Gwendolyn stared at him hatred in her eyes but no fear.She had faced greater dangers in her life than lord Aldrich.All she wanted was to give her son enough time to make good his escape.
Aldrich turned to his host, raising a gauntleted fist, the ruby brooch flashing like fresh blood."Knights of the Council!The queen harbors the heir in defiance of our safeguard.Search the keep—cellar to turret!Seize the boy and let traitors' whispers die on steel.For the Ring!"
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The bailey erupted into chaos with Aldrich's command.Gwendolyn stood unmoving at the dais's foot, her gray gown a stark banner amid the onrushing storm, her sapphire brooch catching the weak light like a defiant eye.Her heart hammered not with fear—for she had stared down dragons and empires—but with the cold fury of a mother robbed, a queen betrayed.Aldrich's knights, two hundred strong and swelling by the moment as reserves poured through the gates, surged forward, their boots thundering on the cobbles, lances leveled and swords drawn.
Sir Kellan the Steadfast needed no order from his queen; his blade was already free, a broadsword forged in the fires of the Blood War, its edge notched from battles that had etched his name into the Ring's legends.He had sworn his oath to Thorgrin on the Day of Seven Weddings, vowing to guard the crown and the MacGil line with his life, and now that vow burned in his veins like fire."Guards!"he bellowed, his voice a thunderclap that rolled over the bailey."Form the wall!For the queen!For the Ring!"
The two dozen of the Silver—elite guards clad in gleaming plate etched with the silver dragon of their order—snapped into position with the precision of a well-oiled machine.They were veterans all, handpicked by Kellan from the Legion's finest, many who had stood shoulder to shoulder with Thorgrin against the Empire's hordes.They formed a crescent shield-wall before Gwendolyn, overlapping kite shields locked like the teeth of a great beast, spears thrusting forward through the gaps.Behind them, the castle's inner gates groaned shut under the command of a young lieutenant, Steffen's successor, buying precious moments as archers scrambled to the battlements above.
The first clash came swiftly.Aldrich's vanguard—Holt's burly mercenaries from the eastern provinces, their armor patched with the sigils of lesser houses—charged without quarter, howling for the prince's blood, putting to bed any doubt about their intentions despite Aldrich’s sweet words. A lance shattered against a Shield Guards shield, splintering into a hail of deadly shards, but the bearer, a one-eyed veteran, held firm, his spear punching through the attacker's gorget in a spray of crimson."Hold the line!"Kellan roared, his sword a silver blur as he parried a sweeping blade and countered with a thrust that felled a knight clean from his saddle.The man crumpled, horse rearing in panic, and Kellan pressed forward, his boots slipping in the gathering slick of blood and mud.
Gwendolyn backed toward the dais steps."Kellan!"Gwendolyn called, her voice cutting through the din like a clarion."No massacre!The people—"
"Aye, my queen!"he shouted back, even as he bashed aside another foe with his shield boss, the impact jarring his arm to the shoulder."We buy time for the lad!"But in his heart, Kellan knew the truth: this was no skirmish to be won by valor alone.Aldrich's host numbered five hundred now, knights dismounting in disciplined waves, their banners flapping like carrion crows over a feast.The bailey, vast as it was, became a cauldron of steel and screams, the air thick with the clang of metal on metal and the wet thud of bodies hitting stone.
For a breathless moment, it seemed the Silver and the Shield Guard might turn the tide.Kellan's men fought like demons unbound, their training a symphony of lethal grace.From the battlements, arrows whistled down in black flights, felling a dozen of the attackers before they could close ranks—shafts punching through visors and pauldrons, pinning men to their horses like grotesque banners.A phalanx waded into the fray with axes swinging in wide arcs, cleaving helms and limbs with roars that echoed the old war cries of battles of yore.One Silver archer, a red headed woman, loosed shaft after shaft from her perch on the dais, her bow a blur, each arrow finding throat or eye with unerring precision."For the druid-king!"she cried, her voice fierce and unbroken, and a cheer rippled through the Silver, steeling their resolve.
Kellan himself was a whirlwind at the line's heart, his broadsword carving a path through the press.He ducked a mace swing from one of Garrick's brutes—a hulking figure in spiked plate—and drove his blade upward into the man's armpit, twisting until the foe sagged lifeless.Blood sprayed across his mail, warm and sticky.To his left, a young Silver parried a flurry of strikes from two knights at once, his shield splintering under the assault, but he held, bellowing a challenge that drew their fury onto him alone."Come on, you whoresons!Taste MacGil steel!"
The battle appeared to turn, a fleeting illusion of victory.Aldrich's vanguard faltered, their charge breaking against the Silver's unyielding wall like waves on a cliff.Bodies piled in the bailey's throat, tripping the onrushing horses and sowing chaos among the ranks.Elowen's riders veered wide, wary of the archers' rain, while Holt bellowed curses from the rear, his face purple with rage as he flogged his mount forward.From the inner walls, the castle's reserves—fifty Legion youths added their weight, spears thrusting from arrow slits.The mist reddened with blood, and for a heartbeat, Gwendolyn dared to hope.
But hope, in war, is a cruel jester.Aldrich called on the full force of his troops, worried the way the battle was turning, and no longer caring what it looked like, a lord arriving in the guise of a protector, attacking the queen and her army.Horns blared from the outer gates—deep, resonant blasts that summoned the reserves: a thousand footmen in piecemeal armor, mercenaries and house levies bought with Holt's gold and Garrick's threats, flooding the bailey in an inexorable tide.They came not as knights in shining plate, but as a ragged horde, axes and billhooks gleaming, faces twisted in the fervor of promised spoils."For the Council!For the new dawn!"Varis shrieked from his saddle, a shortsword clutched white-knuckled in his grip.The newcomers crashed into the flanks of the guard's line.
