Forever Knight (The Champion Chronicles Book 3) (31 page)

“My queen,” Marik said with a dip of his head.  He looked around the room, but all seemed to be in order.  “You were attacked?”

“Marik,” Elissa replied coolly in greeting.  “Should you not be preparing our defenses?”

“Lord Martin said you were attacked.  Are you okay?”

“It seems that they make armor to fit a woman’s body, too,” Elissa said, as if he was not speaking to her.

“Your Majesty, are you okay?”  He raised his voice to ensure that he was heard.

“Yes, of course,” Elissa finally replied.

Marik finally breathed.  “What happened?”

“Tarans,” Toknon said from a corner of the room.  “I am sure of it.”

King Toknon had been in the room, but Marik had not noticed him until he spoke.  He looked at the king of their northern neighbor suspiciously.  “You were here?”

“Of course,” he replied.  “I had promised to protect her.”

“The Taran army is out there and we must prepare our defenses,” Marik said.  “We’ll leave fifty men here at the castle to guard the queen.  We’ll need everyone else at the walls.”

Elissa turned on Marik and snapped, “I will not sit up here in my castle while I ask my people to defend the city.  I will do as any king has ever done.  I will join the fight!”

“But you have never trained with the sword, or the bow!” Lord Martin called out.  He just arrived, huffing and puffing.  He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

For once, Marik agreed with the lord.  He said, “It is true, my queen.  Princes are trained from early on in the arts of the sword and bow.  Tactics learned over centuries of defending the kingdom are taught right alongside reading and writing.”

“Yes!” Lord Martin added.  “You cannot do this.  We must have you here in the castle!”

Elissa’s eyes narrowed and her lips turned up into a sneer.  “My father rode out of that gate not half a year ago to fight a war that he should never have fought.  He did not think once about whether or not he should be at the head of that army.  I was there, on top of the wall, seeing the entire city cheering him on, thankful that he was their ruler and would risk his life for theirs.  I will do no less!”

“You are but a child!” Lord Martin argued.

Elissa stepped over to one of her guards and yanked a sword out of its scabbard.  She lifted it up and held it high.  “I am not child!  I am the queen of the kingdom.  I may not be an expert with this, but I know which end goes where!”

Lord Martin turned to Marik and said with an exasperated voice, “I cannot convince her.  She must stay here for her own safety.  She cannot defend herself on the battlefield!  Marik, you must help me convince her.”

Marik stepped forward towards Elissa.  Her eyes glistened with anger as she assumed his next words.  He took hold of the sword around the handle, but she resisted at first, expecting him to try and pull it away from her.  With one hand, he pushed her hands up from the bottom of the sword’s handle to the top.  Touching her skin, he realized how soft she was.  If she were to be a true leader of her kingdom, she would have to harden up.  Looking deep into her eyes, he suddenly realized that maybe she had.

With a soft, fatherly voice, he said, “You are not as strong as a man, so you must make sure that your grip is high, right up to the hilt.  Do not squeeze so that your knuckles are white.  Hold firmly.”

She did so, and dropped the sword to her side.  “Thank you,” she said.  Her eyes trailed to a spot on the floor where Kimmie had fallen.  Most of the blood had been cleaned up, but there was still a stain on the floor.  “I could not defend myself.  I could not save Kimmie.”

Marik felt Toknon start to take a step forward, but he moved to comfort her first.  He cupped her face in his hands.  “You do not need to fight this battle alone.  You have an army to fight for you.  I will not stop you from fighting, but Lord Martin is right in that you cannot lead the army from the front.  But there is no reason that you cannot stand the walls alongside your soldiers.  Many of your ancestors did just that, walking high upon the walls so everyone could see them.  If they see you there, unafraid, then they too will be unafraid.  That is how you can lead your kingdom.”

“Marik!” Lord Martin protested one last time.  “She must be protected in the castle!”

His words fell on deaf ears as Marik helped finish arming the queen.

Chapter Twenty

The scratching above their heads woke Conner with a start.  He had been sound asleep and the suddenness of being abruptly awakened left him groggy and confused.  He pulled himself up to his feet, shaking his head to regain the full capacity of his senses.  Glaerion was standing a few feet away, his head up, watching the door.

“Is it opening?” Conner asked.

“Someone has been digging for a bit.  It seems like a very inefficient way to hide a trap door.”

“We don’t have magic to hide things,” Conner replied.

“Maybe just a thick, heavy rug would do.”

“I didn’t come up with this tunnel idea,” Conner snapped back, letting his irritation show.  “This has been here for hundreds of years and it seems to have worked well enough.”

“And we’ll be here for hundreds of years if this person doesn’t dig faster.”

A few moments later, a shovel knocked on the wooden door as it scooped up the last of the dirt that covered it.  With an audible grunt from above, the door was opened, spilling bright light into the tunnel.  Glaerion had taken a step back, so he had avoided the dirt that fell down into through the doorway.  Conner, not patient enough to wait, had moved to be right underneath the opening and got a face-f of dirt.

The elf chuckled and muttered something about stupid humans.

A young woman’s face appeared in the opening.  “Come on up,” she said.

