Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 9

Chapter 9

*Before…

“Good, and I’m sorry I poked you. He grins. “I enjoyed that part actually.”

“You did?”

“Yes…a lot….it was sort of fun…” He’s looking at me and even in the dark I can see him blushing.

*And More…

The things he says. The blush….dammit I’m definitely, definitely feeling this ache of attraction going on. I offer my hand and he sheathes his sword and takes it and we smile at each other before I start just walking with him. I’m not sure but I think he sighed in a bit of tension leaving good way.

*And Now…

It’s a very, odd very strange, very oddly strange sensation really beyond the attraction and all the man to woman things and that’s holding hands. I don’t think I held hands with anyone other than my family and that’s when I was a young child and needed hands to hold.

So to do this now and with what had just sort of passed between us it’s…

My hand is really small. He has a lot of calluses I can feel then on my skin from all of his hard work and the weapons training and they feel so very big and tough like leather in places almost and his hand is very, very warm. I think I like it, I think I like doing this and he looks at me and I look back and I give him a smile and he gives me this shyish looking one back and that’s not fair. It’s not because I don’t know if a woman’s mind does things that differently as a man’s does but I’m not thinking like a man right now I’m thinking that he is very cute and he is an honorable and sweet man with desirable hands.

We walk along the bit of the lake front and through some of the out buildings and we don't say that much of anything really. It's just a bit of time for us to clear our heads and just sort of breathe. 

I look at Alaan as we are starting to make our way back to the alchemy tent.

"You knew my mother, you said as much. Can you please tell me about her?"

"I... I knew her years and years ago. I was just a squire then and she was this amazing and daunting woman. I had no idea that the night we met at the end of the siege of Basra was going to turn into what it did."

"What it did?"

"We'd been fighting in Basra and trying to stop the Lord there from expanding his own realm into those of allies and neighbors. He was a brutal man that wanted to silence all who opposed him and his ways. A slaver and a true bastard to all the women under his divine rule. He took the pass at Dragon's Fair and used black powers to blast apart the two peaks and close it to all that needed it. He conquered the land of Belle-Saini that held the pass for over five generations and slaughtered the entire family. He forced all trade that must pass through there to use a tunnel he built with slaves that was no better than a murder-hole used to rob merchants and traders at will...trade was dying, it was five hundred miles to go around so many had no choice but to use it. He took money, taxes, tariffs and slaves at will. We marched and fought and freed the people there and restored the best line that we could from the south to ensure peace and not instill a war by them thinking that we had created a rulership in our favor."

He stops and cuts off a stalk of rhubarb and chews on the sour stuff even offering me some and I wave it off pulling a face. I like it fine sweetened but not like that, just all sorts of no with that.

He looks at me and he blushes some. "I was partying with some of the other squires and knights and the local fighters that had rallied to us during the time. There was music and merriment and lots of wine and date liquor and palm beer and I was well into my cups."

I'm staring at him and it catches up to me. "You and her?"

"Yes, she was my very first ever."

"I'm not sure if I want to know this..."

He nods and stares at me. "Like I've said you favor her very much and it's such a powerful and wonderful memory too. She took a young boy and showed him things, taught me how to be with women in a way that I hadn't heard of from the talk of the others."

"Oh? I... I don't know what you are..."

My face is plenty red and I can feel it.

Alaan looks at me. "They were lessons that I've never regretted.”

I think I just discovered what a man's smoldering look is all about.

I can feel my heart beating very, very fast and there's a swelling in my small breasts and nipples of both anticipation and want.

It's an ache like nothing I've known and it's a good and scary feeling all at the same time. 

Gods I want to be touched, I want to touch him and I want things to happen and...I...I think I actually might want to bite him...in like a good way.

It's warring with the real me and being well aware of what sex is at least the mechanics of it and the fact that it would require me to stop being a virgin and that I do not have that stuff that Nicole had told me of to keep me from getting with child. That thought alone is more that sobering to me and helps me keep my head over all the want and need that's burning through my body. 

(Cough...) "Perhaps we should get back?"

He blinks like I interrupted his thoughts and he blushes the he nods. "Right...I'm sorry if what I said was upsetting Christiana. I am very much reminded of someone who has been a big influence on my life and her daughter is just as moving."

