife. Two of the men eyed the unlikely weapon as they began to approach her cautiously. They kept their crossbows leveled, but seemed to be unsure of whether they should bother firing, or should simply rush her and disable her by hand. The third man worked to load a bolt into his weapon. Maggie waited patiently as they closed in on her. When the third finally had his weapon loaded, he bent down on a knee, raised his crossbow to his shoulder, and leveled it at her. She stood still, waiting for the sound that would tell her to move. Click.

The third man’s bowstring snapped into place, and Maggie ran at nearest bowman. As she approached, he pulled the trigger and the bolt flew through the air. Maggie kept running, knowing that it would fly slightly wide. The large arrowhead ripped her shirt by the shoulder, but did not contact her skin. She kept moving in on the man, the hunting knife in hand. She leapt up into the air, and drove the butt of the knife down hard into his head, then without waiting for another moment, she dropped to the ground as two bolts simultaneously flew over her dropped form. Thud. Thud.

Maggie stood up and looked at the two other crossbowmen, each with a bolt in his chest. She put the knife back in her belt. There were still three men attacking the cabin who had just entered through the front door, and by the looks of it, there was no resistance coming from inside. She stepped over the unconscious men and ran to the front door, knowing there was more she would need to do.

When she pushed open the door, she saw the three men lying on the ground, and a woman grasping at her abdomen with an arrow protruding from her. When Maggie walked through the door, she shifted her weight to the side, neatly dodging a small throwing knife the woman had thrown at her.

“Calm down,” Maggie said, raising her hands to show they were empty. She knew she wasn’t the typical looking hero coming in to save the day, with her travel-worn clothing, matted hair, and dark birthmark that stretched down the right side of her face, but she also had learned that desperate people needed to accept whatever help they could if they were going to survive. “I’m here to help, please put down the other knife.”

“Who are you?” The woman asked as she held the weapon in front of her defensively.

“I’m here to help,” was all she said, then she made her way past the woman on the floor and into the pantry. She began to search through the cabinets and called out over her shoulder. “You have about three minutes before you pass out because of blood loss, so I suggest you get into a comfortable position. It would be terrible to add a head injury to your current state.” Maggie came back to the woman on the floor with her hands full of sacks and jars. She set the ingredients down around her. “What is your name?”

The woman looked quizzically at Maggie, then released the knife. “I’m Bethany,”

“Hello, Bethany,” Maggie said as she lowered the woman’s head down onto a pillow. “When you wake up, the surviving two attackers will be tied up here in the cabin. I’ll put one in the back room, and the other over there,” she pointed at a large, wooden support beam. “They know about Mordyar’s plans. Get information from them and then get back to Lexingar and report it to Sir Theodore. He’ll give you orders, and if you want Mylot to survive, you need to obey them.” She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to make this promise to Bethany, but it seemed to mean something to her.

“Mylot,” Bethany said through clenched teeth, as she reached out to Maggie. “Is he okay?”

Maggie pushed Bethany back down to lie on the floor. “He got away,” she answered. She really didn’t know anything else about his whereabouts, or his fate, she just saw him shot with an arrow and then he disappeared into the woods, she didn’t think it would help to let Bethany know that he was injured. Maggie pulled back Bethany’s shirt and revealed the arrow that was protruding from her. It looked very bad.

Bethany began shaking her head, “I don’t think I’m going to make it through this one. I’ve seen this kind of wound before.” Ignoring her words, Maggie began mixing a pink powder with a green ointment in a medium mixing bowl. She added some green herbs and a sprinkle of a white substance. “Have you healed something this bad before?” Bethany asked. Her voice was soft and her head swayed back and forth as she fought to stay awake.

Maggie continued working silently, she knew that if she told the truth—that she had never done anything like this before, and she had no idea what ingredients she was mixing—it might upset Bethany. She also knew that Bethany wouldn’t remember much at this point as she was lapsing between consciousness and unconsciousness.

