Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 13

*Before… Elizabetha Lyonnes

It all happens so fast doesn’t it?

One part of the night I was tired and bored to tears listening to my sisters bicker Angeline chastising Gracia for her flirtations and her demeanor. I’m good with words and myself for my usual.

“Elizabetha don’t slouch.”

“Elizabetha pay attention.”

“Elizabetha put away that book.”

Pfft gods and goddesses that. I hate that or hated it…given how everything had happened, has happened? I can’t help it that I am clever and that I am clever for a girl and that I have more interest in books and tool and the hows and why’s of the world then who was wearing what and what kind of lace so and so was wearing or just as bad who was buying what.

Angeline was so into that…is? I don’t know I saw other sphere’s leaving escaping with me so she might be alive.

But she was interested in the oddest things like harvests and bees and what was being bought for fests and other events…numbers which I’m fine with but numbers used it the most boring of ways.

I’m the youngest of us all and it was something that I both chaffed under because I’m a girl and there was so much that was just not done, especially for a noblewoman’s daughter which I hated or hate because I think that might always be the case and then there’s the advantage of being excused for the evening.

My maids frown on my leaving too early but I escaped every chance I got and retreated to my rooms and my stacks.

They frowned on that too and that I bought books instead of dresses unless I was forced to buy a gown for something. They frowned on my sitting up too late reading saying that squinting over candle light reading would give me crow’s foot wrinkles.

But mother and father approved, they might not have made it something known to all but they both were good that I was read and mother would read with me and well father was often busy but he loved learning and if there was a tome or a scroll or a book then he had the coins.

Always…

(Sniffle-Sob.)

I was well asleep though when they came and it was the screams and the earth trembling crashes that woke me as the siege weapons hit the keep and I could feel them smashing through my home and I bolted out of bed and foolishly went to a window and I seen the battleknights of the enemy coming through the holes they made in the walls with the ramming spears.

Large like a siege weapon called a bore they were twenty feet of steel all the way though with handles that were fitted with chains on the shafts. Like the ones used inside of a siege shed they were swung by those handles but with the force of a battleknight behind them instead of a half dozen men and they literally spiked their way through the stones and mortar until they broke through the walls.

I knew this was deadly serious then.

For a foe to have the knights to use a half dozen of these meant wealth. That much hardened steel would be dear in cost. Then they were through and there were troops flooding in as infantry and others and I ran from my window to get my things and it was just getting worse and worse as the moments passed and I gathered what clothes I could in a bag and I shoved some small books in there too…no not for reading, but they were small and easy to carry and I knew they might be valuable.

Damned copper clipping sister of mine.

I had just pulled my bag shut and belted my dagger over my night dress when I heard screams from just outside my door and they were of my maids and then the doors burst open and three men in colors I did not know came storming in and I grabbed my oil lamp and I threw it at them but over then at my ceiling and it shattered and it exploded in flames.

They were not very smart because they looked up at what I had thrown and flaming oil came down on them lighting tabards and men both and they screamed and they burned and I drew my dagger and ran passed the one that was burned worst and he grabbed me and I stabbed him up and under the helm.

Too hot sticky blood gushed out and he went limp and the other two swung steel on me and the first one missed and then they both had their swords keen…there was this sound like a finger on good crystal but louder and their swords snapped into pieces that turned on them and it was fast and it was scary and it was bloody and at the same time horrible.

I had never killed anything before and I had never seen men die either and in scant moments I’d seen both.

I still don’t know where I had the thought but I cut and tore the tabard off the one I stabbed and took his buckler and shoved the cloth in the space of the arm handle and I took up the shield to use to try and keep safe.

By the time I had done that Lady Blackhand was there looking fierce and she was crackling with power and rage unlike anything I have ever seen and she grabbed me and pulling me out of my room which was now very much ablaze.

Is it odd that even now that I have an odd satisfaction that my lamp was burning my books instead of the enemy?

She looked at me. “I have to get the others out that I can. I’m sending you to your grandparents to your mother’s lands to the east; you tell them what happened here.”

We headed out to an open spot as dangerous as that sounds to have been. I asked though. “What exactly is happening?”

“Your father’s lands are under attack, a man who calls himself The Gorgon…Lord Auron Kingsland is waging war on the lords of the middle kingdoms.”

“Why? Why now and why here?”

“Your father is a hero, he fought in the war against my father and other evils Elizabetha, he’d be a rallying cry if left unchecked.”

“And not because Lyonnes is witch-tainted?” I’m no fool I know that there are those that dislike our alliance with her and the fact that we are very liberal and progressive in the realms.

She glared at me. “Is that what you think of me?”

“No lady you’re my godsmother you’re family but I hear things past the spines of my books in courts and the fact that a lot of folks in the realms dislike you for how you raise women up and how father entertains the notions of women.”

She frowned. “Aye, the bastard out there is not alone. He’s too many troops here for that and he’s getting aid.”

I look out. “Civil war?”

“I don’t know but maybe.”

“So send me to the capitol.”

“No you’re too young I’ll send Gracia.”

“You’ll be sending an idiot.” Yes I’m younger and I’m still a child too but Gracia? Gracia was a professional flirt.

“The King’s court will be better suited for her, she can rally support while you can explain things to your grandparents and the kinsmen you have in The Riverlands.”