I... What do you say to something like that? I know this man enough to know that he isn't the type to use words like that to bed a woman just to bed a woman. 

Deep breath...

"Alaan you're a good man but this is something that I have to weigh very carefully. I'm not my mother and while you do things for my heart that I think I might share with her I am still my own woman. I really need to think on this a lot before I decide to bed with you and bite you."

Yes I said bite and it's a little bit of me getting a little bit of control back. And it's a little bit of me trying to be me.

I sort of need that. 

And there's this maybe some odd thing too...me maybe having this really strange connection with my mother because of this man. She was the first woman that he had slept with and that she did with him and now I'm here with him however many years later...

It's in my brain.

Him and her.

Him and I. 

I mean how could it not? Is this natural that I'm feeling this? This strange mix of curiosity and competition and wanting this very, very strange connection with her like this?

"I think I very much need a cup of tea. "

"I think a pot of tea might be just the thing that both of us are in need of."

It’s somehow gratifying to think that some of this whole thing has him at least as unsettled as I am feeling really.

We head into the tent and I get the water heating in the kettle and there’s a few looks, me at him and him at me and Megan at both of us. She purses her lips sort of in this sort of sideways smile sort of not way and I shrug and she nods and looks at him and he blushes.

Okay it’s still all sort of very awkward and sort of amusing in the fact that it’s awkward and then it also has this sort of in between him and myself joke thing or quality to it.

The tea definitely hit the spot and sort of seemed to settle my nerves and not soon after we all have the pot that we get back to work and I slip back into my documenting and charting duties as Alaan and Megan are going through the measures and concentrations.

The difference is that this time we’re seeing actual progress now with the solution’s reaction to the blood samples. Drop by drop and gram by gram we’re getting closer to seeing the medicine working more and more.

At another point Nicole comes in and tells us that nursing duties are being handled and that we’ve been told that just to keep working.

I think I hear at some point in the day while we’re working the sounds of hammers and mallets and saws being used and the sounds of workmen being busy but also getting invested in doing the things that they are doing.

It’s good really; it’s the sounds of life, of people trying.

We have supper brought to us in what seems not too long after that and that’s when we set things aside and go outside. I need to breathe and I think that the others did too since we’re rubbing at eyes and stretching and my arm from taking notes and being in the steady posture in a little sore and so is my back too from being bent over the log book for so long.

I see two newish thatched roofs and a shack that’s set up close to the water that looks…odd…it’s wide like twelve feet but only perhaps four feet from front to back and it has a peaked roof that looks very much like…well it looks like a gable roof but it makes the structure look like a treasure chest of sorts.

We sit at the table set up for us outside and Nicole is there looking freshly bathed and a little sun kissed not a burn but just a tinge of color there.

“That’s a very un-noble look.”

“Oh? Well I suppose where you’re from but talcum skinned isn’t so much a thing here.”

I smile and sit on the bench. “I think I got that part but back home you’d be all a scandal all the ladies of the realm would be all a twitter over the poor state of your complexion.”

I almost laugh at the ‘what the hell’ look on Megan’s face. “Fer true? What D’they do hide like vampires?”

I’m nodding and tearing at a roll that had just come out hot and I take the spoon of the fat with herbs and browned oniony bits in it and give it a smear and waiting a second or so as it melts and I take a bite.

It’s rough bread dark from the grain and the grind, chewy and dense and there’s the off little bit of hull and husk but I’m hungry and it’s good and before I’d have come here it was something that I’d have never eaten this kind of bread and drippin’s as they call it here.

“For true Megan, they have lotions to keep from getting a sunburn and to lessen it afterwards and sleeves done fancy and in drapes or with all sorts of frills and many ladies parasol during the brightest days and then there’s always hats and the scarves and the ribbons. Fair skin is the mark of privilege in the middle kingdoms.”

She’s shaking her head. “Here even with the nobles it’s a sign of being either sick or being lazy or being born of fair skin and ye’d burn right fast even though t’aint spared me none.”

She gestures at herself and her own completion and she does look like she’d burn easily.

