Barbara had taken a horse from the stables to the inner gatehouse, telling the soldiers that she wished to ride around the inner wall and collect some wildflowers. Since that wasn’t unusual behavior from Barbara, the soldiers let her through, but Fraser was watching from the yard when she’d ridden through and he thought that something about her looked strange.
Then, it occurred to him.
She had two big, heavy saddlebags on the back of the horse. Those types of bags belonged to knights, as he had a pair of his own. They were custom made, durable pieces of equipment, tailored to each owner. They weren’t something that young women out to gather flowers would normally carry, nor would any bags she carried have a three-point shield burned into the leather.
… shield?
Suspicious, he followed.
Fraser was looking for Tor or Christian or any other knight as he ran to the stable yard, but he didn’t see anyone. He thought they were probably in the great hall at this time of day, but he didn’t want to take the time to find them. He did, however, grab a stable servant and sent him with a message for Tor – that Barbara had left through the inner gatehouse and Fraser was following her.
Satisfied, he grabbed the nearest horse, threw on a bridle, and leapt onto the back of the skittish beast. Digging his heels in, he took off across the outer bailey, heading for the inner gatehouse.
The men on the wall were pointing to the east, the direction that Barbara had gone, and Fraser followed. There was a path around the castle inner walls with the moat down below, so he followed that trail as quickly as he could, rounding the southeast corner and then finally the northeast corner, coming around the bend only to see something quite confusing over near the postern gate.
He could see the horse that Barbara had ridden out on, but she was off the horse now and simply standing there holding it. Lenore was there, too, but she looked worried. She was wringing her hands. As Fraser drew near, a man suddenly appeared carrying a limp woman in his arms, and Fraser recognized him as the sick man who had come to Blackpool for help. The same man that Barbara and Lenore were supposed to be tending.
Only he wasn’t sick any longer.
It took Fraser less than a second to see that the woman in his arms was Isalyn.
He spurred his horse into a gallop.
Suddenly, he was plowing through Barbara and the horse she was holding, and he could hear screams as Barbara went rolling down the embankment towards the moat. The horse, too, slid down the embankment and Fraser heard a big splash as the animal fell into the water. Lenore screamed and ran back inside the postern gate as the man with unconscious Isalyn in his arms lost his balance and dumped Isalyn down the slope. Fraser leapt from this horse and onto the man, and the fight was on.
Since Fraser wasn’t armed, all he could do was throw punches at the man he had believed to be deathly ill. They all had. But clearly, the man was well enough and certainly hearty enough to fight back. Big fists were flying as Fraser got the upper hand, pummeling the man as he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground. But the minute Fraser threw himself onto the man to finally subdue him, the man produced a dagger and Fraser leapt right on it.
It sank into his body, by his hip.
Momentarily stunned by the pain, it was enough of a pause for his opponent to throw a fist into Fraser’s face. As Fraser snapped back, the man charged him, slamming him against the inner wall. Furious and in pain, Fraser ripped the dagger out of his body and turned it on the man, stabbing him in the shoulder by his neck. The man screamed as Fraser drove the dagger deep. It was disabling, but not crippling.
The battle went on.
Isabella awoke to the sounds of a scream, but not just any scream. There was a man screaming, somewhere, and she lifted her head, having no idea why she was laying in the mud. The last she remembered, she was walking with Isalyn towards the postern gate and then… nothing.
Lifting her head, she could see the postern gate in front of her, open, with Lenore standing there, weeping hysterically.
Something terrible was going on.
Head pounding, and feeling nauseous, Isabella staggered to her feet. She could hear sounds of a fight and Isalyn wasn’t anywhere to be found, so she went into panic mode. The buttery was immediately to her right and there were a couple of old wooden butter churns, one used to make the butter. They were big and heavy, but one of the paddles was partially chipped, which was why it wasn’t currently used. Grabbing the heavy butter paddle, Isabella wielded it like a club and staggered to the postern gate.
The first thing she saw was Lenore, weeping and gasping, and Isabella didn’t hesitate. She swung the paddle at Lenore’s head and hit her squarely on the side of her skull, sending the woman down the embankment towards the moat. Down below, Isabella could see a horse swimming in the moat, trying to pull itself up on the other side, and Barbara up to her waist in the murky water, trying to claw her way out.
But the noise was coming from the fight to her left and Isabella turned to see Fraser in a vicious fight with a man she didn’t recognize. They were both covered in blood and Isabella screamed at the sight, but her shock didn’t prevent her from acting. Convinced that Fraser’s life was in danger, she lifted the paddle high and charged the men fighting, bringing that heavy paddle to bear on the man locked in mortal combat with Fraser. She whacked him on the back of the skull, twice, and he released his grip on Fraser. But as he started to fall, a nasty-looking bolt plunged right into his back.
Down he went, face-first into the mud, never to rise again.
Still in panic mode, Isabella looked to see where the arrow had come from and she could see Christian on the wall above, crossbow in-hand. Realizing there were soldiers now rushing to help and protect them, Isabella threw the paddle aside and ran to Fraser, who was just rising to his knees. She fell down beside him, her hands reaching out to steady him.
“Fraser!” she gasped. “What happened?”
Fraser was beaten and bleeding, but he was alive. Breathing heavily, he had one hand over the dagger wound near his hip, but the other one came up to cup Isabella’s panicked face.
“Easy, Bella,” he said softly, breathlessly. “I am not as bad as I look, I promise.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “What happened? Who is he?”
“That is the sick man we brought in for Barbara and Lenore to heal,” Fraser said between heavy breaths. “I saw Barbara ride out on a horse with what I am guessing are that man’s saddlebags and I discovered him taking Isalyn outside of the postern gate, so I… Isalyn! Where is she?”
Isabella shrieked as she and Fraser started looking around in a panic for Isalyn. Men were starting to spill out from the postern gate, including Blayth, Ronan, and finally Tor, who had been summoned from the great hall by a terrified servant. Tor saw a bloodied Fraser, a dead man with an arrow in his back, a wet horse on the other side of the moat, and Barbara and Lenore down by the moat’s edge.
“Tor!” Isabella screamed. “We must find Isalyn! She must have fallen down the slope!”
Tor was on the move. He had no idea what had happened. But at the mention of Isalyn, he was moving, sliding down the slope, searching for Isalyn somewhere in the grass and muck. He finally caught sight of her lifting her head out of the tall grass down by the moat’s edge. She had a hand to her head, and her dirty hair was all over her face. Tor rushed towards her as fast as his legs would carry him. He ended up slipping because of the angle of the slope, falling heavily on his left side, but he scrambled and clawed his way over to Isalyn.