Conner climbed the ladder first.  The young woman looked at him and gave him a smile of recognition as he stepped through the doorway.  He remembered her face, but not her name.  She had been very kind to him the last time that he had escaped through the tunnels, giving him a hunting bow and knife.

“You’re back,” she said.  “I thought for sure you would be dead by now!”

“What?”  Conner stepped off the ladder and into the middle of their house.  But her face went from his to Glaerion’s as soon as his head appeared through the doorway.

“This is Glaerion,” Conner said.  “He’s an elf.”

The elf’s face turned a slight shade of red.  “You don’t have to tell everyone.”  Again, the stupid human comment was muttered under his breath.

“Elf?” she asked.

A low rumble of a growl escaped from his lips.  “Yes.  An elf.”  With graceful ease, he jumped from the ladder to the floor.  To Conner he said, “We need to move quickly.  It is already getting light.”

But Conner was still stuck on her words to him.  Her name also came back to him.  “Laura, right?  What did you mean that you thought I would be dead?”

“It was nothing,” she replied.  “I should not have said anything.  I know I am not supposed to talk to the travelers at all.  Let’s just keep it that way.”

She turned to step away, but Conner touched her on her arm.  Not hard, just enough to let her know that he wanted her to stay. 

“Laura, why did you think that I would be dead now?”

Glaerion fidgeted, his eyes glancing at the door.  He had given up on getting Conner to move quickly.  But if he didn’t get moving in another minute, he would just leave him here.  Except, he would have to find a way to carry the Ark.

“When you left this house, you were a boy that had become a man without ever enjoying being a child.  You have killed.  I can see it in you.  It is the same look that my Dane had when he came back from fighting the Thellians.  And now he’s left again.”

“Where’d he go?” Conner asked.

“To the city, of course.  With all the other men and boys.  The soldiers came calling in the middle of the night to gather up whoever could carry a sword.  You came from the city.  Do you not know what is going on?”

“No,” Glaerion said angrily.  “We’ve been in the tunnel for some time.”

“Oh, sorry,” Laura replied.  “I was feeding my baby and I had to finish before I could dig the door out.  They say it is the army from Taran.”

“Tarcious,” Glaerion said.  “He is here and he is marching on the city to take the Ark by force.  We have to get out of here and now!”

“What should I do?” Laura asked.

“Get into the city,” Conner said.  He looked down into the darkness of the tunnel.  “Back through the tunnel.  There is an old man at the other end.  He’ll help you.”

Laura quickly gathered up her sleeping baby.  She looked around, wondering what else she should take, but there really was no way to climb down the ladder with the baby and carry anything.  With Conner’s help, she carefully descended the ladder.  Conner handed a lit lamp down to her so she could find her way to the other side of the tunnel.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Find your husband,” Conner said with a smile.  Then he dropped the door closed.  He picked up a shovel and started tossing dirt onto the door.

“What are you doing?  We don’t have time for this!”

“Quick griping!” Conner said.  “What happens when centurions come busting into this house and see a doorway in the floor.  You think they’ll just leave it?  No, they’ll go streaming into the city.  And I am sure that Tarcious wouldn’t mind casting one of his fireballs to break down the door at the other end of the tunnel.”

“If they are streaming into the city, it means they aren’t chasing after us.”

Conner wanted to drive the blade of the shovel deep into the elf’s head.  “This is my kingdom, my city, my people.  I don’t care that you don’t like us humans.  I am going to do whatever I can to protect them.  So you can either help me fill in this hole, or you can sit there and wait for me.”

Glaerion was clearly angry, but he did not continue the argument.  There was not another shovel in sight, so he dropped to his knees and began pushing piles of dirt into the hole.

When they were all done, a small rug was placed over the loose dirt.  The rug did not look out of place, so a casual observer would not easily notice that there was freshly moved dirt underneath.  Maybe a careful observer would notice it, but they would have to be looking specifically for a trap door in the ground.  Conner also took the shovel outside and set it against the house.  It would have been suspicious for a shovel to be sitting in the middle of the house.

Laura and Dane’s house was about a hundred yards from the wall in a clump of other houses that were built outside the city gates.  There were many such dwellings that slowly grew out from the city, built by people who no longer worried about the protection of city walls.  But as Conner and Glaerion began to trot away from the city, he realized there would be many homeless people after this battle.

He could see the Taran forces in the distance.  Since they were on the ground, he could not see them as clearly as if they were up on the wall.  But what he saw was enough to know that Tarcious was serious about attacking the city.  Centurions were slowly streaming out of the forest, marching to the beat of a drum.  Even from this distance, he could hear its deep pounding beat.  As they came out of the trees in a chaotic mass, they continued marching and formed up into even rows.  Conner did not wait to see how many hundreds, or thousands of Taran centurions were coming for battle.  His trot turned into a full run as he, Glaerion, and many others stuck outside the city ran for the river.

***

“Is it safe here?” Queen Elissa asked.

“Their crossbowmen are at the forest edge,” Marik replied.  “Too far to reach us.  We are safe, for now.”

