Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
BASTIAN
Something was wrong.
A clanging carried down the hill from the direction of the maze, a noise that took me back to the first time I’d stood across the battlefield from the Vikings.
But there couldn’t be an army here, and it wasn’t loud enough to be one. My ears were playing tricks on me.
I wasn’t the only one. Every man there who’d known battle began to shift uneasily and search for the source of the sound.
A scream suddenly rent the air, then was cut off just as abruptly.
Something was definitely wrong.
I eyed the racks of practice weapons, wondering if we had enough real swords here to do anything if this was the precursor to an attack.
“Alert the castle,” I shouted to a sentry.
“Alert them of what?” Elric glared, looking around. “If Vikings had breached the outer wall, we’d have been alerted. Perhaps it’s simply your wife?”
I ignored him. “Arm yourselves! Godric, get your bow and pick a dozen strong archers to do the same. The rest of you, swords and shields!”
For a moment, no one moved, but Godric barked, “Your prince issued a command.” Whether it was due to the reminder of my rank or the tense silence that had followed the thumping, they all sprang into action, retrieving weapons.
I scanned the top of the hill, realizing we were in an impossible position to face an attack from higher ground.
“Knights of the realm—to me!” I waved my sword, signaling the royal guard to follow me up the hill before we were trapped.
The men formed up in uneven lines, led by the older warriors amongst us.
Movement caught my eye.
Eleanor ran down the hill from the maze like the hounds of hell were chasing her. My feet moved into action before I’d begun to make sense of what was happening.
“Sigrid!” she shouted breathlessly, her hair falling from its tidy bun to billow behind her in waves. “Sigrid!” She could barely get the word out around her terror as she gestured wildly towards the maze.
Sigrid tried to harm her?
Even as Eleanor stumbled and landed in a sobbing heap on the ground, I wanted to deny that Sigrid would hurt an innocent.
I reached Eleanor in the space of a dozen frantic strides and slid to my knees in front of her, checking for injuries. She appeared unharmed, which didn’t make sense. If Sigrid had tried to hurt Eleanor, she would’ve completed the task.
Maybe Sigrid had simply done something to scare her, her idea of a joke that had backfired.
Eleanor was crying and breathing too hard to get a coherent word out. “S-Sigrid…Sigrid!” was as much as she could manage.
One side of her face was bruised.
“Did she hurt you?” I asked, taking her by the shoulders.
Eleanor shook her head frantically. “Vikings with no eyes! She killed one!”
No eyes? My mind reeled. “A Banamaer?”
She’d killed him already, though. How had she managed that without her berserker?
I shook Eleanor gently. “What do you mean she killed ‘one’? There was another?”
“Four! There were four of them!”
My feet were moving again, sprinting towards the top of the hill as I shouted back to the men. “Assassins! In the maze with the princess. To me! To me!”
I didn’t wait for them to follow the order, running for the maze with my heart in my throat. I would’ve had any other soldier flogged for running ahead of formation so recklessly, but assassins were hunting Sigrid.
Four Banamaer, for fuck’s sake.
Her father had sacrificed four to make sure they annihilated her.
From the direction of the maze, I heard Sigrid’s unmistakable battle cry, pure fury bellowed in the face of whatever she stood against.
Still alive! Hold them a moment longer, my warrior queen. I’m coming for you!
I didn’t slow as I crested the hill and caught sight of the nightmare in front of me, but the numbness of absolute terror seemed to disconnect my mind from my body. I still moved towards it on pure instinct, but my very soul quaked at the horror of the Banamaer.
Sigrid was only a little shorter than me, and they dwarfed her like giants. Three beasts with pointed teeth snapped and snarled at her as they hammered my wife with a relentless onslaught of weapons. Their skin had a greyish pallor like they were already dead, and they moved with inhuman speed.
Sigrid swung an axe with the unholy fury and effortless grace of an avenging goddess, but their shields held fast, sheltering them from the worst of her blows. She had no shield, no way to protect herself besides agility and the handle of her axe.
It was obvious it wasn’t enough.
She ducked and rolled, slashing at their legs under their shields.
The biggest one let out screeching a howl when Sigrid managed to connect with his shin, but it cost her.
