Emily French - Ironheart

There was a long silence. For a long moment Leon listened to the silence that had sprung up between them because it was an unquiet silence, one rife with sizzling tension, almost a contest of wills.

Then an urgent whisper, combined with a tug of his coat, quietly, shyly, tentatively, hopefully, and smiling that innocent smile. “I want only to see Father and the others.”

Leon laughed out loud. “Are you certain?”

“That’s all,” she affirmed, still smiling sweetly.

“How can I refuse to do a good deed?” he asked, hoping there was no tremor in his voice.

That angelic smile. “Would you…?”

He was a fool to do what a girl-child wanted him to do! Yet, her invitation was the only option he saw. Strange thing! He could see no honorable way to deny her. He dared not back out now. He did not want to go to that place—but what else might he do when he was the only one here to help her? he asked himself. It was almost as if he were no longer in command of his own body, that even had he wished to halt and turn back he could not have done so. This was where he was destined to be, what he was fated to do.

And that was magic, surely?

Rush into it and through, it’s the only way to face what you fear, he thought. Tightening his gut, he braced both hands against the wide tooth of a merlon and leaned out a crenel to see past an intervening wall buttress.

The side of the castle dropped sheer. Far down showed the footings of solid granite. Below that…

The earth and river and dark forest far, far below.

He groaned involuntarily. His palms on the merlon were slick with sweat, trembling. An icy ball of fear turned his insides to water. He wanted to go back, but forced himself to stand firm. Far away a cock crowed, calling forth the dawn. The air hung cold and wet about his face as he looked down.

It was no good. His breath rasped. His teeth danced. His sight hazed. His legs shook so violently his kneecaps drummed the stone wall. Stand here too long, and he’d pitch over the parapet like dice rattling out of a cup. Slowly, shuffling his leather boots, he crept away from the gaping space.

“What did you see? Lift me up so’s I can see it, too!” Her mouth open, her face all delighted smile, she danced for the battlements rising on the western end of the parapet.

Already spooked, Leon jumped at the girl’s blithe command. Deep shuddering twitched his body. Backing against the inner wall, he willed his heart to stop pounding. Surely it could only beat so fast before bursting. He blinked the night as clear as it would come. There was color in the world. It was dawn. He took deep breaths of clean, cold air.

“You’ll fall,” was all he could say.

She gazed solemnly up at him. Unafraid. She gave a furious shake of her head. “No I won’t, ’sides, you’re here to stop me.”

He opened his mouth to refute but his jaw trembled. His breathing had slowed, and he mopped his brow with his sleeve. He hated being up in the battlements. He still remembered falling off the tower at Whittington. Even now, he screamed in his sleep when he recalled that day. He had been seven then. He had cried in his foster father’s arms, which had embarrassed him, but his foster father had patted him on the back and hugged him the way he hugged Fulk Riven, called him his other son and assured him even grown men made mistakes and wept.

“The other end will give the best view.” Indignation, combined with the fear that she might actually leap onto the crenel, made Leon stride out ahead. But she only laughed and followed him.

Walking east, he asked, elaborately casual, “Do you get giddy on heights?”

“Not the times I try,” she said, skipping beside him.

He shifted his posture, suspecting mockery. He regretted bringing up the matter, but he refused to care what the witchling thought. She seemed absolutely fearless. So young to have such courage, he thought. He saw scratches on her arm and large muddy rips in the gown at her knees. The girl’s nurse would be searching for her by now, and he almost felt sorry for the woman. She would suffer if the mother saw the child now.

“Lift me up, so’s I can see over.” She lifted up slender, fragile-looking arms.

The morning breeze stirred his hair and softly cooled his overheated cheeks. He became calm, and out of calmness came determination. He would not abandon his first damsel in distress. He picked her up, and set her bare feet on the seat of an arrow loop built into a buttress in the parapet.

She stood up on tiptoe, craning forward. She was mad, he was sure of it. He brought a firm hand around her waist to keep her safe, but he didn’t stop her looking.

“Lean on my shoulder if you get dizzy. I’ll catch you.”

“I know, silly!” Steady as a rock on her perch, she rested a small hand on his shoulder and, moth-light, touched his hair. “You talk funny, but you have nice hair. Shiny.”

Her voice sparkled with hints of laughter. She smelled of soap and girl and honey powder. He blinked and wriggled his leather-clad toes. “Thank you.”

Leon stood perfectly still and glanced over his outstretched arm. It was just dawn; the air hung cold and foggy around him, obscured the towers, cut off the tops of gates, pooled and eddied along the courtyard outside the siege walls, and collected wood smoke in long, flat, sooty sheets.

Troops marched out of the gatehouse. He watched the glittering armor-clad company file through the dimming patches of fog, buckles clanking, pennants snapping on poles, accoutrements jumping and tingling regularly at every step in a mass musical note, muffled strangely in the sea of fog.

“Can you see the prince leading them all?”

The girl-child tossed her head to get an unruly lock of dark hair out of her eyes. “There he is! There he is!” She squealed in delight and clapped her hands.

“He must. He is the commander,” Leon said briskly. He glared out the embrasure at the troops still marching past, and fretted to himself. Keith, who would be sixteen years old next Midsummer’s Day, had been chosen to squire the prince. Keith, who in spite of his new length of leg and width of shoulder, could not best Leon either at mock battle or in a wrestling match.

“Aren’t they grand? Where do they go?”

“Men gather here. To ride with Richard. To Palestine. To fight the Saracens.”

As soon as he spoke, he regretted it, for the look on the child’s face turned from joy to fear. She frowned, a little knitting of the brow. Small hands clutched at him.

“Oh. Bad men,” she muttered. Her face crumpled. She looked so young—not a witchling now, but a frightened child.

He was quick to mend his error. “Cheer up, little girl. Your father will be home soon enough,” he said lightly.

A frown. She was not to be distracted. “What if the bad men attack us while Father is away?” she said faintly. “Should we all run away very fast?”

Leon looked up at the white, frozen face. Loosing a rare and splendid smile, the one his arms-master said in a few years would melt women like wax in a furnace, he said softly, “No. My lord would stop them before they reach here.”

Brave though she was, she was still a girl, and that smile held a mighty magic. She laid her hand upon his arm and squinted through black curls at him, a swift bright glance.

“I can throw rocks at them! Big rocks.”

“Oh—” Leon struggled to keep from laughing. He brushed back the dark hair. “That would be most helpful.”

Men marched into the fog and vanished. The air seemed unnaturally still and heavy. As an omen it made his spine turn cold. The day seemed perilous, full of portents; yet there was nothing he could put a thought around. As if—

As if he were on the brink of his own forever after—or maybe only of growing up. He had twelve summers and, with Keith’s departure, was newly promoted to squire, but tall and muscular as he was, and good as he was with either sword or bow, he hadn’t grown into his hands or feet yet.