Elissa looked out at the centurions as they formed up into their battlefield formations.  She tried to count how many there might be, but it was futile.  There were so many of them, marching through the cold and snow.

“How are we ever going to win?” Elissa said softly.

“Win?  There is no winning, only survival.  They will attack us, and we must repel their attacks.  And we must kill enough of them that they lose the taste for fighting.  But in the meantime, we will lose many of our own men.  And boys.  And maybe ladies, too.”

“You think I should not be here?”

“That is not my call.”

“But it is what you think.”

“It does not matter what I think, Your Majesty.”  He would not directly tell the queen she should not be here, but he wanted to make sure that she knew his feelings.  Maybe it would help her change her mind and return to the safety of the castle.  Although he felt that her safety was important, he understood why she wanted to be here.  And he didn’t blame her one bit, even if he did feel she should not be exposed atop the walls.

Elissa was afraid.  Not of dying or even of losing her kingdom, but of the death that was to come.  She had never seen a true battle between armies, but she had seen its aftermath.  Not only missing limbs and scars, but the missing husbands, fathers, brothers and sons.  It was personal for her because of how she had lost her father.  He had gone into battle with a city cheering him on.  At that time, it had been many years since the Knights of Karmon had gone into battle and no one remembered the horrors of battle.  Or they refused to remember.  It had been a celebration where the good citizens of the kingdom took up arms against the evil kingdom to the north.  Except the kingdom to the north ended up not being so evil.  Years of irrational hatred had forged a belief that Karmons were good and Thellians were bad.  But in reality, they were really no different than one another.

She wondered if that was true of Tarans. Were they just like Karmons?  Do these soldiers, who were marching upon the battle field right in front of her, have families just like theirs?  Did they go marching off to war with cheering and celebration, too?  And will they return to their homes broken men because they witnessed the atrocities of war?  Elissa did not want to think of them as people just like herself, she would rather think of them as hated enemies.  It made it easier to imagine their deaths if she hated them.  But Taran was not supposed to be their enemy.  There were likely many Taran merchants still in their city trying to earn a simple living trading their wares.  A good portion of the city’s economy relied upon foreign trade.  But if they were smart, they would go into hiding.  For once the battle started, their lives would not be spared.

“Why are they here?” Elissa said, asking the question that was on the mind of every Karmon who watched the Taran centurions fill the battlefield.

“Taran history is filled with irrational wars,” Marik said.  “Sometimes wars happen because of pride and ego.  Or an insult can lead an emperor or king to march his army to right a perceived wrong.”

“You don’t think this is my fault, do you?” Elissa asked.  “I sent their admiral home and didn’t let them have their garrison within the city.  You don’t think this is why they are here, do you?”

“The mind of an emperor doesn’t always make sense, especially a man with the reputation of Emperor Tarcious.”

“So it’s possible then, that this is all my fault?”

“You cannot worry about such things.  It’s hard enough dealing with those things that you do have control of, so to worry about things that you don’t have control of will only make you go crazy.  But no, it is not your fault.”

Elissa fell silent and her gaze moved to the part of the city that lay just outside the walls.  People were running from their homes, heading for the river.  A few were on horseback.  Some even had loaded their lives into wagons and were pulling them to what they hoped was safety.  The Tarans were content to let them go, unconcerned about a few hundred Karmons escaping the city.

“Should we do something about them?  Open the gates and let them in?”

“They are safer outside the city,” Marik replied.  “The centurions are ruthless, but they are not savages.  They do not go about killing innocent bystanders.”

“Are you sure?”
“No, just hopeful.”

While Elissa looked south to the river, watching a too-small number of her people run for safety, Marik looked up and down the wall.  Every able bodied bowman was on the wall, a bow in hand and a quiver full of arrows on their backs.  Young boys, too short to pull a bowstring back were running along the top of the wall, filling quivers.  One of the nearby inns had been taken over by fletchers who worked tirelessly to make as many arrows as they could.  They didn’t even have to be high quality arrows.  By the time the bowmen got to use those arrows, the battle would be right at their doorstep and distance accuracy would no longer be an issue.

Then he looked behind the wall where the Karmon army had mustered.  There were swordsmen and pikemen as far as he could see, crowding the streets so much that it was nearly impossible to pass through.  Like the fletchers, every able bodied blacksmith was busy sharpening swords and turning any type of steel into a sharp instrument of war.  He stretched his neck looking for his own men.  His knights.  Even though the true Knights of Karmon had been disbanded, their duty would always be to the kingdom.  And they would show when needed.

“What now?” Elissa asked.  “Do we just wait?”

“If we had five thousand mounted knights, I would send them out to attack their foot soldiers.  We would slaughter them and the war would be over just as soon as it started.”

“We don’t have five thousand knights?”

Marik let out a sigh.  “No.  And if we did, they would send thirty thousand foot soldiers at us.  Tarans are smart and experienced warriors.  They know just how many soldiers they need to fight a war.  Too many, and it becomes a logistical nightmare as they all have to be fed and cared for.  The supply caravans would be long and unwieldy.  They have just exactly the number of soldiers they feel they need.”