Kellan's world narrowed to the press of bodies and the bite of steel.A billhook hooked his shield rim, yanking him off-balance, and he slashed wildly, severing the attacker's hand at the wrist in a fountain of gore.But another took his place, and another, the Shield Guard’s crescent buckling under the sheer weight of numbers.Beside him, a captain fell back, blood streaming from a gash across his brow, his axe lodged in an enemy's shield; he wrenched it free only to face three more foes, his roars turning to gasps as a spear grazed his thigh.The arrows from above slowed as the battlements swarmed with climbers—Garrick's men scaling with grapples and raw muscle.The red haired woman’s bowstring snapping taut until a crossbow bolt silenced her forever, her body tumbling from the parapet like a fallen banner.
"Regroup!"Kellan thundered, his voice hoarse now.He pivoted, shield high, to cover the man to his right, as he staggered under a mace blow that dented his helm.The line held—barely—funneling the attackers into a killing ground where Silver steel could reap a toll.Kellan fought with the fury of a cornered bear, his sword a reaper's scythe: a thrust to a throat, a backhand chop that split a helmet, a shield bash that caved a face into ruin.Sweat stung his eyes, mingling with blood from a shallow cut on his scalp, but he grinned through the pain, a feral thing born of defiance.This was what he lived for.For every one of his men who fell, their blades claimed double in return, the bailey becoming a charnel pit of twisted limbs and steaming entrails.
Gwendolyn watched from the dais, a sword in her hand, fending off the blows of any attacker who managed to scramble near.The air reeked of iron and voided bowels, a stench that had once been so familiar but one she had hoped she would never have to endure again.She had seen battles first hand.Dozens of them, but this felt worse.This stung deeper.
This was fratricide, Ring turning on Ring, and it tore at her like thorns.She could stand it no more."Kellan!"she cried again, stepping forward."Enough blood!Yield if you must—we fight another day!"
But Kellan could not hear her, lost in the melee's roar.The Shield Guard and the Silver dwindled, their valor a candle guttering in stormy winds.Gwen saw a captain who had fought beside her against the Empire, overwhelmed by a knot of footmen who hacked at his legs until he knelt in the mud, axe raised in futile salute, before a spear ended him.Another familiar face fought on beside Kellan, back-to-back now, the two men an island in the storm, blades flashing in desperate arcs.
The turning came not with a clash, but a whimper—the inner gates shuddering under a ram's assault, Holt's engineers wheeling forward a makeshift battering beam slung between destriers.Wood splintered, and with it, the last illusion of defense.Aldrich's horde poured through, not just warriors now, but the dregs: camp followers turned looters, their knives hungry for soft throats, their eyes alight with the promise of pillage.
Kellan saw it then—the end, inexorable as winter's grip.His gaze cut through the press to Gwendolyn on the dais, ringed by her last half-dozen Silver, their shields a frail cage against the encroaching tide.One of the guards toppled, an axe burying in his neck, and the circle tightened, but it was crumbling, the attackers closing like wolves on the wounded.
No, Kellan thought, the word a blade in his gut.Not her.Not like this.The Ring could lose a battle, but not its heart—not the queen who had forged it.With a roar that split the heavens, he drove his sword through the throat of his latest foe, wrenching it free in a gush of arterial spray."Guards!Silver!To me!Stand down!"
His men faltered, disbelief rippling through the survivors like a shockwave.The man beside him, blood sheeting from a wound in his shoulder, gaped at him, sword mid-swing."Captain—"
"Stand down!"Kellan bellowed again, dropping to one knee, his broadsword planted point-down in the bloodied gravel, a gesture of parley amid the slaughter."I yield!For the queen's mercy—halt your blades or damn your souls!"
The word spread like oil on water, Aldrich's host hesitating as horns blared the recall.Garrick's men lowered their axes, Holt's mercenaries sheathing swords with greedy grins, eyeing the castle's riches beyond the gates.Aldrich strode through the carnage with Varis at his heel, his velvet cloak unstained by the surrounding gore.
Kellan rose slowly, hands empty save for his planted sword, his chest heaving.Blood masked his face, but his eyes burned with unquenched fire.The surviving Silver—eight, perhaps nine, battered and bleeding—formed a ragged honor guard around Gwendolyn, weapons lowered but grips tight.She met his gaze.
"For you, my queen," he murmured, voice pitched for her alone as Aldrich approached."A battle lost is not a war surrendered.In chains or free, my oath holds."
Aldrich halted before them, his smile serpentine, the bailey falling to a hush broken only by the moans of the dying."Wise, Captain Kellan.The Ring needs no more graves this dawn.Bind them—the Silver and the queen.Gently, now; we are not savages."His knights swarmed forward, ropes and manacles clinking, but Kellan held his ground until the last, his stare locked on Aldrich's throat, measuring the strike he would not make—not yet.
As iron bit into his wrists, Kellan leaned close to Gwendolyn, his whisper a vow etched in blood."I serve still, my lady.In shadows or steel, I'll guard you.The prince lives—these curs will not enjoy their dawn for long."
She nodded, faint but unbroken, her chin lifting as they led her away.The bailey, slick with the cost of betrayal, watched in stunned silence as the Council claimed its prize.But in Kellan's heart, the embers of resistance smoldered, waiting for the wind that would fan them to inferno.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