“And Angeline.”

“To her betrothed.”

“He’s so far north in the middle of the godsforsaken wilds and mountains.”

“He has power, he has weapons and battleknights and he’s an honorable man.”

I nod but frown… “I guess we’re getting out then.”

“Yes…” And she did magic and this opaque bubble formed around me and I could still sort of see through it and before I knew it I was flying out from home with arrows and crossbow bolts pelting the bubble and I screamed and hid and tucked behind the shield I still had with me.

But I still saw…

Father dead…The Rampant bathed in his blood, others dead or dying and as I was getting out of range other things burning, some of the other villages were on fire and I seen troops out and around them killing and likely worse.

And then I was out over our hills and into the eastern farms and some things were burning there too but it was getting less and less the further I got from home.

But it took half a glass for me to get far enough away that I could no longer see home burning.

It took me another half a glass to turn myself around and face forwards into what was coming. And what felt like a short time later it was becoming dawn when I passed over The Eastern Mountains and then I was in the Eastern Kingdoms and I barely recognized landmarks as I passed over things faster than any horse and I could see the home of my grandparents.

*And Now…
Green rolling hills and ponds and lakes and all interconnected ages ago from the large melt water rivers and lakes off of our mountains and naturally fed underground feeds, natural rivers and man-made canals all the way down from the lush hills covered with forests and farms and estates to these even richer fields that boast huge crops and fields all along the water there’s mills and vills and hamlets as well as smaller towns and then actual cities in the largest of the trader used waterways.

It’s a very beautiful place.

Then it’s not too long before I’m past all of that and heading to the coast. I saw the shift in the line of blue sky becoming the double line of blue and lower the darker blue.

The ocean.

And then I can see the shorelines and then just out about a mile from the shore and the beaches is…

The White Spire… out on the coast… City Island…that’s actually the name of this place the only city that is on an island here and not just bordering the water.

Home of mother’s house…House Petrel.

The keep is all of pale sandstone blocks as in the wall for the city but The White Spire as well…it’s is actually a beacon within a tower an ancient marvel and responsibility called a lighthouse.

The whole city as I’m coming down is both more lovely than I remember with there being the same sort of colors around so much here and stone homes great and small to weather all manner of storms and clay interlocking tiled roofs.

People are pointing, bells are being wrung and men at arms are running out of barracks into the courtyard armed with spears and crossbows and cutlasses.

The bubble breaks and I fall as soon as I try to stand and my legs are too numb.

I yell though. “Fetch Grandfather! Please now!”

*And Now… Christiana.

It is very much a different trip over the last two days.

With all of the things that I’ve learned from my time at Palfrey’s Corner especially with my memory trick I learn and really learn as we walk and forage and I’m shown things by Hawk and some by Nic as we go and I commit them to memory.

The first day was pleasant enough with blue and clouded skies and we and the horses were much refreshed from the time not traveling that we made good time and distance getting all the way back to the roadway or what passes for one hereabouts and we kept going only stopping to water the horses and make water ourselves as we ate what fresh goods we were given as we traveled.

Another strange learning experience happened though. I could feel something, just something in the air and I wasn’t sure what that was until the day wore on and the clouds thickened and it was like I could feel the changes in the air as it got closer and closer to raining.

Mercifully Taylor knew these parts and he found us a herdmasters bairn that was used to take livestock to market and we were only mildly damp by the time we got there.

It’s a simple enough thing two dozen tall poles as posts in the ground and there was a rook that was there of simple thatching and it was walled with sheets of woven rushes about four feet high to keep in the herds and keep out the wind somewhat but it was welcome and we stopped there for the night with us eating on the wagon and me using my bit of metal and water heating trick to boil us soup.

It’s fresh and dried mushrooms and some of that wild rice and there’s shavings he put it off of a slab or hard salted pork and some garlic and wild onion. Then an egg and some flour and some soda? Yes I think it was soda and some herbs and soon he had dumplings in there for us.

Is there better than hot soup and dumplings on a cold and very rainy day?

We bedded Nic and Hawk and myself under the wagon itself and Taylor up in the tail of the wagon itself on watch but more relying on the horses.

That morning Nic decided to see how much skill I had with my staff and she and Jessa went at me both and then Taylor took a turn and they with him and I had both my knuckles rapped a few tips and my ribs tapped as well.

Taylor was the best of all of us and I was better than Jessa and Nic was better than I was.

It was rather satisfying to actually not be the least skilled in something at least.

After all of that though Nicole readied her rigging and made sure that everything was well in order and she walked her Squire’sknight until we stopped for midday or close to our midday meal.

I helped her reload it to the wagons and to tune it and oil it as well.

“You’re good at this.”

“I was to learn it home.”

“Honestly Chrissy it’s easy to forget somewhat.”

I looked at her. “Have I changed that much?”

She shrugged. “I’ve no idea; all I’ve known is you.”

Jessa said though as she stopped to tie her laces, she always undid them when we were stopped and redid them before we left. “You’ve certainly changed since The Corner, for one you’re more experienced and you’ve more confidence.”

“Well I’m a lot more used to things and not falling over while taking a pee certainly has helped you know.”

