Chapter 10: The Blood-Streaked Flower

 

“Deceit. Deceit, and shame, and insult.” With each percussive word, the hand that held the sword twitched slightly, as if the baron were trying very hard not to simply kill the wizard there and then. “You invade my castle with your useless ideas and two-faced words of peace, and then embarrass me before my enemies. Was that your game all along, wizard? Show them that our forces are so pathetic that a bastard wench must raise a sword in our defense? Whose side are you on?”

“She has talent.” Isaac’s voice was quiet, grim, and resolute.

“A woman cannot wield a sword!” the baron bellowed. “You defile my house with your insolent ideas. Hersch!” He gestured to an attendant page. “Fetch a messenger. Then go to my private weapons room and bring me the black box that sits in the southeast corner.”

Rivka studied him, looking for an opening, but he had been a lifelong warrior and the hand that held her blade showed no sign of weakness. Instead, she said simply, “Uncle, I can fight for you. You and I both know it’s useless for me to add that I wish it wasn’t true, but the Apple Valley troops are always a danger. I promise that I can help you repel the next attack.”

“Useless -- your promise is useless!” screamed the baron, close enough to Isaac’s face to cause the stoic, stony mask of anger to momentarily flinch. “You would collapse at what I’ve seen in one half-minute of ordinary battle.”

“Uncle--”

He put up his other hand. “Save your breath. Guards, hold my niece.”

Before Rivka could dart out of the way, four strong men appeared from the shadowed corners and grabbed her arms and legs. She wriggled with all her might, but none of her heavy, muscled pushes could break her free. There were simply too many guards.

“Wizard, you have interfered with the supervision of my valley, you have interfered with the peace of my home, and now you have interfered with my family -- especially this fatherless girl whose upbringing has been my burden these many years.” The baron sounded like a judge passing down a verdict. “Of course her weak woman’s mind would believe whatever twaddle you told her about dead kings and theoretical battle plans based on dreams.”

“You would dig in a gold mine and see only potatoes,” Isaac growled. “And you would swallow them whole, bitterly regretting your misfortune while filling your stomach with countless riches.”

“Why, you--”

“I hope you choke on them.”

“I have a sword to your throat! Your words mean nothing.”

But to Rivka, bound and struggling, they meant everything, especially as one who had been called Daughter of Beet-greens. She knew in her heart, with a certainty as real as the air in her lungs, that Isaac valued her as nobody else had. Beets and potatoes come up from the earth and taste of earth. Gold comes out of the dirt but shines like sunlight.

The messenger entered, followed by the page and his cargo. “Sire, you sent for me?”

“Yes. Report this message to the Wizard Order in the mountains,” said the baron officiously. “I’ve found their wizard representative completely unacceptable and demand his removal immediately. If they insist on replacing him -- if they must nursemaid me -- tell them to send me someone who isn’t so insufferably smug”-- he glared at Isaac -- “and who doesn’t constantly quote ancient histories, and who won’t disobey my rules in my own castle! You never should have even spoken to the girl, fool wizard.”

The messenger cleared his throat. “Sire, was that all?”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes. Just tell them to get here as soon as possible to collect him.”

“Collect him?” Rivka’s heart pounded in her ears.

The baron’s response was to gesture at his page for the black box.

Rivka’s glance met Isaac’s. In that moment of terror she memorized his eyes. For a moment, she was able to forget the room, the sword, the baron, the four strong men holding her, and the nightmare she was sure would follow.

The baron’s free hand emerged from the black box holding a small vial of liquid. “Wizard, I don’t believe for a moment you would actually leave if I banished you awake. You’re a sneaky, slithering, treacherous, interfering--”

“What is that?” Rivka demanded.

“Shut up, girl! It’s sleep... sleep in a bottle.” He held it up for her. “He’s going to drink it, and then he won’t be able to cause any more trouble until the other wizards come to get him and take him far away.”

Isaac pursed his lips and glanced up at the baron defiantly. He lifted one of his pointed eyebrows and closed his lips tightly.

Rivka noticed his hands at his side, slowly tensing into action. She silently prayed that his magical whips of light would be swift and effective. Could he use them to free himself and get out of the room before the baron could swing his sword?

“Guards, knives,” said the baron, unexpectedly.

In one confusing moment, light flared from Isaac’s fingers, and the guards holding Rivka suddenly held daggers to her flesh. “You would harm your own blood?” he growled at the baron in horror.

“Of course I wouldn’t kill her,” explained the baron. “But there are things those men can do with their daggers that I know you don’t want them to do to her.” He grabbed the wizard’s right arm and pulled back his sleeve roughly to expose the scar across his wrist and forearm.

“You monster,” Isaac growled. Rivka had never seen him so bitterly angry, almost as if he were buried under an avalanche of his own rage.

“Drink the cordial like a good little irritating meddler,” said the baron, “and Rivka won’t be harmed.”

“No!” Her voice was like a hawk’s scream.

“Shut up, girl!”

