Moonstone, Magic That Binds (Book 1) (12 page)

“Could you move back a little, lieutenant? We’d rather set up watch a bit deeper in the woods and it wouldn’t do to have you in front of us,” a soldier said. He must have come up to relieve the first watch.

“I’ll stay here, soldier, until I’m ready to leave. Just don’t shoot any arrows my way. There may be a few of our men in the village.  If you see three of them running for the forest, let them pass and capture the pursuers as quietly as you can.”

“Yes, ma’am. We weren’t told.”

“You’ve been told now. See that your men know. I’ll stay for a bit longer,” Restella said.

She had just about given up on the scouts when they walked out of the village, talking in lower tones than when they entered. Restella stayed to observe.

About halfway to the woods, riders emerged from the village with swords raised. The men began to run, but they wouldn’t make it to edge of the forest before being overtaken.

Restella waited until the last minute to mount up and pull her sword. The soldier who talked to her before came up to her side. “Want us to help them?”

“I do, but I’ll have to ride out in front of you and delay the riders until your men can converge. Send a soldier to Lieutenant Hanni informing him that there are enemy troops in the village.” Restella had no more time to lose, swatted her horse on the rump and charged the riders.

She counted six of them. Could she divert their attention from the scouts without getting herself killed? That wouldn’t be a question in another moment. She pulled the sword from her scabbard, feeling that pulse of strength the Moonstone always lent her. Riding between the pursuers and the pursued, she decided to close with the man on the far side.

Their shock gave her a momentary advantage, as she cut one man down and began to subdue another. The pursuers stopped to ring her mount. She swatted them away, but their additional strength would wear down her reserves quickly, but the scouts would serve another day.  Her wait lasted the time it took for the scouts to turn and attack the mounted riders. Arrows flew from the forest and newly-arrived soldier’s pikes kept the mounted riders from cutting down the scouts who finally retreated into the woods dragging the one remaining pursuer back with them.

“We’ll have to attack right now,” Silver said, his face filthy with sweat and dirt from fighting the pursuers. She didn’t realize that he had gone into the village with two other men. Restella had saved them all.

Lieutenant Hanni rode up with a squad of ten men and dithered. “What proof do we have that we have sufficient forces?”

“I offer you no proof other than the fact that two Oringians left the tavern, telling their six friends that they’ll see them tomorrow afternoon with reinforcements. We rose to leave and one of the men asked the barmaid if she knew us. When she shook her head we had to retreat quickly.”

Hanni chewed the end of his long mustache.  “All right. You were closest to the castle, what do you suggest, Silver?”

Silver looked at Restella. He said, “Why don’t you take the village, Lieutenant Hanni and secure it? Try to get the villagers to help you. From what I can tell, they don’t even know that Jiffero has changed sides. The Oringians don’t exactly have a positive reputation in the treatment of Valetans.”

“I’ll take the castle,” Restella said. “The scouts can climb the walls and open the gate unless there are too many inside. If that’s the case, then we will surround the open area and attack the reinforcements, preventing them from entering the castle, and do what we can to lay siege until Captain Shortwell can send us additional men.”

Silver nodded. “If reinforcements are requested, I’d imagine that the Baron doesn’t have too many men inside the castle grounds. Perhaps we can duplicate the strategy that worked at Louson and pin the Oringians between our forces and the castle walls.”

Hanni grunted. ‘Let’s get moving then. Put some food in the men’s bellies and let’s get going.”

Restella took her men to the backside of the castle. The moat that once protected the castle walls had long since turned into a grassy ditch and they had no problem moving men into place.

The guards were only stationed at the front of the castle and one of Restella’s scouts expertly picked the lock to a posterior door permitting her unit to run silently into the castle with ease. Silver and her other three men followed close behind, clearing rooms as they invaded the castle itself. Obviously, Jiffero hadn’t expected Shortwell’s forces to attack so soon.

They ran through one door too many and when they entered the great room of the castle, filled with armed men, laughing, singing and carousing. Restella began to slide out her sword.

Silver wrapped his hand around her face and dragged her back as one of the other men silently shut the door.

