Carrion crows, she thought.
But then, one black shape began to distinguish himself from the others. He was getting larger. Ayla realized that whoever it was, he was moving up to the castle. Alone.
The man spurred his horse to a lazy trot and advanced up the slope. The flames behind him threw his shadow all over the mountainside and against the castle wall, making him appear like a black giant. Yet as he came closer, Ayla could see that he was in fact not wearing black—it had only appeared thus, in contrast with the brightly burning flames.
In fact, he was wearing red.
Red as fire.
Red as blood.
Ayla watched with fear and revulsion as the red robber knight, the same robber knight who had taken Eleanor from her, the same robber knight who now had burnt her village to the ground, brought his horse to a halt only a few dozen yards away from the castle wall and looked at her.
It had come down to this.
Him and her.
He raised his hand.
“Greetings, Milady. So nice to see you again.”
Friend and Foe
“I can't say I feel the same,” Ayla replied. She wondered how she managed to keep her voice as calm as it was. Inside, she felt like boiling. Or exploding. Or...
“Before you get any ideas,” Sir Luca said, “you should know that I come under a flag of truce.” He held up a white linen handkerchief. “Here, you see?”
“You call that a flag of truce?”
“Well, it's not very big, I admit, but it's white enough. I think it works.”
Ayla gritted her teeth. “I wasn't referring to the size of your flag, but rather to the fact that while we speak, your soldiers are setting my village ablaze!”
“Ah, but it is your village no longer, Milady. By right of conquest it belongs to the Margrave now. So my men can do whatever they damn well please.”
Ayla sucked in a breath. She was sorely tempted to call one of her archers and have him shoot this man. But she knew she wouldn't do it. She didn't have it in her to be dishonorable. And anyway, the Margrave would just send someone worse to replace him—though he would probably have to search for quite a while to find such an individual, if indeed one existed.
“Since you come here under a flag of truce,” she said, speaking the words with all the disgust she could muster, “what is it that you wish to discuss?”
“You have to ask? I thought it would be obvious.”
“Just pretend I'm very dumb.”
The red knight nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I think I could do that.”
She heard his suppressed laughter and again had to fight an urge to call for her soldiers. No, she wouldn't call them. She had to fight this battle on her own. It might not do for the men to hear what he had to say, or what she had to say to him in return.
“State your business, Sir Knight, or begone. What is it you want?”
“What I want? Why, to dictate the terms of your surrender, of course.”
“What?” Ayla stared at the metal-clad man in utter amazement. He, through the slits of his visor, stared just as fixedly back at her. “We have fought four battles so far,” she pointed out. “What makes you think that I would suddenly give up now?”
“Well, let me think...” He scratched the side of his helmet in mock preoccupation. “There's the fact that you've lost a major battle, that you are surrounded and cut off from any supply chains, that we still outnumber you ten to one, and that generally speaking, your situation has become completely hopeless. How about that?”
“You can take that and stuff it up the devil's derriere!” Ayla growled, her hands balled into fists. He was right. And the fact burned her from the inside. She would rather have died than admitted it.
“Dio mio, Milady is getting feisty. Well, perhaps this will persuade you: in his heavenly mercy, the Margrave Markus von Falkenstein has decreed that, in spite of your resistance, if you are willing to surrender, he will spare the miserable peasants who infest your castle at this very moment. If, however, you do not surrender and we are victorious, as we surely shall be, he will decimate them, as the ancient Romans used to do to their rebels.”
“Decimate?” Ayla's voice was hardly more than a whisper. But somehow the red robber knight heard it.
“Kill one in ten men.” Sir Luca shrugged. “A harsh but just punishment, don't you think?”
“And what guarantee do I have,” asked Ayla, her voice not as steady as it had been before, “that the Margrave will not inflict this 'just punishment' in any case?”
“Why, his word of honor, of course!”
“I see. Like the word of honor he gave when swearing friendship to the three other nobles whose lands he has since conquered?”
“Yes, Milady. Exactly like that.”
“Why are you even here?” Now her voice was firm again, cold and demanding. She could have sworn that, behind his visor, she saw teeth glitter in a grin.
“To let you see that you have no way of escape, Milady. Your fate doesn't belong to you anymore. It is in the Margrave's hands now. He may choose to have mercy, he may not. Personally, I think the latter more likely. But you can always hope. If you persist in this folly, however, trying to resist your future husband, you will only bring more harm down on yourself and your people. That I swear by every bone I've broken and deadly blow I've struck.”
Putting her hands on top of the parapet, Ayla leaned over the wall.
“I shall never give in!” Her voice was as hard as the rock beneath her feet. “Never! Not to a villain like you! Not to someone who kills others for money! Not to someone who burns the homes of innocent people. Not to a knight who disgraces his station by robbing defenseless women in the forest! Never!”
There were a few seconds of silence.
“Robbing defenseless women in the forest?” he asked, actually having the gall to sound surprised. “Maybe Milady is better informed than I about my many misdeeds, but as far as I know, I have never robbed anyone. I've always paid other people to do that for me. Much simpler.”
