'There are a few knights left, your Majesty, and Areava directs them. We can finish them off with one more attack, I am sure of it.'
Lynan carefully dismounted and approached the entrance, his Red Hands bustling around him. He could see the top of the palace over the wall that surrounded it. Black smoke billowed into the sky from the west wing. That would be the church library, he thought sadly. The bodies of guards and knights littered the streets outside the wall. Any dead Chetts had been carried away by their comrades. He could hear the buzzing of flies, and seagulls fought over carrion. Above them all hovered kestrels, sometimes diving down to take the tastiest morsels.
'That is what we have become,' he said aloud.
Korigan rode next to him and dismounted to stand by his side. 'Lynan, your army is ready to finish it,' she said. 'Just as you wish.'
'I do not think I need to finish it with my army,' he said slowly. 'The enemy… my sister… must know it is over.'
'But she is queen on your throne!' Korigan said, surprised by Lynan's change of heart. 'You cannot be king while she lives!'
And that is what I want, isn't it? he asked himself. Had not Kumul and Jenrosa and hundreds of Chetts died for his cause? And had he not decided when he crossed back to the east from the Oceans of Grass that his cause was winning the throne of Grenda Lear? Or had all those people, all those he cared for, died for nothing?
But still he hesitated. Korigan stood in front of him and held his head between her hands. 'As I love you, and as I know you love me, I tell you with all my heart that I wish there was some other way for this to end. But I do not believe the future can bear the weight of both Areava and yourself. It will tear the continent apart.'
He nodded, and the breath shuddered out of his lungs. 'It is time.' He walked back to his horse and mounted. He unsheathed his sabre and held it in his right hand, tightened the reins in his left. Korigan, Ager and Gudon took their places on either side of him.
Ager cleared his throat. 'Lynan, before the first battle we fought in the east, I asked you if you were prepared for what comes after. I am asking you again.'
This time Lynan answered truthfully. 'I don't know,' he said.
Ager shrugged. 'That's what I thought.' He looked at his friends and was filled with a sudden grief he could not at first understand, but then realised it was because Kumul and Jenrosa were not here as well, here at the very end as they should have been. 'Oh, fuck it,' he said. 'Give the order, Lynan.'
Lynan raised his sabre. The Red Hands drew their weapons, the archers before the entrance to the courtyard drew their bows.
'Now!' he shouted, and kicked his horse into a gallop.
For Olio it started with a rain of arrows, black darts that rose over the wall and landed, clattering, on stone and armour.
'Help me up,' Areava ordered, and Olio and Charion put her arms around their necks and lifted her to her feet. She grunted in pain then brought her arms by her side. 'I am fine now,' she said. 'Look out for yourselves.'
All three drew their swords. Before them the knights readied their own weapons, the sound of their clanking armour echoing around the courtyard.
Another volley of arrows, and then came the cavalry led by the youngest of the Rosethemes, pale and slight and filled with a terrible fury.
Olio, seeing him, remembered him, and the shock of it was paralysing.
Lynan was crying before his horse entered the courtyard. Tears blurred his eyes, and rage filled his heart. He smashed into the first line of knights, sending several tumbling to the ground, and brought down his sabre so hard onto a helmet that the metal buckled underneath and the head within was crushed. Almost immediately his horse was struck and it fell to its knees, already dead. Lynan struggled to loose his feet from the stirrups. A poor knight, dressed in nothing but a coat of chain mail and a pot helmet, came at him with an axe. Lynan deflected the first swing, got his right foot loose, ducked under the second swing, got his left foot loose, blocked the third swing and kicked the knight between the legs, and as he went down Lynan's sabre sliced open the back of his unprotected thighs. The knight squealed and rolled in pain. Lynan ignored him and threw himself at a better-armed opponent wielding a long sword with practised strokes; three dead Red Hands already lay before him. But Gudon was there before Lynan, ducking under the longer reach of the enemy and thrusting the point of his short sword straight into the man's face. The knight swallowed the point of Gudon's sword and collapsed in a fountain of blood.
Another axe-wielding knight attacked Lynan, but before he could deliver a stroke two Red Hands were on top of him, cutting, slicing, slaying. Lynan moved on as if he was part of an irresistible tide, his Red Hands overwhelming the few defenders left. The courtyard became slippery with blood as the knights retreated to the steps in front of the great hall to protect their queen. Areava and her two companions did not wait for the onslaught but charged down the steps and into the fray. Lynan tried to reach her, but knights threw themselves in the way, lashing out with swords and mailed fists. Lynan started to wonder if the battle would ever end. He could not breathe without sucking in air misted with blood, and his nostrils were filled with the scent of hot metal as blades and armour sparked. His foot slipped and he instinctively put out his hands to arrest his fall, his fingers landing in the face of a dead knight. He struggled back to his feet, feeling nauseous, and realised the fighting had stopped.
It's all over, he thought, and then realised that was not the case, but both sides had just pulled back from each other to rest. Chett warriors stood resting on their weapons, panting like dogs, trying to get one clean lungful of air. The surviving knights, panting even more heavily, pulled back to the steps, Areava behind them.
Afterwards, Lynan was never sure what made him do it, but he lifted his head back and shouted at his sister: 'Surrender!'
The courtyard fell silent; even the panting stopped.
Lynan stepped forward, heedless of his own safety. 'Areava, surrender to me!'
All eyes rested on the queen, all ears waited for her answer.
Olio had fought without knowing how he did it. He recognised the moves he had been taught in training, but he had no real control over them. While he blocked attacks and parried, while he sidestepped as he needed to and struck where he could, he could not rid his mind of the memories that flooded in, of Lynan when he was a child and then as a young man. After waking from his insanity, he had not remembered anything about Lynan, had felt nothing for him except a kind of abstract repulsion because of his assault on Grenda Lear; but on seeing Lynan in the flesh his real feelings had returned, and he realised he loved this man, this pale demon who was trying to kill their sister.
Then he found himself on the steps to the great hall, his sister behind him, and there was an unexpected lull in the fighting. Knights crowded before him. Charion jostled to his right.
'Surrender!'
His brother stepped forward from among the red-handed Chetts.
'Areava, surrender to me!'
He looked over his shoulder, saw the indecision in his sister's face. Then she shouted back: 'I am queen of Grenda Lear! I am sworn to defend the throne!'