Dragonblade Trilogy - 01 - Dragonblade (18 page)

Toby wasn’t sure how
long she had been awake, staring at half of a pillow with the other side of her
face buried in it. Only one eye was able to open. She blinked, having no idea
where she was and finally lifting her head to look about. Still, she did not
recognize the place. It was a larger chamber, dusty, with a broom and a pile of
debris in one corner. The fire in the hearth was faded to hot cinder, radiating
some heat into the room.  As Toby looked around, disoriented, her mind became
more lucid and her memory unmercifully returned.

Ailsa.
 The remembrance of
her sister’s name hit her in the chest like a hammer and she visibly winced,
tears springing to her eyes and a sob to her lips.  Everything tumbled upon her
and she remembered the day before, the fall, the horrific grief when she saw
her sister lying still at the bottom of the stairs. She wept as she remembered
Tate picking the child up reverently, his expression stricken with shock. She
remembered him bringing her sister back to this very chamber, to lay to rest in
this very bed.  Weeping softly, Toby touched the coverlet that her sister had
been laid upon. She could still see her there, lifeless and pale.

It was a crushing
grief, not like the same sorrow she felt for her mother and father. This was
different. It went beyond sadness to physical pain. She remembered, clearly,
when Tate and Stephen had separated her from Ailsa but little after that. She
knew, in hindsight, they had done what was best for her. Ailsa needed to be put
in the ground and if Toby had any say in it, she would still be holding her
dead sister’s corpse.  The knights had known better. She wasn’t angry at them;
she was too caught up in sorrow to spare the energy.

Wiping at her eyes,
she struggled to compose herself. She wasn’t weak by nature but the past few
days had repeatedly crushed her. She was laboring to get hold of herself. She
had to find out what the knights had done with her sister and make arrangements
from there. 

Someone had brought
her things up during the night; she noticed two large trunks and a variety of
loose items stacked neatly against the wall. Wiping at her eyes again, she made
her way to the trunks with the intention of finding something to bury her
sister in. But she passed by the lancet window on her way to the trunks and a
waft of smoke caught her attention.

A glance out of the
window caused her do to a double-take; from her perch on the third floor of the
keep, which was situated on a motte, or large hill, in the center of the
bailey, she was several dozen feet above ground level. From there, she could
see the walls of Harbottle and the green fields beyond. Only the fields were
covered with men and as she watched in shock, she could see two large siege
towers being rolled towards the walls. Dozens of men were towing them. Arrows
flew over the walls, some flaming, some not, and the men upon the walls of
Harbottle were doing their best to fight off the siege.  But she could see that
the siege towers being rolled into position would soon change all of that. 

Toby forced her grief
aside in favor of the current situation. She was, frankly, terrified, but she
managed to keep her wits as she went in search of her shoes. Her long hair was
hanging limp and uncombed and she grabbed a scarf from one of her trunks, tying
her hair back and out of her way. Yanking on her shoes, she bailed from the
chamber.

The deadly stairs were
tricky to navigate but she did so ably. Once on the second floor, the great
hall loomed to her left and she stopped in horror at what she was witnessing;
more than two dozen men were strewn about across the floor with a myriad of
battle wounds. Some were screaming; some were simply lying still. Toby
swallowed the bile in her throat as she witnessed the rivers of blood on the
floor, pieces of limbs and flesh strewn about.  It was ghastly. She could see
the majordomo and an old male servant struggling to render aid, but it was
clear they were overwhelmed. Although Toby had never worked on an injured man
in her life, she knew she was about to have her first taste of it. She could
not simply stand by while people suffered; all else in her mind, her own grief
and suffering, would have to wait.

Toby walked up to the
majordomo as he hacked at a man’s nearly-severed limb in an attempt to amputate
it. When the limb broke free, he caught a glimpse of Toby’s shoes and looked up
to her with a start.

“Lady,” he barked.
“What are you doing here?”

Toby was struggling
not to become ill at the sight of so much gore. “I am here to help. Tell me
what I can do.”

Wallace shook his
head. “Go back to your room. This is no place for you.”

“If you will not tell
me what I can do then I will just figure it out for myself,” she snapped. “I
can just as easily walk to the next man and do what I can.”

Wallace glared at her.
“Battle is not for womenfolk.”

Toby growled with
exasperation. “Good lord, man, I shall not be the first woman who has ever
tended battle wounded. You have more than you can handle. Why must you argue
with me?”

The old man’s glare
intensified and he stood up, hoping to scowl her to death. But Toby stood her
ground. She wasn’t one to be bullied. Finally, Wallace indicated the man whose
arm he had just amputated above the elbow.

“I assume you can
sew?” he asked irritably.

“Of course I can.”

“Then sew up this arm
so the man will not bleed to death,” he gestured to a dirty length of gut and
big bone needle on the ground. “Get to work.”

Toby was sickened by
the suggestion but she was not going to shy away; she had asked to help and he
was going to give her a very dirty chore in punishment. Yet there was no way
she would admit she could not do it. Without another word, she sat next to the
unconscious man, collected the gut, and went to work.

Wallace pretended that
he wasn’t watching her but he really was. He could see her out of the corner of
his eye, struggling with the bleeding flesh and he felt wicked pleasure in
making her suffer. He knew she would not be able to handle it and he took
fiendish satisfaction in knowing that she would more than likely give up. Then
he would send her back to her chamber and be rid of her. But as he waited for the
inevitable to occur, a funny thing happened.

