Page 2 of Never Love a Lord
“Hold, Wigmund,” Sybilla cautioned him.
“It nearly struck you,” the knight argued. “’Tis obvious the thieves are aware of your presence—they think to avoid a fight should they fell you in advance.”
“I know your men are eager. You will likely gain the battle you crave before the dawn has stepped both feet onto the earth.” Sybilla looked back down at the arrow. “But I am as yet untouched. Hold.”
“Madam?” Graves asked solicitously.
“I’ll get it,” Sybilla said, hitching her skirts up slightly into the crease of her hips in order to crouch down on the massive wooden shield. She untied the parchment, leaving the flames to flicker their little light while she unfurled the message and held it near the dying flame.
Shall we negotiate?
JG
Instinctively, Sybilla looked to the battlements, although from her crouched position she could see nothing but sky. Negotiate? She could see no points on which either side was willing or able to concede. The only information that might save Sybilla, and which the king couldn’t already know, was what she had sworn to her mother while Amicia lay dying. Andthatshe would never, ever tell.
Fallstowe might be taken, the Foxe family would be no more, Amicia’s name would be synonymous with deception and scandal, but the greatest secret of all would be buried in a grave.
Most likely Sybilla’s.
As if to emphasize the inevitability of her fate, another flaming arrow lofted over the battlements, this time pinning the hem of Sybilla’s gown to the wooden platform.
The roar of armor shook the night as soldiers rose like a black wave to the battlements, even as Wigmund bellowed “Place!” and was answered by the echoes of his lieutenants repeating the order around the whole of Fallstowe Castle. The air trembled with a whiny reverberation, the audible tautness of hundreds of bowstrings.
Graves cleared his throat. “Won’t you come away from the edge now, Madam?”
But instead of fear, Sybilla began to feel the familiar rumblings of anger. “I said hold!” Sybilla shouted up at Wigmund. “Hold your men!”
The general glared at her but relayed the command. He did not order the men to stand down, and Sybilla had not expected him to. She knew they would be pushed only so far, with or without her word.
Still, once they fired on soldiers of the king, their fates were sealed.
Sybilla tossed the earlier plea for negotiations aside and, without unpinning the still-flaming arrow from her gown, removed the latest message.
Last chance.
JG
“That pompous ass,” Sybilla growled, her fury spreading like thick ice on a deep lake. “Wigmund,” she called out calmly as she jerked the extinguished arrow free from the wood.
“My lady?”
“Bring your bow. Wrap and dip a fletching—I want to be certain it is seen.”
Sybilla turned the dead arrow in one hand, using her other hand to place the most recent missive on the flat shield. With the coaled end of the arrow she scratched a short, crude message, and then tossed her makeshift writing utensil aside.
When she looked up, Fallstowe’s general stood above her, his longbow in one hand and a single arrow in the other, its end bulbous and dripping with pitch.
Sybilla stood in one swift motion, still anchored to the wooden shield by the flickering arrow, the parchment crumpled in her hand. She seized the projectile Wigmund offered and then glanced at the general out of the corner of her eye as she tied her message to the arrow.
“I haven’t the strength to draw a longbow, good sir; I shall have the one across your back.”
If the general was surprised that Fallstowe’s lady intended to send the message herself, he hid it well, ducking his head to remove his shorter weapon and holding it toward Sybilla. Before she took it, she bent at the waist and yanked the flaming arrow from her hem, quickly touching it to the primed fletching in her hand. Then she grabbed the bow and turned to the battlements once more.
“I shall be the only one to fire,” she advised her general, and was satisfied as the command to hold made its way around the turret and away into the night.
Sybilla stepped into the embrasure and knocked her arrow, the bubbling pitch hissing, the heat from the flames rising up to warm her face. She knew she had only seconds before she was spotted. She quickly raised her elbows and lowered her weapon until she had sighted in on her target.
The carriage. A lone archer stood with his back leaning against the ornate conveyance, bow in one hand, arms crossed over his chest, as he conversed casually with another soldier. He paid Fallstowe no mind.
