Chapter 17 Attack
Attack
Ayla screamed as loudly as she could. The lantern slipped from her fingers as she stumbled.
Glass shattered on the stone, extinguishing the small candle inside.
She could barely see her attacker. But she could feel his chainmail shirt pressing hard against her skin and his hot breath on her ear as he yanked her tight against him.
She managed another scream, praying someone would hear.
Then his hand clamped tight over her mouth.
“Be quiet,” the man hissed. He dragged her back towards where Isalde’s voice had come from.
Ayla thrashed. Her elbow connected with mail in a sting of pain. She jerked again, twisting. For a moment the arm around her loosened, but she’d barely made it an inch from the man when he hauled her tight again.
Does Niel know his men are down here? Her mind bleated. Surely there were more important things to worry about, as a soldier hauled her deeper into the cellar, than whether the knight knew what his men were getting up to. Was the soldier hurting Isalde? Was he going to hurt Ayla, too?
Who cared what punishment awaited the man, if she didn’t live to see it?
“Lady?” She heard Sarella yell from upstairs. “Are you hurt?”
She tried to scream back. The hand over her mouth tightened. She could taste his skin, bitterness and salt.
“Stop fighting. We’re here to save you,” the man hissed in her ear.
He pulled her around the corner of the shelf, to where Isalde held a bright lantern, the young maid’s lips pressed tight.
And there. On the wall, just past Isalde, the dark, narrow entrance to a tunnel, low enough it would require crawling. She was sure it had not been there before. Two slabs of the flat stone that had covered the wall lay on the ground next to Isalde.
Two other men stood there, both armored and helmeted, with swords on their belts.
Another was crawling out into the room, the shiny cap of his helmet reflecting in the light.
The gap between the shelves was just wide enough that you could not touch both shelves at once, even with fingertips outstretched.
She trembled, still tight in her captor’s arms, his hand hard over her lips. How had she never known there was a tunnel in the pantry?
“Lady? Isalde?” Sarella’s voice called again, closer.
“One moment,” Isalde yelled back to Sarella. “All’s well.”
These weren’t the knight’s men after all. Most of them weren’t Ditmar’s, either. They were from the Queen’s army camped outside. The soldier coming through the tunnel slowly straightened upright with a quiet grunt. She recognized him as one of Ditmar’s guards.
“Alright?” her captor, who was one of the Queen’s men and not Ditmar’s, whispered.
“I’m going to take my hand away now. Don’t scream.
” She nodded stiffly, heart pounding, but despite his promise the hand stayed tight over her lips.
“You’ll have to wait until the rest of the men come through.
There’s not room for more than one at a time in there.
But it’s safe. His lordship’s waiting on the other side. ”
Ditmar. They wanted her to crawl through a tunnel on her hands and knees to get back to Ditmar.
They had no idea who her husband was, behind closed doors.
And then these soldiers, they’d… they’d kill the knight, and his men.
Would they hurt the servants? Maybe not.
Isalde didn’t look like a prisoner. She was holding their lantern. Why—no, how—was Isalde there?
“Lady. Do you understand?” The man gave her a small shake like she was a bone and he was a terrier.
She nodded again. His hand slowly loosened, until she was standing of her own accord and watching soldiers drag themselves into the room.
Her heart wouldn’t calm; she tasted metal.
Wasn’t this supposed to be a good thing, men coming to liberate the castle from traitors?
Only it wasn’t, and she couldn’t go through that tunnel, and how many soldiers were there worming their way inside?
Was the whole of that giant army going to cram inside the castle? Niel wouldn’t stand a chance.
They’d execute him. And she’d go back to Ditmar.
She took a small step backwards. Nobody stopped her. The soldiers were huddled, talking in quiet voices. Ditmar’s guard was gesturing, explaining the layout of the castle and how far they were from the pantry door.
Ayla buried her hands into her skirt and drew a deep breath. She didn’t need a lantern to make it back to the door. If she made it around the corner of the shelf she would have a straight path to the pantry door and the stairs. She needed to warn the knight. If it wasn’t already too late.
Warning a traitor was, itself, traitorous behavior. She didn't care. Ayla tightened her fists into her skirts, lifting them.