“Get those things away from me!” Rivka hissed at the guards. They were trying to be extra threatening by showing her how sharp the daggers were, shaving off bits of hair on her arms. Her fists clenched, and she longed for an army.

“Isaac--”

The wizard looked at her straight on, ignoring the baron completely for a moment. “I believe in you.”

Then he tilted his head slightly and opened his lips.

Without taking his eyes off Rivka, he let the baron’s rough hands tip the contents of the vial into his mouth.

“No!” Rivka’s jaw shook. Everything shook. “I’ll find you.”

The wizard’s blue eyes closed, beholding last an image of tall, blonde Rivka, trembling pridefully in the grasp of her captors. He fell limp into the arms of more guards who had turned up at the baron’s gesture.

“No, you won’t,” said the baron calmly. “Guards, get her into her room and lock the door from the outside. Make sure she gets regular meals.”

Stuffing the frantic, fighting Rivka into her room was like trying to bail out a boat that was leaking in fourteen places, but the guards managed it somehow and then bundled themselves off to dinner. She wore herself out banging on the door and then collapsed onto the floor with her hands once again clenched into fists.

She rushed to her window. It was too high to make a practical escape, despite the deep pond just beneath. Studying the landscape just outside the castle, her eye caught movement on the ground. What was that, if not the guards carrying the unconscious wizard into one of the wooden towers that had been built as storage for last year’s exceptionally bountiful crops? She stared at the strange, horrifying procession, torturing herself with every moment of beholding Isaac in such a state. He was beautiful in repose -- that repose should be with her, not as punishment for her friendship!

The guards disappeared with their prisoner into the tower, and before long she saw them in the topmost window, two or three stories up, fussing around in the room. Probably making room for him amid the sacks of beets.

Realizing she wasn’t going to be able to watch him anymore -- they must have lain him down on the floor -- she looked around the room and tried to plan an escape.

Unfortunately, the guards burst in a little while later with her food, interrupting her knotted bedsheet rope scheme. She wasn’t quick enough to hide it under the bed in time, and they took it away with them. They left part of a chicken and overcooked kasha varnishkes in its place, but it was a poor trade.

She ate for strength, not pleasure.

 

***

 

“Rivkeleh.”

“Mammeh, isn’t there any way you can soften his heart and get me out of here?”

Mitzi sighed through the door. “He’s right -- you can’t keep getting involved in these dangerous things that you don’t understand.”

“I do understand.”

“You say you want to fight. You could get killed out there.”

“Has it occurred to you that I might be good enough that I would actually survive a battle?”

“Your uncle has tried to give you all that a woman needs in life -- a nice bed to sleep in, good food, pretty clothing, social position -- which, need I remind you, you and I are not naturally blessed with, thanks to my behavior at your age.”

She still thinks I’m fifteen. “I’m not you, Mammeh. Those are all the things you need.”

 

***

 

Several hours later, Rivka had taken up position at the window to gaze out at the tower through the cool night air. There was nothing to watch, but she felt closer to Isaac if she could at least see his prison. So deep was she in her thoughts -- of his voice, his unspoken love, his sacrifice -- that it was several minutes before she noticed the men on horseback riding into the grounds. She squinted into the inky night, trying to see--

Someone else raised the alarm, and then she realized what was going on. Their enemies from the other valley. What timing! Was her whole life to collapse like a poorly constructed model house of sticks in one climactically awful night?

If only she could get out of the room and help fight. Not that she had her sword anymore, of course. Her uncle had awarded it to Lev, one of the guards who had been shaving the hairs off her arm with his dagger. Her sword -- that had Isaac’s name on it.

Women were rushing around in the passageway screaming, and she heard the heavy clomp of men’s boots as they prepared for battle. “Let me out! Let me fight!” she screamed at nobody, and nobody answered.

Hastening back to the window, she saw that a group of attackers holding torches were spreading flames across the land. Reaching her hands out the window at them as if she could hold them back with sheer will, she tried to pray them away from the tower where Isaac lay. “Please,” she cried uselessly into the night. “He’s asleep. He can’t escape. Oh, please!”

It was unlikely the men downstairs had any idea that they were destroying anything beyond resources. The inexorable torches moved toward the tower and kissed it with flame. The structure was constructed out of wood, and caught easily.

“No!” Rivka grabbed the sides of the window with both hands and wriggled through, then launched herself from its height into the pond below. She had no room in her heart to fear the fall. All her fear was for that dearest heart trapped high in the burning tower.

She hit the water with a violent splash. When she lifted her head above the surface and wiped the droplets and dripping hair from her face, what she saw by firelight turned her blood to a frozen poison.

The tower...

Rudimentary remainders of the first story were still standing, as black sticks amidst a forest of orange flame. But the upper stories were completely gone. Ash was everywhere. Men ran and horses galloped back and forth, thundering over the quiet rumble-crackle of the fire.

Rivka walked out of the pond, her wet dress not the only shackle weighing her down. She kept her eyes on the ruined tower, unable to ask--

The ash-laden wind whipped up, chilling her and plastering her face with a cloth rag with singed edges that had flown about on its eddies. She pulled it away from her face only to shudder in fright.