When Bethany’s eyes closed, Maggie gripped on the end of the arrow and pulled it from her body, then held her hand over the open wound. She cleaned the area as best she could then smeared some of the thick mixture over the affected area. After covering it with a clean bandage, Maggie added water to the bowl and stirred until it was a thin gray drink. She put some in Bethany’s mouth, plugged her nose and forced it down. After making Bethany ingest what was left in the bowl, Maggie moved around the property bringing the two surviving men into the cabin and tying them up so they could not escape while Bethany was unconscious.

As she left the cabin, Maggie saw something familiar, and welcome. Her half-brother’s favorite horse, Gapol was grazing, as if waiting there to give her a ride. While she felt directed in the work that needed to be done, Maggie didn’t know what would become of the situation.
Would Bethany survive? Where was Mylot going? What brought them here together?
She often left a situation with more questions than answers, but she didn’t have time to worry about what would and would not be. She leapt up on Gapol and kicked him into action. She had a lot of work to do.

Back at their camp P furiously stalked back and forth, trying to figure out their next move, while Kaz sat quietly by himself. The remaining men from Hess nervously watched Kaz and P, knowing that something bad had happened, but were afraid to break the silence. It didn't take an intellect to figure out that there was serious tension in the small group.

Finally P broke the silence. “What are we going to do?” she asked, exasperated.

Kaz looked up, surprised. “Are you asking me?”

“Yes, I'm asking you. You know him. You might be the only chance we have to succeed at this mission.”

“You're right, and although I have no idea why he's advising Omer, I do know that he's not a tyrant. I grew up with him and I will not shoot him. I need to talk with him.”

“That is definitely not an option,” P said definitively. “If you get taken, Omer will know all of our plans and we won't have our archer. So I'm asking you again, what would your friend do now?”

“We were friends, but I never understood his thought process. He's studied everything, so he knows, in theory, every possible way to break up a resistance. He will know the tactics for leading an army. But it will all be theoretical; he's never actually led anything.”

P turned toward the ex-slaves. “When the people of Hess tried to revolt before, how did Omer stop it?”

“It wasn’t much of a revolt,” Dirt answered. “The people just stood with their farm tools and Omer sent in a direct charge with cavalry. It was terrible, they just charged through us, cutting us down like wheat.”

“Let's move! Now!” P flew into action, gathering their belongings and mounting their horses. They rode in the opposite direction from the keep for half a mile, then turned sharply north, then east again. Within thirty minutes they found themselves crouching in a stand of trees that overlooked the north side of the keep. As they watched they could see that P was right to leave when they did. P could easily see the swath of torn earth left in the wake of a large contingent of cavalry that had already swept up the hill from which they were spying.

“What are we going to do?” Kaz asked, as he edged closer to P.

“While they search for us in the east, we're going to move north, set up camp for the night and hopefully acquire some more supplies from patrols that have not yet heard about how we operate. We'll need all the supplies we can get.” Then with an accusing look to Kaz. “Our plans are working on an expedited schedule.”

*****

Later that day, just as the sun was beginning to fall low in the sky, Kaz watched from high in a tree as Digger, Dirt, and Smudge, all knowing their roles, were innocently sitting by a camp fire. They had chosen a location about a thousand paces north of Omer's Keep, safely concealed in the forest. Shortly after lighting their fire, a band of five thieves came across them. Before they could act surprised or fake fear, the leader of the thieves grabbed Dirt and slid his shirtsleeve up his arm to reveal the brand of a slave.

“It's them!” He shouted as he pulled out his sword to kill the runaway slave.

Before the thief’s sword could fall, three things happened; Kaz released his bowstring, P jumped down from her hiding place, and a full patrol of soldiers in shining armor entered the light of the campfire, swords drawn. With nearly twenty soldiers and five would-be thieves attacking this small band, and without the element of surprise, they were hopelessly fighting for survival.

