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Chapter Fifteen: Two Brave KnightsShe fought hard to keep her features smooth as she followed Jon into the throne room. She'd been at Neal's knighting, his whole family had been there. This was a time for family and most of hers weren't there. Inness had been stationed at Fort Mastiff and he wasn't granted leave, Anders was at home with his wife who was going to give birth to a child any day now, only Conal had been within riding distance and had been granted leave. Jon had offered to delay the ceremony so that all her remaining family could be there, but Kel knew that Inness wouldn't be getting away from the border anytime soon. She caught Conal's eye and he grinned supportively. It was odd, she mused, Conal had been the one she had fought with when she was younger and now he was the only one there.
As she walked past Dom, he squeezed her hand and smiled at her.
"You can do it," he whispered.
Kel smiled at him and moved to stand in front of the king.
"I must ask you to give an oath of allegiance," Jon said, using the time-honoured words that he repeated again and again every year to each squire.
As he said that, the opening words of the Yamani Warrior Oath came into her head, they were words that she had held close to her heart for most of her life, ones that used to mean everything to her. 'Naraw til yuir kar seth mul demort Yaman…"
"Can you give me that? Will you fight for no other country but this?" Jon asked gravely. He knew that that question meant more to Kel than to any of the other people he had knighted over the years.
Kel bit her lip. This was it, she was finally backing out of her Yamani Oath, an oath she had thought she would keep until she died. For as the translation of the beginning of the oath said 'Until the day upon which I die, I shall fight for no other country but my Yaman…'. She breathed deeply and images flashed through her head. She saw Jhedy's lifeless body…
"Jhedy! Mithros Jhedy! I'm so sorry!"
Her black hair was stained with blood, her own blood. Her tanned skin was rapidly loosing its colour and her neck was smeared with blood. Her beautiful clothes were soaking up blood, the kimono she wore was one Kel had given her as a leaving present. The glaive in her hand was the first glaive Kel had ever touched and fought with.
"Jhedy! I…" Kel trailed off as Jhedy smiled weakly.
"I always told you we'd meet again," Jhedy replied, echoing her parting words to Kel before she left the Yamani Isles for Tortall and her eventual knighthood.
She saw herself kneeing in front of the Emperor, taking her oath…Her hair had been tightly scraped back into a bun in the style of a Yamani woman and she had scrubbed her skin so hard in an effort to remove Jhedy's blood from her. She still felt unclean and she shivered as she saw Jhedy as a young child and again as the girl she had killed.
She heard someone translating for Inness who had come over to see her take her oath.
"Until the day upon which I die, I shall fight for no other country but my Yaman. It shall come first and last and I shall defend its honour for as long as I am able. I shall serve the Emperor and his court and will train my hardest to do my best, to become the best and to achieve the perfection that Yaman deserves. This I swear upon the Gods of Wind and Rain, of Fire and Ice and on my own honour which shall always come second to that of Yaman."
"Then train, Keladry of Mindelan," the Emperor replied, using the standard reply in return to her time-honoured speech. "Train your hardest, become the best and achieve the perfection that our Yaman deserves and demands."
She saw Ked as she had seen him on the night of his death as she stood vigil over his body, praying for the safety of his soul in the next life…
The night was cold and the moon shone with all of its glory down onto the horrific scene. Bodies lay in a line, waiting to be piled up and burnt. Stars twinkled merrily in the sky and Kel felt like reaching out and extinguishing them, they shouldn't be shining. The whole world should be in mourning for those that had lost their lives.
She turned to Ked. He lay silently in death, his face covered in a Yamani calm and telling nothing of the pain that he had faced on death. His clothes clung to his body and were drenched in blood, both his own and that of the immortals he had slaughtered to save the Emperor. His blank hazel eyes and blood soaked curly black hair reflected the light of the moon.
Kel sat on the ground next to him and placed a hand on his forehead. She prayed for his safety in the Black Gods realm, she prayed that his family would understand and that they would realise that he had died to protect the Emperor and she prayed she would never see another friend like this again.