We sort of chuckle at that but she looks at me. “Lots of things have changed, you bedded Sir Alaan.”

I nodded and I smiled and she made a bit of a face. “Aye and would ye have done that before?”

“I wasn’t Chrissy before.”

“But in your mind?”

“In my mind Jessa I was having fun and it felt good and this body, my body liked what it was feeling and smelling and I liked being with him. He’s a good man. And I’d have much rather bedded a good man than not for my first time.”

She looked at me. “But you’re okay with this though…bedding a man.”

I looked and I shrugged. “I’ve no idea how long I will be like this Jessa, it could be forever.”

She still made a face but just nodded and she headed off.

And I…I stayed with the wagon after that for a while because I was a little perturbed at her peturbedness at my choice of sexual partners and that I was okay with what I’d done and chosen.

Not mad though…Jessa had a whole war-quiver full of reasons to not like men or the thought of intimacy with a man and her own preferences and my birth sex were still unsteady things still in my mind and heart I’ve no idea what she’d have in hers.

So a good part of that afternoon was spent with me tumbling out my ingots and taking my wand and actually trying to do things with them and to float them and really just practice with doing what might just seem frivolous things but it’s training nothing formal but still practice nonetheless.

A good part of that was actually observing the magnet force, seeing it and moving it but seeing the relation it has with other things like the nails in the wagon or Nicole’s Squire’sknight and then closing my eyes and feeling these things and then trying to feel them in relation to me and each other.

It’s gratifying to have been able to reach out and feel the ingots and grab one from the air as it floated or to reach out and touch where I feel a nail is in the wood and it touch them every time.

I spend some time after that trying to reach out with those feelings and keep track of the others. Taylor’s the easiest since he’s driving the wagon and he’s carrying a goodly amount of steel on him and the it’s Nicole who is further away and taking point and sometimes flank on foot but she’s wearing her weapons and she’s wearing her armor and I can feel he easily. Jessa’s hardest she’s furthest away but she has the least amount of metal with her knives and hatchets and the arrowheads most likely what I could feel that and she moves fast.

I think I only found her when we she was stopped to forage or to drop off those bundles of wood or herbs or bags with berries or mushrooms or whatever else we found along the way.

I felt Blossom Vale before we seen it.

It’s this small little place where two really steep hills like cliffs came together and went a good deal in length. Sort of like a massive outcropping that was a couple of hundred feet high and mountain goat steep it was covered in a few evergreen but largely it was beech trees and a lot of wild apple trees but not crabs something called apple jacks and they were a small tart green apple.

Apparently the village gets its name from the apple blossoms and from the vale which is actually a miner carves pass through the two cliffs that was reinforced with brick blocks.

There was a gate and it cost a copper in coin or trade to pass and the fact that they did so with the approval of Lady Tatiana here without her taking the dragon’s share of it still baffled me. We stayed and we did post and we ate as guests of the headman after climbing a lot of stairs.

The village was on both sides and it was literally carved into the hillsides and platforms for the homes and cabins are resting on large logs or more seen mortar and cobbles. It’s a great idea for defense and honestly it’s very pretty here.

We did some trade as well part of that’s with the doings of the post and the rest is for our goods and we part with some things in return for some of the things from here. Apples, dried apples, cider, and a little brandy too but mostly we have are a half dozen casks of vinegar. I could smell it through the barrels.

It’s a grand thing to trade actually since it’s so immensely useful, tonics and curatives as a cleanser and disinfectant and even in the right solutions of water a brine for pickling, so it’s is one of the essentials here.
The meal was actually fine as well…apple vinegar pickled piglet with pepper and cider and it was hearth braised until it was glazed and crackling and sweet yet tart. Honestly it could have graced a nobles table. There was beans baked off and in this sweet yet not sauce and there was bread from the morning and cheeses and pickles…there was a goodly board set out of pickles. The only thing fanciful was the piglet and it wasn’t just for us but for the headman’s family and the innkeeper’s too the serving girls and the town forester who was really much more of a ranger like Jessa/hawk than a man who cuts timber and tends to the trees.

I helped of course and I heated water for the inn and lugged and loaded and carried things but not so much things one would assume with a Wisdom.

Though I was watched with kind smiles and the peeking of children.

That actually I was used to in my old life with people taking peeks of us especially the children as we’d ride by in the township on way to temple.

Though this time I tried to just be more of a girl and less of the noble and as I was not doing anything sorceress they seemed a bit less scared.

We moved from Blossom Vale out and we made some decent distance again and the weather was nice so we kept going and I lit the way as we went into the evening until we reached a spring that the other’s wanted to get to and we bedded down for the night.

*Currently…

I’m awake, I don’t know why even with the long days that I wake after just four perhaps five hours of sleep but I do and I sit up and look around and then I feel around with my “Magnet sense.”

I feel the others and I feel the wagon and it’s sort of strange doing this but it’s something that I think I need to hone. I get up and slip out of the warm tent and look around and I don’t see Jessa so I reach out and feel again and I can feel the metal that she wears up in a close by tree and I look over and up at her and wave.

She slips out of the tree limb she was on pulling her jacket and cloak with her after she was using it as a lookout pad. “Can’t sleep?”

“No, it it’s been something that’s been regular for me and not just nerves, I get four or five hours and that’s it I’m awake.”

