One company would rest while the other stood guard. They ate some meager rations and huddled beneath trees on each side of the road. Ransom’s company were the guardians. He would be the final knight to go to sleep.
The reprieve didn’t last long.
Ransom stabbed with his bastard sword and found the chink in his foe’s armor. The man let out a groan of pain and then slid off his saddle to land in the muck with a heavy splash. His men had formed a wall to block the road, and they’d held off three attacks from the knights of Occitania. In each attack they’d been outnumbered, but the enemy had not broken through, not with Ransom himself holding the wall. His other company was preparing a flanking maneuver, getting ready to strike from the trees.
And then the foot soldiers arrived, marching through the mud with diligent purpose, a wall of pikes coming directly at them.
“Curse them!” muttered one of his knights.
The noise of their boots in the mud was an eerie sound, one with a frightening reach. Their tunics were all stained, but their faces were determined and hateful. On they came.
“Fall back,” Ransom said to his knights. Staying would only increase the number of dead.
The Occitanian knights were regrouping to give chase. Ransom hoped his other company, the one that had planned on flanking the enemy force, would forbear attacking. He could sense with his dwindling Fountain magic the insurmountable host coming at them. Although he could not see the sun, he knew it was roughly midday. The pit in his stomach yawned. The front ranks of these men would reach Jon-Landon’s wagons by nightfall.
As he led his knights into a retreat, a battle cry sounded from behind. The Occitanian knights had rallied again, and they obviously intended to slow their escape until the foot soldiers reached them. He shouted to increase the pace, to win some distance. But it wasn’t enough. They were overtaken by a group of knights that appeared from the woods on their right. They’d been outflanked.
“Dex aie!” Ransom shouted in warning, brandishing his bastard sword.
The two groups clashed on the muck-strewn road, puddles oozing gray water from the wagon tracks. Ransom heard some of his men fall. He gritted his teeth, slashing against the foes seeking to stall them. His own destrier was sluggish to respond. Although a good beast, it was no Dappled, and the stress of the constant fighting and the difficult terrain had weakened it terribly.
He looked back, seeing the foot soldiers coming toward them. There was a hunger in the soldiers’ eyes. A desire to kill the knights who had plagued them.
“Dex aie!” came a shout from the other side of the road, deeper in.
The hidden company of Ransom’s men had seen their distress and come to the rescue, mounting an attack on the foot soldiers. Pikes wavered, soldiers turned in confusion. The knights on horseback had a decided advantage in everything but numbers. As he watched his men stanch the foot soldiers’ forward progress, a spark of triumph lit within Ransom’s breast. He redoubled his attack on the knights, and soon they fled back into the woods to rejoin the advancing army.
It was a reprieve, albeit a brief one. Ransom ordered his men to withdraw again, and the company fighting the foot soldiers turned as well. But many of his knights had been yanked from their horses. It was a brutal conflict. Two sides determined to vanquish. Neither side willing to yield.
They escaped with no one giving chase. Ransom’s mind was a fog of weariness. He knew his men were at the breaking point. He could see it in their fearful and determined looks. But their eyes found him, a source of strength, and he rode on without flinching, without flagging. His example lent them strength.
He gave them the courage to keep going despite their weariness.
It was all they had left.
The drizzle persisted all day, and it seemed another storm was on the way. Although the sun had not made an appearance all day, he sensed it was waning, and they’d reached the bend in the road that would bring them within a league of Glosstyr.
Where he expected to find the king’s wagons.
Messenger knights had come with the warning that the wagons were all stuck in the mire by the sea. Horses had perished with exhaustion, unable to budge the massive wagons any farther. The conclusion seemed obvious to Ransom—the treasure would need to be abandoned. They couldn’t hope to protect it any longer. He told the messenger to return and bring the king to Glosstyr posthaste.
And the knight had returned, miserably, to say the king refused to leave and that he’d drawn his sword when they tried to compel him.
Thick looming clouds continued to blot out the sun. As the trees became sparser, enough so he could see the distant cliffs of his duchy, he heard the sound of the surf and the screech of gulls. He sensed the presence of someone Fountain-blessed ahead. His heart immediately shuddered with fear, but he did the only thing he could. He pressed onward with his men.
He saw the beach finally, the white caps of the surf. But there were no signs of the wagons, horses, or . . .
Where was the king?
Ransom spurred his horse faster in the direction he felt the presence. Sand had come to settle on the road, which was covered with mounds. There were no hoofprints, no tracks at all. The mounds, he realized, were dead men. There were maybe twelve in all. He saw a sword, half-covered in grit. A gray hand was reaching out from beneath a blanket of wet sand.
The horses’ hooves, which had been sucking in the mud, now gave wet hisses as the ground changed to sand. There was no sign of the treasure, no spilled caskets or chests. He searched frantically for the king, for the prince.
“What happened here?” asked Sir Galt in confusion.
Ransom sensed the presence coming from the direction of the water. There was a man slumped by the sea, kneeling in the sand, getting doused by the waves as they glided up the shore. But that was not the source of the feeling, which was coming from farther away, where the cliffs of the cove were murky in the dimming light.
Urging his horse to gain speed, he approached the man kneeling at the water’s edge and recognized him to be Jon-Landon. There was a sword next to him, but the sea was burying it rapidly with each wave.
Many of Ransom’s men were resting, slumped forward in their saddles from the arduous ride and relentless fighting. Others were going through the sand-strewn wreckage.
The presence he’d felt was still farther ahead. Ransom peered into the gloom, trying to see, and caught the sight of a woman walking away from them with a little boy. His stomach lurched with dread.
Jon-Landon lifted his head and gazed at Ransom in confusion. He looked delirious.
“Attend to the king,” Ransom shouted to Galt.
Ransom left them and rode after the woman and the boy in desperation.
Dearley left with a storm on the horizon. Now, from a distance, it seems as if all of Ceredigion is smothered beneath the ill weather. Is this the end of the Wizr game after all? My heart yearns for Ransom. Whatever is happening, he is thrust into the middle of it. I fear I will not see him again, and that thought makes my waking hours torture.
—Claire de Murrow
Connaught Castle
The end of the game
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Ondine
Ransom’s heart pounded with fear as he rode along the glistening shore toward the retreating figures of the woman and the boy. He gripped the hilt of his bastard sword but did not draw it.