Ayla turned. And Ayla ran. She made it all of three steps to the edge of the shelf and turned the corner. A hand grabbed her from behind and dragged her back.
But not before she caught sight of the Niel striding silently towards her through the dark aisle beside the shelves, naked sword in hand.
His armor glimmered dully in the hint of light from Isalde’s lantern.
His face was shadowed, but she could see the malice in his eyes as he drew near the intruders.
“No, don’t,” Ayla cried as she was dragged back.
The knight was outnumbered, unless there were more men following him.
There were eleven soldiers now in the narrow, long space between the shelves, and more coming, one after the other like ants in a line.
Niel didn’t know what he was walking towards. It would be a slaughter.
“Might need to gag her,” one of the soldiers started.
“Oh, I wouldn't,” Lord Niel answered coldly as he rounded the corner.
The man who’d grabbed Ayla shoved her backwards, pushing her behind him for protection and drawing his sword. The blade was only halfway out of the sheath when Niel’s sword took the man’s arm clean off, cutting just above the elbow where the sleeve of his chainmail shirt ended.
Ayla shrieked. So did Isalde. People were not supposed to come apart like that.
There was an arm on the ground, like the soldier was a little wooden doll whose limbs could pop on and off, and not a man, a bleeding man, a man screaming and stumbling in front of her.
The other soldiers rushed forwards, and she realized if the tunnel couldn’t hold more than one at a time they had no way to retreat, not with more men coming. Death was the only ending.
Niel ducked, blocking an overhead blow, and rammed his sword through the eye slits in one of the soldier’s helmets.
Another soldier charged forward, the arrangement of shelves too narrow for them to get behind him.
But Niel’s sword was still embedded in someone’s head.
The knight threw one of his daggers into an approaching soldier’s stomach, then kicked the body off his sword, freeing the blade in a spray of blood that had Ayla stumbling back in a near faint, her head buzzing and light.
The man he’d just killed slammed against the nearest shelf.
With a groan it toppled. It hit the next shelf.
And the next. Which hit the far wall, sagging.
The bulk of their supplies, between the battle and the doorway, remained upright.
Niel spun to slam the hilt of his sword into his new attacker’s helmet as towers of jars shattered against the floor, oil drenching into sacks of grain, preserved fruits rolling across the floor as a vinegar brine overwhelmed the smell of blood, sweat, and terror.
It all seemed to be happening so slowly. She could see everything, hear everything, smell everything, the acrid burn of the room and the choking guttural screams of dying men. But she could not make herself move.
Niel pivoted. Grabbing Ayla, he hauled her bodily behind him, away from the men.
“Kerr. Get her out of here,” Niel shouted. She hadn’t even seen the blonde captain arrive, but there he was, pushing aside a spearman’s strike between the cross of two long daggers.
Another man crawled out of the tunnel as Niel’s sword punched through a soldier's throat, the knight lunging right as a blade narrowly sliced just past his head. Niel wasn’t wearing a helmet, Ayla realized. No armor on his arms. Just a cuirass on his chest. Mercy, if anyone got him in the head…
A man grabbed her. She shrieked, but it was Kerr; he was pulling her at Niel’s command, only she couldn’t leave. Not yet.
“Isalde!” Ayla yelled. For a moment in the chaos she could not find the girl, and feared the worst.
The girl was cornered against the wall. Her lantern was on the floor, on its side but still burning. The girl’s arms were wrapped around her head as if to block out the slaughter.
“Help her,” she begged Kerr. “She’s still a child, please—” Fourteen was too young for this.
“Later,” Kerr snapped. The other shelf that had formed their corridor groaned and shuddered as a body slammed against it, but it didn’t topple over; the soldier slumped down to the ground, blood masking his features and pooling across the stone.
Niel reached over, grabbed Isalde by the back of her dress, and hauled the girl up. He tossed her towards Kerr; Ayla grabbed the maid into her arms with a sob.
She let Kerr shepherd them towards the stairs then, stumbling through the darkness, nearly losing her footing as her heel caught on something soft and wet that soaked through her slipper. She prayed desperately it had come from the shelves and not a man.
