Daughter of Crann

“I swear that I, Danielle Longbow, will serve the Kingdom of Crann from this day until my dying day. I will obey the instructions of my Queen and her commanders. I will wield my sword in defence of my people, against any that would do them harm. I will obey and uphold the laws of the realm. 

This is my oath as a soldier of Crann.” She raised her eyes from the granite flagstones to look at Sir Dewar. He stood over her with a smile on his crooked face. His muscular frame cast deep shadows. As he smiled, she saw the gaps in teeth he’d probably lost fighting. He stood with most of his weight on his left leg because the right caused him pain. 

Sir Dewar wasn’t the knight in shining armour that rescues princesses from frightful monsters with a carefree smile on his face. He was a battle-scarred veteran who’d been fighting for the kingdom decades before Danielle was born. His hair was platinum, the mark of a man who had not been cut down despite his ever-creeping age. His armour was clean but had scratches. 

That armour was as old as anything Danielle carried but the sword and shield of her father. She looked at the unicorn on her shield and the sword in its scabbard on her hip. 

“What are you waiting for lass? A hand up? My boots have seniority over you. Get up now. You’re one of us.” Danielle stood and looked into his brown eyes. “Welcome to the Army of the Kingdom of Crann.” 

When she was on her feet, he held out his hand. As she reached out, he shook it. Once, just once. His shadows danced in the light of the flaming torches on the walls. There were no windows in the granite blocks. Faded tapestries of great battles covered the walls. 

“Next one, take a knee.” The ancient knight’s eyes rolled past Danielle to another woman behind her. “Another lassie? What’s the world coming to?” He shook his head. “I hope you heard the oath when she said it. I hate repeating myself.” 

The woman who followed her repeated the oath, substituting in her own name. 

“Good job Danielle. You’re one of us now.” It was Sir Lennox. He was almost as weather worn as Sir Dewar but not as old. His good left eye looked at her, happy blue. The milky one did the usual grey stare. “If you had a horse and could read, we could have knighted you.” 

Danielle’s chest sank. She wished she had pestered her drunken father, Sir Darren Longbow, for reading lessons before he died at the bottom of a bottle. 

“I have to be able to read?” she asked. 

“Read, write, own a horse, swim, own your own sword and armour. Basic requirements for a knight. And you must be of noble birth. You’ve got that covered at least.” He smiled. His teeth were yellow. 

“Noble birth? You knew my father, didn’t you?” She smiled. Her white teeth were in stark contrast to those of the old knights who had eaten well all their lives. 

Sir Lennox scratched his short cut, greying-brown hair. His smile faded. He frowned. The fearful scar across his right eye creased the skin of his pink complexion. 

“Your family is as old as any, lass. I can show you if you don’t believe me. Your father was an oaf at the the near end of a family. With you, there’s a chance to redeem that name. The Longbow’s were well respected once.” His tone was somber as if it was a tragedy that she didn’t know the tale of her forefathers. 

The heavy clap of footsteps on stone echoed off the walls. All heads turned as the rhythm of running met their ears. 

“Imperials in the city,” said a young woman in her chain mail and green Crann Kingdom tabard. The Crann Oak shrank in the creases of the tabard as she entered the high doorway of the soldier’s hall. The woman was gasping, she tore off her helmet which was too big for her. “They’ve set fire to one of the forges, a granary, and murdered townsfolk. They took hostages and they’re holed up in an abandoned house. They’re in the Smoke District.” 

“Dammit,” roared Sir Dewar. “All of you get there, now!” He motioned to the door. “Not a moment’s peace from those bastards. Go. Don’t wait for me.” 

“Come on,” said Sir Lennox, nodding to his senior brother in arms. “He’ll catch us up.” 

Danielle began a swift sprint through the castle in all of her armour. It had already been a long day for her. She felt as if it was going to get a lot longer. 

She ran behind Sir Lennox who wasn’t fast unless you took age and the weight of his armour into account. After an exhausting day Danielle could only match his speed. 

They ran down corridors lined with antiquated suits of armour and weapons of various designs and the shields of warriors whose legends were fading into obscurity. Out into darkness. The sun had set. The moon was high but peeking through grey clouds. Warriors bearing torches converged with them. 

The gravel of the courtyard had been torn up by the footprints of frantic soldiers. As they passed under the raised portcullis the work of the imperials was revealed in flickering light. Orange tongues of flame licked the dark sky. 

“It's the granary!” shouted someone with a better sense of the city at night. 

Danielle's stomach rumbled as she ran. 

“Have you not eaten?” Sir Lennox asked as he jogged. 

“I slept after the workout this morning.” 

“The training was brisk,” he said. He didn't know that she had gone from archery training to bed with Lupita Smith. 

“Yes. This morning was exhausting.” Though her feet felt baked in her boots and her joints were stiff she was smiling as she ran.

