It’s the standard length for a battleknight longsword.

I’ve spent most of my life looking at my father’s.

Now…

Now I’m staring at it broken shattered by the power of the golden bull’s big axe. My father’s battleknight on the ground damaged badly our gates destroyed and everyone running and screaming.

Everything’s on fire and my mouth is so dry.

I’m in shock or what the men-at-arms call shock because this wasn’t supposed to happen.

We’re Lions…

We don’t fall.

Prologue

25 years ago…

Duncan Lyonnes sat drinking from his water skin inside The Rampant…it was one of the best Battleknights in the realms. An ancient war long since past and forgotten had ravaged everything and taken from mankind the power of lightning…the power of the gods.

But it that age some of those powers were slow to fade, sleeping machines could be roused. The Emps and Gremlins called forth hadn’t affected the sleeping tools of the gods.

Defense was needed and there was still the arts of the great forges…so upon the frames based of men they build skeins, and these worked with spools and tackles of ingenious design so that a man could sit inside the chest in harness and raise up a knight like a marionette but one that made the power of the knight the power that drove it and unassailable by the majik of the Emps.

Battleknights were vastly expensive and only the rulers of lands could afford to have them or keep them up. Most were legacies passed from father to son and so forth.

The Rampant was like that.

As was those of his fellows here.

The Blackfenn’s outside the vale of Rory Blackhand a foul bandit ruler and one who kept the company of murderers and thieves and witches and sorcerers.

Only these last few years he’d gotten even more brazen and more deadly…his forces wielding arcanities that never should have been recovered.

He drank and waited and recovered his strength from the long trek here. He pulled the viewing glass in close so he could see outside more and watched her.

Aurora… Rory’s own daughter and a sorceress and some say witch…she stood watching outside on a bunch of scrub rock and she was holding her hands in front of herself palms to the sky and she chanted…she’d been chanting awhile now her eyes fixed and seeing the gods only knew what.

Part of him wanted to honestly put a blade in her…majik was an evil and terrifying thing and he wanted no part of it but High King Boen had placed his trust in her and had her in his court.

And she was lovely as much as she was powerful.

And with her father’s own stable of evil, she was a necessary one for their own side.

The hairs started to stand on end all over his arms as lightning danced over her hands and then died out and she sagged leaning on her staff.

Seconds later there was the rumble of thunder…He moved just enough to look and could see clouds on the horizon. Dark and angry and thunderous…hopefully it would cover their advance on Blackhand’s Castle.

***………… There was thunder and lightning and death as they charged through the mire and breathed the first two walls of the valley and its dykes and fields and the castle was next.

Streaks of death from something like a cannon but a thousand times faster and much smaller tore through the men on the ground and even through battleknights until Sir Brandon drew it’s fire and with a massive shield he charged the position.

He joined others as the siege spears wedged into mortar spaces and with the leverage of giants forced open the walls.

He flew backwards as he was struck by thunder and lightning and shrapnel and fire bounced around inside of his rig. Tearing into him…blood fountained inside his rig-cage.

Everything was ringing as he only sort of heard King Boen cry out. “Tank!”

***………… He woke and he was in a bed, bandages bound and a surgeon’s work having been done and Aurora there coming in to his cot with others. She carried a cauldron and things with her.

“Good eve Lord Lyonnes.”

“Lady….” What could he call her but that? He didn’t know the protocols for sorcery.

“I’m no lady M’lord just…a witch.”

He swallowed at her boldness; many witches and the like were burned to death in many realms. The fact she held is gaze with her eyes and was so unapologetic unnerved him. Though it didn’t unman him, far from it apparently.

His mouth was dry as he looked at her and his manhood hard. He glanced at her things. “Potion?”

“Hardly, Hen stew.”

“Hen?”

“Aye, a tired old thing she was but they make the best stew if you can cook it long enough.”
“You don’t sound like a witch lady despite the things I’ve seen.”

“Well I am, and it’s a feared thing to be a witch with actual power.”

“Pardon?”

“Learned innocent women and midwives burn for being so called witches…I’ll not wear some pretty title like enchantress or other such rot because of their suffering.”

“You’d endure that for them?”