Painfully she remembered Tait's offer of being her Warrior Lord and his eventual betrayal…
"You will think it over?" he asked, his hazel eyes steady and giving Kel no indication of what he thought.
"I would be glad to accept," Kel replied. Her heart was racing. She had got herself a Warrior Lord and it wasn't just anyone, Tait noh Firatumio was well known all throughout Yaman for his fighting skills and he was also Ked's brother.
"Good." He flashed her a wide grin, one that reminded Kel so much of Ked that she nearly laughed. "We shall begin tomorrow, for now I shall hunt down that mischievous brother of mine and get him to help you to move into your new rooms."
"He left for one of the other islands yesterday, my Warrior Lord. He found a Warrior Lord and they were called straight out."
"He didn't tell me?" Tait asked, his voice was calm and level but his eyes flashed angrily.
Kel didn't know what to say, so she stayed quiet.
Tait sighed. "Ah well, I guess he couldn't help it. Come on, I'll help you move in."
Kel was shocked, she hadn't expected that offer. Most Warrior Lords expected their calawabi's to do all the work themselves.
Years later, Kel saw his grin again, but this time it was shaky and unsure. He wore a blue armband and was obviously the warrior in charge of the boat boarding. She remembered perfectly how his voice had wobbled slightly as he called out her name and his eyes wouldn't meet hers when she stepped forwards to meet him.
"You betrayed us!" he grunted as they exchanged sword blows.
Kel was dazed by his words but her Yamani training helped her to keep fighting. "I betrayed no one!" she panted as she ducked to avoid a stab at her head.
She remembered him as she had last seen him, soaked and shivering lying on the boat deck, his uniform clinging to his body with salt water dripping off of him. She heard his coughing and spluttering as he fought for breath and saw the men who crowded around him.
Her mind conjured up memories of fighting side-by-side with Jamil, once for the Emperor and once when he had forsaken the vow he took after his Tribulation and fought for her against Tait…
"Behind you," Jamil warned her and she turned to meet the pirate's sword. Hastily she brought her glaive up to block it and winced as she heard the wood creaking as she went body-to-body with him. She kicked out and sliced her glaive clean through his neck.
She spun away in time to see a lone pirate creeping up behind Jamil, a bloody dagger in his hand. With a loud Yamani war cry she launched herself through the air and brought her glaive down on his back. Jamil turned at her cry and slit the pirate's throat.
"Thanks," he gasped and turned to fight another.
She remembered standing by the boat rails with him, discussing Dom and his shock as he saw Tait try to kill her and the horror in his eyes as he saw him decapitate her father, one of the Island's most respected men. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the pure anger in his sword movements and prayed he wouldn't do anything stupid.
"I had thought better of you," Tait shouted at Jamil.
Kel could remember thinking at that time that if Tait would betray someone, his thoughts weren't worth much.
She had seen Jamil's casual shrug and had hoped that he knew what he was doing.
"We will kill you if you resist!" Tait yelled as he tried to run his sword through Kel.
"Then I died a hero," Jamil replied quietly and Kel cursed all the gods she knew. Didn't he know any better?
She remembered the last picture she had of him. He had been tied to the rails of the boat and was dangled off of the edge. His body was thumping against the side, but he was still alive and he smiled at Kel, a smile that would haunt her for the rest of her days.
Finally she saw her father, not the smiling man she had known for most of her life, but the bloody and lifeless corpse which would forever be her last memory of him…
She stood close to Dom, thankful for his arm around her waist supporting her, preventing her from falling in a faint. Although the room was painted in such bright colours, the atmosphere was gloomy and depressing. She could hear Oranie sobbing and the calm comforting words of her husband. Somewhere she could hear Lachran, he was humming a tune under his breath, a Yamani tune that his grandfather, her father, had sung to him when he was a young child. Conal wore a look of pure grief on his face and his lips moving silently as he uttered a prayer to the Gods. Inness stood with his face towards the ground and he clung onto his wife's hand.