“Or you’re like Chrissy and never sunburn.” Alaan says.

I look at him. “I’ve sunburned before.”

“Since your magic has started?”

“Uhm…” Well it hasn’t been that long but that’s not something I’m saying yet even with him.

“Lady Aurora told me that she didn’t sunburn because she had a somewhat more of a magical resistance to things like fire and the sun with all of the energies that flowed through her system.”

I blink, that’s something new but it sort of makes sense she was very fair and I’m that as well but I haven’t really felt the sting of the sun. I’m actually looking at my arm and I I’m not really as fair as she was but father blood mixed in too might be a factor.

“Well that’s more I didn’t know.” I look at him thoughtfully trying to think of things to ask him without going to the whole him sleeping with her thing. That’s interrupted by the ladies bringing supper and Nicole steps on my foot as Alaan gets up in their presence and I nearly did as well.

Force of habit.

It’s so strange to be on the other side of things and he’s quickly told to sit and “Noon a’that we’ve enuff comin an going wit out ye bouncing up and down like a five year old, we’ll take this time as payment in ad’vance and thank ye kindly though Sir for thinkin s’kindly of us an all.”

Okay…I’m stealing that in advance thing, I might need that as a woman now and I think that if I was around a lot of that it’d get tiresome. And I think that it’d still fall within good manners too.

Supper is soon brought with fish that’s been fried whole and meal crusted and there’s a large bowl of hot peas in the shells and they’re in drippings and green beans in the same way with vinegar over them and yellow beans in a dish with cooked chunks of turnip covered with mustard and then there’s another large bowl of wild greens and a platter of pickles and some of that farmers cheese they make in these parts.

I’ve never eaten this much green anything really and it makes sense that these plants are growing as far as I know in a decent year readily but there’s always wild greens stewed on the tables here. I suppose it’s only smart to eat what is edible while you can, but I don’t think that this has been even this much of a thing even home.

I might be hungry but I do like most of it and the turnip is new to me this way, I’ve never had a mustard on them before and this, well it has that vinegar hint and then the actual mustard flavor that blends into the sweet sort of musky flavor of the turnip and considering how well they keep. I mentally file this away as something that could be useful; you never know how or when something like this will be actually important especially in a really lean year.

There’s wild garlic in the green too which tells me that Taylor or Jessa harvested them and sent them over the wall and it adds a nice difference to things and I find myself doing like Alaan and putting some of the mustard on the fish and then some greens and eating it that way and he’s mimicking me as I do the drippin’s on the bread rolls and then some greens and then the farmer’s cheese.

Nicole asks about the testing and then we’re talking about that and the work that she and some of the men she’s organized and some of the things that she’s getting done and gotten done.
There’s actually dessert with a cracked wheat cake on a sweet custard and a sauce of wild berries and something sweet added to it like a jam or something. It’s absolutely amazing with a cup of this local bitter tea…I’m not sure the plants used but it’s a local brewed tea/tisane that’s bitter in a nice way and with something sweet it very nice.

I’m full and feeling quite spoiled and I have a second cup of the tea while the others are settling with their fullness and I make myself get up afterwards and take some of the dishes and clear the plates and take them into the main hall and heat water for the laundry and for the baths and I roll up my sleeves and start to help with the dishes.

I’m still getting a few looks at helping and it’s not as bad as it could be since there seems to be a difference between myself and Nicole and Megan who are squires and nobility and the fact that they see me as a Wisdom and more like someone to be respected for things that I know and can do than anything to do with rank.

And I’m helping because I want to not seem like I’m too good for things that everyone must do and besides my hands helping out are giving the women and helpers here at least some relief.

Nicole and Megan actually join me and the women object a little bit of course before we shoo them out of the kitchens and to their baths. I scrub and clean pots and pans and Megan cleans the hearth of ashes and sifts them out to get clean ashes for the soaps and other uses they have and the rest are put in the barrels for the jakes. Nicole takes flour and we use a copper strainer from the alchemy tent for a few minutes to make a finer flour from what they have and she cuts in some of ours from our wagon and she gets a large batch of bread dough made to raise and ready overnight for the morning.

