“Awake, Aurelie.”

  She twisted away from a noise, a voice in a dream. Her knee lifted and the blanket fell from her leg onto Balor beside her. She rubbed her face and buried it in her pillow.

  “Awake, Aurelie. Bring thy family to him. He needs thy help.”

  Aurie’s feet touched the cold floor before she realized it wasn’t a dream. The voice was not in a dream, it was all around her, inside her. It was soft as a lullaby and commanding as a king. Soothing and stern. She looked to Balor, who was snoring peacefully, wondering if he heard it. The door burst open.

  “Ma, Pa,” Maud slid across the floor and nearly launched into the bed over Balor from trying to stop mid-run. “You won’t believe wha…doesn’t matter, we need to go. Now.”

  “Maud? What are you doing?” Balor looked up to her from the pillow through sleepy squinting eyes.

  “We’re going to Draka, get your spear!” Aurie hurriedly pulled her dress on and kicked the bed at Balor, who had begun snoring again.

  “What?” Balor sat up, rubbing his puffy eyes and yawning.

  “It looks clear!” Alden called from the front door. “But Draka fell from Vigora.”

  “Draka’s hurt? What’s going on?” Balor tossed the blanket off him and leapt into his trousers.

  “I don’t know, but we’re going to him,” Aurie tossed him a shirt on her way out the bedroom door. “Come on. Maud, get all the wraps and salve ingredients in the basket.”

  Pride swelled within her at the sight of Maud with a shawl over her shoulders and a basket overfilled with everything she needed to tend wounds in her arms. She looked scared but determined. Instead of being afraid like she had been telling everyone, she looked…brave.

  Balor and Alden went out first. “Where are the villagers?” Balor asked.

  “Owls, Pa,” Alden leaned over the edge of the porch and looked up along it. “I don’t see any, you?”

  “Owls?” Balor gave him an odd look. Then he looked up at the roof and along the trees across the road. “No, no owls. Why owls?”

  “Because they’re not owls,” Maud passed him with a leap off the porch onto the road. She sprinted for Draka’s house. Alden tried to keep up with her, his face always turning this way and that at the moonlit sky.

  “We’re going,” Aurie kissed Balor’s cheek and shrugged. “Whatever it is, I know we need to go.”

  “I hate running,” Balor said under his breath, taking Aurie’s hand with one and holding his spear firmly in the other.

  As they ran up the road, Aurie gaped at the field. Most of the tilling had been trampled. There were puddles of what she could only assume was blood spread across the field as if it were a swamp. Feathered and mangled shapes lay across it, splatters of gore scattered like tossed compost. An owl was hanging from the garden window by an arrow. What could possibly have happened here? It looked like a battle had happened in their field. Only, the corpses were a mix of birds and...other things.

  Something tripped her but Balor kept her on her feet. A severed arm with long sinewy fingers tipped by overgrown black nails. Her knees nearly gave out at the sight. Her stomach churned.

  “See and be not afraid.” That voice again. All around, filling her head from within and without. She reeled from it and felt strengthened by it.

  Wind flowed through her lungs and her feet carried her faster. She was dragging Balor.

  Ahead, Draka used Vigora as he struggled to keep on his feet while unstrapping her armor. She nuzzled him, latched onto the end of his bevor to help him stay on his feet. He let the saddle fall to the ground with a chime and thud. He staggered. Another loosened belt and her flanchards fell. She lapped her lips and chomped down to keep him upright.

  Maud reached him first. She dropped the basket and grabbed him by the waist, barely able to fully wrap her arms around the splattered sticky metal armor. Alden quickly grabbed him from the side, then Balor, who tapped for Maud to get out of his way, on the other. The sight of him made Aurie stop in her tracks. He was a wobbly statue of glistening blood and gore splattered metal.

  Aurie took up the basket. “Maud, get a bucket of water on the hearth,” Aurie called to her, then to her husband and son, “Get him to the table.”

  “Baron’s Men are coming,” Alden nodded to point towards horses galloping from the bridge toward them.

  Aurie’s heart tightened at the sight. She staggered a step in awe, then called to them, “Let’s go!”

