The Greenwood Shadow (36 page)

Isaiah put a hand on her shoulder, and she took hold of it. Time seemed to stand still for a long while, as the king grieved over his lost son. Finally, he stood and gathered Isaiah, Evey, and a few of his captains together.

"Report," he demanded.

"Sir Guy and his personal guard are barricaded in the northwest tower," one of the captains explained. "A direct assault would be nearly suicidal, even if we had more men."

"Blast!" the king growled. "That place was built to be impenetrable, even with a minimal garrison."

Another captain spoke immediately. "Your majesty, Sir Guy can't hold out forever. Food and water are limited. Whether we drive him away, or lay siege, he'll have to come out in the end, and then we'll have him."

"No good. No good!" the king roared. "If anyone here really knows Sir Guy, I do. I didn't foresee his treachery, true, but I know how his mind works. He's far too clever. The longer we give him, the more chance he'll have to slip away right under our noses. It's got to be now."

"But sir! Our men would be slaughtered. We've got no chance. He's got two dozen elite guards with him."

The king sank to a makeshift chair. "I know. But we can't let him escape. We've got to do something before he has time to regroup."

"Excuse me," Evey interrupted. All of the men turned to look at her, some with disapproving glares. She ignored these. "I think you're forgetting a third option. You're underrating subtlety."

"Get this girl out of here!" roared a tall, thin man. "What could you know of battle? Go back to your needlework, girl."

He uttered the last word with such contempt that Evey charged before she had time to think. She kicked out his knees and locked her arms around his head and neck in a hold that a bear couldn't have broken. She had to restrain herself from squeezing too tight. The rest of the men, other than Isaiah and the king, were too shocked to react.

"Ready to listen to me now?" she muttered into the man's ear. He didn't answer, but gave a whimper of pain. Looking at the rest, she said, "I've never been inside, of course. But what makes towers like that so easy to defend is the spiraling staircase. The defenders have the high ground and the advantage of the weapon hand forward. So if someone were to attack from the top down..."

She left the men to figure out the rest on their own. Most looked unconvinced, but Isaiah nodded. The king also looked intrigued.

"Have we got any others who are left handed?" Isaiah asked him.

"Not that I know of. It's mighty uncommon."

"Not as much as you might think," he replied, and he ran off to search the uninjured knights.

"What is going on here?" the king asked Evey. "It seems that I've missed a rather crucial part of this plan."

"I can climb that tower. So can John, if he's not hurt. They can't shoot at us from the arrow slits if we're actually on the wall. From the top down, we'll have the advantage. We'll clear any archers. Then Isaiah, with anyone else he can find, will lead the charge up. They're left-handed. That will negate the angle advantage. We'll have Sir Guy before nightfall."

She said this confidently, despite her plan's obvious uncertainty and reliance on luck. She had no intention of letting the foul man escape her.

The king looked into her eyes. "You're sure about all of this? That's a dreadfully high tower."

"We nearly made it to your bedchamber once. The tower isn't much higher." She didn't mention that she had never actually climbed that far before. But with so much at stake, she was willing to try.

The king looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and amazement. "Well, alright. But do be careful."

She gave him a nod, and hurried off to find John.

Isaiah had been able to find two other men who favored their left hands. Unlike Isaiah, they had not been allowed to train that way. They still repeated the fighting stances with their right, alongside everyone else, but they could fight well with either arm.

The plan came together within half an hour. There wasn't really much to arrange. She had summed it up very succinctly for the king. Every bit of it was risky, but there wasn't a lot that could be done to fix that.

Just before they put the plan into action, Isaiah pulled Evey aside.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked. "That's over fifty feet, straight up."

"If you mean 'have I ever done it before', then no. But yes, I'm sure. I'll be fine."

"And you're not just saying that to make me stop asking you?"

She rolled her eyes, but only to make him laugh.

"You caught me," she admitted. "But seriously, don't worry about it."

"I..." He seemed to be trying to find the right words.

He stood incredibly close. Breathing suddenly became more difficult than usual. He brushed away a strand of her hair. As his thumb gently ran along her cheek, she stopped breathing altogether.

A little at a time, he leaned down until only an inch separated them. She longed to close the gap, but she froze in place. Forward. Just one inch. That was all.

Before she could act, he pulled away and turned his back on her.

"We can't," he said sullenly. Any other words caught in his throat as he cleared it. Then he walked away, stealing only the briefest glance back.

Misery. The moment he left was quite possibly the most depressing of her short life. And yet, even as she felt like crying, she couldn't help but admire the loyalty he had shown. No matter how much he wished things to be different, he still honored his promises. She only hoped that his bride would realize how lucky she was.

After an agonizingly long minute, she scolded herself back to the present. She had a job to do, and she couldn't just go around wishing for things that would never happen. She'd channel her frustration into energy for the job at hand. She had more than enough. Any tower guard that crossed her path would wish they hadn't.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Evey approached the tower first. She had a much more accurate judgment of a flying arrow than did John. Her first instinct was to sneak to the wall. Something she could do with no problems. But that left John to fend for himself. Instead, she charged forward with a yell, attracting the attention of all the archers in the tower.

Arrows flew past her. Some she dodged. Others she blocked with her huge, and quite heavy shield. Near the base of the wall, she threw aside her shield and dove the remaining few feet. Every archer had sent an arrow at her, and none of them hit. John came in only seconds behind her, taking advantage of the momentary lack of fire while the guards re-nocked arrows.

