The Queen's Reckless Charge
Richelle rode hard, the wind whipping past her as she thought to herself: this was when she felt most free. No matter that she ruled a nation, at her core she remained a knight. Of course she took genuine interest in governing the Kingdom of Zylan. Yet that duty never brought the same wild liberation she felt when she drove a horse until her lungs burned and her leg muscles screamed. Ruling and defending Zylan stirred both fascination and a profound sense of obligation in her. The feeling could swell her chest with pride, but at times it made her long to flee everything. Before her coronation, she would ease that urge by seizing her favorite mount and racing along the banks of the Constogel River. Even now she galloped, though the path was different. She was the sovereign of Zylan, after all.
Herbert and Leo, riding back to Polbury by carriage, no doubt worried she was being too rash and impulsive. She knew their concerns were justified. “Hang in there, Bonnie,” she murmured, stroking the mare’s chin. Bonnie answered with a powerful snort. A draft horse unused to carrying riders or navigating narrow trails, she showed no sign of resentment. Bonnie was proving far better than expected. Richelle decided that once they returned to Venterum she would consider moving the mare into the royal riding stables. Assuming they returned at all.
For now she kept mostly to the riverside, slipping into the trails only when the exposure felt too great. The detour cost precious time. Bonnie ran better than anticipated, yet no horse could gallop without rest forever. Another fork appeared. Richelle drew Bonnie to a halt. The mare needed to breathe. Besides, though she performed admirably, she had neither been bred nor trained for forest paths or carrying a rider. Even with brief rests, continuing this way might exhaust the surprisingly sturdy animal until she dropped dead.
“Which way would you prefer, Bonnie?”
The mare pawed the earth and kept swinging her head toward the river. Richelle gave an awkward smile. She would have liked to let her run freely. In her mind she weighed the choices: unfavorable ground with a smaller numerical disadvantage, or favorable ground with a severe one. The answer was obvious. She was an excellent knight. Astride a fine horse with a well-kept blade, she feared nothing. She turned Bonnie toward the gently winding but level riverside path. The mare sprang forward willingly. Irritated by earlier slopes, Bonnie now ran with even greater vigor. From her back Richelle thought, So it is Malong after all.
She and Leo had considered both Derim and the North while inside the carriage, but neither seemed likely to orchestrate something like this from behind the scenes. A century earlier the North might have been involved. Yet now that the North’s leader, the Count of Zad, stood poised to become Zylan’s prince consort, the only gain they could expect from destabilizing the crown was the chance for Count Zad to serve as regent to a young queen. Besides, no underage princess existed between Prince Marion and Queen Richelle. The same logic applied to Derim. Zylan was certainly one of Derim’s chief hypothetical enemies, but Derim shared borders with the Western Empire to the east, the Apostolic Throne and the Eight Nations Alliance to the south, and the Kingdom of Yedinia to the west. In such a precarious position, the Derim king’s authority was not so fragile that he would incite riots in a city holding one of his own captive.
That left only Malong. Count Raoul of Malong possessed merely four countships, yet his domains stretched across three kingdoms and two continents—an empire in all but name along the western Mediterranean. Farmland, sea trade, gold, a formidable army, and even cunning schemes belonged to him. All he lacked was a crown to place upon his head, provided he could borrow the military skill to wield it. Still, Richelle struggled to see why he would choose to conspire at this particular moment. Even Raoul could not believe such unrest would succeed in killing a monarch. Moreover, even if she died, neither he nor his wife, Countess Matilda of Malong, could claim Zylan’s throne. Though Matilda was a distant royal relative, she stood nowhere near the line of succession.
Were they hoping to exploit the kingdom’s war-weakened state for future advantage? Zylan had won; Malong had lost. No direct reparations had been extracted, yet it remained an unchangeable truth that the greatest defeated power was the County of Malong. Whatever “next move” they envisioned, Malong possessed no room to make it. Nor, for that matter, did Zylan retain the strength to punish Malong immediately. The exhilaration of the hard ride drained away, leaving Richelle’s mood sinking back into mud.
These rioters were nothing but chaff, and fundamentally they were still Zylan’s own subjects. The surest solution was to split their skulls, but those skulls lay beyond her reach. Worse, at this moment she could not even move her own hands freely. That was why she had chosen the wide, flat road. She had dimly foreseen it would not be wise, yet confirming the mistake in person left a foul taste in her mouth.
When Richelle rounded the bend of a small hill at full gallop, she found a motley crowd of rebels waiting. They were poorly organized, but some held scythes or billhooks and had managed a semblance of formation. Only three carried bows, yet one of them wielded a proper warbow.
“Damn it.”
But the true problem stood at the far left of their line: a man not on horseback, dressed in clothes that screamed obscene expense. Sunken eye sockets, a hooked nose, and a slash of a mouth—the classic features of a Jihan. He spoke in Derim laced with a heavy Malong accent.
“Greetings for the first time, Your Majesty Queen Richelle of Zylan. I am Daniel, son of Samuel, sent from Malong.”
“Ah, lest there be misunderstanding, allow me to clarify: I serve His Excellency the Count of Malong.”
“Spilling every secret before the torture even begins. Do all Jihans dislike being tortured?”
“Is it any different for humans?”
“Perhaps. I have never undergone it myself, so I cannot say.”
Gavlen was the Derim word for Jihan. Daniel offered a characteristically sly Jihan smile and asked, “You speak as though you have tortured Mister Bloomfield.”
The implication was unmistakable. Richelle answered, “Only yesterday. Tell me, is it wise to reveal so much information?”
