Chapter Ten. A Bloodthirsty Crowd.
Ten
A Bloodthirsty Crowd.
“Julion Wyse of Prosperitus, at your service.”
The golden knight removes his helmet and bows with a gallantry that surely makes women fall in love with him on the spot. Then he looks to the dark western horizon and extends a hand to me.
“Now, we must go, yes?”
He’s worried about the night and the Fulcrum. I’m worried about why he thinks he knows and needs me. Hard to decide which is the bigger danger, and that’s saying something.
I accept his aid in getting to my feet because I feel so wobbly, but we need to part ways, he and I. “No, thank you. I’ll get back on my own—”
He picks me up as if I weigh nothing and carries me over to his steed once again. The previously laconic stallion, who wasn’t even bothered by a dragon getting resurrected and flying off, suddenly begins to mince in place and snort.
Its shrewd eyes are focused somewhere past the sandblasted outer ring of the forest, on the shadows lurking in and among all the dense branches of the healthy trees.
Where I found the dead cow.
“I think I will accept a ride,” I mutter.
“Your honor is safe with me, I assure you.”
The knight gathers the reins, plants a boot in the stirrup, and somehow manages to get us both up onto the saddle in one smooth movement. As I’m settled behind him like a sack of grain, the horse rears up, hooving at the air.
“Hold on tight!”
The steed bolts before the knight finishes speaking, and I grab on to whatever I can.
Ducking my head behind the smooth gold plate across his back, I look over my own shoulder.
The Fulcrum looms like an evil entity in and of itself, rather than a containment for one, and I search for black bands in the last wink of daylight—
The horned face appears again, this time in gigantic proportion, the features pressing out of the swirling sand. The mouth is open and the eyes are hungry, and it’s rushing out toward me with a booming war cry—
I scream, and the knight twists around.
“Fates!” he hollers over thundering hooves.
“He’s coming for us!” I yell.
That’s a lie. Whatever it is comes for me, and me alone.
The steed responds with a surge of speed, except clearly the horse already senses what’s happening.
And though there’s a proper trail some distance away, the knight veers us right into the scrub brush and dead wood.
It feels like an eternity, but then we hit the tree line proper and are lashed by branches.
By the tinging of metal, I know the knight is taking the brunt of the impacts, and I’m glad the armor is on him for his sake.
There is no slowing down.
Still going at breakneck speed, we link up with a narrow, winding animal path, and go deeper into the dark forest. The steed jogs left and right, jerks his head, shifts his weight.
We do the same, the knight and I, while I hold on to the male body before me for dear life, and I keep glancing in our wake, expecting to be pursued by what is trapped in the Fulcrum.
And trying to get out.
Fear chokes me and I hunker in under my cloak, squeezing my eyes shut and recognizing that there’s nothing I can do to help in this madcap retreat except not fall off.
I can go no faster than the horse and I have no skills to fight like the knight, so I’m at the mercy of whatever destiny will befall us in these trees.
Thank fates the armor is made of a sturdy gold, or surely I’d crush it like paper.
The escape seems to last years, and my whole body, especially my teeth, hum from being clapped by the horse’s surging efforts, nothing but trees, trees and more trees until I’m certain the knight is lost and we’re going in circles—
We break out of the arboreal congestion like something expelled.
The brace of fresh, cold air rejuvenates me, and the horse obviously feels the same.
Our speed increases even further as the stallion stretches out his neck and becomes a bird over the ground, the herky-jerky jostle gone, now only a lightning-fast, smooth flight over the meadow’s long grasses toward my village’s wall.
I’ve never gone this fast in my life, but the knight has. He’s one with the horse, as steady and true in the saddle as a statue, my anchor in the windstorm.
When we pull up short in the lee of a barn, the horse lets out an angry war cry and rears up again as if he’s frustrated his gallop is being taken away from him. I nearly roll off his butt, just managing to catch myself on the knight’s arm.
As we land with a bump, I forget all the aches in my bones and stinging in my molars. In the icy moonlight, the bridge over Greensward’s moat is raised, and the murky circle of water churns with balas thrashing in excitement as if they’ve already had some sort of a meal.