“Aye.” She set the things down and there were bandages along with the food he could smell now coming from the odd looking cauldron. “I’ll bring then into my coven if I could shelter them from the ills of petty lords and men that’d punish a woman for having eyes and ears and a brain.”

“They’ll hate you for it lady.”

“They already do and it’s Aurora.”

“If it be Aurora then I’m Duncan.”

“Aye, that be true but noble blood runs through your veins.”

He looked at his bandages and wounds. “And all over the inside of my battleknight and the ground too. A man can’t be born noble; a man has to be noble.”

“Be noble and how should a man be noble?”

He locked eyes with her as she started to remove bandages. (Hiss of pain.) “A man’s nobility is not just measured but what he does or what he says but for what he speaks and what for and if his deeds can be those that come to the aid of those in need without the lure of any rewards.”

“That sounds rehearsed.”

“Aye they’re part of my lessons as a knight from my boyhood.”

“You had a good knight master then.” Her touch was skilled and deft and soothing.

“My grandfather but my teachers were actually his monks.”

“You believe in that?”

He moved so the sheets exposed him… “Aye I do.” and for the love of the gods he blushed.

And gasped when her fingers touched him as she kissed him.

“Ye better be the man ye say Duncan, I’m sorely tired of being disappointed.”

(Gasp)….. “So mote it be….”

Sixteen Feet of Steel

It’s the standard length for a battleknight longsword.

I’ve spent most of my life looking at my father’s.

Now…

Now I’m staring at it broken shattered by the power of the golden bull’s big axe. My father’s battleknight on the ground damaged badly our gates destroyed and everyone running and screaming.

Everything’s on fire and my mouth is so dry.

I’m in shock or what the men-at-arms call shock because this wasn’t supposed to happen.

We’re Lions…

We don’t fall.

They came in the middle of the night…The Golden Bull, Prince Gorgon of Greymarch and his battleknights and horse knights and yeomanry and militia’s and with them siege engines and death.

The trebuchets woke me with the crashes that shook the castle and the battleknights using siege spears to drive holes in the walls or some carrying ladders and others huge shields to cover the men on the ground.

I haven’t even gotten to the age of being a page yet in my father’s house…I’ve never set foot in a harness or anything save the very basics of swords and spears and shields that I was able to get from Paren my father’s scribe-squire.

Now I’m watching in horror as my father pops the rigging cage of his battle knight’s chest and stares defiantly at The Gorgon before the bastard drops down the huge war axe and there’s just an explosion of blood and gore.

I…I’m not sure I screamed or not because there was just this one sort of sound all around me now drowning out everything else and that’s the sound of my heart and the mad rushing of my blood.

The Gorgon turns and I hear his voice over his rig’s boomer. “Kill them all, I want every drop of Lyonnes blood soaking the ground, Wipe them out of existence.”

I see men in Gorgon livery coming for me and then I’m yanked away by the wrist.

Lady Aurora…

A friend of my father’s and more if you believe the rumors. She came to my father’s realm before my mother and helped him.

Lyonnes was home to witches, to her… Aurora Blackhand the vilest witch on the continent.

Though she wasn’t…Her coven had a bare handful of people with “The power” but in its ranks instead were foundlings and girls and women that didn’t fit in places, were strong or were gifted and all of them had those that could not forgive their strangeness or their differences…imprisoned them and sought to use them and claim their talents as their own gifts or kill them.

My eyes went wide seeing here and my breath caught as her eyes were washed out so silvery and they shone with a pale light in the gloom from the smoke.

(Sniffle.) “They killed Da.”

“Aye and they’ll kill you too unless we hurry.”

“Hh...hurry?”

“Aye I’ve sent your sister’s off as best I could but ye remain and they’re seeking to end your line.”

“But..but why?”

She starts to pull me with her and we’re headed through a few halls and then up the stairs to the roof of the Wind-Tower…it’s like a windmill but built as part of the castles windward side and it’s got three sail wheels and it’s used to power all sorts of stuff including the illuminations.

“Why because your family is powerful and the house of Lions has grown strong from its alliance with Haven-Hill.”

Haven-Hill is the name of her coven.