“Quite wise. No matter how skilled a knight Your Majesty may be, you cannot break through this many men.”
Richelle laughed. This was no sneer; it was a genuine, hearty laugh that rose straight from her chest. She had always loved honest men.
“Very well, Daniel. Then let me ask you this. What does Raoul hope to achieve by killing me? Matilda holds no right to this kingdom’s crown.”
“Of course she does not. Yet I have noticed many in this country believe the right to the throne is merely a prize granted to whoever already possesses the greatest power.”
Richelle’s expression soured. “So the parliament still clings to its delusions.”
Daniel twisted his lips in mock surprise. “Were my words directed at Your Majesty Richelle?”
She ground her teeth. Both this Daniel and that David were the same. The Jihans clearly knew the full truth of what had happened to her.
“How do you know of it?”
“Because His Excellency the Count of Malong whom I serve told me directly that he would receive the coronation from the Zylan parliament.”
“You know that is not what I am asking!”
Richelle drew her sword, but Daniel only smirked and stoked her fury.
“Being abandoned by the gods is truly a delightful thing, is it not?”
He began to babble cryptic phrases. Richelle glared at him with burning eyes, yet he paid her no mind.
“How could the sin of hanging the savior ever be pardoned? It deserves the harshest punishment.”
Richelle leveled her blade at him. “Answer me. At once.”
“It means we Jihans no longer receive either reward or punishment from the gods. Nor new memories. Do you understand my meaning now, sweet little Queen Richelle?”
It was answer enough, yet the way he spoke of her as if praising a young girl grated beyond endurance. There was nothing left to hear or say. With reason burned from her eyes, Richelle kicked Bonnie’s flanks. The plain brown draft horse charged forward with astonishing courage, like a veteran warhorse plunging into dozens of enemies. Bonnie gave a thunderous neigh; her eyes, lit by the rebels’ torches, seemed to blaze. The sound of her hooves hammering the hard riverside path rolled forward like an avalanche bent on shattering the mob.
The rebels stood gripping their weapons, yet they looked utterly incapable of stopping the female knight bearing down on them. Their Jihan commander clearly shared their doubt. In thickly accented, barely intelligible Zylan he shouted whatever came to mind.
“D-do not panic, good peasants! The woman wears no armor and her horse has no proper saddle! You there! Arrows! Loose your arrows!”
Of course Richelle wore no armor, and Bonnie had neither saddle nor stirrups. She had not charged so boldly into dozens of ranks simply because she had lost her mind. Valor was not so cheap. She carried unquenchable rage and hurled herself forward as though she would overturn everything before her eyes. On countless battlefields she had succeeded in charges that cold analysis would have deemed impossible. That was the nature of her prowess.
Among those blocking her path, only one man held a bow. He appeared old enough to have mastered the weapon, yet in her memory no warbow archers of his age had been conscripted near Penhill in the last fifteen years. The other two carried toy-like bows—fit at best for squirrels or larks. Throwing stones by hand would have been more effective; unless they struck an eye, they could not hope to injure the horse. Assuming they could hit anything at all.
Richelle drew her sword and crouched low. A heavy warbow arrow whistled just over her head. No matter how often the law required warbow owners to practice, hitting a charging knight was no common feat. The other two shots flew harmlessly into the distance. All the while she whispered into Bonnie’s ear.
“Good girl, Bonnie. It’s all right. You won’t be hurt.”
Of course the mare could not understand the words, yet the calm tone mattered. Bonnie was untrained; the rider had to instill absolute certainty that she would never be led into danger. And Richelle was doing exactly that. While she soothed her mount, Bonnie accelerated to full speed and slammed into the right flank of the rebel line. They had no time for another shot. The men there recoiled in terror, shattering their formation. Richelle claimed two fighters: one lost a shoulder, the other a wrist. She gained far more.
Daniel clearly possessed no battlefield command experience. She had seized the rebels’ rear with ridiculous ease. That meant she could reach Venterum Castle without interference from the rabble before her.
Daniel drew his sword with a hand fitted with a false thumb and shouted desperately, “Turn around! Do not let her escape! After her! Quickly!”
“Why should we, sir? Two men from our village are already wounded. One may die!”
Daniel had never commanded troops. Richelle’s memory that no soldiers had been levied from the Penhill area was accurate. These men were in no way fit opponents for a true knight. Numbers, weapons, or even the absence of armor and stirrups did not grant superiority against a knight. The most vital element in a knight’s battle was the battle itself.
Daniel feared she would flee, but she had no intention of running. Within the reach of the rebels’ long-shafted weapons she swung her longsword with savage force. The blade was slightly too long for comfortable use from horseback, yet from the back of a large draft horse it struck down on heads and shoulders with devastating power. Blood, flesh, and fat sprayed skyward. Over the screams Daniel shouted again.
“Surround her! Encircle the monster! Do not let her move freely! Close from front and rear!”
But a leaderless mob could not be controlled by the frantic orders of an inexperienced commander. The man beside him stared in disbelief. “What? You want us to surround that monster? Have you lost your mind?”
The rebels’ panic was understandable. In a space barely ten yards across, the arms and heads of men they had known since childhood were flying into the air. Daniel himself faltered. He had known that “Prince Richard of Zylan” was a formidable knight. Yet he had never imagined “Queen Richelle” would be this strong. To be exact, he simply did not understand what a knight truly was. He had pictured men who were somewhat strong, rode well, wore armor, and stabbed with lances or swung swords. That was all.
But it was not. Richelle knew no fear, and she knew how to win. At this moment, she was the one dominating terror itself.