But that’s nothing compared to the unrest inside my village.
An orange glow rises up from inside the wall, billows of smoke punching at the night sky and charging at the timid stars emerging from their daylight retreat. A great chorus of shouting echoes upward from the market square, and it’s so loud, we can hear the anger even here. On the outside.
It’s as if all that fury is the cause of the bonfire.
“They think I killed the boys,” I say as I right my hood on the crown of my head.
There’s a clanking as the knight glances back at me. “You fought for their lives—”
“No one will believe me.”
With hauteur, he says, “My word is bond. I shall tell them what happened.”
It must be nice to have that kind of authority, but I fear he underestimates the problem.
Hide. You must hide—
My head pounds as I shake it, and I cast myself from the saddle. When I land, my legs are weak, and the knight catches me with a quick hand.
I stumble back from his aid. “I am not the one you seek, and I’m not going any farther with you—”
“Do you mean to go in there and face that alone?” He nods at the wall. “I heard what the boy yelled at you as he ran off. Come away with me now. I know where a royal hunting cabin is not far. We can stay there until dawn—”
“No!”
The knight removes his golden helmet and places it over his breastplate. “My honor will not permit me to just leave you here.”
“And your integrity is the least of my problems.”
He drops down out of the saddle and takes my hand. For a moment, I stare at the link between us, his rich brown skin against my freckled own. We are from two different worlds, and his is so far above mine, we might as well be separate species.
“You must allow me to be of aid to you.”
From under my hood, my eyes shift back to the fearsome glow and furious, billowing smoke. The wall that I previously measured and found wanting now seems more solid than a mountain, and fates, what awaits me there.
I have no choice. I have to leave.
Panic flows through me, running off all the blood in my veins, and as I drop his hand, I force myself to think logically.
First, I want to stock Mare with some provisions, and I should have some for myself.
Except as the din of the riot inside that wall gets even louder, I don’t know how I’m going to navigate the mob.
And then I look to the forest, try to imagine what’s waiting for me out there, and think only of the desecrated cow—
I can smell the blood and hear the lazy flies as if the carcass is right in front of me.
There’s no way I can survive on my own.
Squeezing my eyes shut, it’s a number of heartbeats later that I say with defeat, “I am still not the one you seek. No matter what you saw back with that dragon.”
“Then I shall aid you anyway. A gentleman never leaves a lady undefended and he expects nothing in return for his service to her virtue.”
This … said to a barmaid in a Pox cloak.
Blinking away tears, I choke out, “I have someone I need to provide for first, but there’s no way we can get inside with the drawbridge up. And fates, that riot is over me—”
“It is no problem at all.”
The calm response makes me worried he’s insane, but with no options and Mare on my mind, I find myself once again up on the warhorse and holding on to the knight’s armor.
“Duck down behind me as if you are a saddlebag,” he orders as we trot off.
“With pleasure,” I mutter.
After a short distance, the whistle he makes is loud as a pig squeal. Peeking up from around his elbow, I see two men peer out at us from the guard tower on the right. It’s the pair of farmers who took Mr. Cavenish back home the night before.
“Oy,” one of them shouts down. “What are you on about—”
“Lower your planks,” the knight commands.
The two glance at each other as if wondering whether they heard that right. “We’ll do no such thing,” comes the reply. “Move on.”
“You will open your gate and lower the planks right now—”
“Move on!” the other guard shouts as he points a musket out of the arch. “Your body may be covered, but your head is not and I never miss—”
“If you do not lower the bridge this very moment, I shall return with an army and tear your village’s irrelevant collection of sticks and stones to the ground.
And may I further point out that I am a member of the court of Prosperitus, so I do not recommend you pulling any trigger in my presence—unless you want to be in the gallows before dawn. ”
Roaring from the crowd rumbles through the night, and I swear I can feel the heat of that fire, too.
“I. Am. Waiting,” the knight snaps.
A moment later, the farmers disappear and the great bridge begins to come down with the sounds of heavy chains clanking through gears.
The planks are still falling in that controlled way when the knight spurs his steed on, the warhorse leaping up and riding the end of the descent into the short tunnel between the towers.