At once, Ayla was something she hadn't been for days: wide awake.
In one single motion, she was on her feet and through the door. Behind her, she could hear Reuben call out, “Ayla! Ayla, wait.”
But she couldn't waste a second. Outside of her room, there stood a guard, leaning against the wall, his eyes half-closed. He didn't seem to have noticed anything. The small hand that made contact with his face in a resounding slap changed that.
“W-what? Milady?”
Her arm quivering, hand stinging from the slap, Ayla pointed out of a window towards the outer wall of the castle from where the sound of the alarm bell reached their ears. “Don't you hear that? Get moving! Assemble the guards! If you're not at the outer gates in three minutes, you will regret the day you were born, understand?”
The man blanched. “Yes, Milady! As you command, Milady!”
They both hurried down the corridor, down the steps, and out into the courtyard. There, their paths split. The guard ran to wake all the soldiers not roused by the alarm bell. Ayla had another route in mind. She ran directly towards the source of the racket.
For that was all it was now: a racket of disjointed metallic clanks, mixed with the ringing of the bell. Sir Isenbard's shouts had ceased. Fear gripped Ayla’s heart as she thought of the possible reasons behind that, fear that only increased when the sharp clangs of swords on swords rose above the clamor.
“Ayla! I said wait, damn you!”
Reuben’s voice again, farther behind now. He might be the faster runner, but he was in full armor, and she knew all the quickest ways through the castle.
“Damn you yourself, Reuben Rachwild!” she growled. If he thought she was going to stop now, with Isenbard and her men in danger, he was very much mistaken.
Doubling her efforts, she sprinted down the inner courtyard and towards the gate. Her feet still hurt from her bare-footed run the other night, but she didn't care. Something terrible was going to happen. She knew it. She could feel it in her bones.
“Ayla! Wait, you…” Reuben’s voice again, finishing with a garbled string of oaths and expletives. Ayla felt a tinge of relief that she was too far away by now to understand a single word.
Before her, the two doors of the huge oak gate stood wide open. Apparently, the guards here had not been as tired as the one in front of her room. But they were just two. Two, she was sure, wouldn't be enough.
Then she stepped through the archway and knew she had been right. Something terrible was going to happen—or rather, it was already happening.
Enemy soldiers were swarming all over the wall, yelling, waving torches and wicked-looking guisarmes glistening with blood. There were so many! For one moment, she asked herself how they had gotten there, then she saw the ends of the ladders poking above the outer wall.
Mercenaries were working on securing them to the crenels with hooks and ropes, while others rushed up over the castle wall like locusts. New ladders appeared besides the ones already placed.
One. Two. Three…
Ayla stopped counting; it was a waste of time. Instead she looked for the one thing that now stood between her and total defeat: the men on the wall wearing the blue and white of the house of Luntberg.
She spotted them—and her heart sank. There were six. Six men only, standing against dozens. They had taken up positions on both sides of the enemy, three on each side, standing shoulder to shoulder, trying desperately to prevent the enemy from spreading, trying even more desperately to get to the ladders and cut off the steady supply of reinforcements that clambered over the wall.
But if there only were six, and all of them were guards…where was Sir Isenbard?
“For Luntberg! Die, you cowards! Die!”
Ayla heard the shout. A moment later, she had spotted him. Like a silver-gray whirlwind, he moved through the enemy, striking soldiers down left and right. He was certainly having a lot more luck progressing towards the ladders than the soldiers were.
“For Count Thomas!”
No, Ayla corrected herself as he felled an enemy with a swift, back-handed blow. Luck probably didn't have anything to do with it. His sword impaled foe after foe, and soon he had reached one of the ropes that bound a ladder to one of the crenels. But as soon as he started hacking at it, several soldiers attacked him from all sides, and he had to stop to defend himself. More soldiers came, not just from the front, right and left, but also from behind as more and more climbed up the long ladder onto the allure.
Isenbard's movements were getting slower, his strokes less certain, his movement less agile. He was being overwhelmed. Where were the soldiers? Why wasn't anyone coming to help?
