Chapter 25—Defying the Master and King
The knights walk slowly back toward the training ring. They are drained of energy and are dirty and wet and exhausted. Arthur blinks at the sight—Lara walking strongly forward, hair crumpled from being in water and just a bit of dirt on her while the strong noblemen lag behind. Sir Leon is just behind her, tired but nearly as much as the other men.
"Lara I wanted you to train them—not kill them," Arthur jokes.
Lara did not think it was funny. She walks right past him and picks up a bow and arrow.
"We are not finished!" she yells out before they head back for the castle. They do not groan as Arthur expected. They stop and look at her for further instructions.
"One man come forward," she calls out.
They hesitate and then a man—just barely a man who looks more like a farmer's son than a nobleman's—walks forward with his chin held high. Lara gestures him toward a tree. He stands there with his arms at his side.
"Turn your back to me," she says.
"No I'll stay forward," he says.
Lara smiles coyly and nods to him. "Very well," she agrees, happy with his response. Then she raises her bow and shoots—it nails the tree just above the man's golden head.
Lara grins and nods to him. He smiles. "What is your name, Sir Knight?" she asks.
"Darion of Carland."
Lara grins and gestures him forward. "He has learned," she calls out to the others. "Follow Sir Darion's example. You may leave for the day. Return tomorrow at sunset."
The men sigh and disperse. Darion meets with his friends with a noble smile. Lara puts the bow back as the knights pick up their things.
"I'm guessing it went well?" Arthur says.
"It could have gone better," she says. "But they're learning."
"Good."
Lara begins to walk toward the castle without another word to Arthur.
"Lara," Arthur calls. Lara looks over her shoulder. "We're going hunting tomorrow with the arrival of Prince Foray and Princess Sansa of Caspar. Will you join?"
Lara thinks about the familiarity of the names and decides against her initial deliberation. "No," Lara says. "Give the Highnesses my regards."
"I'd like you to go, Lara," Arthur says a little sternly.
"Oh, excuse me," she mocks walking toward him. "I wasn't aware that it was an order. I thought it was a suggestion."
"It was."
"Then why do you continue to ask?"
Arthur stares down at her. "Because I think it would be good for you."
"Oh, yes," she says dryly. "Killing more of God's innocent creatures will make me feel better." Arthur stares at her. "The screams of a dying animal will make the screams of those I've killed go away! They will fade to nothing—underground just as their bodies did. And it will make the memories I have—of death and destruction that I was the cause of—disappear into thin air as if by magic. Oh wait!—that wouldn't work, would it? Not on me."
Lara turns on her heel to walk away from Arthur when she sees Merlin. She stops in her tracks and her hand goes to her core where she feels the pain. Merlin is looking at her not with pity, but with equal pain for her own suffering. Lara swallows at the thickness of her throat and the sting behind her eyes.
She lowers her head and stalks forward toward the castle in the opposite direction of Merlin. She knows he is following her. When she reaches her chambers she falls into one of the chairs and presses her hands to her forehead. Merlin puts his hands on her shoulders and she feels hot wetness fall from her eyes.
"I wish I could make it go away," Merlin says softly.
"Yea, I wish you could too," she says in a choked manner.
Merlin sits down next to her and looks at her puffy blue eyes. She looks at him then and feels that maybe he can make it go away. She opens her mouth and doesn't stop telling him.
She tells him everything from Lara to Mortis—from the ends of Odin's Kingdom to the edges of kingdoms unknown—from the Mediterranean to the North Sea and back again.
—Mortis sat next to Bronwyn on a lesser chair than he or Aldren's. The men were fighting for her; for the right to father her children. There had been no deaths, but plenty of blood. That Bronwyn could not stop.
The unconscious or mortally wounded men were pulled away from the ring to be tended to. All that was left was Bran, Roddick, Jon, and Kardyn.
Bran sliced Kardyn's back calf and dislocated his jaw, knocking the old man out. As Kardyn was pulled away Roddick was thrown away from the ring by the heavily muscled Jon. Roddick recited a powerful spell that shot fire from his hand. The flames licked Jon's legs, but Jon-large, heavy Jon-kicked dust up into Roddick's eyes while putting out the trail of fire. Roddick was knocked out by Jon. Bran and Jon began to fight once Roddick was carted off. Bran was faster but Jon was larger.
"See how sought out you are, Morits?" Bronwyn laughed. "These men would die to have you in their bed."
Mortis swallowed. "But I would die before I had them in mine," she growled.
Bronwyn and Aldren looked at her. Bronwyn grabbed her chin and Mortis did not react with him as she did with anyone else. Her hands clasped the arms of her chair.
"What did you say to me, child?" he hissed angrily in her face.
"Let go of me, Bronwyn," she warned. Bronwyn blinked.
"I will do with you as I please," he spat. "If I wanted you in my bed I would. But because I see you as a daughter, my sweet prodigy, you have yet to visit it." He moved her head in the direction of the battle. Bran was winning. "Now you will be in your champion's bed and there will be no contestation. Do you understand that?
"Let go of me, Bronwyn," she repeated.
"I release you on my will!" he yelled in her face. The assassins go silent even though Bran just won. He stood over her with authority and she glared up at him under her eyelashes.
"You cannot tell me anything, child!" he declared. "I am your master—you will do as I please when I wish you to! If I say run until your feet bleed—you do so! If I say whore yourself to every assassin in this order—you spread your legs! If I say die—you die! Now do you understand me?"
Mortis glared at him and stood slowly. She did not break their eye contact. They glared at each other for another moment when Bronwyn grabbed her chin again roughly.
Instead of leaving him be as she normally did, she grabbed his wrist, twisted it to the side and elbowed his chest in one swift movement. As he fell backward three assassins went upon Mortis.
Mortis dislocated the jaw of the first, disarmed and killed the second, and grabbed a handful of hair of the third. She pressed the third assassin's head forward and kneed it so he began to bleed.
Mortis pushed him over into the ring and turned on her heel so she was facing Bronwyn's sword.
She glared up at him and he at her, breathing heavily.
"Don't make me kill you, Mortis," he breathed angrily.
Mortis looked down at her reflection in his blade—her eyes had no positive emotion. They had only anger, pain and hate. She hated the look on her face. So she looked away from her own reflection and back up at Bronwyn. She wrapped her hand around the blade so her palm began to bleed. Bronwyn blinked at her wound while the blood trickled onto his sword and to the floor.
"You will not be the death of me, Bronwyn," she hissed.
Four assassins then grabbed Mortis from behind and clapped her in irons. She was dragged away from the scene to the screaming dungeons—yet she felt it was the most silence she'd been given in years.
Mortis understood at that moment.