  Balor and Alden were limping Draka to the table when the armored horses galloped to a halt in front of the house. Draka kept waving a gauntleted hand at them to stop, but they didn’t let go until he was leaning on the table, exhausted. He lifted the helmet from over his head and spat bloody mud to the side.

  “Really?” Maud’s hands went to her hips and she kicked his shins with a ting. She wagged a finger at his nose, “Never again!”

  Gerard leapt from his horse and rushed up the stairs, half turned to shout his orders. “Unbridle Vigora and get her into her stable before she collapses. Archers on the roof, shields to the door. You! There’s a hidden entrance, find it and plug it up.” He rushed through the door straight for Draka.

  “Care to tell us what’s going on?” Balor growled at Gerard.

  Draka raised a brow at Balor with narrowed eyes while Maud grabbed his face and began turning it this way and that. Aurie brought her a bowl of warm water and a cloth. His face was smeared with blood and filth. His eyes weren’t lolling, his nose was unbroken. She sighed with relief at that. It was his back and chest that worried her. There were a dozen punctures through the metal. Scrapes and claws marks led to those punctures that actually creased and bent the thick steel.

  “Here,” Gerard lifted Draka’s arm and slid the plate from his side to get to the belts. “Help me with his armor. Don’t look at me like that. I’m still a Monastic, you barbarian.”

  “There’s so many pieces,” Alden said as he tugged at one of the pauldrons.

  Maud pulled Draka to look into her eyes, “I saw you, Draka. I know.”

  “Look out, love,” Gerard said as he and Alden lifted the bevor over his head.

  “I need to speak with you when we have a chance,” Maud said as she stepped back from the men pulling Draka’s armor apart, piece by piece. His heartfelt, worried gaze hung on Maud’s thankful, worried eyes.

  Aurie grinned at that. There was something there, for certain, and she felt warmed by the sight. She pulled the bucket of boiling water from the hearth and set it on a chair before replacing it with another bucket of water. As she waited for the water to cool enough to be put into bowls, she was drawn to Balor sticking his tongue out to one side as he fumbled with the belts under Draka’s arms.

  Draka was rolling his eyes at them. She could see that all the attention was annoying him but the way his hands moved, the way his head was tipping back and forth and side to side, she knew. He was too weak to stop them. Weak. Of all the things to see, she never thought it would be this man looking weak.

  “I got it!” Balor smiled widely once he unfastened a belt.

  “Great! Did you get the other five?” Gerard said while unsnapping his rerebraces.

  “Five? Shit,” Balor’s tongue stuck out again.

  “Done on this side,” Alden called.

  “How did you…?” Balor leaned to look at him.

  “Boots up,” Gerard directed him. To Aurie and Maud, “He needs to drink something. He won’t be able to lift a cup himself.”

  “You mean…” Maud stammered.

  Gerard nodded, a loud click resounded from where his hand had been, “Yes, you need to hold it for him. Water, if there’s any ready.”

  “There is,” Maud leapt to around the table where she had put a jug for his supper. She returned with a cup of water.

  To Aurie, “Brace his head, I have to get this backplate off.”

  Aurie pressed her hand on the back of Draka’s head. Don’t look at him. Concentrate on Draka. Don’t look. Don’t look.

  She turned to Gerard, who was reaching for something beneath the armor that he couldn’t look at, so his eyes were skyward. She looked away, quieting her heart from the residue of a once familiar and constant ache which no longer exists. But the memory of it always would.

  Maud lifted the cup to Draka’s lips with a warm smile. “I watched you. You were…it was…I’m glad you’re alive. I was worried.”

  He coughed a little, then grinned at her.

  “You should have seen him, Pa,” Alden said, dropping the greaves to one side. “He charged across the field like a giant ball of light and they charged him and there was dust and these bright flashes like lightning—and they sounded just as loud—and the owls, they were women with bird wings and tits and everything!”

  “Alden!” Aurie snapped at him from behind Draka.

  “Harpies,” Gerard huffed. There was a click. He pressed Draka by the back of his neck, “Alright, hold him up or he’ll fall as soon as I get this off.”

  “What’s a harpies?” Balor asked, then said, “Got the last one.”

  “Maudeline, hold him from the front, Aurelie,” Gerard lifted the backplate only slightly, “Under the plate, hold him.”

