Kelir looked over the scene in astonishment and concern. “What do we do? When the fighting begins, they will be crushed.”
“So we give them better weapons,” Maddek said, leaning over to offer his shield to an old woman who looked up at him with such hope, tears streaming down the lines on her face. Straightening, he called out, “Syssia! We are here to fight alongside you! Every mounted Parsathean warrior carries an extra blade. Make your way through the streets and back to the avenue to claim your weapons from the riders behind me, and with the warrior whose blade you choose, you will fight together!”
Quickly the square emptied, giving them an easier route to the citadel gates. Only mounted warriors and a few Syssian soldiers filled the square as he advanced.
The citadel was surrounded by a wall, and inside was yet another wall protecting the main keep—and at each corner of that inner wall stood a tower that pierced the sky, with entrance only from the interior courtyard beyond the inner wall. Tyzen had told him which was Yvenne’s. The northwest tower, nearest to him now. It stood so tall that Maddek had no angle to see into a window where she might be looking back at him.
Yet so close she was. Only two more walls to breach.
He looked to the citadel’s gate, a thick lattice of iron and steel. Through it he could see the inner wall’s second gate—not yet closed, as Rugusian soldiers scrambled to their positions. They must have known the riders had come, yet had not anticipated the Syssians letting the enemy in through the city’s outer wall.
If the soldiers were not all in position, then they might not be prepared to defend against warriors who would climb this wall. Only a few Rugusians did he see upon the battlements.
He looked to Tyzen. “Where is the gate’s lever?”
Tyzen pointed to the stone above the gate, where narrow slits revealed where the gatehouse chamber stood. “It can be reached from—”
A soldier silently fell from the battlements, a feathered shaft jutting through his helm. Then another toppled over, gurgling and clutching at the arrow protruding through his throat at a deep angle. A screech and clang sounded from within the gatehouse.
The gate began to rise.
Two women burst out of the gatehouse entry onto the battlements, carrying heavy chamber pots splashed with blood, racing along atop the wall. An arrow felled a soldier who chased after them.
“Race to the inner gate!” Maddek shouted through a burst of hearty laughter. Again Yvenne had paved the way for them. His horse surged forward, warriors thundering after him. Within that inner courtyard, they would be vulnerable to attack from arrows loosed from within the wall through loopholes, yet most soldiers would take to the battlements, not knowing that their death sat in the northwest tower.
“How many arrows does she have?” he yelled to Jeppen.
“Not many!”
And no doubt, she would save one for Zhalen. So she would not be able to clear the battlements.
“Take the gatehouse!” he shouted to the Syssian as they raced through. Yvenne must have sent more maids to keep that gate from closing quickly, for a woman sat gasping against the inner wall, holding a cloth to her bloodied head, laughing and cheering them forward.
He recognized her. It was the same handmaid Yvenne had sent to Maddek with the message that first lured him.
Then he met the charge from the Rugusian guard and bloodrage took him. His sword was a hungry beast, tearing flesh and slinging blood. A war drum pounded in his heart, accompanied by the clash of steel and Rugusian screams. For they had taken his bride and she had suffered. Never would their suffering be enough, the quick death a mercy he hated to give, yet he did, with claws and blade and teeth. With his Dragon behind him, he fought his way to the northwest tower.
Another gatehouse stood at the base of that massive tower—and Zhalen had not hidden within the citadel’s keep, as Maddek had assumed. Instead he waited in the shadow of the gatehouse, in front of the open gate, mounted and flanked by his personal guard.
The guards that had raped his mother and tied down Queen Vyssen.
Dripping with the blood of Rugusian soldiers, a grinning Maddek called to him, “It was you who smote the Smiling Giant? You look not warrior enough to smite a suckfly! Perhaps you blinded him with the shining armor you wear. For certain that has never seen battle!”
“And you are as arrogant as your parents were, pup!”
So he was. But not as arrogant as Zhalen, standing before an open gate with mounted soldiers who numbered not even a fraction of the warriors Maddek had brought.
And though hate and bloodrage blazed within Maddek, Zhalen’s life was not his alone to take, vengeance not only his. Yet no angle did Yvenne have with her father so near to the gatehouse. So Maddek needed to lure him away from the walls.
Luring away from walls had not worked well with Yvenne, but Zhalen was not near the warrior and ruler that she was.
Dismounting, Maddek spread his arms wide, grinning ever wider as he dropped his bloodied blade to the ground. “I have come for my bride! If you wish to keep her, then meet me in warrior’s challenge. I vow I will not even use a sword, and never will I break an oath.”
“And your warriors will stand by? You think me a fool.”
“True!” Maddek laughed, because in his experience, men such as Zhalen could not bear being laughed at. “But they will also vow not to raise a sword against you. Let this grass here be the battlefield where this war is lost or won.”
Zhalen looked to the warriors behind him. “I do not hear a vow!”
Maddek could not order them to make a vow. They had to give it. Yet although he could hear the unease as they did, their voices rose as one.
Hefting an axe, Zhalen gave a sudden grin and urged his stallion forward. “Prepare to die, barbarian. You are a fool to think you can take what is mine!”
Maddek’s grin became a baring of teeth. “You are a fool to think that locking Yvenne in a tower would ever be the same as controlling her.”
He knew not where she would place the arrow. Zhalen wore a thicker helm than the soldier on the battlements had, yet even the force of an arrowhead striking it would likely knock him unconscious from his horse. From almost directly above, not much other angle would she have. Perhaps his arm, holding the axe.
Or his leg, bent with his foot braced in the stirrup. A whistling streak, and the arrow embedded feather-deep through the top of his knee, straight down—likely splitting the bone of his calf.
Shattering his knee. As hers had been.
Yvenne did not want her father to have an easy death. And so he wouldn’t.
Maddek’s warriors surged around him, heading for the Rugusian guards who hadn’t yet seen what had struck their king. Zhalen had made no sound, though his face whitened with agonizing pain.