colors. These colored lights were focused on them, like a lantern in the dark. It was no longer a steady light, but a varied one – like the quilted wildflowers of the forest floor. One piece of the air was blue while that directly adjacent was the purest green.
The trees were poignant in the colored darkness. They brooded in the shadows, their branches entangled, their leaves whispering. They were ancient and unchanging, but that was the source of their poignancy – they were at once fearsome and comforting; knowable and unknowable. Yet it was not contradictory, for these characteristics did not come from differences in themselves, but in those who passed through their ranks. In the night, the forest itself came alive, joining the creatures which infested it. To the passing human, it gave fear and calm. Fear, for it was more than the human and could defeat him. Calm, for it was more than the human and he could not command his own destiny. In the realization that nothing can be controlled, there is only fate. Gylain, in his despotism, was left calm at times, for even his own evils were beyond his control. This was the essence of the forest. This is why men live to destroy it.
“Who goes there?” called the guards as the party approached the western gate.
The queen sat stoically on her horse, her face invisible beneath its own features. They masked her demeanor and covered her countenance. Her voice was equally controlled, wielding its power without thought. It was the voice of strength, that did not need emotion for a fuel.
“The Queen of Saxony,” she said, and the sound of her voice conquered the silence. “Open, that I may enter.” It was done.
Around his waist the Admiral wore a leather belt with a sword hanging from it. As they approached the castle, he reached down and loosened the belt, so as to draw it more easily, should it be needed. The queen saw him and looked over with her graceful mouth drawn into a smile.
“In case your master is displeased with you?” she asked.
“I will not deceive you,” he answered gravely. “There is to be a great feast in your honor, with an abundance of luxurious foods. I would not have my lord see me loosen my belt, lest he think me a man of weak habits.”
She laughed and said to herself, “If he is not a fool, he is a traitor. Yet I will not protect Gylain, if he means him harm. He is a man of strength, and if he is overpowered it is his own fault.”
They came to the castle gate and the queen stopped her horse in front of the river.
“Open!” she cried. “For the Queen of Saxony!”
The guards hesitated, until they saw the Admiral at her side, and Osbert and the Fardy brothers behind. They were the rebels who had scaled the wall. After the castle guards were destroyed, and the aiming marks painted, they prepared to destroy the drawbridge. If the queen and her rebel escort had been a moment later they could not have entered. But as it was, the drawbridge was lowered, and they passed silently over it and into the courtyard. Behind them the last exit rumbled shut. Before them, underneath the windows of the Great Hall, were a group of catapults, with a group of men preparing to fire them. The queen turned to the Admiral and questioned him with her eyes.
“There is to be a display, for your amusement,” he said. “An exciting and unexpected display, I should think.”
“Of course,” she answered, and continued forward to the doors of the Great Hall.
They dismounted, giving their horses to a stable hand. He thought nothing amiss, since the impersonators had deposited their horses in the town. The queen led them up the steps to the hall, hurried on by the sound of merriment within. She was angered by this show of contempt – as she thought it to be – from Gylain, in starting the feast before her arrival. Yet her emotions did not show through her face as she grabbed onto the handles of the double door and flung it open. Silence entered the room at her side. Every face turned to the Queen of Anger, the Siren of Saxony, and she returned every look with an invincible facade of power.
“What is this?” she bellowed, and her voice rang out through the lofty hall. “Another guest of honor, to overshadow my arrival?”
Gylain stood and asked, in a tone that told he already knew the answer, “Who might you be?”
“The Queen of Saxony!” she returned, growing heated.
The brown Fardy – seeing that he and his companions had to reach the other side of the hall before Gylain’s men took up their arms – cried out, “Charge! Gylain has turned against us!”
He waved his sword above his head and charged across the room, followed closely by the others.
Chapter 41
When Nicholas Montague saw the brown Fardy’s charge, he knew they had been fooled.
“Quick, Gylain,” he cried, “To arms! These are impostors!”
They drew their swords and stood back-to-back in a defensive manner. Willard was on them in an instant, his golden armor still covered by the black cloak. He jumped over the table and came down beside Montague. Both were skillful swordsmen and neither afraid to die. They each held their two-edged sword in their right hand, while the left sat on their hips and their legs remained firmly on the ground. Willard and Montague were men of great strength – of both body and mind – and they parried back and forth as if they used mere foils.
Willard struck Montague’s blade, catching it along its broadside and pushing it downward. Yet Montague held his advance in check, and neither retreated from the fierce grapple. Then, as if by common agreement, they both pulled back. Montague lunged forward at Willard, knocking his sword to the left; Willard recovered it and pushed him back again. Then, Willard took the charge, and came down upon his opponent’s head with a powerful downward blow. Montague knelt and held his sword above him, holding it at both the handle and the blade. It absorbed Willard’s blow, sending the force of the swing running back to its creator’s arm. Willard fell back for a moment and Montague pressed forward with several scissor strikes back and forth. Willard skillfully parried them. He deflected the blade rather than stand against it, to recover his strength.
As they fought, Montague said, “You fight well, sir. It is an honor to meet a man of such strength, of such skill in destruction. It will be a greater honor to strike you down.” His speech was broken into short segments and accompanied by the clangs of their clashing blades.
“I, too, have fought many lesser enemies – among them your brother,” Willard enticed him to anger.
“It is rare that both emerge alive, when my brother fights a man. I will see that it does not happen to you and I.”
“By your weak left side? I see you are wounded,” and he drove forward with a series of leftward plunges and thrusts. Montague dodged to the right each time.
“Honor will yet be mine.”
“That is not what I would call it,” Willard answered, “For it is but devilry.”
“Perhaps,” and Montague dodged Willard’s sword, dashed to the left, and brought his own sword down at Willard’s head with a momentous downswing.
But Willard was quicker. He tucked his sword under his left arm and rolled in the same direction. When he came to a halt, he sprang from the ground and fell upon Montague, who had not yet recovered from his heavy swing. Montague leaned sharply away from Willard’s blade, his own sword still going downwards. His leaning changed its course; it came for Willard. It was easily dodged, however, and the move cost Montague his footing. Willard fell upon him at once. His loss of balance kept Montague from parrying the blow. Instead, he blocked it with his arm, receiving a large gash between the shoulder and the elbow.
“Impressive, but it will take more to take this demon’s head,” Montague laughed, taking the recoil of Willard’s blow to better position himself.
His feet stable again, he went after Willard with a rage. He came forward with a diagonal blow, going from his upper right to lower left. Willard could not parry, but allowed his blade to take the hit, weakening his arm. Montague looped his sword in a circle behind him – catching its momentum – and brought it down again from left to right. Once more, Willard’s sword absorbed the shock – giving Montague the smallest opening. He plunged at Willard with a leap. Spinning to the left, Willard dodged it and gave a sharp blow to Montague’s blade. The latter was not recovered from his reckless plunge and went reeling backwards for a moment.
“Impressive, indeed,” Willard said, “But I cannot finish this at the moment. You will excuse me, I am sure.”
He pushed a table onto Montague and dashed off to Ivona’s aid. She was being attacked by several soldiers, armed only with a bow and a dagger. She had been forced back, until she abutted the wall beside the throne, which she used as cover. Willard’s cloak was still in place; the soldiers had no idea the King of Atilta was present. Therefore, he was able to slip through them to her side.