“Don't lie to me!” Ayla hissed. “What's the point? I'd recognize that armor of yours anywhere! There isn't another like it in the Empire!”
“This armor?” He looked down at himself. “You recognize it? Interesting. When was it that you were robbed, if I may ask?”
“As if you didn't know!”
“Just pretend for the moment that I'm very forgetful.”
“Very well, if you want to play games with me... It was the very same day that your master's herald came, making the same insolent demands as you just did.” She was about to say more on the subject of his insolence, when he interrupted her.
“Was it? Well, Milady, then this is a rare occurrence. It seems I am accused of a crime of which I am actually innocent.”
“What?”
“I,” said Sir Luca slowly and clearly, as if speaking to a child, “did not rob you that day in the forest. I didn't have this armor until a day later. My men pulled it off some fellow whom they shot down and left for dead in the forest—after he had slaughtered several lances of good men, I might add.”
His words, so obviously spoken with the conviction of utter truthfulness, left Ayla reeling. For a few moments, she didn't know what to think. And then, comprehension washed over her like ice-cold water.
A man without armor.
Alone in the forest.
A man who was muscled like an expert fighter.
A man strangely knowledgeable about all things military.
No, please, no, God, let me be wrong. Let me be wrong in this!
“This man,” she asked, her voice having lost all strength and now sounding strangely toneless, ringing in her ears like an echo from far away, “how many arrows did he have in his back?”
“How many arrows?” The red robber knight's surprise was evident. But no, not robber. Just red knight. He was not the robber knight. But someone else was. “You want to know how many arrows we shoot our enemies w
ith?”
“Yes, please,” she replied, her voice still sounding strange in her own ears. She was somewhere else, only listening to the things this young woman on the wall was saying. She was in a place of terror and uncertainty, a place as thin as a razor's edge. She would fall off one side or the other, depending on the answer of this man she hated.
“Three, I think. Though I would have to ask my men to check. Why? Would you prefer we used a different number of missiles?”
He was probably trying to mock her, some rudimentary part of her brain noted. But her mind, her heart, her self, did not care. She had fallen off the edge—and not in the right direction, the one she had desperately hoped for.
It was so abominably obvious now.
Three.
Three arrows.
Three arrows in the back.
A man with three arrows in the back.
A man in red armor, threatening her, robbing her of her friend, her Eleanor.
The red robber knight.
Reuben.
Without deigning to glance at Sir Luca one more time, she turned and began the descent down the wall.
“Milady! Lady Ayla!” Behind her, she heard the red knight shouting, but she didn't care. He was a pretender. He was not her foremost enemy. That title belonged to another.
*~*~**~*~*
Seething with rage, hurt, and humiliation, Ayla stormed up the steps to Reuben's room. Questions whirled in her mind like a maelstrom: Why did he hurt me like this? What is his game? Does he have any real feelings for me at all?
She wanted to laugh at herself for the last question. Or maybe punch herself. Or cry.
Feelings? For me?
He probably had been using her this whole time, trying to get what he wanted by smooth-talking her.
But then, said a very small and sad, but also hopeful voice in the back of her mind, why did he help? Why didn't he leave when he could have?
The voice was soon silenced. Too heavy were the hurt, the anger, the feeling of betrayal.
Ayla marched down the oh-so-familiar corridor and stopped in front of Reuben's door. All the questions in her mind had vanished now, had coalesced into a single, overriding, all-encompassing question: Was she going to do as she had vowed and hang Reuben from the highest tower of the castle?
Ayla stretched out her arm. Then, with all the force her slender body could muster, she threw open the door and entered the room.
THE END
of
THE ROBBER KNIGHT
The adventures of Reuben and Ayla will continue in the second volume of the Robber Knight Saga, The Robber Knight’s Love.
Now follows an insight into Reuben’s mysterious past.
Sins of the Son
Anno Domini 1230
“What do you mean, you won't do it?” the old duke roared. His fist came down on the table with a crash that made the platters rattle.
On the opposite side of the table, his son didn't appear to be the least bit concerned. He bit off another piece of mutton and said calmly, if not very clearly, due to the mutton: “I mean I won't do it, Father. I have other plans.”
“Other plans? You're my heir, Reuben, my eldest son!” Angrily, the duke waved a meat fork through the air and stabbed it at his son. The servants around him took a precautionary step backward. They knew the duke's aim to be less than perfect. Suddenly, they all seemed to be very eager to be on their way to the kitchens to fetch the next course. “One day, you will inherit all my lands. What other plans could you possibly have, except learning how to oversee our family's possessions? You're already a knight and of an age; it’s high time you learned all there is to know about tithes and clergy appointments and...”
Reuben rolled his eyes and spat a little bone back onto his plate. “More mutton!” he called to a servant. And to his father: “Bah! Don't even start! The mere thought makes me want to die from boredom.”
“Boredom?”
“Yes, boredom.” Reuben waved his fork towards the dining hall windows, through which one had a beautiful view of the valley beneath. “I'd much rather go adventuring. See the world, rescue damsels in distress, prove my valor, kill a few dragons—that sort of thing.”