I watch and learn too, I did not really know all the things that one needs to do to make bread and I learn about using a starter which apparently is a semi-precious thing really and the fact that we use a little sweetener to help feed it and we actually use some of this sweet preserving liquid from a jar of pears as liquid and sweet for the dough and we cover it with damp towels and let it do it’s business.

Then it’s our turn for the baths and once we’re done and out of them I head to the alchemy tent where Alaan has already bathed and Megan and I get back to work with him and our figuring while Nicole gathers her things and heads to where the men are at to start another round of drill with weapons and fighting skills.

Then a few hours later and some more blood samples and some nursing while we’re there and more note taking and we’re back at it taking turns to keep our minds and eyes fresh and I’m looking through the magnified as we start using the latest batch of solution.

And I see the fever in the blood start to die out even more.

“Alaan! Look it’s working!”

I move out of the way and he’s looking and them Megan and I are making more slides and we’re working on doses and then there’s this formula that has the amount of drops used in the slide to the amount of drops used in the slide and that with a lot of equations actually works out to how much solution that we use per pound of the patient.

It’s another hour and then there’s this pause…this just stopping and…

Alaan looks at us and there’s this smile and this light in his eyes there and he says. “We found it, we found the right stuff, we can beat this.”

Megan’s actually wiping away at some tears and so am I.

This, this feels better than the first time I rode a horse or was given my first sword.

Days and nights of being here and doing all of this and nursing people and so many things that I thought that I’d likely never do and now…and now we can help people.

A lot of people.

Alaan opens up a case and there are more needles and the glass tubes they fit to and he gets things ready and we triple check the results and we make very, very sure that the formula is written down and he makes a copy of it in a smaller book that he had in a pack and Megan makes her own copy as well.

She looks at me and smiles and she passes me a small thin leather-bound book. “I’ve an extrey ye kin have it and I’ll get another.”

I smile and I find a page to use as I want to write a few more things in the pages ahead of this of the things that I’ve learned and done so far.

“Thank you, this is an amazing gift Megan and an expensive one.”

“Aye t’is and remember that Chrissy ifinya please, it’s be a sweetness if ye did.” And she’s looking me in the eyes too and that’s when it sort of dawns on me that Megan is a sapphire and she’s…is she?

I mean I’m assuming that sapphires do sweet things for other girls just the same as young men would do for a woman.

“I will, I mean it.” I meet her eyes and there’s a thing there for sure but she blushes some and she returns to writing things down and I look at Alaan who missed the entire exchange and is still writing things down.

I think Old Tedric would approve of getting this down in a few places; knowledge like this should be preserved and shared.

I’m not sure what he’d say about the fact that apparently I have the interest of knight master and squire happening though.

I’m not sure of that I know what to say about that either.

We brew and strain and refine and we make more and more and we very carefully take the solution we have and the needles and very potent alcohol and a pot of water for me to boil and we go to the main hall.

It’s still a lot of work administering to them, and I learn more about finding veins and where to look for them and then it’s taking the needles and boiling them and then bathing them in the alcohol and then in the very early hours of the morning we are done and just waiting…and waiting and I see Nicole come in looking a little sleep bleary and I pass her a mug of the bitter tea and she looks at me.

“Have none of you slept?”

“No, we’re waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“We found it, we found it and we’re waiting for the fevers to break. We’ve dosed everyone here.”

“You found it, a cure.” She’s smiling and the news looks to have woken her up.

“Yes.” It’s sort of whisper shouted in that happy excited way from me. This is the biggest good thing I have really ever done and this…I need this dose of happy.

“Okay…I forgive you not sleeping I’d be excited too.”

“I am, this…it’s sort of amazing Nik.”

She takes another big gulp and she hugs me and just leans on me and it’s good. It’s not a sapphire thing since Nicole’s not like that but it’s that lean on you that really close people do, that I’ve seen armsmen do.

And that feels good too.

Actually that feels amazing too really because it makes me feel a whole lot less lonely.

We stay like that for a while and then Nicole pulls away. “I’ve bread to pan and fat to heat and such if we’re going to be up and doing this.”