It was a piece of Isaac’s cassock.

She gasped as if she were breaking, her legs weak and shaky and barely holding her up, and then screamed. A horrible feeling devoured her stomach and threatened to rip the breath from her throat.

Before she had time to think, a warrior wearing the Apple Valley crest approached her on horseback. He made as if to draw his sword, but his unusually large horse, most likely spooked by the fire, suddenly reared and threw him off. With one quick look back at the surprised invader, lying on his backside in the mud, she leapt onto the horse’s back. It didn’t occur to her that a spooked horse might not like her either.

Once on the horse, she wrapped the cassock fragment around her hair and knotted it. She could shatter into a thousand pieces later for all she cared, but right now, without a way to defend herself, her first idea was to get out of the fray and back into the castle.

She rode away from the confusion at the burning crop towers and toward the castle entrance. The battle had been here already and moved on, and the last few steps of the horse were in between corpses -- those of her own family’s guards, but also those of invaders from the other valley. They lay here and there all mixed together, all human in death.

The main entrance was still a confusion of swords and shouting, and since she still had no sword, she guided the horse into the relative safety of the shadow made by a side doorway. There, she took a deep breath and looked around her.

A glint of metal on the mud caught her eye.

Lev lay faceup and lifeless, and beside him was Rivka’s sword.

Without another thought, she hopped off the horse and grabbed it. For a moment she could do nothing but clutch its hilt with both hands, and then suddenly she broke into bone-quaking sobs. Isaac. Never to spar with him again -- never to see his face again, hear his voice, all lost--

Focus.

She looked back down at Lev’s corpse. His battle armor of leather and metal looked relatively undamaged by the fate that had felled him. After placing the sword against the corner of the doorway for safekeeping, she dragged the body into the shadows and quickly removed every useful bit of battle-kit.

Caring nothing for modesty in that strange night, she cast off her dress and donned the pants, the tunic, and the helmet.

The sword felt perfect in the scabbard she now wore across her waist.

Jumping back onto the back of the enormous mare, she raised her sword and dashed into the thick of the battle.

It wasn’t long before she found the baron. He was bravely holding the doorway against three men at once -- despite being an awful person he was indeed a good fighter. But eventually a fourth invader fought his way through the lesser guards and tipped the balance.

The baron gritted his teeth and plowed into them, surely knowing that he risked his life.

“Hyahhh!” Rivka shouted, galloping forward on her horse. She helped her uncle to drive back the four men, then fought at his side for the rest of the battle. At one point, she even sliced off an arm that was about to stab the baron in the kidneys. She didn’t know whose arm it was, and she didn’t have time to care. The warrior spirit Isaac had brought out in her was fully born, and there was no putting the flower back into the bud, that flower that was now streaked deep red with the blood of her enemies.

Nobody had any idea who she was.

When the thing was done, and their enemies had been driven away for the time being, she stalked into the Great Hall where the baron was feeding the survivors thick, awful coffee and an impromptu breakfast of boiled potatoes. “Uncle,” she said, breathlessly, removing her helmet. “So you see, I can fight.”

The baron’s weary but satisfied face twisted into a fiery scowl. “What -- that was you out there?”

“I saved your life, Uncle.” Her smile fled, and the face of an adult woman began to replace it. “You saw--”

“I certainly hope none of the surviving Apple Valley fighters saw! How could you betray me like that?”

“Betray you?” She glared at him. “I kept an enemy sword from stabbing you in the back! I wouldn’t let those men overpower you. Do you value your own life so little--”

“Come on, girl, I know what you’re really upset about. Don’t pretend.”

“No, Uncle, this is not about what happened to Isaac.” Several of the warriors eating around the room had stopped mid-bite and were watching the show. Rivka had always been headstrong, but never had she displayed such deadly calm and resolve in her outbursts. “He died because you imprisoned him, and yet I stayed to fight for you, to defend this keep, because this has been my home and I am part of this family, whether you like it or not. He died because of you and yet I defended you. And for that, you reject me?” The baron moved his mouth as if he wanted to interject, but she kept talking, her words fueled by the stinging nettles in her heart. “I reject you, Uncle. Thank you for my childhood. You don’t deserve my talents. And you certainly do not deserve my respect. I. Am. Done. Here. Go shit in the sea.”

Mitzi dashed out at her from a corner, a look of desperate pain across her face. “Rivka!”

“Mammeh, I’ll send word. I love you, and some day if I settle down to guard one keep -- which is what I’ve always wanted”-- she glared at the baron -- “I will send for you. And you’ll still have a warm bed and good food, without his disdain.”

There was one moment, during which nobody in the room -- Rivka, Mitzi, the baron, the soldiers, the servants -- moved at all. Then, with a final nod at her mother, Rivka turned around and stalked out, her sword at her side.

She lifted herself onto the huge mare and rode away. To her surprise, the mare reared suddenly and sprang up into the sky. The next thing she knew, she was riding a Dragon...