Nardine had known that brawny veteran knight for a few years, but she never got a chance like this one to ask him the question that had bugged her mind since their first meeting.
"So, why do you hide your real name, Sir Blade?"
Mounting his destrier next to her armored warhorse, the towering knight scoffed, "What makes you think I would hide it, milady?"
Did he imagine she might give him a political answer? That man had no idea. "Because you committed a crime in your past and you wanted to escape from justice?"
He laughed. "That would be quite a tale indeed."
"Oh please. You want me to believe that your parents named you Blade the day you were born because they believed you would become a knight when you grew up?"
Sir Blade heaved a sigh, grinning. "Seems I cannot hide my secret from you anymore, milady. Blade is not my real name indeed. It's Blayd."
His sense of humor was worse than her cooking skills. But she hadn't insisted on taking him with her on her tour around Bermania because of his amusing company. "Sir Blade is a veteran commander whose insights would surely enlighten me, Mother." Nardine had said to her mother to justify her request. "Besides, what would you need your military advisor for these days? Anyway, I will let you keep your general." Lord Idwin; the Queen's General who had nothing serious to do in these times of peace.
"I will pretend I didn't hear your amazing jape, Sir Blayd."
"My parents were southerners, Lady Nardine. They named me after Blayd the Slayer, one of the folk heroes there. It was my brothers-in-arms in Ramos who changed my name to Blade."
Because they were ignorant of the glorious history of the South. "Is that why Father chose you to rescue his army in the battle of Kingsraid?"
Sir Blade allowed himself a wry himself. "I never asked him why me whenever he gave me a mission. But I know he was always confident that I would get the job done."
The job he was referring to was persuading the lords of Augarin and Lapond to put their differences with their king aside and send their troops as fast as possible to defend the capital of Bermania from the Rusakian invaders. Had it not been for the reinforcements Sir Blade had brought with him to the battlefield at the walls of Paril, her parents' reign would have ended before she was born. And who knows? I wouldn't have existed even.
"Still, I can't imagine how the Rusakians managed to reach that far one day? What happened to the great fortress of Karun? Or the castle of Subrel?"
Blade shook his head. "You have no idea how the civil war shattered our country. The garrison in Karun was too small to hold the fortress against the titanic Rusakian horde. Subrel?" he scoffed, "Subrel was an abandoned fort without a wall when the army of Rusakia marched harmlessly past it."
Nardine gazed over her shoulder at the fortress of Karun, which was still visible from this distance. "And that's why he wasted his coin and stone on a cursed fort at the Green Hills."
"The Kingsfort was supposed to be Paril's last line of defense. Your father insisted on building it so that he could repel the invaders—if they came—without waiting for the valorous Southerners to rescue the pearl of his kingdom."
Still a waste of gold and stone, Nardine reflected. And her mother had already squandered the kingdom's treasury on the Rusakian red mercury and the smiths of silver arrows. "Stone means nothing without arms to defend it."
Blade gave her a lopsided smile.
"What?" she asked.
"His Grace, may the Lord of Sky and Earth rest his soul in peace, used to say that."
She had heard her father say that indeed. She missed those days when he used to take her with him on his horse to the Green Hills to oversee the construction works. The Kingsfort, it was supposed to be called. But after the King's tragic death in his own fort, the castle earned a new name: the Accursed Fort.
"If I were Mother, I would raze that huge castle to the ground," said Nardine. "With all the stone we will get from it, we can rebuild, not just repair, our castle in Festburg." The eastern fort, which was supposed to protect the Bermanian common borders with Mankola, was in a miserable condition. I would flog the lord in charge of that post for such a crime.
But why would any lord bother to see to his duties while Her Grace Queen Rona was preoccupied with her games with her vassals. I wager she doesn't know how those forts look like for real.
"The Kingsfort was meant to be out of siege weapons' range. How do you plan to destroy such a fortress?"
The retired commander was just playing along; Nardine was aware of that, and it didn't discourage her from going on in their blabber. Because from the blabber of a seasoned warrior like Blade, a teenage girl like her could learn one thing or two.
"What about using explosive material?" The idea just crossed her mind as they were speaking. "Like the kind Father used to..."
Nardine squinted as she spotted a horseman on the hilltops in the east. No, he was not some random wanderer who was entertaining himself with the warm sunlight of spring. He was following her. Though she couldn't see his face from that distance, she felt that his eyes were on her.