  She bent her arm and slid it up Draka’s back. Her heart was near bursting out of her chest, both from feeling the hardness of his back, and the syrupy wetness she knew was blood through the quilted coat beneath, and from Gerard being close enough that she could smell his breath.

  “Balor? You ready? Alden, help him, it’s heavy,” Gerard waited for the boy to grab the bottom of the breastplate. “On three. One—two—three, lift!” All three men hefted breathily, their faces going red as they lifted the plates over Draka’s head and carried them in small, staggering steps, to drop them on the floor. They stumbled to catch their breaths and regain their footing. How heavy could they be that three men look as if they had lifted a cart full of grain?

  “He’s passing out!” Maud pulled him to lean toward her with fistfuls of his quilted coat.

  Aurie was already looking at the blotches of blood surrounding holes through the coat. They had dug deep to get to him. Broke through chains in his chainmail shirt and more raggedy material was poking out from whatever layers were beneath.

  “That’s normal,” Gerard stretched his back. “Okay, Maudeline, undo his coat. Don’t worry, there’s plenty more underneath to protect your eyes.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  She looked disappointed, yet glad to be unbuttoning the coat. Aurie was too fixated on those piercings through his layers to feel the same.

  “Alden, Balor, keep working on his legs,” Gerard directed them.

  A soldier came in just as the coat was pulled off to reveal the long chainmail shirt. Gerard began lifting the shirt off of Draka while Aurie and Maud held his arms up. “Clear so far, but we counted thirty-six dead demons,” the soldier reported. “We’re in place for the next wave.”

  “The next wave?” Aurie shot wide eyes to Gerard.

  “There’s more of harpies?” Balor was on his knees, pulling one of the steel boots off.

  “Very good, Sergeant. Hold till sunrise for further instruction.”

  “Yes, Knight Commander.” The soldier bowed his head and was out the door.

  “How can we defend against something that can do this?” Aurie said under her breath as she helped Maud slip the silk shirt off of him. Draka’s head rocked forward, Maud shrieked. “Maud, he’s breathing. Help me with the last shirt.” To herself, she muttered, “I plowing hope it’s the last one.”

  “Harpies are demons who are half woman, half owl,” Gerard said as they laid Draka onto his stomach on the table. “They’re strong and vicious. Usually target pregnant women, infants, and immoral men they hope to breed with.” Gerard looked to each of them, “They look like owls to us until they want us to see otherwise. Usually when their seducing or attacking. And they normally don’t attack in force like that. That’s a very large unit he faced. Too large.”

  “Demons?” Balor chuckled at him. “Next you’ll tell me that there are trolls in the forests wanting their tolls or a dragon with a lair of gold in the old Abbey.”

  “I suspect what’s in the Abbey will make us all wish it was a dragon,” Gerard stared him down.

  The wounds on Draka’s chest and back were barely larger than needle points, already scabbing over. His layers of armor had done their jobs. Aurie noted to Maud that he was lucky none of the skin had torn. They were only shallow punctures.

  “That’s why he wears the silk shirt,” Gerard showed them. “It can take an arrow in it and all you do is tighten the shirt to pull it out and it doesn’t cause you to bleed to death. The Islamites use them. Draka liked the idea when he was told about it. Personally, silk makes me itch.”

  “Seems a small price,” Maud shot him a glare.

  “Why did this happen? How did it start?” Aurie dabbed his wounds on her side of him and washed the mud from his back.

  Gerard regarded them and hardened.

  “And what’s to be done about my field? Will demon blood kill my crops?”

  “Yes,” Gerard shook his head. “I’ve sent for priests who will be here tomorrow or the next day. They’ll do what they can to make sure your crops aren’t tainted. But for now, Balor, I think there’s more important things, don’t you?”

  “Why, Gerard?” Aurie glared.

  He drew in a breath.

  Balor crossed his arms at him, “Well? Do we need to leave and where can you provide for us, since this didn’t happen until you came here?”

  That made Gerard step at him with a downward glare. “Don’t try and pin this on me. I’m here because your village needed help, because my brother asked it of me.”

  “Brother?” Maud looked up from her washing.

  “In Arms,” Gerard let out a long sigh and shook his head. “I don’t know, alright. I was in bed when it started. Ask him when he wakes up.”