I look at her and I look at Megan and Alaan who are out there among the beds and pallets sitting on the floors keeping a vigil both are healers and they seem so intent on things that you can just sort of feel their passion in what they do, that commitment.

I nod and look at her. “I’ll help you another set of hands and I want to learn this too.”

“You’re really set on learning all sorts of woman’s things.”

“Well honestly they should be just things and not a man thing or a woman thing…I’m getting that now but yes, I want to learn these things so I will know and who knows how long I’ll be like this and who knows who’ll be alive when I get back home….i might have to teach people these things.”

Nicole nods. “All good reasons, c’mon we’ve a hearth to get up to heat.”

We get sort of cleaned up and prepared to bake with our hair tied back with kerchiefs and the ovens stoked and going and I’m amazed at how much the dough we made earlier has grown and she shows me how to kneed and how not to put too much work into it else we make it tougher that it needs to be and I learn about fried bread dough and I learn about making Jam & Bits a dish that Nicole’s family had made often which is literally these trimmed bits of dough that are like small finger length dumplings and we fry them and then we put them in a roasting pan with the berry sauce and some jam and slide them into a cool corner of the oven and let the whole thing cook down and get just shy of candying.

And then we’re making bread and that’s another thing that is a serious job really knowing the smells and knowing by the heat of the oven just how long to put it in and to turn it and this is a very smart thing really almost as tricky as smithing fires in my opinion with all the things that you have to know and it kind of occurs to me that many women do this very thing day in and day out and they get very little praise for this sort of thing.

But it is a skill and bakers are a trade or at least in larger towns and such. We’ve things well under way when the women are waking from their pallets or coming in from their homes and they are smelling the baking and there’s some smiles and Nicole set’s out mugs of tea and the Jam & Bits which makes more smiles and I serve a few myself and then Alaan comes in and he’s looking at us all from the doorway.

“The fevers are all breaking or on their way to, they’re all going to be okay it’s working.”

One of the women has tears and she looks at him. (Sniffle.) “Working?”

“Yes ma’am we’ve brewed the cure.”

The entire kitchen explodes in cheers and tears.

*** Angeline…Before…

It was in the dead of night and I had just been done reading and settling in to sleep and to try and picture things.

I’d been betrothed, an arranged marriage and it was still new to me, it was sort of expected and my lot but I was expecting a neighboring lord or one of his sons and I was expecting a good match because as eldest daughter in the event something should happen to my brothers and my parents I would be in line to succeed…or rather my husband would to the lands of Lyonnes.

“Braitheholde…” I breathed it out looking up at the canopy of my bed.

I had to go to my father’s study to look it up.

A small country a small and remote country that I had never heard of…and I think that even father would not have had a tome with it in it if he hadn’t betrothed me to them.

North…north and east it was even hard to place on a map other than this dot. Way at the top of the eastern mountains overlooking this huge place called Stonewood. They have no neighboring realms that I could see, they are in the middle of nowhere and all I know is that.

Well that and father’s tome said that they mine there and that they have sheep and goats and make money as freeblades.

So engaged to mercenaries in the middle of nowhere.

Then it happened…

I felt the first strikes through my bed and I was trying to figure out what the vibrations were when I heard the claxons sounding off.

An attack.

I hurled myself out of bed and went for my boots first thing, I had shoes but there’s be fires and broken bits of stone and glass maybe and then I shucked myself out on my nightgown and into a shift and a dress.

I’d just snapped my belt when… there’s a shout. “Trebuchet!”

What!

I saw it, I saw this thing on fire coming out of the black and it streak passed my windows and there was a huge impact shake and flames and more yelling and screaming and I ran…foolishly ran to my window to see.

I saw the walls break…wall breaker spears like huge chisels held by a battleknight while another used a huge hammer to break the walls apart. One…then two then three holes in the walls and the enemy rigs, were tearing the holes bigger and using those chunks they tore off as things to throw.

Their standard a steel or grey raging bull on black. Their battle knight only bearing that as a color instead of being enameled just plain polished steel and my gorge rose as I watched a chunk of rock bowled through armsmen I know and crushing some and wounding others and our fighters closest to the holes firing their crossbows trying to shoot the battleknighters through the venting in the rig cages getting smashed by huge hammers or just the fists…and feet.