Light at the entrance of the tunnel; an armored soldier with a torch in hand—she screamed and grabbed Isalde tight; he’s on our side, Kerr bellowed, and pushed her forward, until they reached the stairs, and she climbed, fell, galloped up them practically on all fours, all dignity gone and the screams of the dying still ripping through her ears.
Kerr wasn’t with them anymore, she realized.
Ayla didn’t know when he’d turned around and gone back to Niel, but it was one of the other soldiers pushing her through the kitchen now, as Sarella grabbed at her arm and asked what had happened.
The soldier pushed her on, into the frigid great hall.
Isalde tried to slip away and was grabbed by the wrist; the soldier pushed her down on the bench next to Ayla at one of the hall's long tables.
Ayla looked down at her damp slipper. Oil.
She’d stepped in something oily, from one of the broken jars, not…
except there was still blood, sprayed on her.
Her hands shook. They would not stop shaking.
Was Niel alive? Were any of them alive? Eleven to one, until Kerr joined, and it had still been a slaughter.
Niel was there then, suddenly. She could hear his voice, demanding whether anywhere else had been breached, and something in her unclenched.
No, the men answered; all was calm outside the walls, the enemy was not attacking on multiple fronts.
She looked up hopefully, terrified what she’d find.
Four limbs, and two eyes. She couldn’t say more than that, but he hadn’t lost those.
“Ivar, I want that tunnel sealed so tight a rat couldn’t squeeze in. Kerr, have them search the castle,” the knight ordered a group of soldiers. “Better than you did the first time. No stone unturned.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Suddenly the knight was crouching in front of her. She stared into his eyes and drew a shaking breath. He was covered in blood. She didn’t think it was his.
“The key,” Niel said. “The dungeon key. Do you know where it could be?”
And she might have been terrified enough to admit she'd taken it out from her mattress and hung it with a jumble of bells in the chapel, where it blended in beautifully, metal-on-metal, except her throat wouldn’t work, and all she could do was stare at him and open and close her mouth like a fish.
“Get her upstairs, soon as you’re sure it’s empty,” Niel said, and then he wasn’t looking at her anymore. Why did he need the keys to the dungeon? Was there something down there, another tunnel? Or perhaps they wanted to lock somebody up. One of the soldiers. Ditmar’s soldiers.
But there had been dismembered bodies and there had been an arm lying on the ground and blood, so much blood, and it had been so loud, she had not known death was loud. A week ago she hadn’t seen anyone killed, and now for the second time she’d watched Lord Niel… she’d watched him…
Someone fetched Isalde. She didn’t know why, or where to. She couldn’t even watch as the girl was led away. All she could do was stare at a small bloodstain on her knuckle and think, I don't even know whose that is.
She didn’t know how long passed before Megh pulled Ayla to her feet and led her gently upstairs, escorted by two soldiers.
“Not my bedchamber?” she whispered as Megh took her up higher than Ayla’s room.
“They’re searching it now,” Megh answered.
They reached the solar. Megh quietly closed the door in the soldier’s faces.
Ayla shivered as Megh wiped her face with a wet cloth and stripped her bloody clothes off, then offered Ayla clean things that had been draped over a chair when they arrived.
Ayla recovered enough to help dress herself.
The tears started falling, then, but she was silent as her shoulders rocked and Megh held her.
“You’re safe,” Megh whispered. “You’re safe, you’re safe. They were only in the cellar. They haven’t found any others. You aren’t going back to him.”
“But those men,” Ayla whispered raggedly.
“It’s war,” Megh answered. “It’s not your doing, lady.”
She nodded at Megh’s words, but it wasn’t so simple.
We’re here to save you, the man had said.
And she didn’t want saving; didn’t want to go with them, not to Ditmar.
But they were dead now, those men. Had they died for her?
She was a noblewoman; the lady of the castle under siege.
She was a piece on the playing board, and no matter whether she chose her own moves or allowed a man to do so for her, she was part of it.
Perhaps they would not have attempted the tunnel if they had not been desperate to get her out.
There was a heavy knock on the door. With a gasp Ayla accepted a handkerchief from Megh and wiped her eyes dry, blinking wet lashes and turning away to hide her face as Megh opened the door.
“Leave us,” Lord Niel said to Megh, his voice hard as stone. “I need to speak with Lady Blackfell.”