The man who had been holding Dirt fell to the ground with Kaz’s arrow protruding from his eye socket, and P immediately started shouting orders to the men concealed in the trees to stand and fight. This identified her to Omer's men as the leader, and they turned their attention to her. Before they could get close, two of the men posing as petty thieves were grasping at throwing knives protruding from their bodies. In the confusion, as Omer’s men were focusing on P, Kaz was sure to cover Dirt as he ran to gather Smudge and Seed and take them deep into the woods, as had been pre-arranged should they ever fall into a sticky situation.

Digger had retrieved a stave he had hidden in the dirt near their campfire and was desperately trying to fend off the attacks from two of the thieves. They were fighting in such close quarters that Kaz couldn’t get a clean shot at either of the assailants, but saw that several of the Hess men were coming to Digger’s aid. His attention was caught by a sudden burst of speed from the mounted lieutenant, who had broken through the scuffles taking place on foot, and was now running P down.

She dodged behind a tree just as the man passed her and turned his horse for a second charge. As he came about, his horse took three arrows to the chest, and a fourth arrow plinked off his helmet’s visor. A small cheer went up from a group of Hess men who had clearly been responsible for the shots. He growled and was preparing to charge them when another arrow managed to clear the gap in his helmet and struck him in the eye, felling him from his horse. Kaz followed the arrow’s path back to Samel who was pumping his fist into the air as he roared in triumph. He looked joyfully up at Kaz just as a mounted patrolman swept past, striking Samel down with his sword.

“No!” Kaz screamed as he watched the scene unfold as though in slow motion. It took him only a split second to recover his senses and fire an arrow of his own at the patrolman who was now on his way to the group of four who had first shot at the patrol leader. The arrow slid in neatly between his chainmail and helmet, killing him instantly.

From his vantage point, Kaz was able to slay three more soldiers in armor before he felt a burning pain in his right shoulder. Despite the pain, he was able to turn and release a final arrow at their archer who had remained in the shadows as the others advanced. After sending the arrow into the dark, Kaz was dislodged from the tree by a powerful force that hit him in the stomach. He landed flat on his back on the ground. He was conscious, but with an arrow protruding from his shoulder, and some cracked ribs from the impact of his fall, his mind was hazy and he could not move.

He was vaguely aware of P rallying the handful of men who were still standing and giving the order to attack. The men from Hess did not hesitate. Kaz saw Asher take the sword from the fallen patrol leader, while another grabbed small logs from the fire to use as clubs. The men had only the meager close combat training they had received from P on the journey here, and were no match for the soldiers, who were quickly advancing. But the soldiers were only motivated by their salaries, while the runaway slaves fought for their lives. Their clubs rose and fell despite the many wounds that they were given by Omer's men.

I have to get to my bow and help them!
Kaz thought desperately. He sat up painfully and looked around to see where his bow had fallen. He spied the weapon not far from him, and slowly stood to his feet. Just as he came upright, a throwing knife came flying within inches of his nose. His eyes went wide, and he followed the flight path of the blade and startled when he saw it protruding from a patrolman’s neck, his arm still raised, poised to strike Kaz down. He looked back the other direction and saw P fleeing into the woods with a final horseman chasing after her.

*****

After saving Kaz, and finding she had drawn attention from yet another mounted patrolman, P utilized a trick she had learned a long time ago. She ran. Through the thick woods she dodged behind trees and then circled around to come in behind the patrol. The horse could not keep pace through the thick underbrush, so P gained some ground and began again the work of death among the soldiers. Three more were down before they could react to the attack from behind. Then, without notice, P was knocked to the ground by a large rock that hit her arm with tremendous force. She rolled onto her back and saw the patrol leader dismount and stalk confidently toward her. She quickly took in the scene. A mounted patrolman struck out at Asher, slicing down the right side of his face. She screamed as he fell to the earth, and she realized that, despite their best efforts, all of the men from Hess were down, and P could only assume they had all been killed, Kaz was nowhere to be seen, and from the darkness of the woods a large strongarm appeared, holding another massive rock in his hand.

“So nice to meet you,” the patrol captain said with a sarcastic grin. Then to the large strongarm he asked, “Are they all dead, Krick?”