She looks at me. “Useful.”

I nod and start adding some wood to our fire. “It is but it’s still odd and it’s still just one more thing for me that’s odd.”

“Like you and Sir Alaan?”

I look at her and she’s not being scrunch faced but just Jessa it was I think an honest question this time.

“Very much yes, being with Megan is something I could understand mentally, I’m young but not that young that I wasn’t looking and there’s part of me that is thinking about being with him like I said…he’s a good man.”

I put on the kettle over the fire. “But I’d be lying if I said part of my mind isn’t very confused by it too.”

She nods. “Good I was worried.”

“Worried?”

“Yes I was worried you’re not born to the life of a woman Chrissy, you’ve been magicked into it and you have so much to learn, to just know in your bones to be watchful and wary of.”

“I know, I thought that you were mad at me.”

“Why?”

“For being with Megan and then with Alaan.”

She gives me a look and she nods. “Some…maybe, there’s not a lot of women like me that are open. Even here there’s a sort of don’t naysay but by the gods don’t encourage them.”

I nod. “It’s worse elsewhere.”

Jessa looks at me. “And you being with him just sort of seemed you were taking it lightly.”

I look at her. “Like the noble that I am?”

“Somewhat, it’s…just…”

“I was made to be this and not raised as a woman.”

“Aye an I know it’s being jealous of me too. Not just did ye have y’thing with Megan but ye were with him and me and so many of us ain’t never had a gentle man to do gentle things for our first times and here ye just up and do.”

“Would it help that is a really big reason why I took the chance to be with him, that I know that he’s pretty rare a find and wanted to take control of my life a little…because the last thing I’ve had or felt lately is that my life’s in control.”

Jessa looks at me and moves enough to get the tea and she takes out one on the bits of clothe that we use for the muslin cloth and wraps them up and does a knot in them before tossing them in now that the water’s at a boil and I move the kettle away from the direct heat.

There’s a shared look and a smile there.

“Welcome to womandom then when your life’s made about makin choices that ye shouldn’t hafta make just because ye were born a girl.”

I nod and smile. “And here’s to changing that.”

She looks a little surprised at that but she nods and get mugs while I pour us some tea and we sort of just do that sip and enjoy the quiet for a while and she lowers her mug and she looks at me.

“You knew where I was and you’ve been sort of doing that for a while now is that a new magic?”

I nod. “Yes sort of. I’m learning how to work with magnet force which lets me move or repel things with iron and the like and I can sense that force and the metal on you.”

“Oh well shite that’s useful, can you do compass things without a compass?”

“Yes.” I close my eyes and point. “True north is there.”

“Dead on.”

I open my eyes and grin. “I felt out your metal but you’re hard to find sometimes because you don’t have a lot of it and you flit around the woods a lot faster than you do with me in tow.”

Jessa nods. “That’s on a cause of me not having you and Nic t’slow me up so I can do some proper ranging.”

“I thought it’d be rangering.”

She coughs on her tea. “Stop that y’know better’n that.”

I grin. It feels good to have this all worked out between her and I it didn’t feel right with the air not cleared between us.

I look at Jessa. “How far now until we get to this stronghold of your lady’s.”

She looked out at the woods. “We’ll be in the quilt soon then it’ll go faster.”

“The quilt?”

“Aye it’s how it looks from the towers.”

“Oh well I think I can picture that. So it’ll be faster?”

“Aye we won’t hafta stop to do the post ‘cause it’s done by the actual post riders.”

“Oh…so we’re really close.”

“Two day if we’re all on horses I’d say with decent weather we’d do four or five to put us into the stronghold itself and done with this trip.”

“What are your plans after that?” I’m trying not to sound too needy but at the same time the idea of being there alone is daunting especially since they all have lives and they all heave things that they would be doing instead of watching over me.

“I’ll likely spend some of my coin and get things taken care off and likely I’ll stuff myself and get good and lit then I’ll sleep for the first two days at the least.”

I grin. “That sounds good.”

“The tea smells good.” I look and Nicole’s up and she’s still looking bleary and we pour her a cup while she goes off to do her business and get cleaned up and she gratefully takes it as she sits down. “I’ll still be around Chris; I won’t leave you to founder.”

“Am I that obvious?”

Both of them are grinning and Nicole nods. “Kind of yes.”

Taylor’s the last to get up and he takes no time at all to wash up and get clean and we can hear him splashing from here and he’s still sort of dripping when he comes back but is running a comb through his hair slicking it back and then taking out the things for our breakfast and it seems like we’re lazy having more tea and just sort of watching him but it’s just sort of nice to watch him and not be doing things for once.

He makes porridge…a very good thing.

I’m used to some porridge and oatmeal from home and what they made at palfrey’s corner but Taylor makes something that’s actually pretty grand. He takes a bit of lard not much but just enough to slick the frying pan and into that goes some walnuts and hazels he’s just cracked and some wheat berries all pulled apart to be loose and chaffless and he pan roasts those a bit before adding in the oats and that just takes a few short stirs before the oats get toasted and then some hot water in a few pours as he’s stirring then he cubes up three apples and then it’s done and there’s a little pour of apple preserves over it.

