Like Ariel, Jirair thought she may turn jack rabbit on them and take flight from the table. What had she to fear? Had she been struck down in flight? Had she abandoned her men? What struck such terror through her now? What had she to hide? Or was it just as Ariel had feared? Had she suffered a stroke in the taking of the wound? Could she speak now?
And then with the parting of her lips their question was answered. She frowned as her lips parted, then trembled, closed and then opened again. She struggled, they could tell in the paling of her face and the quickening of her pulse. She wasn’t breathing either. Finally, words left her trembling lips. “Since a child, I struggle with words,” she explained and each word she spoke was one thought before spoken. She bowed her head and lifted her finger to touch upon her forehead. “The words are here,” she said then touched her lip, “but rarely … right… here.” She meant the words never quite came out the way she thought them and even as she spoke her face twisted into a frown knowing what she said wasn’t what she wanted to say.
“My brother…” and her voice cracked with emotion, “…told the tales. It is he who would tell our story with such skill as to make you feel you were with us the entire time.” She paused and looked at each of them in turn. A blush replaced the pale of her face. She’d said what she’d thought and that didn’t happen very often. “The sailors said he died after dragging me to the ship.” Her eyes dimmed and her hands rubbed against her thighs. The room was getting warmer by the word.
Jirair raised his glass to spare her and give her time to think. Dawni and Ariel did likewise. “To your brother, in his life and death.” The three spoke in unison and Aislinn bit her lip as she hesitated to follow their tradition with the raising of her own glass. “To Samuel,” she said when she raised it.
They each drank down their mugs. Dawnie rose to refill the glasses and then silence fell upon them as they all turned to Aislinn, waiting for her to say more. She didn’t but it was evident she was thinking – or hoping she had said enough. The speech impediment must have been a real issue for her. “We’ve heard tell tales of Branwen’s finest,” Jirair prodded. As much as it pained her to speak, they all wanted to know. “The Seven. Lady, were you the Lady of the Seven?”
She glanced away, looked as though searching for the rabbit hole to flee into, then gained courage and lifted her eyes. “Feich led us,” she said by way of answer, confirming she was indeed one of Branwen’s knights. Thus she had to be the fierce redheaded Lady knight, whose passion was told by many a fire. Here, in their tavern…and alone. Jirair sank a little more into the chair he sat. And not by her choice. “Our second was Wulfbane.” She spoke now their names and held her head high in reverence for her fallen comrades. “Samuel rode to Feich’s left. Behind them rode Ailen and myself. Rehroane and Calin pulled up the rear.” And only she was left to ride again. Silence fell again and she seemed not to notice the agonizing loss of sound. She’d her own agony to contend with.
Dawni rose and filled their plates. She nudged her husband with her elbow as she piled food onto the pewter plate before him. Jirair looked to Ariel for help in drawing her out, drawing out the story of what happened to cause Branwen to fall. Ariel caught the hint and cleared his throat. Once Aislinn’s eyes were focused on him he tipped his head in her direction. “It would do us a great honor to learn of your last battle,” Ariel suggested kindly. “It would do your comrades a great service as well to know their feats were shared with others.”
She nodded, knowing that was what they waited for, just unsure of how to put the tale into words. She sighed. No matter how she told it, the tale would not have the flair as it would if Samuel was telling it. Her heart ached and her shoulders slumped forward. They needed telling of, she told herself. They deserved to be known and from what the sailors told her it was likely only she could tell it. The injustice of said choosing did not go unnoticed by her. Someone who struggled with speech as she did, telling the story of the greatest warriors she’d ever known. It was a terrible injustice. “Would that Samuel could speak through me,” she said and closed her eyes. She sat straighter and thought of her brother, remembered the ease with which he told such tales – how he would even get up and dance as though replaying the battle for his audience. She couldn’t dance the tale either in her condition.