The other two used the precious time it took her to stand as an opportunity to attack again, swinging with curved blades towards her unprotected back.
“Sigrid!” I shouted, desperate to reach her faster.
She escaped the wicked edges by a handsbreadth and flicked her eyes in my direction.
She hadn’t looked afraid in the face of their murderous rage, but when she saw me, her face fell.
She closed her eyes with something like resignation and stepped into the center of the path between the three assassins and me.
“No!” I shouted.
I was still steps away when they attacked her again with renewed fury, as though they’d reached a silent agreement with her to bring this to an end before I could get there. They were too quick, too strong, too goddamned focused on her.
I saw the fatal blow coming when the biggest one raised his axe. Time slowed as he brought it down towards her while her axe was locked against the sword of another.
I had no misconceptions about stepping into this fight. If Sigrid was outmatched, I stood no chance, but for her, I’d face certain death.
I lunged between them, raising my shield to absorb his strike.
The weight and power behind it sent searing pain through my shoulder, a blow that felt like it might shatter the bones in my arm.
Sigrid bared her teeth at me. “Get the fuck back!”
It was only this close that I could see how battered and weary she was, but she still swung at them again in broad, sweeping strokes with the head of her axe, driving them back a few steps. It only bought us seconds as they immediately renewed their attack, howling as they charged together.
I blocked another blow with my shield, unsure how many more it could take before it simply shattered.
“Don’t let him get past you!” Sigrid snarled, and I thrust my sword into the thigh of the Banamaer who tried to skirt around me on the path. He howled with pain but didn’t stop, forcing me to shove him with my shield.
She wasn’t just having to hold them off. She’d been keeping them all on one side of her, a nearly impossible task even with two of us. If one managed to get past us, we’d be facing attacks from both sides, and it would truly be over.
I jolted with shock as suddenly we were no longer fighting three Vikings. They’d transformed into the king and two guards.
“An illusion!” Sigrid grit out, not missing a beat. “Though a poor choice for one.”
I heard movement behind us, but didn’t dare turn to look. Not a poor choice at all. Sigrid and I had no qualms about killing my father, but my soldiers had just come to find a Viking and their errant prince attacking the king. They knew nothing of the Banamaer.
I waved an arm to catch their attention. “It’s a spell! Viking magic! This is not our king!”
The Banamaer who looked like my father, struck and his curved blade slashed around my shield, slicing my forearm.
“Shield! Wall!” My voice was low and tinged with desperation. Would they trust me? Would they stand and fight with us?
Behind us, shields clanged together, and the men began to thump a rhythmic beat as they stepped forward, one pace at a time. The Banamaer dropped their illusion, turning once more into monsters who struck terror into the soldiers.
Sigrid screamed as she ran at the assassins, launching herself into the air to rain down a punishing axe blow on the smallest one, who still towered over her. His shield cracked where her axe lodged, but she had to release the weapon to dodge from the sword of another.
She ducked, picking up a short knife from the ground as she stood.
The Banamaer was still in the middle of his swing, so for a breathless second, she had an opening, a chance to drive her knife into his heart.
It was only when she hesitated that I realized the Banamaer had cast an illusion to look like me.
She only paused for a second, but it was long enough for him to recover and the other two to jump back into the fray.
“Fuck!” she screamed, her eyes wild with fury and fear.
I threw my shield in front of her and used it to pull her back. She fought me, thrashing to get out from my protection. even as my shield rattled with blow after blow from the eyeless assassins.
“They came for me!” she yelled over the thumping of the Saxon warriors behind us. “They’ll leave if they kill me!”
Against her ear, I said, “They’ll have to kill me first!”
The line behind us parted to allow me to drag her back behind the safety of the shield wall, and then they reassembled just in time to block the Banamaer in the maze.
As soon as I released her, Sigrid dropped to her knees, panting on all fours. She was spent, her head hanging in exhaustion while blood seeped from at least a dozen small wounds.
She’d stood against them alone and survived. It was the stuff of legends.
Legends that would only be told if any of us survived to speak of it.
Our line was at least ten deep, but only ten or so could fit across the entrance of the maze, so the small number of men at the front faced the punishing onslaught of the Banamaer alone.
I turned to the archers behind us. “Godric, can you get a clear shot?”