She spotted the two gate-guards at the foot of the tower, fumbling around at the door.
“What are you waiting for?” she shouted. “Open it, get up there, and help them.”
“We can't, Milady!” One of them yelled back, the desperation obvious in his voice. “They must have jammed the door from the inside! They want to assemble a large force on the wall before they confront us!”
On top of the wall, Isenbard was being surrounded by dozens of enemies. He fought valiantly, but even Ayla, inexperienced in sword fighting as she was, could tell he was hard beset. Then, a moment later, the mass of enemies had swallowed him, and he was out of her sight.
“Isenbard!” she called in desperation.
There was no answer.
Instead, footsteps came up from behind her. The guards, finally? She whirled around. No, it wasn't the guards. It was something far better. Never in her life had Ayla been so glad to see an angry face.
“Ayla, what the hell were you thinking! You could have been—”
“Reuben!”
She clutched his hand, cutting him off, and then pointing up to the wall.
“Isenbard is up there.”
He didn't waste any time with unnecessary questions. He just asked the one that was essential.
“Then why is the door to that damn tower still locked?”
“It's jammed,” she cried in desperation, and the guards nodded to confirm her words. He shook off her arm and took a deep breath.
“Not for much longer. Stand back.”
“What do you intend to d—”
“Stand back, I say!”
For once, she did as he asked without protest. The guards were already twenty yards away. Reuben threw her a last look, a look full of determination, fervor, and…love?
Then he began to run.
Hurtling down the courtyard, he gathered speed and momentum with every leap. Ayla stared at him in surprise. Did he just want to get to the door quickly? If so, he was overdoing it. The way he was running, like a mountain ram gathering speed for a duel with an opponent, he wasn't just going to get to the tower door, he was going to crash right into—
And then she realized what he wanted to do.
“No!” she cried. “Reuben, don't! You'll smash every bone in your—”
With an almighty crash, Reuben collided with the oak door. It was ripped from its hinges, and he disappeared into the darkness. There was another crash and the sound of something splintering. Ayla fervently hoped that it was a piece of wood, not Reuben’s bones.
The two guards cautiously approached the open doorway. Ayla was not far behind.
“Well?” she shouted at them as they peered into the dark interior of the tower.
One of them turned and shook his head.
“He's not there anymore, Milady. He’s gone.”
That meant he must be on his way up already. Ayla could hardly imagine the force it must have taken to rip that door out of its hinges, the pain that must have caused. Well, pain it might have caused to anyone but Reuben.
Reuben was something…special.
A new, sudden bout of fear shot through her.
What am I doing? How could I have sent him up there? He’s completely alone! There is no aid in sight, nobody else who could help defend the wall! I’m a fool! An infernal fool!
Hesitatingly, she looked up at the threatening edifice of stone above her. Should she go herself? But deep in her heart, Ayla knew she would not be able to help.
Well, not by brute force, maybe. But perhaps she could stop panicking and start using her brain!
“You!” She nodded to the two guards. “Go to the tower west,” she pointed towards the west, “and east of here. Go up there on the wall and check that nobody else is trying to climb up there. If you find something, a rope, a ladder, anything—cut it or smash it to bits. Keep patrolling the wall all around until I say otherwise!”
The two guards bowed.
“Yes, Milady!”
They were off without another word. Ayla retreated a few steps and anxiously stared up at the wall. From inside the tower, she could hear thundering footsteps that were even audible over the wild clamor of the fight.
Ayla waited with bated breath. Did that mean what she hoped it meant?
Her agony of waiting lasted a few seconds longer. Then the upper door of the tower burst into splinters, and Reuben broke out onto the walkway.
He was no whirlwind, like Isenbard. He was a thunderstorm. He did not weave through the enemy. He cut them to pieces.
When his great sword connected with an enemy, whether with the edge or the flat of the blade, it meant death. Those who were not cut in half were thrown off the wall right and left, like so many autumn leaves blown away by an approaching tempest.
With a thunderous crash, the first enemy slammed into the ground beside her. Ayla twitched and staggered back, fearing that the man might rise again—but he just lay there, twisted into an unnatural tangle of limbs.