“Kill dragons?” The old duke's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “There's no such thing as dragons!”
“There must be, Father. St George[50] killed a dragon.”
“He was a saint!”
“Don't you think I could be a saint, too?” Reuben asked and gave his father the charming smile that had already won him the heart of every maid and miller's daughter within twenty miles of the castle. It didn't have quite the same effect on his father.
The old duke growled disparagingly. “Saints have to swear off women,” he reminded his son.
Reuben gave this due consideration. “All right,” he conceded. “Maybe I won't become a saint, then. But I could still be a dragon slayer, a brave adventurer.”
“You could also do what you're told for once!”
“And where would be the fun in that, Father?”
The duke said something in answer that he would not have said had his wife been present. Only when the swearing had subsided did the servants in the kitchen dare peep through the door and start approaching with the next course—trout in wine sauce. Though one of the young kitchen maids carried an extra platter full of mutton for Reuben.
“Language, Father,” he said, giving the duke an admonishing look. Then, as the smell of the mutton met his nose, he breathed in appreciatively. “Ah. Excellent.” He gave the servant girl a beaming smile. “Thank you, Sophie, my dear. What would I do without you?”
The plump girl blushed to the roots of her hair and hurried off, covering her mouth with her hand. When the kitchen door shut behind her, they heard the muffled sound of excited giggling from the other side.
The duke growled. “And you dare admonish me? Did you have to do that?”
“Do what, Father?” Reuben asked with an innocent smile, while he busied himself loading mutton onto a piece of bread.
“Do... that. Your thing. With the girl.”
“All I did was smile at her.”
“Exactly. She won't be any good to the steward for at least a week now. She'll be busy plucking flowers and telling rumors to her friends and God knows what else. I've had complaints from the steward before about this.”
Reuben sighed. “Can't one be polite in this castle anymore? What the world has come to...”
Angrily, the duke plunged his knife into a piece of trout.
“Damn you! You've distracted me again! What were we talking about?”
“Courtesy to servants, Father.”
“No! We were talking about your ridiculous scheme of leaving the castle.”
Unimpressed by his father's renewed glare, Reuben took a swig of honey wine from his cup and then returned his concentration to the mutton. “Firstly, it is not ridiculous, and secondly, I don't just plan to leave the castle. I have a fancy to go to the Emperor's Court. I've heard there are marvelous tournaments and falcon hunts being held there, and...”
Again, the duke's fist came down on the table. Unfortunately, this time, the fist was still holding the knife. It buried itself inches deep in the wood, pinning a piece of fish with wine sauce that was still clinging to it to the table.
The duke didn't seem to notice. “The Emperor's Court? Emperor Friedrich?”[51]
“Is there another emperor?” Reuben inquired. “Dear me, I hadn't noticed.”
“But his court is in Palermo, in Sicily! Hundreds of miles away!”
“Yes. That will be a jolly journey, don't you think?”
To judge from the words the duke uttered next, his Grace didn't think so at all.
Reuben popped another piece of mutton into his mouth and chewed, thoughtfully. “We can be thankful that Mother is visiting Aunt Hildegard,” he pointed out. “I don't think she would appreciate the way you express your opinion.”
“Why the blazes can't
you prove your valor somewhere nearer home?” the duke demanded. “There is a tournament being held next week at Schweinfurt. Why not go there?”
“Pah.” Reuben spat another bone onto his platter, next to the first one. He didn't seem to have problems finding one whenever he wanted to express his disdain. “I went to the last one. A paltry affair. Only a few local knights, and not one of them could last a minute against me. I want adventure! To measure myself against the greatest fighters of all Christian kingdoms. And those are to be found only in Palermo. I've heard that Emperor Friedrich even has Saracen[52] fighters under his command. That would be a welcome challenge!”
“Yes, and they also say he's got a harem of Saracen women, which I'm sure would be an equally welcome challenge.” The duke's eyes narrowed. “That wouldn't have to do anything with your decision, would it?”
Reuben simply smiled.
With an angry grunt, the duke reached for his knife—only to discover it was still stuck in the table. It took him several attempts to retrieve it, and by then, his trout had grown cold.
“Next course!” he yelled in the direction of the kitchen doors.
Soon after, servants hurried towards him with a large platter of sausages and bread. The Duke grabbed one of the sausages and bit off the end, savagely.
“You can't really be set on going to Italy. It's folly!”
“No, jolly, not folly. If you remember correctly, I said it would be jolly.”
“Is it really for the tournaments or are you going for the women?”
“You know, I'm not sure why you always make me out to be such a lady's man,” Reuben admonished his father mildly. “I'm just looking for the perfect girl for me.”
“Well,” growled the duke, “nobody could accuse you of not being diligent in your search, with close attention paid to every subject you study. Very close attention.”
The young knight shrugged. “You can't find the perfect girl if you aren't looking, can you now? And as for your question—I am indeed going for the tournaments. And if I should happen to stumble over a dragon that needs to be slain or a damsel in distress on the way, I wouldn't say no to that either.”