  “It was me,” Maud drew all of their stares. “She came for me.”

  “Who?” Gerard was the loudest of them, though each of them said it nearly at once. It was his that had less shock and more suspicion to it.

  “She called herself Lilith.”

  Balor and Alden both said to each other, “Who the plow is that?” But Aurie watched all the color drain from Gerard’s face.

  “What did she say? And try to be precise, girl.”

  Maud told him the only part she remembered, her eyes to Draka as she ran her fingers lightly through his hair, “Will he only save me or them this time.”

  “That’s not good,” Gerard rubbed his eyes. “That’s really not good.”

  “That settles it,” Balor bit his lip. “My love, I think we need to start getting our things together. Alden, I’ll need you to help me with loading the cart.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Gerard stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  Balor looked up to him with a sharp glare, “We both know why you wouldn’t. But seems to me that my family will be safer elsewhere. Far from here and…whatever this is.” Balor shouldered roughly past him. Alden shook his head in confusion and followed.

  “They used you as bait, Clevlan,” Gerard called over his shoulder.

  Balor stopped just before the door. Aurie audibly gasped. Maud’s head hung. Alden held his spear in both hands with a cocked brow at him.

  “You think they can’t reach you out there? The further you go, the more you help them lure Draka into a trap.”

  Balor turned to him, “Explain, Cathol.”

  Gerard looked at Draka, then met Aurie’s eyes, then Balor’s. He drew their attention with a nod toward Maud. She was running her fingers through his hair, her face tight like she was deep in thought.

  “I would recommend you make yourselves comfortable here. It’s more defensible than your house and it’s close to him.”

  “That is my house, shoemaker, not here.”

  Aurie felt her entire body sink into the floor. He knew. All along, he knew. She had never told him, but he knew. And now, now it comes out.

  “Do as you will, farmer.”

  “How long?” Maud looked up. “How long must we stay here?”

  “Until he says you’re safe to return or the Paladinate army that’s on its way gets here, whichever comes first,” Gerard answered her but never drew his eyes from Balor’s. “He only knows men like us and others like him. All able to defend ourselves. You’re the only ones he cares about enough that they used you,” He pointed at Maud, his voice rising into a roar, “Used Her as bait! Because you’re easy prey. And he has so little self-preservation in him, he’ll dive into hell itself to save you and get himself killed in the process. Trust me, I know him better than any of you. He would. And if Lilith appeared to Maudeline, she knows that Draka values her.”

  “He values me?”

  “My Maud?” Balor blinked at him with a half-smile.

  Aurie went to Maud’s side and grabbed the hand that wasn’t on Draka’s cheek with a warm grin. “Who knew?”

  Maud’s brows furrowed as she looked back at Draka. “They know he protects me. But not just me,” she straightened proudly. “My family, too. All of us. Why not stay here a while? You slept here before, Pa. We’re safest at his side. And,” She looked down on him, “For once, he’ll be safest with us, too.”

  “We stay?” Aurie looked to her husband.

  Balor put his arm across her back and regarded Maud with pride, “I insist.”

  Aurie found Gerard on the porch with his shield leaning against his shoulder smoking a pipe. She had waited until Balor was distracted by making their beds of hay and blankets with Alden before she went out to him. She sat herself with a distance between them, stilling the memories in her heart by keeping herself away from him.

  “Is this what you did on crusade?” She asked with a straightening of her dress to cover her feet.

  Gerard nodded.

  “For Draka?”

  “Not always,” he puffed at the pipe. Tendrils of smoke snaked from his nostrils and from his mouth. “Sometimes it was others. In battles like that, we’re liabilities—dangerous for Draka—because we can easily be turned against him. If they send another wave, we will die. Our only purpose is to weaken his enemies as much as we can before that happens, but,” he regarded her stoically, “we must die in the process or we will join his enemies against him.”

  “Your God is cruel to make you do such things,” Aurie said with a look of disgust. “Sacrifice yourselves like that. Throw yourselves at His enemies to be slaughtered. And Draka along with Him if he allows it.”