“What did you do that for?” Restella said, red-faced, as Silver released her in another empty room.

“A scout doesn’t take on the army that he—or she, as the case may be—finds during reconnaissance. We have more than one hundred men outside to do that. You tell me now what shall we do…attack them with the five of us or plan an attack that won’t have you and me dying?”

Restella glared at Silver, having a difficult time processing his words in the midst of her rage. She took a deep breath as meaning pierced through her emotion.

“I’m not a scout, I’m a leader,” she said, taking a huge breath, “and leaders don’t take their troops into certain death for no reason.” She looked up at the ceiling, fighting against tears. “Thank you.”

Restella had two of her men get another twenty of Hanni’s soldiers into the castle grounds. She gave them orders for ten of them to take out the gate and open it from within. The others increased the size of her force inside the castle and soon the corridors of the castle were filled with her fighters as the guards at the gates were silently dispatched.

Lieutenant Hanni rode in with half of their force, ready to take the onslaught from inside the castle, closing the gate after him. The main castle doors opened and Jiffero’s fighters began to run out at the same time that Restella’s men flooded into the great room from her previous position at the back of the hall.  The Valetan force began to eviscerate the enemy’s flank.

The fight leaked out of the great room and into the courtyard. When the enemy realized that they were caught between two forces, they began to surrender, however Lord Jiffero and his officers began to fight their way towards the stables.

Restella observed the move and thought it likely that a bolthole existed there, since the gate was closed. She took her men and ran towards the little group and fought with Jiffero over a cleared-out trap door in a horse stall.

“Surrender!” Restella said.

“A woman officer?” Jiffero sneered with his back still to the princess. “Ah, Princess Restella. I might have known. You’re along for the ride, pampered by your father’s indulgence. You’ll not get my sword voluntarily.” He turned as he drew his sword and began to attack Restella as his other men fought at his side.

Restella drew Jiffero away from the trap door and as she did so the center of the fighting moved with her. She barely noticed Silver placing men guarding the escape route, when she blocked an overhead swipe. Jiffero meant to kill her and she would have to fight for her life. He continued to pound his two-handed sword down on her as if his blade was a great hammer. The tactic worked as her helm became bent and the battered metal epaulets saved her shoulders from grievous injury. Restella got down on her knee and knew she could only take one more descending blow. The descending sword broke through her protection and cut into an epaulet.  She gasped as she realized that his next blow might kill her.  She quickly grabbed her knife from its sheath on her belt and rammed it up through Jiffero’s groin as he raised the sword over his head.

The Baron gasped and then wailed as he dropped his sword.   Through the pain in her shoulder, Restella took her sword and repeated the same thrust that she had with her knife except the sword went in much further. Jiffero took a shuddering breath and collapsed to the side.

Jiffero’s men dropped their swords and raised their hands. The fight quickly ended for the other men as well.

Restella sat back on the ground, clutching the shoulder of her sword arm. She nearly didn’t understand how a wound could hurt so much.  Gritting her teeth, she looked wildly around for any who would attack.  Silver ran to her side and began to take off her uniform jacket and the chain mail shirt underneath. She soon sat in a blood-soaked thin leather shirt.

“Forgive me, Princess,” Silver said as he slit the top part of the shirt, revealing a blood-soaked shoulder. He knelt down and washed the wound down with water from a nearby barrel underneath a gutter pipe. A curved needle and thread were instantly in his hands as someone put a leather patch in Restella’s mouth.  She gagged and spit the patch out.  It tasted awful.  A trooper gave her an indeterminate amount of strong liquor and asked her to clench the leather patch again.