And it’s true, the fields with the drainages and the waterwheels and the oddities like adding vinegar to some of the scrub waters and medicines from all of the midwifery that they do…Women stopped dying from childbirth in Lyonnes except but rarely.

We are…were indeed a rich land I would have to guess…I mean we had foes I’m sure since we did not travel to the realms of other lords and nobles over so much.

“But…we’re Lion’s”

“Aye and they come ready to hunt them Christian.”

“But why?”

“Because your father’s a good man and when evil seeks to strike out into the world it will rain darkness on the good men.”

I don’t understand…I don’t but it’s mattering less and less as I can hear footfalls in armor and loud shouting voices that aren’t our men-at-arms on the stairs below us.

She runs us into the attic of the Wind-Tower and she shoves me towards the far wall and she sweeps up a few screws and nails and bolts into her hands from the work benches them sticking to her hands like they were glued there.

The enemy comes in and she shoves a hand at him and with a blue streak of majik one of the bolts is hurled through his body.

Blood sprays everywhere.

They try and rush her but metal is not something you want to wear around her…she flings them around like bales of hay and hurls more metal at them…through them.

Then moments later it’s over or it is for now….men are moaning and crying…horrible sounds too…calling for mothers of family begging to go home. It’s not something that’s human.

And she didn’t touch them…she did it with the power.

It did not take me more than the second warrior to die with one of those spells for me to be noisily sick.

I want this to stop!

I don’t want to be here!

I want my father, my mother!

There’s too much dying!

I wasn’t expecting the slap to my face.

I look at her through my tears and she’s staring at me. “Christian, snap out of it I need to get you out like your sisters, to send you someplace safe.”

(Sniffle.) “How…?”

“Magic.”

“Nnn..nooo…!”

She shakes me. “Yes, it’s the only way.”

“I…” I can’t talk I’m terrified.

And then she starts to chant and the air is humming and her eyes are getting bright and there’s this glow forming in the air that’s there but not quite there and it’s like a ball…I’m inside a ball?

Then there’s more noises and more warriors coming in and I see crossbows and Lady Aurora raises a hand and she tries to defect the crossbow bolts I think as they fire at us and she…she moves to put herself between me and them and I see blood splatter the ball I’m in as what looks like lead tips for the bolts come through her body.

Why lead it’s soft metal?

“Lady…!”

She turns and looks at me and there’s a smile there….broken and sad too.

“What’s mine is free, what I am is free, what’s mine is free and I pass this unto thee…”

Her hand reaches through the ball and she touches my chest and there’s a charge?...lightning hits me and it feels like I’ve been struck by a warhammer to my chest and then I fall on my ass and then the ball explodes out through the roof…

I’m in the ball and everything is getting smaller way, way too fast and I’m screaming when it gets too high and everything too small and then there’s the tops of our mountains and clouds and then it’s just too much and I faint.

Or something else, I read of the thin airs from heights.

***…………I’m not sure how long it is by the time I wake up but it’s the cold that wakes me up. I’m freezing and every part of my body hurts.

I look around and I have no idea where I am.

I mean it’s not like some mystical place that I was spirited off to. No this is sort of normal but it’s tall wild grasses and mountains I don’t recognized to the far, far east of me and to the west there are huge hills in the distance and the dark lines of thick forests.

I don’t know this place.

And it’s cold here too so maybe somewhere in the north?

There’s no snow that I can see and I can’t see my breath but it’s still terribly cold or it is at least to me.

And I’m crying as I’m shivering and turning around and around as I’m trying to decide on what to do?

That forest if very far away.

The mountains are as well and I see no land marks….

I see movement…it’s coming my way!

I’m saved!

Then I hear the howls….a barking almost insane bloody almost laugh-thing that ends in a howl.

I’ve only seen dead ones brought into for bounty by mercs or rangers but I’ve heard enough stories to know the sound of Wargs.

And where there are Wargs there’s goblins.

I turn the opposite way and I run as fast as I can away from them offering up prayers to all the gods that I know and some of the ones I only know from stuff said in the market.

I will never outrun them, but if I don’t run and if I don’t try then what?

Why did I even get sent away to live in the first place?

