Ironheart

She gazed solemnly up at him. Unafraid. She gave a furious shake of her head. “No I won’t, ’sides, you’re here to stop me.”

He opened his mouth to refute but his jaw trembled. His breathing had slowed, and he mopped his brow with his sleeve. He hated being up in the battlements. He still remembered falling off the tower at Whittington. Even now, he screamed in his sleep when he recalled that day. He had been seven then. He had cried in his foster father’s arms, which had embarrassed him, but his foster father had patted him on the back and hugged him the way he hugged Fulk Riven, called him his other son and assured him even grown men made mistakes and wept.

“The other end will give the best view.” Indignation, combined with the fear that she might actually leap onto the crenel, made Leon stride out ahead. But she only laughed and followed him.

Walking east, he asked, elaborately casual, “Do you get giddy on heights?”

“Not the times I try,” she said, skipping beside him.

He shifted his posture, suspecting mockery. He regretted bringing up the matter, but he refused to care what the witchling thought. She seemed absolutely fearless. So young to have such courage, he thought. He saw scratches on her arm and large muddy rips in the gown at her knees. The girl’s nurse would be searching for her by now, and he almost felt sorry for the woman. She would suffer if the mother saw the child now.

“Lift me up, so’s I can see over.” She lifted up slender, fragile-looking arms.

The morning breeze stirred his hair and softly cooled his overheated cheeks. He became calm, and out of calmness came determination. He would not abandon his first damsel in distress. He picked her up, and set her bare feet on the seat of an arrow loop built into a buttress in the parapet.

She stood up on tiptoe, craning forward. She was mad, he was sure of it. He brought a firm hand around her waist to keep her safe, but he didn’t stop her looking.

“Lean on my shoulder if you get dizzy. I’ll catch you.”

“I know, silly!” Steady as a rock on her perch, she rested a small hand on his shoulder and, moth-light, touched his hair. “You talk funny, but you have nice hair. Shiny.”

Her voice sparkled with hints of laughter. She smelled of soap and girl and honey powder. He blinked and wriggled his leather-clad toes. “Thank you.”

Leon stood perfectly still and glanced over his outstretched arm. It was just dawn; the air hung cold and foggy around him, obscured the towers, cut off the tops of gates, pooled and eddied along the courtyard outside the siege walls, and collected wood smoke in long, flat, sooty sheets.

Troops marched out of the gatehouse. He watched the glittering armor-clad company file through the dimming patches of fog, buckles clanking, pennants snapping on poles, accoutrements jumping and tingling regularly at every step in a mass musical note, muffled strangely in the sea of fog.

“Can you see the prince leading them all?”

The girl-child tossed her head to get an unruly lock of dark hair out of her eyes. “There he is! There he is!” She squealed in delight and clapped her hands.

“He must. He is the commander,” Leon said briskly. He glared out the embrasure at the troops still marching past, and fretted to himself. Keith, who would be sixteen years old next Midsummer’s Day, had been chosen to squire the prince. Keith, who in spite of his new length of leg and width of shoulder, could not best Leon either at mock battle or in a wrestling match.

“Aren’t they grand? Where do they go?”

“Men gather here. To ride with Richard. To Palestine. To fight the Saracens.”

As soon as he spoke, he regretted it, for the look on the child’s face turned from joy to fear. She frowned, a little knitting of the brow. Small hands clutched at him.

“Oh. Bad men,” she muttered. Her face crumpled. She looked so young—not a witchling now, but a frightened child.

He was quick to mend his error. “Cheer up, little girl. Your father will be home soon enough,” he said lightly.

A frown. She was not to be distracted. “What if the bad men attack us while Father is away?” she said faintly. “Should we all run away very fast?”

Leon looked up at the white, frozen face. Loosing a rare and splendid smile, the one his arms-master said in a few years would melt women like wax in a furnace, he said softly, “No. My lord would stop them before they reach here.”

Brave though she was, she was still a girl, and that smile held a mighty magic. She laid her hand upon his arm and squinted through black curls at him, a swift bright glance.

“I can throw rocks at them! Big rocks.”

“Oh—” Leon struggled to keep from laughing. He brushed back the dark hair. “That would be most helpful.”

Men marched into the fog and vanished. The air seemed unnaturally still and heavy. As an omen it made his spine turn cold. The day seemed perilous, full of portents; yet there was nothing he could put a thought around. As if—

As if he were on the brink of his own forever after—or maybe only of growing up. He had twelve summers and, with Keith’s departure, was newly promoted to squire, but tall and muscular as he was, and good as he was with either sword or bow, he hadn’t grown into his hands or feet yet.

The girl-child shaded her eyes, shaking her head. “I don’t see them anymore.”

Leon took a deep breath, drew her back from the crenel edge, tender in his grip. She studied him with grave bright eyes. “Don’t you wish you could follow the prince?”

“I wish I was with him. I wish it more than you know,” he told her fiercely, angry with her for asking. His voice echoing loudly in the dawn sky.

“It is not too late. If you run fast, you could catch them.”

He knew that. He was also not accustomed to being made light of. “My lord isn’t happy with things along the border. He wishes me to stay, be a shield-brother to his heir.”

“How will you win your spurs?” she asked with just the hint of a smile.

Leon did not rise to the bait. He was a squire, past childhood, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. He thought of Keith all bruised and bloody, crying foul, and the demands of his own stubborn honor. Then he thought of make-believe things, set in the future. Images of the girl-child, now a woman, a prisoner in the place where crows gather, where the woods grow strange and twisted. Himself, helmed and mounted, sword in hand overwhelming a dragon.

No, that was too exotic.

He rebuilt the image and tried to make it something real; the girl-woman up on the battlements, dark hair aflying in the wind, laughing and holding out her arms; himself, just walking into them, and not noticing the precipice.

No, that was too incredible.

The picture changed. The name of Caer Llion had been added to those famed few that were bywords to both friend and foe, whom men would follow into the jaws of death at the wave of an arm. Iron-helmed, he sat astride a huge destrier, sword held aloft and gleaming in the bright morning sun, thundering over the desert sands, leading a band of knights, an iron-clad avalanche of destruction.

“I haven’t got it all worked out yet, but one day I’ll be a knight. I have to. I must.” He used the blunt mode for conviction, for absolute duty—for oath swearing.

“You could run away and become a commoner if you wanted it enough. Father says the common women have more fun than the highborn.”

“He talks too much. Knights are shields against evil. They are the only hope for pig farmers and little girls—saints preserve their stubborn necks. Nobody else will take pity on them.”

“How proper. They will sing songs in your honor.” A small hand crept into his, the other touched his jaw with her thumb.

“Sounds good to me.”

She wound her tiny fingers through his hair. “Why not? You are brave and noble and strong. You will make a great knight.”

Leon’s nerves jumped, his pulse fluttered and a flush came over his skin, confusing all his thinking. She was curious. She thought he was very brave. It puzzled rather than delighted him, but it was very hard to go on being mad at someone who really believed that. He searched his mind for something clever to say in response. When nothing came to him, he settled for attempting to endow his silence with a knowing air.

She smiled prettily. Her breath was in his face, warm as a spring sunbeam. “Will you marry me when I grow up?”

Leon couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. The girl was so foolish she was a woman already! He was not certain what he was supposed to say, but it wouldn’t hurt to put her straight.

“You must marry a man with estates and title.”