"We are not alone," she said.
"You mean that Rusakian scout?" Blade casually asked, without even turning to those hills.
"So, you are sure he is a Rusakian, and you are totally fine with it?"
"It's understandable." Blade shrugged his broad shoulders. "The sight of three hundred Bermanian soldiers near Karun must have alarmed them."
It was her mother who had insisted that a decent force had to accompany the Crown Princess of Bermania in her ride around the kingdom. "The sight of Bermanian soldiers on Bermanian soil should not alarm anybody, Sir Blade." She pointed to the horseman, who was still watching them from his spot. "A Rusakian scout is not supposed to be seen here. If you are not going to do anything about him, I will."
"Queen Rona's orders to me were clear. Protect Lady Nardine. And no engagements."
"I'm not a child who cannot decide about some scout trespassing on her lands. My mother led an entire army when she was my age."
"Actually, she was twenty when she did that, not sixteen."
Curse you, Blade. "I don't need anyone to babysit me. I'm aware of my actions, and I can answer for them."
"I mean no disrespect, milady, but it is me who will eventually answer to Her Grace for your actions."
Truth be told, he was probably right. But she couldn't easily ignore that Rusakian scout rambling on about the hills of Karun. "I don't think Her Grace will be happy when I tell her that her military advisor insisted on letting a Rusakian spy wander freely in her realm."
Sir Blade took in a deep breath. Was he giving up at last? Because with or without his help, Nardine would catch that Rusakian scum.
"Chasing him now is pointless anyway." Sir Blade turned to the hilltop, where the scout was watching Nardine's company. "Look. He can see us from a mile if we just come one step closer to him."
"We won't need to come closer." Nardine gazed at the hills on her right. "We shall camp here while a small band of our knights make a wide turn around those hills and catch him unawares."
From his silence, she could tell he was giving her plan a thought. "You are talking about camping here until nightfall."
A smile tugged at her lips—a smile of victory. "Whatever the time my men need to accomplish the mission."
"How about dragging him to follow us into Neldon Woods? That small band of our men can ambush the Rusakian there."
"He will be too careful to fall into such an ambush. But our men sneaking up on him from the eastern side of the hill? He will never see that coming."
Glancing over his shoulder at his men, Blade muttered, "I know I will regret this."
"Maybe." She pulled the reins of her warhorse to stop her. "Let's have something to eat. I'm starving."
Sir Blade commanded the battalion to halt and chose five knights for Lady Nardine's mission. While a bunch of her soldiers was slaughtering sheep for dinner, she gathered some dry grass to build a tinder nest. As her father had taught her in their past rides, she picked a round thick branch to make a spindle out of it with her sword. Blade came to her while she was cutting a groove in a wooden board. "Not bad at all for a princess," he teased her as he sat on his haunches, watching.
"I'm Masolon's daughter. Don't forget that." Funny she should mention the very irksome remark the others often used to refer to her dark hair, brown eyes, broad shoulders, and towering stature, which was nothing like her mother's blonde hair, emerald eyes, and lithe frame. Her mother was not short, though—if compared to all the women Nardine had met in her life. But since the height gap between the Queen and her daughter grew into three whole inches, it became hard to attribute Nardine's frame to someone else other than her late father.
Masolon's daughter. That sick remark had made her weep more than once when she had been younger. When I was naïve and weak. Today it was the sigil decorating her banner.
"What I see now is King Masolon's and Queen Rona's daughter." Blade smiled wryly. Was he referring to Nardine's thin nose and round face? Or her stubbornness? If she remembered right, her mother was not the only stubborn parent she had.
"I will do my best to take that as a compliment." Nardine struggled with the spindle as she started rubbing it up and down the groove she had cut in the wooden plate.
"Need a hand?"
"No," she snapped as she kept rubbing. When, finally, her tinder nest caught an ember, she started to blow gently. Shortly after, the ember became fire, without Sir Blade's help.
The soldiers were still blanching the meat when Nardine decided to enjoy the view. Leaning back on her arms, she sat on the ground and watched the sun descend slowly into the woods of Neldon in the west.
"Whatever the cause behind the collapse of that damned hall on my father was, we can surely use it to level the whole fortress to the ground," she said.
Blade sighed. "You are obsessed with that fort, milady."