Kel stared at her father's face. It was twisted and contorted showing the agony he had been in when he had died, she hoped he was at peace now. He was pale, which was what death did to you. His skin was smeared with his blood despite Kel and her brothers trying to wash it off. His clothes were the best Tortallan clothes that he had. Adalia had been very insistent when she was choosing his final clothes that they had to be Tortallan. Kel was glad of that, she didn't want her father being sent to the funeral pyre in the clothes of the nation that had killed him.
Slowly people began to leave until it was just Kel and her brothers. Dom was the last to leave and he turned her gently over to Anders. She looked at her elder brother and fought to control the tears that were threatening to cascade down her cheeks. Anders drew her to his chest and placed a protective arm around her and she cried into his shirt.
Kel fought back the tears that threatened to come at the last memory and looked up at Jonathan, he was still waiting for an answer.
"Upon my honour and all the things that I hold dear, I give you an allegiance that will protect this country from her enemies. I give you my will to fight for you, for Tortall. Though I may find fault with some laws, I shall still strive to upkeep them and protect the people of this country. I shall heed the code of chivalry for the rest of my life. I am a vassal of this country, and yours to command, my liege and King."
Jon smiled at her and gestured for her to kneel. He pulled his sword from his sheath and tapped both her shoulders and then her crown. "You are dubbed Lady Knight, Keladry of Mindelan," he announced firmly in a voice that carried easily over the hushed crowd. "Remember you vows of service to this crown. Remember your promise of chivalry."
Kel rose and the room erupted in cheers. She turned and grinned slightly. Neal was standing on a bench, whooping loudly and Yuki was trying her best to keep her dignity by pretending she didn't know him, but her eyes shone with mirth and Kel could tell Neal's activities amused her. Conal stood clapping loudly and wearing a large grin on his face, but Kel could see that he too had been remembering their family and the ties they once had with the Yamani Isles. Thom was concentrating hard and seconds later a banner with her picture on it hung over the door. When he caught her glare, he just shrugged and started to clap. His mother looked ecstatic that there was finally a second lady knight. Kel looked around for Dom but couldn't find him. She was sure he had been standing with Neal and Yuki, but he was no longer there!
"Kel!" Neal shouted. "Try looking behind you!"
Kel spun around to see Dom standing next to his father. Feran held a suit of armour, some of the finest armour she had ever seen. At his feet lay a sword, still sheathed and the sheath had her name engraved onto it. But it was what Dom held that interested her the most. He had her shield. She gaped when she saw it, it was one of the most beautiful things that she had seen. There was the distaff border of blue and cream around the edge. The field was a deep blue and she could see that the paint was still wet. In the middle was a silver star that covered the outline of Tortall. In the right hand corner there was the Mindelan crest, the same one that was on her brothers' shield. Dom smiled at her. "Like it?"
Kel nodded. "Like it?" she echoed. "It's great!"
Dom stepped forwards and placed the shield on her left arm. "Wear it in health and victory. Now, turn and show the people, I know Neal wants to see it, he was very annoyed with me because I wouldn't let him see it earlier."
Kel grinned and allowed Dom to turn her around so that she faced the cheering crowd.
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"Well, you've finally achieved your dream. How does it feel?" Dom asked as they sat out in the gardens as the celebrations were wrapping up.
Kel gazed at the moon. "It…I'm glad I've finally got what I wanted, but I can't help but think the price is too great. If I could have kept my parents and forgone the knighthood, I would have chosen that without a doubt."
Dom nodded. "I can understand that."
"Are you two going to come in?" Neal yelled through the open door. "Alanna wanted to make a toast!"
"In a minute Meathead!" Dom yelled back. "I'm in the middle of a conversation."
Kel laughed under her breath, the two of them could always amuse her.
Dom stood and bowed with a flourish. "May I escort the Lady Knight inside?"
Kel smiled. "Certainly." She allowed herself to be pulled up and guided inside towards the celebrations that were being conducted on her behalf.
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A/N: Well? What you think? This will probably be finished in a few chapters or so, they'll certainly be no more than five chapters left. Well, I say that now, but knowing me at the last minute I'll change the plot line and write even more. Ah well.
Hannah