Vol.7, Ch.3, P.10
With all prompt had we evacuated ourselves to a safer distance, scrambling across the flame-bright lawn as smithers, timbers, and limbs pelted all ’round. And fearful that the devastation would draw enemies from near and far, we’d also concealed ourselves as best as could be managed.
Huddled now amongst the bush, we counted heads, scouted our surroundings, and saw to any hurts. And after a tense while, we gathered and peered up at the college wreckage. How angrily it fumed. How voraciously it burnt. Not for a very long while yet would it dare wane, I measured.
“…That was contrived, was it not?” Her Highness uttered timorously. “Too much of the tower it doth recall…”
I had to agree. No blast wrought by spell could that’ve been, but rather by fuses and black powder. And with disparate parts of the building having gone off all at once, ’twas neither some accident, surely. Might it’ve been some effort to destroy whatever evidence that lay therein? Evidence as touching this conspiracy? Björn’d told of the college being the base of some enemy commander, ’tis certain… but being as well so large a building, there must’ve been no few enemies yet posted inside, if this macabre rain were any token. Did they, too, count amongst such “evidence”…?
“Madame, madame! Thank the Deiva, we found you!”
Amidst my troubled thoughts, there echoed that restrained yell. And soon, up rattled another handful of my knights, freshly to join us. ’Twould appear the flame and noise had drawn instead some friends from afar, thankfully.
“And none too soon,” I said to them. “Your coming comforts us. And yours as well, Bailon.”
Included in the new number was indeed my chief adjutant. It gladdened me much to see him alive as well after the day’s evils.
“Y… yes,” Bailon said, catching his breath. “Touch-and-go it was, but I shan’t complain. Ah! Her Highness! The lord chancellor withal!” he gasped, spotting the rest of our company huddled deeper in the shade.
“Indeed, everyone’s safe and sound,” I said. “But what of you, Bailon? Are you hurt?”
“Nay, madame. Yoná has kept me firm in Her hands, praise be,” he answered, blessing himself. But as he then looked closer through our company, his expression changed. “How now. Officer Nyholm! Is she yet missing?”
“…She is now,” I murmured. Bailon cocked his head in puzzlement, and justly so. What mareschal, what superior, am I to know not whither my subordinate has gone? But plying my thoughts for a moment, I then turned to Björn and spoke. “Captain,” I began declaring, “I must away for a while, to spy out the situation. Pray keep Her Highness safe.”
“That I shall, of course,” obliged Björn. But then he became more grave as he searched my eyes. “Heavens—you cannot mean to enter the flames, Mareschal?”
I in fact did. After all, Her Highness ought be safe enough, now that her Praetorians and their captain were here for her. And as for my knights at hand, Bailon more than sufficed to lead them in my stead.
But the adjutant himself shook his head. “Yea to that. You’re more needed here, madame,” he objected. “Might sending another better serve? Why, I should offer myself, if it—”
“Nay, Bailon,” I said. “I’m sorry. But I must go.”
“Must thou, truly…?” the princess said. Worry was writ plain across her face.
“Your Highness,” I said, bowing to her. “Pray forgive me. Officer Nyholm… so asudden did she disappear, you see. I must needs try and search her out in the building, even as it burns. But I shall return as soon as I may.”
’Twas my heedlessness and mine alone that’d swayed me from keeping an eye on an underling leader, least of all amidst this crisis. And so it fell to me to put things to rights. At any rate, the college was the first place to look, if not the best. For one thing, no other buildings lay immediately about, only lawn, shrub, and tree. And for another, my knights had neither glimpsed any enemies prowling anear. Going alone to have a look ought therefore trouble no one.
…So I should say, if asked. Truth be told, I was grimly certain that yet in that building was Rolf himself—and that Raakel had stolen away to have a “word” with him.
“I am to stay,” Lise put in asudden. There the jarl-daughter was, standing with folded arms, and gazing rather opaquely hither.
“No one asked you,” I retorted.
She huffed back. Oh, the gall of this fox. But so much the better, I say. Not having to put up with her jabbering, if even for a moment, seemed more a boon than anything else. Though I should suppose delving into flaming wreckage is a bad price for it. Lise meanwhile kept staring this way, as if something yet lingered on that prickly tongue of hers. And so, against my heart, I thought to offer her the choice.
“’Tis pretty plain that you worry for Rolf all along,” I said. “If you would seek for him, now’s your chance.”
“Were my words not clear, or?” she refused. “A fool I’d be, to leave my father and officials in Londosian care.”
“…”
“…”
We locked eyes. And as ever, there brimmed in hers the glow of animosity. But as I withstood it, something else lay deeper therein, I briefly felt. Something like a concession: that just this once, she would spare me a moment alone with Rolf.
Oh rubbish, that! Forgetting the thought, I turned away to address the princess. “Your Highness. Fare you well for a while. And Captain,” I said, turning then to Björn, “I leave her to you.”
“…Pray be safe,” glumly said the princess.
Björn saluted. “Upon my honour,” he vowed.
Things not to be given up. Things not to be given up on. Turning and running off, ever did these haunt my thoughts. And with them, a certain moment from an evening not far past.
♰
“Raakel,” I called. “’Tis dark. Haven’t you had enough?”
Like every night before, one lamp sat yet lit upon the training grounds. I’d come by to see what was going on, only to find Raakel quite literally burning the midnight oil. Such was her habit of late: staying and training here even after the freshest knights and swains had long retired to their barracks.
“Ah, Emilie-love,” she said. “Aye. Just a mite more.”
“A ‘mite more’ might help less than harm,” I noted.
“I knows, I knows.”
Despite her words, Raakel plied her silvermaul ever and on. Swing after heaving swing, she fought away at the benighted air, her weapon painting bright arcs and circles through the blackness. It must’ve been many hundreds, many thousands of swings by this hour, all to eke out even a mote of greater strength. But that was Raakel. Or at the very least, ever since Sheila had returned to us defeated and marred by Rolf’s blade, that is.
And as if recalling the selfsame thing, Raakel strove then more harshly. Her face shone with sweat. A steam rose from all her skin.
“Hut! Hut! Hut!”
“…”
I looked on in silence, being reminded of Rolf, of how he, too, once swung his sword over and again, day after day. And the boon of it all was a strength beyond even Cronheim the hero-knight to match.
I’d spoken of this to Raakel once upon a like evening: that for years had Rolf himself spent such dark and strenuous hours. But she’d said nothing of it, and only swung her weapon onwards as she did now.
“Heaht! Haat! Haht!”
How terrible she seemed. Terrible and afire. But for it, more powerful again had she become. Yes, even more so than her former and so-savage self. I wondered then what Raakel saw in the night air as she swung away at it. Someone, perhaps. Someone’s form, someone’s face, someone’s…
…And then I stopped myself. For to think any further frightened me utterly.
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