They get closer and closer and they’re not even trying they’re running me to ground over rolling hill after rolling hills the chase me keeping pace and I can see them pretty clearly now and they’re.

Goblins.

Starved skinny looking with pale greenish tinged skins and no hair…slanted yellow eyes in cruel faces and sharpened teeth…or just a lot of fangs or something, long pointed ears that look as evil as horns and dressed in patchwork skin leathers made black with grease and ashes and decorated with bits of their kills…human and otherwise.

And the Wargs…reddish brown beasts that resemble wolves and hyenas bred together into something the size of a pony.

I lose a lock of hair as the first arrow flies past me and lodges in the throat of a Warg and it flips over crunching and crushing it’s rider and on this outcropping of rocks is a cloaked person that looks like they’d blend well with this area and they have a bow and they’re letting fly with the arrows.

And I redouble my speed from sheer desperation even though my lungs are screaming and everything else is too.

The goblins are firing back and I didn’t know that a person could knock arrows from the air but this ranger is doing so with one of their clothyard shafts like they’re scolding a child with a switch.

Amazing and I would be further amazed by it if I wasn’t in full panic mode.

I get to the rocks and so do the Wargs and the Goblins and some of the rocks move!

A squire’s rig, much like a battleknight but only eight feet tall is with the archer and was kneeling with a tarp to conceal itself and grasses…it moves standing from its crouch and slams down its sword cutting through a Warg and its Goblin rider.

It shield bashes another a dozen feet the Goblin getting broken up as the weight of the Warg rolls over him several times.

Yes even a squire’s rig is that powerful.

Eight feet of metal armor with a harness inside it’s the same as a battle knight with a harness that you strap into and boots and gauntlets that are also connected to a framework that moves with your body…all these wheels and bearings inside all made to do one thing and that’s to amplify the squire’s raw strength into power to move the machine.

Like a warbow does with its pulleys and multiple strings to make it have or create much more force than a regularly made common bow.

Squire rigs are fairly rare actually…Father…we didn’t have one in our household we only had The Rampant and our castle battleknight rigs a total of five in all….and with that much mechanics all of these things are expensive and take time to maintain.

This Squire fights like a knight or as close as I’ve seen and moves amazingly well, nothing wasted in how it works and not missing a blow or a sword stroke and the ranger with it moving and keeping out of the way of the squire and using their bow at the same time to almost force a Warg or a Goblin into being in reach of the Squire or it’s the Squire fighting in a way that allows the ranger to find a deadly opening for a shot.

They’re both amazing.

And while I’m trying not to throw up from my running to get here and trying to keep my eye on the battle a Warg with a Goblin charges me with a spear trying to skewer me with it like it’s a lance and I throw my hands up in a panic and try not to get mauled and my hands scream to me in pain as lightning ripples over them and burning them and the ball od semi-light is back around me and the spear shatters when it hits it and the Warg is mauling it and it can’t get at me…though it’s bear sized mouth full of huge teeth is less than an inch from my head.

The ground shakes and my “ball” is covered in blood again as the Squire slams down its sword into the Goblin and the Warg shearing straight through and sending the mixture of red Warg blood and greenish Goblin blood all over it.

Oh…oh that’s so much and it’s soooo close and the “ball” doesn’t stop smells and I heave…nothing’s coming up since there’s nothing left really but I heave and the “Ball” goes pop…and all the blood on it splashes to the ground.

Then…then just silence…at least for a few seconds then the whirl and clinks of the Squire moving along with the ground shake of a thousand pounds of armor moving. I’m coughing and looking at it and the Ranger who is pulling the hood of her cloak back.

Wait…what her?

I see breasts…and trousers?

Women aren’t rangers?

And the Squire….it had chest mounded details.

Again breasts.

Women are neither knights nor Squires?

The Squire’s rig pops open in the chest and sure enough is a girl in there…older than me, young but where she should be married off at a close fifteen years at least and she looks at me.

“Sorceress are you hurt, did they strike you?”

Sorceress?

I turn and look around.

I hear the ranger a girl of an age close to this squire chuckle. “She’s more like an apprentice Nik.”

She…Me?

They think I’m a woman?