Toby didn’t give up.
She struggled with the hacked limb but managed to sew up the end moderately
well. The old servant, taking some pity on her, brought wine for her to clean
the wounds with and all of the extra rags he could find. There wasn’t much by
way of medicine but he brought her what he could. It took Toby some time to
realize that it was the same old servant that had given Ailsa bread with honey.
The next time the old man brought her some boiled rags, she smiled gratefully
at him. 

Toby didn’t even ask
Wallace what more she could do; there were so many wounded in the hall that she
simply moved to the next man and began working. It became easier with time to
forget her squeamishness, but still, with each new gory injury, she had to
steel herself again and again. She began to wonder where Stephen was, given
that he was a Hospitaller, but she suspected his fighting abilities were needed
more than his healing. It was evident, as time passed and more wounded were
brought in, that the battle was intensifying.

Toby lost count of the
men she had worked on. Some had nothing more than a big gash that needed
sewing, but some came in with their torsos split open and guts falling out.
Those were the worst.  Wallace usually tended those as they came in the door,
sparing Toby the horror of it, so she focused on the men she thought she might
be able to help. The blood on her hands turned black, staining her nails and
coagulating on her surcoat, but still, she pressed on.

She was bent over a
man with an arrow imbedded in his shoulder when she noticed a pair of massive
boots standing very close to her. She glanced over; from the boots to the legs
to the heavy mail and armor, to finally the head. Kenneth was standing over
her, an enormous man in full battle protection. Toby sat back on her heels,
brushing stray hair from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Sir Kenneth,” she
said. “Are you injured? Do you require help?”

He shook his head, his
ice-blue eyes fixed on her. “I brought in an injured man,” he regarded her a
moment. “Why are you here?”

She stood up to face
him. “Because there is a battle going on and these men need help.”

Kenneth’s gaze
lingered on her for a moment before turning away. But Toby reached out a hand to
stop him. “Where are Tate and Stephen and the king?”

“In the heat of
battle.”

“Is everyone all
right?”

“So far.”

“But I saw towers from
my window being moved towards the walls. Has the fortress been breached?”

“We managed to burn
down the first one that came close enough,” he replied. “The second tower is
still a threat.”

She didn’t know what
else to say. As she turned back to her patient, Kenneth started back across the
hall when the entry door suddenly burst open and a soldier raced in.

“The wall has been
breached!” he shouted.

Kenneth swiftly turned
to Wallace, who was several feet away. “Drop what you are doing and get your
weapon,” he commanded. As the wild man raced to do his bidding, Kenneth swung
in Toby’s direction. “Bolt this door after we leave. We will burn the stairs in
our wake so they enemy cannot breach the keep. But bolt the damn door and do
not open it for anyone. Do you understand?”

Toby realized she was
shaking as she nodded her head firmly. Dropping what was in her hands, she
raced to the entry as Kenneth, and eventually Wallace, ran through it. The old
servant was beside her and together, they managed to get the heavy wooden bar
across the doorway to secure it. They dropped in the iron pin to lock it.
Panting, and terrified, Toby turned to the little old man.

“What is your name?”
she asked.

“Althel, my lady,” he
replied.

She nodded in
acknowledgement. “Althel, we must do all we can to secure this floor. Will you
help me?”

He nodded eagerly.
“The only windows are in the solar. The rest of them are high in the gallery or
on the top floor.”

“Is there any way to
secure the windows in the solar?”

Althel nodded. “There
are shutters.”

“Then we must close
them.”

She followed Althel
into the solar where there were indeed shutters that flanked the two small
lancet windows that opened onto the bailey. Before they secured the first
window, Toby dared to look out at the chaos in the bailey; men were pouring
over the wall from the siege tower they had managed to prop against it. There
was heavy fighting upon the battlements and she could hear violent clashes of
sword against sword. Off to the right, high on the wall near the gate tower,
she could see a big knight in combat with several soldiers and assumed it was
Stephen. But her eyes were searching for Tate.

She didn’t have long
to search; she spied him on the wall right where the siege engine was lodged,
battling the men who were pouring in from the tower. She could tell it was him
because she recognized the armor. As she watched, he deftly threw men off the
wall or used his skill to cut them down and cast them aside. Tate fought as if
he would never tire; his dragon-hilted broadsword was both a weapon and a
battering ram as he either shoved or gored the men coming at him. The longer
she watched, the more she understood why the man was called Dragonblade; he
fought with power rarely seen in mortal man. The only way to describe it was
magical.

“My lady,” Althel was
hovering at her side. “We must close this shutter.”

Toby nodded, though
her eyes were still riveted to Tate. But smoke was starting to drift in the
window and she knew it was because Kenneth had set fire to the stairs leading
into the keep. With a final look at Tate battling valiantly on the wall, she
slammed the shutters closed and Althel slid the bolt into place. 

The two of them made
their way back into the hall to continue tending the wounded, but not before
Toby laid out a hasty plan for their situation. It would seem that with Wallace
outside fighting, she was suddenly in charge.

“Where are the stores
kept?” she asked the old servant.

The man motioned her
over to a small alcove just off the great hall. There was a trap door which he
opened, pointing down into the musty depths.

“Down there,” he said.
“There is no way in there except for this door. The well is down there, too.”

Toby nodded shortly.
“Good,” she said. “We will need to finish tending these men and then see what
we can do about feeding them.  Do you know what is down there?” 

Althel nodded. “Two
barrels of flour, six wheels of cheese, some dried apples and some other dried
stores. Late summer harvests, mostly.”

“It will be put to
use.  Are there any weapons about?”

“Weapons, my lady?”

“Aye; in case the keep
is breached.”

“Wallace keeps some weapons
in the small room upstairs, next to the master’s chamber. He does not trust
them in the armory. He says they disappear.”