"That fort was a mistake." She could have been riding today with her father if he hadn't built that useless fort in the first place. "Mistakes must be rectified."
Blade paused for a moment before he said in a low voice, "I understand your hatred for that fort. But trust me, looking into the past won't change it. I know you are strong enough to get over your pain."
Words of reconciliation; she had been hearing them for three years. They never worked. Like anything useless in this world, she hated them.
"I'm not looking into the past to bring the dead back." She wouldn't mind if that was possible, though. "I want to save more lives, if I can."
Blade nodded, his eyes hollow. "I understand, milady. However, I'm afraid I can't help you. No one can because no one knows how that collapse happened."
"Which I find too hard to believe." She bit her lower lip. "The man who died in that accident was the King of Bermania, for demons' sake! Didn't anybody think that he might be killed by an act of sabotage?"
Again, Sir Blade gave her one of his lopsided smiles. "You are interrogating the wrong man, milady. All I know is that your father and his mages were dealing with dangerous material."
"I was never told that red mercury could explode."
"Nobody understands what it does exactly."
No, Blade was wrong. There had to be someone who understood the nature of that mysterious substance. Perhaps it was about time she made acquaintances with one of those mages residing now in the castle of Subrel.
Blade fed the cookfire with a few branches when the soldiers brought Nardine's favorite portion; sheep ribs. She thrust a sharp wooden stick into the tender meat and held it over the flames.
"Her Grace has shut the Kingsfort for a reason," said Blade, grilling his portion as well. "Sometimes the best thing you should do is wait."
Nardine took some time to grasp what he was hinting at. "Wait for the whole fortress to collapse, you mean?"
"Two months ago, the guards patrolling the perimeter of the Kingsfort reported another collapse. It seems it won't be the last we hear of."
So, her mother's military advisor did suggest that they should wait for the Accursed Fort to fall apart on its own. That's not waiting. That's reluctance, she almost said. If that was the kind of advice Sir Blade gave to the royal court, Nardine shouldn't be surprised by the abysmal condition of the forts she had visited so far.
"Speaking of waiting." She took another bite. "How long should we wait for your knights to return?"
* * *
The knights never returned.
It was midnight when Nardine and Sir Blade were waiting for the return of the second band of knights who had a different mission: find where the first band had gone.
Despite their long day, Sir Blade ordered his troops not to pitch a single tent until the knights returned. With the tension growing in the camp, Nardine found herself unsheathing Lionsclaw, the sword forged to her when she had turned fifteen. The flawless blade, which she only wielded in sparring, never slashed through real flesh or even scratched some skin. Would she stain it for the first time soon?
Nardine counted twenty horsemen returning to her company. That is the second band. Where is the first one? she wondered as she strode to catch up with Blade who hurried to his men.
"What is the meaning of this?" he asked harshly, gesturing toward the three sleeping men his knights had brought on the backs of their horses. They are not sleeping. They are dead, she realized.
"We found their corpses at the foot of the hill," the captain of the second band answered Sir Blade. "We couldn't find the other two."
Blade grabbed a torch from one of his men and inspected each of the three corpses from close range, Nardine following him to see what he was doing. "They were shot by arrows before they were finished by sword blades." He turned and faced his company. "We must head now straight to Neldon. I want a ring of thirty riders at the center of the battalion around the Crown Princess. Nobody breaks the formation for any reason. Understood?"
Nardine didn't like the fact that Blade totally ignored her when he gave his orders. A ring at the center? She had been riding at the vanguard next to him since they started their tour. "Wouldn't you tell me what is going on, Commander?"
"Those who are following us are not just scouts, milady. They are assassins." Blade forced through clenched teeth. "We must get you away from this place as fast as possible."
Blade didn't give her a chance to argue as he walked away from her to oversee his men. In a couple of minutes, the soldiers brought Nardine her warhorse and the thick ring of thirty knights was ready to move. To her surprise, Sir Blade joined the ring right before the whole battalion started its ride to the castle of Neldon. A ride that would take two days with a horde this large. "Easier, provided that you avoid injuries and bandits," were her father's words about his solo travels around Gorania, when he used to be a nobody from nowhere.
By order of the former commander, the battalion halted after sunrise to bury the three dead knights, which was an opportunity for the horses to replenish their strength.
"Those men deserved a proper burial in the castle of Neldon." Recalling her father's funeral, Nardine stared at the dead bodies her men were covering with dust.