  “He always does his best,” Gerard sighed. “But we all have a part in God’s plan. Sometimes, it’s only to die. Don’t call God cruel because you don’t understand His plan or His Will. Our species caused this. Humans caused this war with our arrogance and vanity. It was God who sent us men like Draka to defend us.”

  “So, my family, little Talkro, are a part of God’s plan?”

  “I don’t assume to know what the Almighty intends. But what I do know is that Draka is the best of us. Some who are gifted like him choose to let their free will be taken by God and live as he does, fight this fight. There’s a theory among us crusaders and all who have met him that he didn’t become a Paladin the way others did. He was created this way. He’s a—different sort. But, like any Paladin after this sort of engagement, his strength of will, and, well his mortal body, has been—used up. That’s why he’s resting. Our God is rejuvenating him. He needed support for this kind of fight. There were far too many,” he looked at her solemnly, “if he were less skilled or less...experienced, he’d be dead and so would all of you.”

  “Why are we bait, then? Who are they and why is he so important to them?”

  “I don’t know and what I do know is not mine to tell,” Gerard climbed to his feet and fitted his shield on his arm.

  “Tell me anyway,” Aurie didn’t move. “What is he? Who is he? I deserve to know.”

  Gerard hung his head with a long breath. “I can’t.”

  “My daughter is in there thinking he might be her husband soon,” Aurie picked at her fingers, “and apparently he’s important enough for your God’s enemies to use us as bait to kill him.”

  “Our Enemies, Aurelie,” Gerard growled at her. “You all might worship them, but they want nothing more than to exterminate every human in existence. And I don’t know why they want him. He made an oath when his wife and son died, perhaps that’s why. Perhaps it’s because of how he’s a living, breathing example of how God intended all of us to be. Perhaps it’s how good he is. I don’t know. But I do know that me and the others have been trying to get him to forsake that damned oath since we learned of it because he’s a good man and a better friend.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “It was our order, my unit, that found him in the desert, barefoot and covered in furs, wandering aimlessly twenty-two or so years ago. Still don’t know how he survived to make it so far. Took forever for us to get him to learn our language enough just to find out that he was from the northern tribes, of all things. That he walked, Aurelie, walked all six thousand kilometers. He didn’t cross through Al'Constantine to Turk Lands. He walked around it. And once there, he never visited a brothel, never took a woman, never treated anyone different than a friend, regardless of who they were or what they had done, never drank himself into drunkenness. He learned of our God more from the Holy Spirit within him than our priests and was always right. And, in battle, he’s unmatched. There isn’t a man I’ve laid eyes on that can best him.”

  “You’ve known him that long?”

  “I fought as his commander, his equal, and under his command. He is as close to me as any brother could be. If my purpose is to die so that he has even a grain of dust more chance of surviving, then I will gladly do so. And so will my men and everyone in the Holy Lands that knows his name.”

  “Well, hopefully he won’t wait until he’s on the Ribbon Pole to realize he loves my daughter,” Aurie raised a glare to him.

  Gerard hung his head and shook at himself. He drew in a long breath, “Unfortunately, it won’t matter. She’s not the first to fall in love with the man. He’s turned countless women away. Some made us hope that they finally, somehow, miraculously made him fall for them, but they never did. To this day, he mourns them. Mourns his wife and child.”

  Aurie sank. “She must have been wonderful. He must truly have loved them.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Gerard stepped off the porch. “Their deaths were why he walked to the Holy Lands. If what I always heard is correct, his son would be a year or two older than Maudeline if he had lived.”

  Aurie gaped at the thought. For the entirety of her daughter’s life, the length of her marriage to Balor, Draka has mourned a wife and child. Never took another, never touched another. Gerard couldn’t do that, she knew firsthand. Would Balor? Would she? And beginning so young!

  “I will say this,” Gerard turned back to her, “Maudeline looks to have got him closer to it than I’ve ever seen. He cares for her. For the rest of you, too. Don’t know if it’ll be marriage, but I think you might be his new family. And, Lord knows, he needs one.”

  He untethered his horse and began walking it toward the village, leaving Aurie sitting in wonder. There was a time, before all of this, when she truly thought she was in love with him. She expected, as with every time she had seen him over the years since his return but had avoided speaking more than a greeting to him, that she would feel that again. But she felt nothing.

  Will that be what happens to Maud?