This would be absolute heaven if there was a little milk or cream the preserves from Blossom hill have hints of spice in them and it’s so good. I like the mixtures with the sweet but the apple chop is just heated and not cooked so there’s that and the nuts too.

We all eat heartily and have good sized serving and then it’s packing up while Taylor tends to the horses and feeds them some and waters them and everything and then we’re back on the road. It’s earlier than usual about a half glass before dawn and I do my light arc trick until we hit the early lights and then I stick close and help with the bundles of the forage and the wood.

We go again with a pretty fast pace and after a few hours Nicole gets her Squire’sknight off of the wagon and the wires and pulleys tuned and then we set out again with her behind us but moving at a really fast pace too and the horses can move faster without pulling the load so much and I take a seat on there and I can track hawk as she goes on ahead at a run and I’m sort of amazed at the kind of ground a ranger can cover when they’re not having to wait for everyone else.

But how often has she done this trip, how well does she know the land and are there signs to read that others in her trade have left for her to read or see. I’ve sort of heard tales of them doing such. I know hunters leave signs for game and such but I have heard stories that rangers have almost an entire language out here in the wilds of signs and the like.

Part of her going so far ahead is freedom I’d imagine but too it’s her gathering forage but putting it in one area for us so Taylor and I can load it instead of a half dozen small stops.

It’s an hour passed midday when we come along to this tiny little hamlet called Rafton.

It’s literally built in a swamp and on stilts and rafts.

I’m staring at it as we’re coming up to it and I’m just… “I’ve never seen the like of this…”

Taylor’s grinning. “Aye, they’re inventive that’s for sure and it’s a good defense too.”

“I can see that it’s one hell of a moat. How do they live though?”

“Decent enough, you’ll see.”

We call out the post and we don’t dare bring the horses or the wagons or Nicole’s Squire’sknight and we’re met by a few villagers and there’s the usual things and greetings and we’re invited to go into the village and Hawk stays behind to watch our things and some of the young village lads carry our bundles for us.

It’s interesting and we’re doing post and we’re trading and a lot of that is the hunted red meat game and all of the coal and the bundles of firewood and here we pick up dried herbs and some fresh ones as well.

We don’t need as much in trade here since we’re getting closer into the lands where things are more settled and more available. But Rafton is very well stocked in its herbs and something I have not seen nor heard of before called yam?

They live on the water and they’re apparently developed a farming that uses the rich waters and soils here of this marsh to grow food on rafts with this technique called water gardening and all around the town there are all sort of things growing like climbing plants and fruits. They have quite a few things really but the wild game from the forest is still a trip of quite a distance for them to hunt it for themselves with most of their meat stocks being raised or fished or water birds.

Dinner was fried frog…

Yes frog, or rather their legs and I was very, very hesitant at first but willing to eat from just the sheer smell and well the way that they were received by Taylor and Nicole. They’re actually not bad at all once you get passed the idea of eating well…frog.

But I suppose you do anything really to survive when you have to.

Again there wasn’t much for me to do actually with my abilities as a Wisdom other than heating lots of water for them so they’re not using fuel so much and helping Taylor to write things down for the people there while he’s delivering the news. Alright to be fair writing and heating water are fairing big things when you look at gathering wood and other things to burn and writing is still something that not all can do or do well.

And by midafternoon we’re back on shore again and we’re heading out.

We get packed up and Nicole’s going over her Squire’sknight again and she looks at me. “Would you like to take it for a few miles?”

I look at her. “For true?”

“You said you were learning and I’ve seen you know what you’re doing when it comes to helping out and tuning the wires.”

“I would love to.” To be honest I’m very excited. “I hope that I actually can do it.”

“I think you can, it’ll be a start at least.”

We take some time and we get me in the harness which is a lot like a climbers harness and then there’s a torso bit and those are anchored by clip bolts to the inner frame to keep you steady and give you leverage but to keep you also supported as there are no seats. Then it’s adjusting the boots which are metal boots that you clamp onto your feet with plating that goes up to your knees and those are actually attached to the leg frames with bolts but there’s the rigging wires hooked to those parts.

So when you lift your leg it puppets the movement and the wires run through the pulleys below and those turn some of the gears and it all converts the power that you use so that it’s multiplied enough that you can move the legs.

I lift a leg and the wires pull in one set and whirl the bearings and the gears in some of the boxes that build energy and I step down and it pushes on a piston right under my footplate turning the motion into more energy through the various wheels…like a war bow with the wheels that make draw easier there are wheels and lines to make the pull of your legs easier and then the downward pushes run the hip gears that allow the swing of your feet and legs and they put more power back into the system so that the more you use it the smoother and easier it gets.

Easier not easy… I’m literally lumbering and it’s like trying to walk through knee deep clinging mud or much like that and my first few steps are teetering and Nicole’s telling me. “Use the harness turn your body with the pull of each step you’re the center of gravity for the knight.”

I try it and it smoothens out and it’s like leaning with each pull of the leg and then moving forwards. But by the gods it’s hard work even if once I’m going it gets easier it’s all I can do to pull the legs and walk and lean and I feel it in my things and in my stomach too and back.

Battleknighters are the best of the best, they aren’t just walking around in armor and mail with weapons like other knights they do those things too but there is only a certain type of knight that can do this sort of training all the time and it produces people who have extraordinary strength and endurance.