"The air is warm, and their wounds are open," Sir Blade explained. "Their corpses will smell before we make it to the castle."
"By why here in the open? Under the sunlight?" She gazed at the plains around her before she nodded her chin toward the woods of Neldon on the horizon. "Wouldn't it be better to use the trees to cover our moves?"
"They can't surprise us in the open, milady." Sir Blade hadn't stopped looking around since last night, his voice tone impassive though. Guarding a princess tracked by assassins was surely a worrisome job, but the veteran commander knew how to conceal his nervousness very well.
"But they can in the woods, you mean?"
Blade peered at her, obviously weighing his next words. "The woods won't cover the moves of three hundred soldiers."
The horsemen resumed their march after burying their gone brothers. For the time being, Nardine didn't feel like going to Neldon to complete her ridiculous tour that ended up with three dead men. How could she make it up for their families?
Is it my fault in the first place? She meant no harm to anybody.
You have a hand in their death somehow. They could have been still alive had you listened to your mother and stayed by her side in the royal palace.
No, she couldn't be the one to blame. Those bastards who had shot the arrows and struck with their sword were the ones to blame. They must pay for this.
"So, we are at war with Rusakia now?" Nardine asked Sir Blade as they approached the woods of Neldon.
"Waging war is not a simple decision. We must make sure first about who could have sent those assassins."
"Who else could have?"
Blade grimaced before he came closer to her. "Your noble house is not short of enemies, milady," he said in a low voice. "Enemies from inside Bermania."
"I thought the southerners are our vassals now."
The Queen's military advisor looked around. "We need to have this conversation somewhere out of earshot. But first, let's make sure you reach Neldon safe and sound."
The noon sun was gentle when the horde marched through the woods. With another brief rest in the heart of the woods, they could make it to the castle at midnight. The riders accompanying her were quieter today than usual. The death of their brothers-in-arms must be looming large for them. What was on their minds now? Our lives are at stake because of a clueless child who wanders aimlessly in her mother's kingdom. They wouldn't dare to voice their concerns, of course. That clueless child was Lady Nardine, Queen Rona's firstborn and heiress. But inwardly, they must be cursing the day they had to serve a foolish teenage girl.
"Archers!" a horseman from the left flank cried. "We have a man down here!"
"Do not break formation!" Blade barked like she had never seen before. "They are trying to split us! Push onward!"
The horsemen, the knights of her ring included, were cantering now, leaving Nardine no option but to match their pace. More soldiers from the left flank hollered, and this time Nardine could hear the whizzing arrows. They are getting closer now, she thought. Blade, who realized that too, ordered his battalion to head north to get away from those archers.
"Sir Blade! Blade!" Nardine called out to him, but he either didn't hear her or just decided to ignore her cries. Nudging her warhorse to go faster, she made her way through the knights ringing her. "Make way for me!" she yelled at every knight trying to keep her in the damned ring formation.
"Lady Nardine, please. Don't break the ring." It sounded like an order rather than a plea. "Your safety is a priority now!"
Nardine urged her warhorse to gallop and suddenly turned the beast to cut Blade off, forcing his destrier to halt.
"Lady Nardine!" The furious commander glared at her. "This is not the time for—"
"You are letting those bastards hunt us down so cheaply. Why don't we charge at those archers to finish them off?"
"We will win in the end." He bared his teeth. "But I can't afford to lose you, milady."
"And I can't watch my men die without even giving them the right to fight back."
"That's what the bastards want us to do, but you don't understand! They are luring us into..."
Nardine waited for Blade to finish his tantrum. To be honest, the look on his face worried her.
"What is it?" she asked nervously.
"They stopped shooting." He looked around, listening. She listened too, but all she could hear was the rustling leaves and the nickering horses. Was the former commander discontent that the arrows' whizzes stopped?
"We must have become out of their range now."
"Or we have become where they want us to be." Blade sniffed then cursed. "Tar."
"What?"
"We must get out of these woods now." Blade advanced and pulled her horse by its bridle, forcing it to turn toward the east. "Go! Go! Go! " He slapped the butt of her horse, urging it to gallop. "Everybody! Follow me!"
Nardine was still trying to grasp the situation when she saw something falling from the sky. One second later, she realized it was a fire arrow. Two seconds later, she realized it was just the first of many.
Three seconds later, the gates of hell opened in the woods of Neldon.