Word of the attack in the woods spreads like fire among brittle branches.
First, there were ten. Then there were twelve. And then, there were twenty men, all bested by our three gallant soldiers. No one mentions James; few villagers even know there is a James.
I let the stories of Liam, Niall and Harry's bravery bloom without interference across the tables in the ale house, the benches in the gardens, the gossipy circles around the laundry casks. It does not hurt to let the rest of the village know it was an easy fight. The lurking truth that there will be another, and likely soon, is pressure enough.
We are a victorious lot by day, but each night I tremble in Liam's arms, awakening with a scream, and covered in sweat.
I dream that my child is cut out of me and sent to Harry.
I dream Harry's severed head is on the pillow beside me when I wake.
I dream that Liam and Mary are taken, that no matter how far I search, I cannot find them.
I dream horrible things.
But the panic doesn't come during the dreams. It comes after I wake, close on the tail of the relief. Because for as gruesome as these nightmares are, they are not all that different from what may really befall us.
Liam insists on a wedding for Niall and Mary. It is a marriage of convenience, and one of protection; but thankfully everyone knows it. The tangle of romantic attachments grows. The ceremony is small, and lovely, and when I put my arms around Niall's shoulders, I find myself weeping uncontrollably. He is good. They are all good men.
I do not want to lose any of them.
My child grows over the next several weeks; my belly is tight, my mood sour, my steps laborious.
Liam bakes bread by day, patrols at dusk, and returns to me when the sky turns dark. Each night, we sit at our table; Mary and Niall join us, and we whisper to each other about what we've heard of the activities of the rebels.
Harry and I meet at the cabin each Saturday, but James keeps watch on the path during my approach, and I keep a dagger in my new laced-up boots.
Harry does not speak of war into the soft skin of my neck. He speaks of names for our child. He speaks of the apples that grow outside the window of the shed. He speaks of books, and travels, and I, in return, share my own everyday thoughts with him.
Over time, in many ways after the attack, life returns to normal, and we all grow comfortable with the notion that we have well and truly won.
We begin to think the rebels lack organization beyond a cluster of common thugs with daggers.
We begin to think they have given up.
History occasionally references the quiet before the storm, but it is something one can only recognize in hindsight, when the storm has passed and one comes above ground to see what has transpired.
Otherwise the quiet is just life.
~~
The first Terror, as they become known, is the line of dolls perched on stakes inside the courtyard.
They are first spotted by a patrolling castle guard on a Tuesday at dawn, and there are scores of them. The entire village creeps out to see, a hushed mass of bodies staring at the sight: Painted red where the metal pierces their mid sections, the dolls' feathers spill onto the stones and blow in the wind; their arms hang limp and floppy as the bodies bow toward the ground. The stakes themselves form an X, stabbed deep into the earth between the cobble.
It isn't only the oddly gruesome sight of the dolls that scares us all, or the message: what they could have done to my child had they succeeded in taking me that day. It is that the dolls were somehow placed inside our gates. It is that someone was able to slip inside, put them there under the noses of the guards, and escape without notice.
Harry and the King increase patrols. Even the king himself patrols the far borders every day at dusk, with four of his strongest soldiers. We have men stationed in every corner of the land, and all along the perimeter. Our blacksmith takes on two lads from the kitchens to help make swords and shields.
Harry comes to James' cabin the following Saturday, face drawn, and holds me, naked and mute, for four hours before kissing my lips once, standing, dressing, and riding back to the castle.
The trickle has turned into a river.
The second Terror happens days later, when three women, wives of soldiers, are taken from a far border of the farmlands. Hoards of us look for them, searching as deep into the woods and far into the craggy mountains as we can, but they are well and truly gone.
The king sends all but the youngest teenage boys onto the patrol lines. No one, he says, will get inside our fortress again.
We live with curtains closed, and daggers beneath our pillows.
The third Terror - the Great Terror as it will be forever known - and the one that signals the flood, the war, is the severed heads of the King and his four soldiers atop the main gate.