Colorado’s eyes opened wide. “Are you sure, my lord? That is Lady Dawn’s own sword—”
“She never fights anymore. She’s far too busy trying to find husband number seventy-one. My mother has issues,” Ethan confided. “She will insist on wedding mortals, and they never last. Still, it’s a hobby. Daisy, where were we?”
“End of chapter twenty-eight,” the woman with the notebook said promptly.
“Begin new chapter. By midsummer in the year eleven ninety-two, I had taken control of all the kingdoms of Wales, and was one day considering what act of derring-do I should next accomplish, when a Saracen prince arrived at my castle gates demanding entrance . . .”
Ethan and his entourage wandered off, leaving Colorado and me staring after him.
“So that’s the head of your team. He’s kind of . . . eccentric, isn’t he? What book is he writing?”
“He is engaged in taking down into print the many dashing and thrilling adventures of his life.”
“That explains the artsy outfit. Is something wrong with his hand?”
A pained expression crossed Colorado’s face. “Lord Ethan was smote with a mysterious ailment, no doubt by Lord Aaron.”
“Warts?” I guessed.
“Alien Hand Syndrome,” Colorado answered with a sigh. “It troubles him greatly, but do not mention it. He dislikes people discussing it.”
There was really nothing I could say to that, so I just stood patiently by while Colorado sent Columbine off to fetch the oddly named sword.
“This was Lady Dawn’s,” he said when she returned with it. It was a smaller sword than that which Colorado bore, with a narrow blade and a delicately scribed hilt that flashed blue and green. “She named it the Nightingale because it would sing when she slew her enemies. It was her favorite sword when she ruled the mortal world.”
“It’s very pretty. Are those emeralds?” I examined the hilt, seeing a couple of spells woven into the intricate design.
“And sapphires. You will take the utmost care of it, I have no doubt. Lady Dawn would not care to know her Nightingale was being abused.”
I tried to remember the history of Wales that I had learned a long time before, but I didn’t remember anything about a woman named Dawn.
“Absolutely,” I said, making an experimental slash or two in the air. The sunlight flashed and glittered on the sword, the gems adding brief bursts of color. I’d never so much as picked up a sword before, but this one pleased me on a primal level. It felt good in my hand. It felt right. “I’ll take very good care of it. So, what exactly do I do when I get to the battlefield? Join up with the other people?”
Colorado took me by the arm and steered me toward the far edges of the camp. “Oh, you won’t be fighting with others. Each soldier fights his or her own shift.”
“But—this is a battle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course.” We broke free of the encampment and walked up a slight incline to a knoll. Overhead, thick oily black and gray clouds blotted out much of the bloodred sky, periodically streaked with blue-white fingers of lightning. A distant rumble of thunder completed the nightmarish scene.
“But you have just one person fighting at a time?”
“Just one.”
“But . . . ,” I repeated, shaking my head. “That doesn’t seem to be a very efficient way to fight.”
“On the contrary, it’s quite very efficient. Lord Ethan found very early on that to have all of our troops fighting at the same time meant that many people were killed.”
“Isn’t that the whole point? I mean, killing your enemy?”
He looked horrified. “I do not know how you do things in your native land, Lady Gwen, but here in Anwyn, we do not condone slaughter.”
I felt like a genocidal fool. “Sorry. Obviously this way makes much more sense.”
“It does. We send out one person for a two-hour shift, after which he—or she—is free to rest until the following day’s shift. Few people are injured, and even fewer are killed. It is, as Lady Dawn says, a win-win situation.”
“Kinda makes you wonder why you bother fighting at all.”
“Oh, we don’t wonder that. We know why we fight. Lord Aaron attacked my lord. He had to answer. It was the only honorable thing to do.”
We crested the top of the knoll as he spoke. He stopped, nodding toward the center of the hilltop, where the grass had been blackened, eventually wearing away to nothing but dirt as red as the sky. Standing with his arms crossed (not as easy to do while wearing armor as you might think), his sword sheathed at his side, was a knight in full armor, including helm, obviously awaiting me. “That is the battlefield.”
I looked around. The area surrounding the knight appeared to be about twenty feet in diameter. “That’s a battlefield? The whole thing?”
“Indeed it is, although if you wish to get a running start, you are permitted an extra fifteen paces.” He clapped me on the shoulder, making me stagger forward a couple of steps. “Good fighting, Lady Gwen! Your replacement will be up in a little less than two hours.”
I watched him trot down the hillside, and then I turned back to look at the knight and the so-called battlefield. It could have served as a baseball diamond for guinea pigs. I took a few steps forward until I was at the edge of the scorched grass. “Um. Hi. I’m Gwen. I guess I’m supposed to fight you.”
The man inclined his head, a flash of lightning reflecting off the closed metal visor.
“Just so you know, I’m new to all this. I’m an alchemist, not really a soldier. I was kind of . . . er . . . conscripted into this job. Totally against my will, because as I said, I’m not a fighter, but there are times when you just have to take the lesser of two evil choices, and this was it. The lesser, that is. So, what’s your name?”
Yes, I was babbling, but there was a method to my madness. I figured I had at worst an hour and a half to kill before someone else came to fight, and if I could use up some of that time in pleasantries, I was willing to chitchat like I’d never chitchatted before.
The knight didn’t answer for a moment, but then he shifted his visor up so he could look at me unimpeded by metal. “I can’t tell you.”
“Is it against the terms of the fighting or something?” I asked, digging the point of the sword into the ground so I could lean on it.
“Don’t do that.”
I blinked at him. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t bury the tip of your sword in that manner. You’ll damage it. Here, see?” He marched over to me and lifted the tip of the sword in his mailed hand, showing me where the metal was dusty with bits of dirt and dead grass. “A sword is a valuable weapon. You must treat her with respect and honor.”
“Oh.” I blew on the end of the sword, took off my metal gloves, and carefully, so as not to cut myself, brushed off the dust and grass. “It is a pretty sword. It even has a name: Nightingale.”
The man’s eyes widened. Although I couldn’t see a lot of his face, he looked pleasant enough.
“You bear the fabled Nightingale? You must be a very great warrior indeed.”
“See, that’s just the thing. I’m not, not at all. I’m an alchemist. Did I mention that? My moms—I have two—my moms and I just got here in Anwyn, and all of a sudden I found myself with armor on and this pretty sword in my hand. So if you wanted to forgo fighting, I’d be fine with that . . . er . . . what was your name?”
“I told you that I cannot tell you my name,” he said primly, lowering his visor again and pulling out his sword, obviously in preparation for skewering me.
“Why not?” I asked quickly, desperate to distract him from the actual act of fighting.
He lowered his sword and raised his visor again. “I am King Aaron’s man.”
“Yeah, so?”