Until then all I ever had was war stories I heard from father and some of the others. Until then I had never seen a man struck with something so large and so hard that what was left exploded.

I looked up and away from the carnage I’d be dead if I hadn’t as when I did I saw another trebuchet load falling out of the sky and right at my windows.

I hurled myself away and there was an explosion.

Fire and violence…there’s no way to describe being in or so close to an explosion like that than just…absolute violence. There’s fire everywhere and I couldn’t breathe and Then mother’s there and she’s dirty and covered with ash and soot and Lady Blackhand was with her?

“Can you save her?”

“I can, but she’ll lose the arm.”

My arm…

I remember Lady Blackhand and this brilliant flash of light and heat, heat like I was suddenly dipped in fever and pain but not pain.

I remember mother off from us in the hallway and she was with Mary and Gertrude her maids and she was firing crossbows…and Mary would take the empty one and pull the wire with a hook and pass it to Gertie and she’d knock a bolt and pass it to mother.

I remember Lady Blackhand pulling me to my feet and wrapping me in a blanket and her eyes becoming electric and white all at the same time like lightning in fog.

Then there was this bubble and she wasn’t holding me up any longer and I fell.

The whole thing glowed and then exploded away from my room through the hole made by the trebuchet…I saw everything burning, the keep and the township was in flames and some of the larger farming steadings as well.

There must have been a thousand men easily down there and a score of battleknights and that’s all I could see as I passed then all gaining in height and speed and I realized that I was flying.

I passed out after that.

***Angeline…And More…

I woke and it was cold, it was cold and beyond cold and my shivering woke me and the bubble was getting less and less bright and there was snow all around me.

My right arm as soon as my brain was even half woken began to scream and I reached for it and scream gasped in pain and ran my hand down and it stopped…it stopped where the bone from arm almost met my elbow…the rest of my right forearm and hand were gone…just a burned stump remained.

I bawled, I bawled and I screamed and I lost control as nerves met panic and trauma and the bubble burst.

And the cold thin air slammed into me.

And then I heard the breathing.

With blurring eyes and a burning throat from the smoke and the pain and the crying I looked up and seen…

Trolls…three of them.

I’ve only ever seen pictures but those do not do them justice. Each was a dull grey in color and had feral reddish yellow eyes and large ears some were actually missing some cauliflowered and big broad broken noses over these huge square jaws that had fangs…not just fangs but tusks too like a huge predator and a boar of some kind.

Huge…huge things two and a half men high close to five yards high and three or four across the massive shoulders and huge barrel chests trolls were as close as you came to giants and they were a horror story out of children’s tale or the adventure ones told of the heroes.

Trolls were one of the reasons why battleknights even existed, no armed man no matter the mail he wore or how strong they could be were able to battle trolls, not effectively…not out of the story books.

A troll is fast and it’s flesh and blood and they are supposed to be smart…well these looked smart enough, they covered their foul bits and they had some sort of tattoos inked into their skin and they had weapons… one an axe another a mace on a chain and another a war hammer.

Two were bald save a top-knot and the other had long braids of some kind adorned with the skulls of birds and rodents like beads.

They guttered something back and forth and I didn’t scream seeing them, I just sort of got to my feet and got ready to run.

I’d never make it but it’s all I could do…hells though I could barely breathe to tell the truth.

“Ach t’ish gots spine.” One of the top knots said.

“O’course it has a spine cha’tard otherwise it’d be flopping.” The other one said.

I didn’t know that they spoke common.

“She’s mine.” That was the braided one. “I want’s the magic it’s got.”

“Wot magic?” Top-knot one says.

“I saw the shimmery thing when it came down and I want’s t’eats it for it’s magic.”

The second top-knot. “Oi, like a fairy I’s likes fairys them’s tasty.” And that’s when he started to take a step towards me and I hold my hand up.

“I’ll blast you… you big dumbass not another step.”

He stopped, the other two stopped.

The first top knot said. “Ye think it’s ‘er she’s been round ‘ere afore?”

Braids… “Dunno but I still want’s t’eats it.”