“We were caught unawares,” she began its telling pushing the words forward, drawing from all her courage – the courage that came so easily on the battle field, in the arena, and on the dance floor. She found it helped if she kept her eyes closed and pictured Samuel telling the story. “Branwen celebrated the marriage – a union of the Seven.” A smile lit her face as she recalled. “Calin’s and my wedding. It was a wedding a long time anticipated but battles and wars prevented it. When at last we thought Branwen at peace, the wedding was planned and the feast prepared.” Her words struck them all as though by swords to their very lungs. She nodded her head, still smiling as she relieved those days prior to the slaughter then continued. “The feast was the largest since the union of the king and queen. All the kingdom came for the celebration. There were watchmen, of course, but the surprise came through magic and with such a force that no one could have been prepared to stop it.” She winced. If not in their minds, in her own she clearly relived the event. The vibrating of the floor beneath her in the chambers where she and the queen prepared. Her dress hung from the ceiling of the antechamber to the chapel. It was an arm’s reach away. Her sword was the same distance in the other direction. The vibration was followed by an explosion that shook the walls with such force the top layer of bricks crumbled and then rained down around them. Aislinn and the queen were dressed for battle. In the madness that followed, the queen then was escorted to the tower where she could weave the seeking spells. It was these spells which enabled the Seven and the others to see the enemy. “The wizards were taken first, a clever move on the part of the enemy. Without them, we had no magic with which to fight back. The queen – our only sorceress was struck down before she could even weave her first spell. She’d barely reached her place in the tower when one of their spells destroyed first her soul and then her body. The walls – walls never before penetrated dissolved before our very eyes. They were made as sand and then seemed to melt into sugar like candies at our feet. They weren’t people we fought. They were…” she paused and frowned, pursing her lips and wrinkling her brow as she thought how to describe that which danced before her mind’s eye.
“It was like…” she stopped again. Everyone at the table stood transfixed, daring not to move or whisper, even breath lest it cause her to open her eyes and the scene she unfolded for them be shattered. Jirair guessed that even if she were good with speech she’d not be able to describe their enemy. “Their steel wasn’t steel…their shields venom to our blades.” Her brow furrowed, the lines of her brow deepened and she shook her head. “We fought,” she said and that was something she could be sure of. “We fought with all we were, as we always did. We couldn’t win and we knew it but we fought. We’d faced such odds before – not exactly like this, no, but with the odds against us. I heard Feich scream – it was a sound I will live with forever. It was a sound I’d never heard before. Like the sorceress it was like his soul was ripped form his body before his heart was stilled.” She shuddered and Jirair thought to reach out for her but didn’t, held his desire to comfort in check. “The others did the same when they fell. Cailin, I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, but Samuel was beside and behind me. I was struck, I remember feeling the blade – but it wasn’t a blade – it was…it was…” she tilted her head, thought a moment, and continued once again, “it was like being struck by lightning, or so I imagine lightning to feel. I felt everything light up inside me, I felt it pulled from me and thought my soul jerked through my teeth. It’s strange to face an enemy that can play with a soul, stranger still to think of being alive when you feel your soul leave. Strange or no, it is the best way I can describe what happened. I remember calling for Cailin, thinking I saw him but my eyes weren’t open. He was bidding me forward or pushing me back – I could not tell. Samuel’s voice to was there. It was calm – like it was in battle. As though we were simply sparring and not fighting for our lives. He was telling me … ” she bowed her head and sighed. “I can’t remember what he was telling me. It was his voice though.”
They guessed right if they assumed this was the most the lady knight talked. They were impressed with her tale and sat transfixed while she spoke. Their attention seemed to unnerve her some and she shrunk back in her seat. “I woke,” she said after a long pause but still did not open her eyes, “on the ship. The sailors told me Samuel had died from his wounds and there was naught but a pile of rubble left of Branwen.” Her lips trembled again. “They gave me their condolences and promised to take me to the next port without charge. They’d healers but they’d never seen such a wound. In all honesty, they’d figured to sell our horses and equipment when they arrived at port.” She opened her eyes and looked at them, blushing fiercely to see all their gazes upon her. “They…did not think I’d live.”