And the arms, I have to learn to move the arms for added balance too. The arms rigging is even more complicated with you shoving your arms into a frame and that frame moves with your arms and these end in gauntlets that have wire to them and a whole skein of wires that lead off to the pulleys small fine ones really that allow you to move the hands and fingers. The wires for the arms are in several pints all leading to pulley boxes with the bearings and gears that in turn push the pistons that make the arms move.

Really if you’ve ever seen the inner workings of something like a piano it’s nothing compared to the wire workings of a rig and as with anything with so many cables the all must be tuned so they have the right amount of tautness for the person in the harness.

And as hard as this is it’s such a thrill too. I grew up or well was growing up to learn how to do this. I had dreams of this and running The Rampant or maybe even a battleknight of my own well before the attack and my change and my magic coming through. To be able to be here doing this and then even just walking it around and then going on the march with it is huge.

I’m sweating like crazy and at there’s this part of me that just doesn’t care that it’s actually the most physically demanding thin I’ve ever done in my life because I’m so happy to be doing it.

I get really maybe five or six hundred yards before I’m running out of strength and my legs start to ache and to cramp up and I stop. Nicole climbs up and pops open the chest hatch. “Done?”

I nod my hair is soaked with sweat and I’m actually steaming a little. “Yes…ow…ow…ow…”

Oh gods I’m stopped and my thighs, my thighs are twisting and knotting up and Nicole looks at me and she chuckles. “Push through it.”

“Push through it?”

“Pain won’t stop sixteen feet of steel coming at you from another battleknight, you have to move and you have to get past it one way or another. So come on you can rest once we get it back up and onto the wagon and we can square things away for me again.”

“Dammit…ow…okay.”

We’re stopped or the wagon is and I’m trying to grit my way into taking those steps and it’s hard…really hard and Nicole’s not pampering me through any of this as she makes me walk it to the wagon and guides me through walking it backwards up the ramp and sitting in the throne.

Three tries and I nearly dump me and the Squire’sknight off the side of the wagon. It’s a really hard thing to do getting that machine to sit. I’m so tired by the time it’s done and Nicole’s nodding. “Good you did good.”

“I did?”

“You didn’t fall over at any point and you walked close to a third of a mile, for a first time that’s really impressive.”

“Well I grew up with these machines, well not one’s like these we don’t have these smaller ones.”

She nods. “They’re still very expensive to build about half the cost of a battleknight even here there’s a lot of battle knight houses that don’t use these of the Page-standards.”

I get out of everything and I feel so light…but floppy.

Nicole passes me a drying cloth and I wipe down and then we get her rigging sorted which is wiping it clean of my sweat and then it’s retuning it for her to use and we’re actually moving again while we’re doing that and when we’re don her and I both sit in the back amongst all of the things and we take a break and she rubs my legs and I hang onto to things trying not to make yowls as she works the cramps out.

“So do you still have an interest?” She asks me.

“I have to, my brothers are dead, my father is dead if I can get The Rampant back then I will pilot it. It’s my duty to and I don’t think Nic that I can be a powerful enough of a sorceress to fight a thing like The Bull with just my powers.”

She nods. “I’ve never heard of such a thing either even with your mother.”

I frown and sort of hunch. “Which means that I have much to learn and much to do one way or another or even both.”

We sit and we just sort of think or I’m thinking and brooding when Nicole looks at me. “Right well we can’t just sit here then I think that we need to get you some practice in.”

“Practice?”

“Yes your mage gifts have to be like anything else one has to develop and you need to stretch them and use them in order for them to grow.”

I look at her. “Alright…?”

“We can do drills.”

“Drills?”

“Well the first wizards and such had to practice somehow and you need to practice so we’re going to practice.”

“How?”

“Well we’ll work on control with those ingots of yours, we’ll work on aim.”

“Aim?”

“Yes, you said Lady Blackhand used metal things as weapons and manipulated them so we start with that and with concentration and strength.”

I give her the side eye.

She grins.

It took a little doing but I’m walking again with the wagon and Nicole took two nails we had and bent them into hooks and had me weld them to two of the ingots.

“Now when we see bundles set out for forage and the sack you’re going to send out the hooks with your magnet force to go and to fetch them and bring them back to the wagon.”

“Alright that’ll be useful too.”

“Indeed and it’s good practice in control and then there will be you throwing ingots with your power at spots I’m going to point at with a light patch from my mirror.”

“I think I can do that.”

“You’d best there’s few second chances in a fight.”

“I will definitely do my best.”

“Better, and the third thing?”

“The third thing?”

“You’re to float the cooking cauldron behind you at waist height about a yard from you at all times.”

“I’m not sure that I can do all of that Nicole.”

“If you gainsay it from the start Christiana then you will make it all the harder.”

I take a breath and I sigh and we get started and it’s hard…really hard because I’m tired and then there’s the fact if I don’t keep the magnet force squarely in my mind and feeling the cauldron it gets slippery and I drop it. I have terrible aim with the ingots as well hitting about one out of every five or six times.

Every time I miss I have to arc power between my hands for a full minute which means standing still because while I can do it between my thumb and forefinger I can’t do an arc between my two hands without standing still and concentrating.