I scream in anger at them and feel my voice getting shredded. “I warned you, I curse you by the powers of the gods!” I raised my arm back and I threw at them….nothing but I did the motion.

They jump and duck and cover up and the shaking almost takes me off my feet.

And that’s when I ran.

I’m very, very lucky that the snow was so hard like ice but not ice but snow just hard enough to be like earth it’s so packed and cold and I was running for all I was worth.

Did you know that when you’ve lost a significant chunk of yourself that your balance is thrown off?

Running was hard, the pain…I felt the fabric of my dress tearing at places where it had become stuck to my body, my right leg really hurt too and the thin air.

Fortunately again panic makes you faster and that helped me too and I turned to look back to see them up and peeking and then figuring out that they weren’t blasted they roared with anger and they began to chase me.

Then there was thundering ahead of me too shaking the ground and I turned and fell to my knees sliding with a wail of hopelessness and it was cut off as this battleknight runs past me, stepping over where I was and it reaches back and it unsnaps from the locking clamps on the back a sword and I hear this war scream over the voicer on the battleknight.

He slid going using the snow and drove that big sixteen foot longsword into top-knot one’s chest and they both went down and they rolled and the battleknight came on top straddling the dead troll.

I watched him fall the battleknight backwards and the mace and chain missed him by a foot and he caught himself with his arm as he grabbed the dead trolls axe and pushed himself upright again and threw the axe at braids who dodged it but took a slice to the face.

Top-knot two snaps the mace and chain like a whip and the battleknight bashes it away with his forearm and metal crunched and rang audibly over the ice and then in an act of sheer power the battleknighter pushed to his feet…even with all the things that make it able to move that should have been…

Okay, I’ve only seen tourneys and father and my brother Justin in a battleknight before and I’m sure that they couldn’t do that…maybe?

But he got to his feet and pulled the sword free and got it up in time to block the mace and chain attack again and he advanced on top-knot two. Braids started to circle looking for an opening.

It happened really fast again top-knot two swinging in and the battleknighter blocking and braids coming in with the big war hammer and the battleknighter side stepping that hit and moving sideways and unexpected to all but the pilot…he grabbed braids’s braids and pulled his face into top-knot two’s mace and chain swing.

Braid was cussing in troll and scream-snarling and the battleknighter stepped back and away gaining room and swung the sword taking braids’s head off and the hand that was clutching at his maced face all in the same go.

This apparently made top-knot two very angry and he charged the battleknighter screaming and holding the chain a lot shorter to use it up close a lot easier and it was swing and block and swing and block and top-knot stomped on the battleknighters left foot pinning him to one place and he swung.

And the battleknighter…actually used his battleknight to head-butt the troll.

That’s all the optics and mirrors and scopes and its important right?

It worked though and top-knot two reeled with yet another busted nose and the battleknighter shifted fast in the upper torso and drove a fingers first blow into the trolls throat and then a punch with the sword holding hand into the gut and that doubled him over enough to get a hard and fast knee to the chin and top-knot two staggered back and the sword flashed faster than I could follow and the battleknight stepped back and out of the way as black blood and intestines fell free from the sliced open abdomen.

I remember looking around and seeing just him and me and then my strength went out and I fell.

I thought that I was dying as the battleknight walked towards me shining in the sunlight.

Light brown enameled plates trimmed with brass and with some very old fashioned designs to it and the coat of arms a bears head and swords in gold on a shield with red as the color for the field.

The rig, the battleknight looked old but the coat of arms looks new…gold leaf? It was shiny.

The rig cage opened and this man jumped out and he was wearing brigandine armor and a woolen cloak that he took off and wrapped around me. He had long wild and unruly curly brown hair kissed with sun fade and this thick but not too long beard to match.

He pressed a skin to my lips and water had never tasted so good.

“I saw the light lady what happened.”

(Coughing.) “Lyonnes…it’s fallen, I was sent here by a friend…an aunt.”

“Lady Blackhand.”

I nodded.

“And you would be lady?”

(Coughing.) “Angeline…Angeline Lyonnes….eldest daughter…”

He looked surprised and maybe a little frowny?

“King Wyatt Braithe my lady, your husband to be.”

And that’s when I fainted again.