The tower had only three protruding machicolations from which to drop objects or pour boiling water. Evey considered this to be a serious design flaw. Any tower boasting to be impenetrable would leave no blind spots, but at least it gave her the safety she needed to climb.

Without pausing to think, she secured her bow and started the intimidating climb. By virtue of her small size, she climbed much faster than John, and was soon several yards higher. Just as before, she found herself wishing for her crumbly wall at home. The hand holds were difficult and her footing was even more tenuous.

By the time she'd gotten level with the third floor, the strain began to tell in her fingers. They got stiff and shaky. She had no feeling at all left in her toes. When her hands finally found the edge of the fifth floor window, she was certain that only pure stubbornness had gotten her all the way up.

Disregarding caution, she swung herself over the ledge and into the only room with a window. Having a window at all, and positioned right in a blind spot, was yet another design flaw. If it weren't for the fact that it was now possible to catch a country-destroying traitor, she would be making some serious complaints about these weaknesses.

Evey was relieved, but not surprised, to find the room empty. No one in the tower had foreseen the chance of attack from the fifty foot high window. If she had been defending, she would have had an archer at the opening. Maybe two. Luckily, Gisbourne's soldiers were not her.

As quickly as she could, she knotted a rope around the sturdiest item in the room, which was a massive four poster bed on a stone dais. She had a sneaking suspicion that this was the king's second bedroom, to be used in the event of a siege.

She tossed the rope out to John, who still clung to the wall twenty feet below the window. He was clearly struggling with the climb. Good thing they had thought to bring a rope.

As much as she wanted to wait for John's backup, she couldn't handle idly pacing around the room. Against her better judgment, she decided to crack the door open and scope out the defenses. Knowing that her bow would be of little use in the spiraling stairway, she drew the sword that had once been her father's and stepped out into the passage.

It was a narrow tower. There were only two rooms per floor, and seven floors in all. Just enough space to house the royal family and as many soldiers as they could block the stairs with. As she looked around, she wondered about the point of it all.

If an army had breached the rest of the castle, it would only be a matter of time before the tower fell as well. She couldn't think of a single instance in history where a siege had been repelled from the last unoccupied, and sparsely defended, tower. But she supposed that it had to be attempted, as a matter of principle. That, at least, she could approve of.

She took another cautious step out of the room. The place seemed abnormally quiet. She expected to hear the footfalls of the pacing guards and the sounds of readied weapons clinking and shuffling between hands. There was nothing. An ominous feeling of dread settled over her.

She heard him coming before he knew that he was ready to attack. The shuffles were deafening in the strange silence, and instantly alerted her to the presence of a man in an alcove a few steps above her. He clearly thought that he was being silent, and she allowed him to continue thinking that. On guard, and ready for a fight, she waited until the last moment before turning to face her attacker.

It was just like the first time that Isaiah had attempted to sneak up on her, only this man was not Isaiah. He was at least a foot taller, and probably a full hundred pounds heavier. Although her timing was perfect, and her form was correct, the man didn't budge when she tried to sweep his feet. He stood there like a living boulder.

She was in big trouble. Any normal sized man would have been thrown to the ground with a knife at his throat. Instead, she sprawled across two stairs, having dropped her sword as she stumbled. Her knife seemed suddenly insignificant but she parried blows as best she could.

Each swing of the guard's massive sword fell so heavily that the power of it passed through the dagger and numbed her arm. The stone steps cut into her back each time she blocked, and she could feel her fingers losing their grip.

With one massive thrust, the knife flew from her hand and landed ten steps away. For the second time in as many hours, Evey faced imminent death, and for the second time, she cursed her lack of ability with the sword. Rather than fear, anger surged through her. To die like this.

Just as she had on the castle walls, she tried to get to her feet, intending to die standing up. A sudden crack rang through the air, interrupting her attempt to stand. The man before her went cross-eyed, and stumbled forward. She only just missed getting crushed by the fall.

In his place, John appeared, wielding his heavy hammer. He didn't say a thing to her about not following the plan. He just picked up her sword, handed it back to her, and lifted her to her feet. She shook out her numbed limbs and followed him carefully down the stairs.

Two dozen men, at least, had followed Sir Guy into the tower. She expected to see a sign of them at any moment. But stair after stair was empty. There were no other guards on the fifth floor, nor on the fourth. John and Evey scoured every room, just to make sure that they wouldn't be ambushed, but each one was empty.

After finding the third floor to be just as empty, Evey began to really worry. She had known that something was wrong earlier, but now she was nearly overwhelmed by the sense of foreboding. Where were the archers that had fired on her? What happened to Sir Guy? On the second floor, she chanced a whisper.

"Where are they?"

John just shrugged his answer, which did little to relieve her anxiety.

Finally they reached the ground level. Evey had been holding out on the idea that Sir Guy had sent every man to guard the door, but again they found no one. Realizing the absurdity of it as she acted, she walked over to the large, heavy door, casually unlocked it, and swung it open. Then she just shrugged at the waiting knights and beckoned them inside.

"What's going on?" Isaiah asked as he hesitantly took a few steps past Evey.

"No idea. We only met one guy and John took care of him right off."

"But what about all those–"

"Archers?" She shook her head. "I do not know. Something really fishy is going on here."

Isaiah walked over to the stairs and looked up. "So it's clear all the way up?"

"We checked every room up to the fifth floor."

"Maybe they're at the top?"

"It didn't sound like it, but we can't rule it out," she admitted.