She gagged, but the alcohol that had slid down her throat numbed her sense of taste as well as her thinking. Her vision began to blur when a sharp point of pain intruded on her consciousness.  She screamed, but then focused on clamping her mouth shut as the needle began to do its work. Before her wound had been properly sewn up, Restella fainted.

~~~

CHAPTER TWELVE

~

D
AYLIGHT INTRUDED ON HER TROUBLED DREAMS
as Restella woke in a fine bed. She laid on top of the velvet coverlet, still in her uniform trousers, but her leather shirt, boots and weapons had been removed.  Someone had thrown a blanket over her aching body.

Her head pounded and pain lit up her shoulder when she sat up. Restella staggered to the door, the blanket wrapped around her. She threw the door open with her good arm and a soldier stood at attention.  Her first thoughts had turned to the result of her night’s work.  Restella thought they had achieved victory, but she wanted to be certain.

“What happened last night after my… after Baron Jiffero’s men surrendered?”

The soldier laughed. “Beg your pardon, ma’am. Silver and Lieutenant Hanni came up with the idea to use the bolthole to our advantage. The Oringians rode around the castle walls and then began to pound on the gate. They had sought a battering ram, but obviously couldn’t find one.  Then they threatened to throw oil on the gate and set it on fire—“

Another soldier passed by and joined in the conversation. “While the enemy hooted and hollered outside the door, Silver and a good number of the company shot through the bolt hole and did the same to them that we did to the baron. To top it all off, the villagers came out and began to attack their flank. The Oringians didn’t know what hit them.”

“How many casualties?”

The soldier’s face darkened a bit. “Always those, Lieutenant Beecher, but a lot less if we hadn’t of surprised ‘em twice in a day. We’re all thankful to you.”

Restella didn’t know why she should be getting the credit. She’d give it all to Silver. She shuddered to think what might have happened if Lieutenant Hanni had led the operation all by himself. Between the Oringians and Baron Jiffero’s castle gate, she doubted the company would have survived. She wouldn’t share that thought to any but Silver.

“Please notify Lieutenant Hanni that I am awake and please notify Silver that I need to see to my troops more appropriately dressed.  I find this blanket a bit confining.”  She clutched it closer to her body.

~

Running up the stairs all the way to Fessano’s chambers kept Lotto in shape. He remembered the first time that Mander had taken him up there. He could hardly make it, wheezing and out of breath. He grinned and knocked on the door.

“If it’s you, Lotto, come in. If it’s anyone else, just go away.”

Lotto opened the door to see Fessano sitting by the fire wrapped up in a red wooly robe. The old man’s nose nearly matched robe’s color. The early snow had started to drift onto the windowpanes and Lotto could feel the cold draft coming from them and Fessano’s rooms didn’t smell very well either.

“If you’re under the weather, sir—” Lotto said.

“This is more important. It’s been six months since I gave you those books. You know the spells, but the magic just isn’t there.  We both know that something is blocking your Affinity, lad. I’m going to try something, but I’ll need your permission.”

Under the gravelly voice and the sniffles, Lotto detected the utter seriousness of the wizard.

“You have it.” He always hesitated to trust Fessano, but Lotto had also felt the block. From the first, he put it down to a lack of concentration. With the weapons lessons and all the things that Mander stuffed in his head, he thought that distraction seemed to be the cause, but as he dug more deeply into the texts, there were passages that made sense, but when Lotto tried a simple spell, he felt a little twist inside.  He’d asked Mander about it who could repeat a spell, but he didn’t have enough Affinity to move a speck of dust.

“Lay on the table that I’ve cleared.”

Lotto saw spells written on scraps of paper pasted around the sides of the table and pinned to a pillow at one end. He jumped up on the table and leaned back.

“Don’t say a word to distract me. I’m going to use these spells to examine you inside. I can’t just say one and see all of you and my mind is somewhat addled by this cold, so I wrote everything down.”

“Is there a risk?”

“Anytime one taps into nexus there is something that could go wrong. I can’t imagine any damage by my examination. The damage, if there is any, will come when I spot the block and try to remove it.”  He shuffled up the table.  “I’ll warn you before I get to that point.”

The examination didn’t hurt at all, but Fessano stood silently looking at him with his hands on his hips for too long until he sighed.

“Five possible blockages; two at your wrists, two at your ankles and one at the base of your skull. I imagine there was another inside your brain somewhere that the Moonstone obliterated. You have a great deal of Affinity locked in your body and those barriers keep you from using it. I imagine that you grew up with them… maybe the blocks were vestiges of the spells used on your parents to inhibit their powers when under attack. Who knows at this point?” He shrugged.