The Smoke District was the home of the armourers, smiths, tanners, and all other industries that produced smoke and fumes. Nearby was the Vital District where food was stored for the winter. Closer, the flames were a giant hand waving at them in orange and yellow.

Finding the house where the imperials had taken hostages wasn’t hard because there was already a mob of Leonor’s people standing around it. They yelled; many had the bows that had been circulated. They wanted blood.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Sir Lennox demanded as he arrived. His voice cut through the crowd.

“They’ve got two women up there. There’s four of ‘em.” A peasant woman with a bow and quiver pointed up to the second story of a home over a pottery shop. The shutters were closed over the windows. The wooden steps up to the only door were steep and barely wide enough for anyone in armour.

“DON’T COME ANY CLOSER!” came the roar from beyond the shutters. “WE’VE GOT YOUR WOMEN. WE’LL CUT THEM FROM EAR TO EAR UNLESS YOU LET US GO.”

“Impudent arsehole. I’ll cut him from his apple to his ballsack.” Sir Lennox growled.

Danielle looked at the shutters on the windows, they were thick wood. The house was a sturdy build. It was stone to avoid burning down, like most things in the Smoke District. The roof was tiled with what looked like all the tiles too low quality to be accepted on better houses. They were odd shapes, chipped and cracked. In places the roof had been tarred like a leaking ship.

“Who was taken?” Danielle asked, suddenly hoping her lover Lupita wasn’t up there.

“Don’t know ma’am.” The peasant woman said, she wore a dress of dirty white and was barefoot on the cobbles.

“It’s Cèilidh Carpenter and Earie Tanner, they just pulled them up there screaming and gods know what they’ve done to them.” The second woman to speak didn’t have a weapon other than a broom handle but after the training all the people of Leonor had been getting, she could probably do some damage with it. “We killed the rest.”

“Where did they come from?” Sir Lennox demanded.

“I think they’ve been here the whole-time sir. They just grabbed weapons and started killing people.”

“Now they’re cornered, and they have hostages. Those women must be terrified.” Danielle said, thinking out loud.

“If they’re still alive.” Sir Lennox sounded sceptical.

“What do we do sir?” asked a soldier behind Danielle.

“Clear these people away from the building. Most of them won’t know those women. I don’t want them burning down that building to kill the imperials at the cost of two Leonori lives.” He pointed to groups of soldiers who were already holding back the mob.

Soldiers pushed back the crowd with their shields.

“Wait. Sir.” Danielle placed a tired hand on the knight’s shoulder. “What is the plan? What are we going to do?”

“They put us through a siege Miss Longbow. Now it’s their turn.” His expression was more grim than usual.

“Those women will die first. Sir.” She was sure of it. Imperials had joyed in killing the people of Crann on the march to Leonor before the siege. They would kill the women out of spite if it seemed they were going to die. The old knight was right though, there was no guarantee the women weren’t dead already.

“We should pretend to give them what they want sir. Four men can’t look in every direction. Soldiers with crossbows could kill them when they emerge from the building. All we would need to do is lure them out.”

“Lure them with what? I can’t let them get away.”

“You won’t have to. If they come out with the women, we can get them from above. As long as they can’t see the shooters taking position it’s safe.”

“That sounds like a half decent plan Miss Longbow. Where would you station crossbows to get a shot at that doorway though? The wall is too far away with too many buildings in between.” He turned to look at her. His hands rested on his hips. His stern face seemed to interrogate her even though he was listening.

“The very next building there, the tanners, is high enough to look down on the doorway. They won’t see it from inside if we can get soldiers up there from the other side. Once Cèilidh Carpenter and Earie Tanner are out the shooters can deal with the imperials. Probably shoot them in the back of the head. It would be hard to miss from so close.”

“Sounds like you know more about this than I do. Who are the best soldiers with crossbows?”

“Sir Aiden Bowman, his sister Rhona, Katherine Fletcher and Sir William Roy are the four best in the city sir.”

Then find them, tell them your plan, and get them up on that rooftop. I’ll tell those louts we’ll give them horses and let them out of the city if they give up the women.”

“Aye sir.” Danielle nodded and tried to find the archers she knew. Sir Aiden and his sister were nowhere to be found, perhaps on duty on the walls. Katherine Fletcher and Sir Roy were among those trying to push back the crowd. Along with Rose Fletcher, who wasn’t related to Katherine, Danielle felt she had enough to carry out her plan.

Soldiers pushed back the rabble outside the house as the darkness of the night deepened. Elsewhere in the city people were fighting to put out fires started by the saboteurs.

It was odd to leave the scene as they set off to prepare for the plan. Danielle wanted them all to have two loaded crossbows, two chances at the right shot. They retrieved the necessary equipment from the castle armoury which Danielle had never seen before.

