Chapter 31 Fire
Fire
Niel could barely feel his face. He moved periodically on the wall to keep his blood pumping, jogging in place or pacing back and forth on the portion of the wall he had set himself to guarding. His fur cloak was warm, but his hands, feet, and cheeks benefited little from that.
How much longer until the eleventh hour and the changing of the sentry?
Too long. It couldn’t have been later than the ninth hour yet.
He resisted, for the dozenth time, the urge to go inside for a moment, out of the wind, and check what hour-mark they’d reached on the candle burning steadily down in the hall.
The Kettalist’s storms had been a curse when he led his men through the mountains, but now he wished fervently they’d return.
Corin couldn’t do much when swirling snows made it hard to see more than ten feet in front of you.
But tonight, despite the brutal wind, the full slate of sentries were needed.
The skies were empty of clouds, strewn with thousands of bright stars, the moon not yet risen.
He didn’t trust his brother. He would never trust his brother. He didn’t care that Corin swore up, down, and sideways that he’d changed; that Corin’s own knight-master had shown him how to live with “honor.” That Corin had denounced their father’s cruelty and asked Niel’s forgiveness.
Niel had no forgiveness to grant.
And it was damned fitting that Corin had gotten the kind, chivalrous knight-master while Niel went off to Hannes. He’d drawn the short straw, as he always did.
The scarf over his mouth and nose kept slipping. Niel tugged it tight again, clapped his hands together, and squinted into the wind at the sputtering torches and hearthfires far below him.
The door behind him slammed open, grabbed and thrown by the wind. Niel spun.
Ayla inched out onto the castle wall, the wind snatching strands of hair from her braid. She bent over a rattling tray of teacups, a teapot at the center. His heart squeezed. He forgot, for a moment, any bitter thoughts he’d been wallowing in.
He was lucky enough, in some ways. Ways he wouldn’t trade.
Mercy. She wasn’t even wearing gloves. Was the woman determined to catch her death of cold?
With a scowl, Niel strode to the door and dragged it closed, then glared down at her.
“What are you doing out here, again?” he asked. The scarf fell back down, covering only his chin.
“Oh, you’re still out here?” she asked back, her gray eyes wide as she looked up at him in surprise, the tea tray separating their bodies.
His retort died on his lips. If she hadn’t expected him out here, she hadn’t been coming to see him.
Well, of course not. Why would she? He swallowed a flare of disappointment.
Ayla wouldn’t be eager to spend time with Niel.
He was so broken and twisted there wasn’t much of a man left inside him.
But she was soft despite everything she’d endured.
She was coming out into the cold not to visit Niel, but to do kindness to the soldiers on the wall.
They didn’t have enough men to provide the sentries with proper reliefs.
“Third shift runs until the eleventh hour,” he answered. “If you’re going to keep coming out here, you need to dress for it. Gloves. A better cloak, fur or one that buttons down the chest. I mean it.”
Hers was flapping in the wind again, revealing the way her dress clung to her skin. She was shivering.
“I’ll only be a moment,” Ayla protested. “I’ve brought tea, for warmth. Only you’ll have to pour it yourself. My hands are full with the tray.”
He stared at her for a moment, then sighed. As much as he wanted to scold her for putting herself in discomfort, he couldn’t help but feel grateful.
“You’re too kind for your own good, Lady Ayla,” Niel warned her. He reached for the pot at the center of the tray.
“I don’t know about that,” she demurred as he poured a steaming stream of tea into the nearest cup. As if she weren’t turning her blood to ice just to bring a little comfort to sentries on a cold night. “This seems like nothing. But the best I could think of.”
“It’s far from nothing,” Niel said. He set the pot back down and carefully lifted the cup in gloved fingers that were nearly devoid of feeling.
“It’s only tea,” she said with a shrug.
He stared solemnly at her for a moment, his hands wrapped around the cup. He could feel the warmth through his gloves. He lifted it toward his mouth, glorying in the steam’s heat after so many hours of freezing cold.
If he hated Lord Blackfell for nothing else, he’d still hate the man for making Ayla think she was anything less than a wonder.
How can the world be worth burning down when someone like her exists in it? He thought for a moment, before crushing the foolish thought firmly down. He was being ridiculous.
He took a sip, warmth coursing down his throat to bloom across his chest.