And they’re not stopping so each time that’s a minute of them still going and getting ahead of me and it’s adding up as well as being tired and I’m getting a headache out of all of this too and my body is yelling at me for all of this abuse.

The easiest thing is actually using the hooks and doing things like floating bundles to the wagon and I can see that being a thing that I will be using a lot more too.

About four hours into it all I clue in enough that I get my ‘wand’ from my bags and I start using that to help me and it’s a lot more accurate to use that to fire at the patches of light and to control things.

We’re done the drills after another two hours and Jessa joins us to stop and rest and she’s treating her things and skinning some rabbits as it starts to get dark and we’re heading into this deep valley and Taylor’s looking for us to get to a good spring that has a waterfall and we’re heading down and down and out of the range of the sunlight so I’m playing lantern again and Jessa gives the whistle to stop us?

From behind?

She’s riding in the back of the wagon to clean things up and she’s dropping the meat and she’s standing at a crouch and she’s looking behind us and then we see these shadowy shapes coming out onto the road from the top of the valley road behind us and they are back lit by the lighter sky.

I see her reach for her bow. “Nicole! Wargs, Goblins!”

Nicole’s running and climbing the wagon getting to her rig. “What! Here!?”

I hear the howls of the Wargs and the horses are going wild and Taylor’s unsnapping hooks and he yells and slaps backsides and they take off running.

“Is that a good idea?” I ask/shout.

“Better’n them dying hooked to the wagon and better than them wrecking the wagon too.”

He’s grabbing his crossbow and he’s grabbing bags and dumping caltrops around us? “Stay on the wagon Chrissy we’re safer here.”

“Alright but I’m not staying out of this.”

“Good plan, but no lightning toward Nic.”

“Oh…yeah that’d be bad in her Squire’sknight.”

They’re coming I see then pouring over the crest of the valley top and the Wargs are howling and the goblins are screaming these horrible giggling shrieks and it begins.

Hawk’s losing shaft after shaft at them and I can sort of see some tumbles and falls in the darkness and I can see that some are just wounded and still coming and then Taylor is losing bolts too using a slur bow crossbow which is the easiest to use and to draw back using a small hook like you’d use for hooking bales of wool.

Whizz…fffp…arrows are whizzing past us. Some of the Goblins have bows.

That’s so not good.

I concentrate and I feel for things, feel their metal and pull that sight, that feeling into me and try to keep it going and it’s very strange and it’s very dizzying for the first few minutes but I sort of get mad at it and myself and force myself to focus and concentrate and I shove out a wall…I try and shove out a wall of my magnet force power between us and them.

I’m trying to get it away from us and to stop the arrows.

I do…Holy Gods of the Elohim it worked…sort of…all the arrows going through are hitting it and wobbling astray and so does three of Hawks and one of Taylor’s crossbow bolts.

And Hawk yells. “Chrissy! What did you do!?”

“I’m trying to stop their archers!”

“……………..okay…how far away is it from us!?”

“Five yards, it’s all I can do!”

I see her take out her axes and set them within reach and then she’s pulling two arrows and she’s breathing and waiting…Taylor loads his slur bow and he does the same with some of his metal bits I’ve felt on him pulling knives that look like they’re throwing knives and Nicole closes the hatch on her Squire’sknight and it reaches and with that metal out of scabbard screech she pulls the sword free of its sheath and she locks in her grip on the large shield and she stands.

“Now Jessa.” She says it and it’s boosted by the speaking tube and horn for the pilot to use and she sounds deeper voiced and commanding.

Hawk pulls back her bow as I feel my wall breaking from all of the metal the Wargs and Goblins are carrying and it snaps it apart from the strain. She does this deep breath and she fires two arrows at once taking the two lead Goblins in the chest and sending them falling off their Wargs and then she moves and Nicole steps off the wagon without the ramp and right onto one of the riderless Wargs.

There’s a screaming howl and almost a wounded dog/canine sound and a very loud crunch sound and I see her belt the other riderless Warg with the shield in the head with her shield and then she steps ahead and into them swinging her blade.

It might not be a full Battleknight or a sword that they’d use but it’s still very long, longer than any blade that a grown man could use and it’s heavy too, very heavy and sharp and she swings and it cuts through everything in its path.

Blood, bone, fur and limbs are in the air and she doesn’t slow down at all as she steps and turns and she continues the sword stroke into the stunned Warg and it’s not even a consideration as she keeps turning doing steps like in a circle swinging as she does with the shield and bashing another Warg and it’s rider off its feet and she keeps going with that turn until she made a full circle and she’s swinging the sword again and there’s another explosion of death and of gore.

Hawk’s back in place and she snaps off three shots more before tossing her bow backwards and grabbing her axes and she’s knocking spears away from herself and trying to get an opening with the Goblins and she gets one as a crossbow bolt nails a Warg in the skull dropping it and as it sinks it’s rider gets his skull cleaved by her axe.

Then they’re trying to get around us, trying to circle while there’s some trying to fight Nicole in her Squire’s knight and they’re trying to jab spears into the joints of the machine.