With a heavily armoured guard at the door, it was a weapon enthusiast’s wet dream. Swords of every size and style sat on the racks, many of the newer acquisitions were imperial gladius swords. Quivers of arrows were stacked like beer barrels on top of each other because there were suddenly so many. The queen had been working all the blacksmiths, bowyers, fletchers, and leather workers from dawn to dusk.

As well as imperial swords there were the long rectangular shields they were known for, but all of them had been repainted from imperial red to Crann Green. Training swords made for the mandatory morning training were in sacks in a corner.

With two crossbows apiece and a quiver of bolts on their backs, they returned to the Smoke District. Sneaking quietly through the windows of houses along the same row as the tanner was difficult, as was getting the ladder along behind them.

Next was the awkward bit. Getting to the roof of the tanners building with a ladder that was four feet shorter than they needed was a hassle. Katherine Fletcher was a lean woman who wore leather armour over a simple woollen dress that looked itchy as all hells. She clambered over the shoulders of Danielle from the top of the ladder then lifted Rose Fletcher who was almost as thin as Katherine. Together the two women hauled up Sir Roy who was of slighter build than Danielle. The three managed to haul up Danielle who’d left her armour in the armoury. She hoped it would all still be there when she went back for it.

The thatched roof of the tanner stank as much as everything else around the building. Wrinkled faces looked at Danielle as she went over the plan again. Sir Lennox would be making his promises shortly. They each locked and loaded their crossbows and crawled along the reeking thatch to see the door of the house above the pottery shop.

“LISTEN UP YOU WHORESONS.” The sudden roar of Sir Lennox almost had Danielle pissing herself. “We have four horses for you here and a clear road out of the city if you let those two women go. I’m in no mood to haggle so I’m smoking you out as well. You can either come out, hand over those women and ride away or you can choke to death on the stink of burning manure. Your choice. Choose quickly.”

In the darkness Danielle was vaguely aware of new light flickering in the street, no doubt the torches made with manure that Sir Lennox had talked of. It was a sharp ruse. The imperials wouldn’t have time to think clearly.

“WE’RE COMING OUT. CLEAR A PATH FOR US OR WE’LL SLIT THEIR THROATS AS YOU WATCH.”

Danielle ground her teeth, supporting the crossbow in one hand with her other near the trigger.

“Quiet now,” whispered Miss Longbow. “Don’t let them know we’re here.”

She heard a bar being removed from the door. It creaked as it was opened slowly.

Danielle shook her head as Katherine Fletcher’s muscles tensed to move forwards along the thatch. They had to wait.

“I only see one. Where’s the other?” asked Sir Lennox from the street. “If you want these horses, I have to see both.”

The tortured sounds of a woman crying around a gag on the stairs met Miss Longbow’s ear, but still she shook her head at both other women lying on the rooftop beside her with crossbows in their hands. Sir Roy was darkly calm. His pale features were set with a killer stare, but he waited for her to give the signal.

“They’re coming with us.” The voice of the negotiator was a deep imperial voice with a tint of the south. The man had clearly been a spy or a linguist for a while. The north had more monotonous accents which had blended as the empire homogenised everything.

“One. I’ll let you one,” said Sir Lennox. “I should be killing you all but if you leave one, I’ll let the rest of you ride out of here. Bring the other maiden out.” There was a pause. “What have you done to her? Take the damned horses and fuck off.”

Danielle nodded and stood with the crossbow in her hands. The moment she had a hostage taker in sight she aimed for his head. The men were slowly walking down the stairs, looking at four horses in the road and Sir Lennox, unarmed, holding the reigns.

Danielle pointed out a target to each of the archers and counted down on her fingers. Each of her chosen locked their eyes on a target, watching her countdown in their peripheral vision.

“Fire,” she said softly.

One of the heads on the stair turned. The imperial had a sword at a woman’s throat. As the bolt entered his skull, he tumbled sideways and the woman began to fall down the stairs, released from his grip.

The other three fell in unison. The first woman was fine, jumping over their bodies to be free as the other slid down the stairs. That second hostage had been unconscious already as she was brought out.

Sir Lennox ran to help the unconscious woman. Other soldiers sped to see that the imperials were dead.

“She’s alive,” the old knight smiled up with his horrible teeth. She’s alive. Good plan Longbow.”

Sir Roy smacked Danielle on the back and cheered. Whatever had happened to the women, it was over. The harder part of the mission was getting back down off the roof. Awkwardly lowering themselves back down the same way they’d gone up was nerve wracking.

After all that, Danielle didn’t even get to go back to her own bed. She had to move into Leonor Castle barracks with the other soldiers. She barely cared as long as she got to close her eyes. Her adrenaline rush was gone. She was ready to drop. Her introduction to the dormitory was a blur as she lay down and closed her eyes. Asleep at last.