“On a night like this,” Niel said carefully, his voice low, “a hot drink is as bracing as a good victory.”
Ayla shivered, her hands pale on the tray.
“If you say so.”
“I can bring that to the men,” he offered. “You belong in front of a fire, with furs around you.”
And what he wouldn’t give, to be in such a place with her, instead of out here on the wall.
“It’s fine. I won’t be out here nearly as long as you all are.”
Neil sighed and studied her face, but there was a determined look in her gray eyes.
“Go on, then,” he urged. “The sooner it's poured, the sooner you’ll be back in the warmth.”
He turned his back to her, his eyes sweeping back over the dark landscape below, tea an inch from his lips. Niel took another bracing sip.
Those fires. The ones flickering on the dark ground not so far away from the castle walls. They hadn’t been there before; he was sure. He’d spent the last few hours staring out at this terrain, and he knew it by heart. These had been lit while he talked to Ayla.
The row of fires lay to the left of the village, and closer to the wall than the army tents.
Three of them; twenty feet between each one.
Niel stepped up to the wall, his own face brightened by the torch beside him.
He squinted, trying to determine the nature of the threat.
He was particularly concerned about ladders, which, unlike a bigger threat like a siege tower or trebuchet catapult, could be built and hidden in the town without Niel seeing.
Blackfell’s walls were tall, but not too tall for an escalade. Corin’s men could do plenty of damage with a few sets of ladders.
As he squinted, trying to make out the dark shapes beside the nearest fire, something bright hurtled towards him.
Fire arrow.
“Attack,” he bellowed, and spun back. Ayla stood only steps from him, turning with a startled look on her face.
She wasn’t ducking down; didn’t seem to understand.
She’d probably never had arrows shot at her before.
No time to think. He slammed into her, tackling her down to the ground in the shelter of the wall’s rim. Ayla screamed, the tray falling from her hands. Pottery smashed apart as hot tea splashed on their clothes. She was in his arms, pinned beneath him to the frozen stone walkway.
The arrow slammed into the castle, two feet beside them, and fell burning to the stone walk. It was a heavy bolt, two feet long and thick, swaddled with burning cloth, the head sharp enough to punch plate armor. Or skewer a woman. Two other flaming bolts made their way over the wall to his left.
Arrows that short and heavy didn’t come from ordinary bows. They came from siege crossbows. They’d brought up fucking siege crossbows, the heavy equipment likely mounted to the back of carts.
Some day he was going to kill his fucking brother.
Down the wall, the other soldiers called the alarm. Bode raised a horn to his lips and blew two long, hard blasts, alerting the soldiers inside the castle to prepare for battle.
Beneath him, Ayla stared up in shock, her gray eyes wide, her braid half-loose and spilling around her head. It was far too dangerous out here. Fuck, what had he been thinking, letting her out on the wall at all, when it was too dark out to see what the army outside was up to?
“Get inside,” he barked. Ayla still lay trapped beneath him. He could feel the dampness of the spilled tea on his right knee. It already felt bone-cold.
“What—” she gasped.
“Move,” he yelled. He clasped her arm and stood in a swift motion, dragging her upright, to her stumbling feet. They stood amidst a graveyard of broken ceramic. It looked sharp. And the fall. Had he hurt her? He might have hurt her.
A problem for another time, when her life wasn’t in danger.
Using his body to cover her from behind, Niel pushed Ayla ahead of him towards the castle door. He stepped before her only for a moment, to grab the icy door handle and wrench it open.
“Niel,” Ayla started to say.
“Lock yourself in your room,” he barked, and shoved her inside, and slammed the door back shut.
“Archers,” Niel bellowed to his men. “Wait for them to light and take your aim.”
Battle pounded in his blood. He was a man made for violence, bred and trained for it from his first steps.
He hated this business of range fighting; wished he was on the ground, sword in hand, to remove the threat.
But that was foolishness, in a situation like this one.
Severely outnumbered as they were, Blackfell’s walls were his only advantage.
His men grabbed the bows at their stations, stringing them with well-drilled speed and nocking their arrows.
Niel studied the nearest bright firespot below, like a dragon waiting for its prey to make the mistake of moving. There: a flicker of movement as one of the enemy soldiers below leaned to the fire, to light the next bolt and load it into the siege bow.