She moved out of the line of the door and surveyed the chaos of the courtyard. Soldiers she’d spent the last weeks living with sat in lines in the snow, guarded by the Enarians who’d camped outside the walls. She spotted Kerr, but Niel was not among them. She flinched away as more soldiers exited from the door beside her, helping the wounded Ashbrin knight to hobble out of the castle. One of the enemy soldiers led Anchor and Gemshorn out of the stable on lead lines. If she were looking for anyone but Niel, she might have thrown off the cloak and demanded they hand her horse over. But at least Gem was a good horse, healthy at twelve years of age and still worth a pretty sum. He wouldn’t be mistreated.
She slipped out the drawbridge and stared in dismay at the army encampment and the town. Out here, it was an even greater mess than it had been in the castle. She saw soldiers celebrating, laughing and singing. Men led horses and packed tents while others jogged in sharp formations, spears on their shoulders, off to who-knew-where. There were thousands of people. As Ayla started to weave through them she found herself ducking and dodging far more than was normally required in a crowd. Nobody moved out ofherway. She bumped into one man and panicked as he looked around, certain he could see her. But he carried on, seeming to assume it was just some other body in the crowd passing by.
Sarella emerged from a row of houses to walk past Ayla, her skirts gathered and her face pale.
“Sarella,” Ayla hissed. The woman turned, eyes wide, searching for her. “It’s me,” Ayla whispered, not daring to remove the cloak in the open. She grabbed the cook’s arm.
Sarella yelped. Ayla yanked her two feet over, into the gap between two houses and swept the cloak off, putting a finger to her lips.
“My lady,” Sarella breathed, clutching Ayla’s arms. “How? You came out of thin air!”
“I’m sorry, but I need—” Ayla started
“Oh, Maker, I was so worried when I heard—”
“I don’t have time,” Ayla begged. In another life, she would have wanted nothing more than to stay and hear how Sarella and the others had fared outside the castle. But she had to get to Niel before he could do anything truly stupid. “Have you seen Niel?”
“Aye, he’s…” Sarella pointed to their left, deeper into the town. “They say he’s to duel Blackfell, but, Lady…”
The thought of Niel facing Ditmar flooded her with panic, even knowing that Niel was a skilled warrior. She feared the man she’d married, and she’d learned long ago the pain he was capable of inflicting. And how could Niel be dueling Ditmar, when Niel didn’t even have his sword or his armor?
“Thank you.” Ayla tugged the cloak back on. “For this, and for everything.”
Please still work, she thought.I need…
The tingling feeling washed over her skin again. Ayla took off running in the direction Sarella had pointed, through the strange golden light that washed over the world.
A crowd had formed in the village square, people pressed so thick Ayla didn’t know how to get past them. There were enough of them that they had spilled out into the surrounding streets, one of which she was stuck on now, staring at the great mass of people ahead. She stared helplessly and decided that they would most certainly notice an unseen force carving its way through with shoulders and elbows. But the houses were not tall in Blackfell, and she had passed a pair of large barrels some three houses back, set outside the door.
She slung the satchel over her shoulder and scrambled up the first barrel with anoof. The crowd from the square started yelling. She couldn’t make out the words. Ayla stood slowly. Theroof of this house was thatched and coated in snow. They were going to see that someone had been up there, but so long nobody was looking now, as snow scattered and footprints appeared, the soldiers and villagers would just assume they had missed the overhead visitor. Unless she fell through the roof while she was on top of it.
Getting up was no easy feat, one that required use of the house's door-lintel, a slab of wood that jutted out an inch from the wall, and resulted in a good deal of dried grass and snow falling to the ground below. Once she was up, Ayla kept to the edges of the roof, not wanting to put too much weight over the center, lest she step somewhere without a supporting beam. With her hands flung out to either side, she wobbled her way from one house to the next until she looked over the square. She came to rest next to a chimney and wrapped her arm around it for support.
The crowd ringed around a great open space that stretched from the town’s well to the steps of the chapel. The front row had a few townspeople mixed in, but primarily consisted of soldiers with spears at the ready to push back the combatants or prevent either from running. A makeshift fighting ring, set inside the circle of people, had been marked on the ground out of a few pieces of rope. It was some twenty feet wide in all directions.
Niel stood on one side of the rope ring in his dark simple clothing, wearing his leather gloves but no armor. His hair was knotted tightly back out of his face. He held no weapon. Her knight was stretching, pulling one arm over his broad chest as he stared straight ahead.
How was she supposed to get the cloak to him, when all the eyes of the crowd were on him? He could hardly make it out through a crowd that was trying to grab him, unseen or not.
Ditmar stood on the other side of the crowd, similarly bare of armor, but not of weapons. Her former husband held a gleaminglongsword in two hands. He swung the blade in a sideways figure eight, letting the weight of the weapon whistle through the air.
She did not see how Niel could survive this. Dread dragged at her stomach. Fury pulsed in her temples. Her hands shook, helpless. There was a storm inside Ayla, threatening to drag her to the ground.
Could she stop this, if she revealed herself? No, there was nothing she could say to stop Ditmar, or Niel for that matter. And no way to get Niel out of the circle of people. It wasn’t as though they’d just let a traitor walk away from a death-match if he changed his mind. If he put on a cloak and vanished, everyone’s hands would be snatching at the air, trying to find it and tear it off him.
But he was going to get himself killed. And it was all so needless.Hecould have taken the cloak that covered Ayla now, and walked away with it, and lived. He could have chosen that.
And she had not even said she loved him back. She had thought she had more time.
She clung tighter to the chimney and stared grimly down at the scene below.
Dueling Oaths
“Are you that eager to die, boy?” Ditmar asked, across the rope circle where they stood.
Niel ignored him, as he’d ignored the taunts Ditmar had thrown for the last five minutes, and kept stretching, making sure his muscles were ready despite the cold. He was going to need to move fast.
Niel respected swords. One wrong or slow move could mean Niel’s death. But he was used to fighting with a disadvantage. For once, he was grateful for his father’s and his brother’s abuses. All Niel’s formative training had been learning to hold his own against someone stronger, and when it came to it, he doubted Ditmar fit that mark. All Blackfell’s strength came from beating people who couldn’t defend themselves.