From above her, she heard an inhuman growl and quickly looked up again to see Reuben, his face contorted into the most fearsome mask of devilry she had ever seen, rapidly plowing his way through his enemies towards the ladders.
The mercenaries tried to encircle him, to grab him, to trip him. Nothing worked. He was an unstoppable force of nature.
Two more steps, and he was at the first ladder. His sword cut through the ropes holding it to the wall and the man who was busy attaching them in a single blow. With his left arm, almost casually, the red knight thrust the ladder away from the wall. There was a moment of terrible, silent movement. Ayla could feel rather than see the ladder fall beyond the wall, and then a crunch announced the death of a dozen men crushed beneath hard wood and the weight of their own bodies.
Reuben moved in quick succession from one ladder to another, not seeming to care much whether he cut through rope or wood or human flesh. There was something strangely fascinating about the way he moved, and Ayla could not look away, though she sometimes wished she could. For a moment, she thought that this was what it must have been like for the masses in the arenas of the old heathen Romans to watch wild animals tear prisoners apart. The fascination of inevitable death.
But when she saw Reuben throw three men from the wall with a single blow, she corrected that view. The prisoners in the arena had probably had a better chance.
“Lady Ayla!”
Startled, she looked over her shoulder.
Guards were running from the barracks, coming towards her, Captain Linhart in the lead. Without a word, Ayla pointed up to the wall where Reuben was fighting. The Captain's eyes widened for a moment.
“God’s breath! He—“
Then he brought himself back under control, and drew his sword. “Your orders, Milady?”
“Go.”
She didn't need to say anything else. He motioned to his men, and they disappeared into the tower and up the stairs.
Reuben didn't even seem to notice their arrival. He seemed intent on personally slicing every mercenary on the wall into tiny little pieces and, from what Ayla could see, was making a good job of it.
The enemies didn't seem to notice Linhart and his men either. They were fully busy trying not to get killed by Reuben. When that didn’t work out, they were busy being killed by him anyway. And then they were busy being dead.
Finally, what remained of the force on the wall turned and fled, running toward the only remaining ladder leaning against the castle wall. Reuben came after them—not like an avenging angel, no, he was far too terrible for that—rather like an avenging demon who had the full fury of hell at his command.
He reached the ladder just as the last man had swung himself over the wall and started to climb down. Reuben beheaded him without hesitation. There were screams and curses from his comrades below as the head of the mercenary bumped down the ladder. Reuben didn't pay any attention. He made short work of the ropes attaching the ladder to the castle wall and then thrust it back with a mighty shove.
The ladder sailed into the darkness of the night. There was a last chorus of screams, a thud—and then silence.
Ayla stood there, gazing up at the wall for a few moments, still caught in a paralysis of fear. She couldn't believe it was over. That had been it?
The enemy had been repelled, and even comparatively easily. All of Linhart's soldiers seemed still to be standing. But then why did this scene feel so wrong? Why, at the sight of the group standing up there on the wall, did dread flood her heart?
And suddenly she knew why.
Reuben was standing.
Linhart was, too.
And so were his men.
But Isenbard was not.
Then, Reuben lowered his head, and as he looked down at the walkway, looking at something Ayla couldn’t see, a grim expression spread over his face, replacing the manic grin that had burned there during battle.
No. No, no, no. This could not be.
Ayla's feet started moving without her consciously realizing it. She was into the tower and halfway up the stairs before she even thought, He'll be all right. Even if he is hurt, he'll be all right. I'm a healer, right? I can heal him. He'll be all right.
Her footsteps quickened. And quickened some more. By the time she had reached the top of the stairs, she had broken into a run. The figures of Linhart’s soldiers stood around her, hazy and indistinct. Something was obscuring her vision. Something wet. Tears?
But why would she cry? Isenbard would be all right. He had to be. He would step out from behind one of the soldiers where he had been hiding and smile at her.
Ayla looked from one of the soldiers to the next. None of them looked like they were hiding Isenbard behind their backs. But, for some reason, they all looked solemn.
Then, two of them stepped aside, and she saw him.