There’s a screaming howl beside me and I see a Warg and its paws are bleeding from the caltrops and the Goblin thrusts at me with his spear and I’m using my quarterstaff now to fight it off it’s fast and strong and it’s mad…not like angry but like psychotically violent and it’s all that I can do to keep it from stabbing me with all of the training that I have.

Gods it seemed like I was trained, I thought I was good and better than this.

Twice I get cuts in my woolen coat the thrusts are that close and I scream and point a hand at him and release power and send a bolt of lightning into his face. He screams and his head lights of fire and I’m that close I’m sprayed a little by the popping body fats.

I use lightning on the Warg next and shove and shove power at it and it falls away screaming and making that hurt canine sounds and as soon as it does there’s another two taking the place of the one that I was fighting and my staff is suddenly too busy for me to unleash more lightning and I’m fighting for my life.

Hawk and Taylor are fighting as a team and there’s Goblins now on the wagon with us having jumped off of their mounts as the Wargs are suffering from the caltrops and three times in that fight Taylor saves my life by putting a dagger in the back of a Goblin out of nowhere as we’re being swarmed….he doesn’t even pull out the daggers there’s just a move of his hands and as if by magic he’s got another nasty blade in his hands and there’s this almost frightening look in his eyes.

Hawk is just as ferocious and she’s not quiet either screaming war cries and she’s very, very good with those axes using them to hook weapons or body parts or to block blows with the back edge of them and she very often or it seems lands a blow as she’s blocking or hooking with one and striking with the other….and half the time she will hook and pull A Goblin off its balance or in a way that Taylor uses to kill.

I’m trying to not be a burden; I’m trying to calm the hells down and get my mind into the fight and see it like I was taught. Every move has a counter; every attack has a weakness…

And father would approve of Nicole because sometimes the best defense you can have is a good offence and she’s done with what was behind us…I never even seen it but it’s all carnage and she’s dropped her shield and she steps into my side of things and slams her sword in a thrust through a Warg and she turns and she uses the free hand to palm the face of another and it goes crunch and goo and gore goes everywhere and she steps away from the wagon and she turns and flicks the sword hard sending the impaled Warg shooting off of it and into a thick and sturdy tree.

One of the Goblins takes my staff from me and he’s too strong and he rips it from my hands and he’s on my with a jagged nasty looking curved short sword and I step in…I don’t have a choice really I have to get into his swing and then we’re fighting and he’s yanking me around and I’m scared to use lightning because Nic’s just that three yards from me and it might get drawn to her Squire’sknight.

His nails are claws and he’s raked my hands and he’s fighting to get clear enough to swing and at the same time he’s biting me and getting a mouthful of my coat and I pull my dagger and start stabbing him and blood’s going everywhere and he vomits Goblin vomit in me mixed with that blood from the wounds and we both fall over being thrown off balance. He falls away and he’s replaced by another one almost like magic but actually not… and this time I use my magnet force and fire my dagger as hard as I can shove from my hand and into his face sending his and it off of the wagon and there’s another and...

There’s this almost slowness to the scene as I’m lying there and Nicole’s huge sword sails over me a foot wide and shimmering in the light? And it hits the Goblin and it cleaves him in two and there’s this expression of it realizing what just happened before it falls apart and his lower torso explodes in a fountain of blood and Goblin innards and the innards of the innards.

Then there’s nothing.

It’s deafening the lull, the silence of the fight being over and Nicole’s machine has stopped moving for a second and then Hawk asks. “Chrissy are we clear.”

“Clear?” Oh…I reach out and I feel…feel for the metal and for movement and other than the rustle of a few bodies like they’re not quite dead yet there’s nothing.

“I don’t feel anything else, anyone else we’re clear except for the ones here still moving.”

Nicole asks. “Where.”

I get pulled up by Taylor and I start to point and I watch as Nicole goes over and she dispatches the ones that are still alive.

I watch as much as part of me doesn’t want to but I do ask. “Shouldn’t we take a prisoner?”

Hawk asks me. “Do you speak Goblin?”

I shake my head no and a gob of something falls free of it and it nearly makes me gag. “No I don’t.”

“No one does, they don’t speak anything that anyone that we know speaks and no one that’s been close enough to them to learn it lives long enough to learn it.”

“No one?”

Nicole slashes down with the sword. “No one.”

I look around. “I very much get why so many of the towns are so well defended.”

Taylor’s looking at them and says. “Sometimes but not this close to well-kept lands usually.”

“Usually?”

“Never, and this was a full raiding party, they carry no rations with them.”

“So they are camped close?”

He looks at us and he nods. “It’s the only explanation; there must be a murderhole close by.”

I look at him. “A murderhole?”

Hawk was drinking from one of our skins and she passes it to me. I take it and drink. It’s wild cherry wine from one of the places we were at. The liquor is welcome.

“Goblins live in the mountains, or under them, they hate the sunlight it hurts their eyes so they live in the darkness and in caves. We usually end up following their ranges and know where their territories are at but every once in a while they’ll dig, they’ll join cavern to cavern to underground streams and the like until they can get passed our lines and then they’ll amass a large raiding force…that place is called a murderhole.”

I take a few more drinks but pass it back because my body is wanting me to drink it all and that wouldn’t be a good idea. I look at the others. “So what do we do? Do we go and track them? Do we look to our wounds and the horses? Do we move as fast as we can and try and warn others?”