Krick scratched his head and slowly looked around. “They look dead to me.”

Shaking his head and releasing a sigh of exasperation he called to one of his men who was emerging from the trees, “What did you find Colter?”

“The horses from the missing patrols, and it looks like the armor and weapons from the men.” He was leading several horses by their reins, and tossed a helmet to the captain. Holding the dented helmet in his hand, the patrol captain gave P a hard look as he issued his command to his remaining soldiers, each of which had been injured during the skirmish. “All of you men, return to the keep and tell Omer that, as he suspected, the slaves are behind the attacks. And take Krick with you!” he added, as he caught sight of Krick chasing a squirrel through the underbrush. He waited until he saw that the surviving soldiers had tied each of the recovered horses to their own, and were heading through the woods to deliver the message, then turned back to P. “Now -- just one more thing to deal with.”

As he advanced, P struggled to move. The rock had hit her with the force of a horse kick. Her other arm was pinned under her body, snagged on some vines. In her last act of defiance, P looked right in the man's eyes. “I am Pentra, daughter of Omer, and I am here to kill him.”

Hearing this declaration made the patrol captain pause. “I'm glad you said something.” Then a cruel smile crossed his lips. “There is a large reward for you… dead or alive.” With that, he raised his sword to deliver the death blow. P kept her eyes locked on the man, bracing for the impact… she heard a sickening thud, and felt warm blood splatter across her face. The man fell and landed hard, just inches from her face, one side of his head crushed. She looked up past the fallen body to where Kaz stood, wielding a club… wobbling… trying to maintain his balance. Then his knees gave out and he half stumbled, half crawled to P.

Kaz slowly moved to P and knelt over her. “Are you okay?” he asked through clamped shut teeth as he tried to suppress his pain.

“I'm so sorry Kaz,” P said with a downtrodden look. “We should have regrouped and made a new plan. I just want Omer dead so badly!”

Kaz leaned down and helped P untangle her arm and they stood up. Just then they heard a rustling in the undergrowth. Kaz and P each reached for a weapon, and turned at the same moment to face the new threat, realizing just in time that the figure emerging from the trees was Seed.

“Seed! What are you doing here?” P exclaimed in dismay as she noticed he was grasping his abdomen tightly, and that his face was completely drained of color. She hurried forward and caught the young man with her good arm just as he fell to his knees.

“Smudge… he didn’t want to leave. He kept arguing… wanted to come back. We were close, coming to see what had happened when soldiers…” he grimaced then and took in a sharp breath. He looked down at his hands and opened them, revealing a deep wound that was bleeding profusely.

Kaz was kneeling by them now, and cried out at the sight of Seed’s wound. He quickly tore the cloak from a fallen patrolman who was lying nearby, and wadded it up, pressing it into Seed’s wound.

“Oh Seed,” P said with tears in her eyes. She cradled his head and brushed his hair to the side. “We are going to get you some help. Don’t worry about anything.” She knew the words were useless even as she said them. He had been so frail to begin with. He couldn’t have more than a few minutes left.

“They took Dirt and Smudge,” Seed said with considerable effort. His eyes were wide and frightened.

“We’ll get them. You be sure of that. We are going to get Dirt and Smudge and free them. You were so brave,” P said as she continued to stroke Seed’s head. He seemed to relax as he heard those words, and his eyes no longer looked frightened.

“Free them all,” he whispered weakly.

“I will,” she promised, hating herself even as she spoke the words, and hating her father even more. Another few shallow breaths from Seed and he was gone. She bit into her lip hard to keep from sobbing, and closed the young man’s eyes. Then she looked to Kaz, who also had tears streaming down his face.

“Come on,” she said abruptly, wiping the tears from her eyes and breathing deeply. “We have to get Dirt and Smudge back!” She gently laid Seed’s head on the ground and then jumped to her feet. Kaz got up as well and they shared a moment as they both looked about them at their fallen friends.

“Let’s get to the keep!”