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Where am I? I look around frantically. I am standing in
a dark stone corridor with my back pressed against the rough blocks
behind me. In front of me, guarding me, is a brown haired man holding a
huge broadsword. The weapon is almost too large for the space we are
in, but he protects me from the six blond giants that have just come up
the stairs. A torch gutters in a bracket on the wall to my left, its
life almost spent. My protector shouts something encouraging over his
shoulder at me and it takes a moment for my confused mind to work out
what he has said. There was a name! Nimue? Is that me? I put a hand to
my throbbing head and feel something warm and wet. I look at my hand,
the fingers covered in blood. Blood! I'm wounded. A part of my mind
tells me that it probably isn't that bad, that head wounds bleed
freely, but the rest of me is in shock. Is this why I can't remember
anything? I look from my crimson coated fingers to the man in front of
me again. Did he do this to me? Does he want me for some nefarious
purpose? I shiver slightly in the chill air and only just now realize
that I am standing in front of seven men that I may or may not know
wearing nothing but a nightshift. A very thin one, at that. I wrap my
arms around myself and shiver, trying to disappear into the wall. A
moment passes and my protector looks over his shoulder again, almost
like he's making sure I haven't vanished on him. My mind supplies the
word 'again' to go with that statement. I blink and look at the man
again, studying the way I feel about him.
I am safe. I blink
again: Safe? I wait a moment and turn my attention to the men he is
fighting. Fortunately, they can only come at him two at a time up the
narrow stairs of this tower. Again I pause. Tower. We are near the top
of one of the Keep's towers. I guess I knew something about my
situation after all. Back to the Others. As opposed to my protector,
they were blond and enormously huge! Saxons. They are Saxons. This
Keep, my father's Keep, has been attacked by Saxons. I was dallying
with the Bard in his rooms at the top of the northeast tower when the
alarm sounded. The Bard... Kevin! I must have said his name aloud
because he turns to look at me, "Nimue? Are you alright? Is your head
better?"
I open my mouth to answer him, that his shoving me
against the wall hadn't broken my head completely, that sir Lancelet
bred harder heads than that, when it became a cry of denial, "No!
Kevin..." I watch as he crumples in front of me. A Saxon short sword
having gotten through his guard while he was looking at me. Blood
spreads from his belly wound. So much blood, and much darker than what
came from my head. Lifeblood... I sob and cower against the wall as the
other three men come up to join their comrades, one lying as still and
lifeless as my lover. Slain by none other than the Bard himself. I
stare down at the cooling body of my mother's favorite entertainer, the
best bard in the entire kingdom of Brittany. I move my feet a little,
his blood spreading toward me, as though, even in death, he seeks to
touch me. White hot anger flashes through me and I reach down,
awkwardly lifting his sword, my thoughts turning toward revenge. The
blade too heavy in my grasp. If only I had my own blade, left in my own
suite as a snuck away for my secret tryst. My bed gown was two flights
up stairs in the Bard's modest suite, forgotten in the haste to flee to
safety.
The barbarians mock me. Me! Just because I am a woman! I
swing the sword experimentally, it is nearly too heavy, but I believe I
can manage it. The tendons in my wrists stand out with the strain of
holding the blade steady and I swing. My aim is true and the sword
nearly severs the head of one of the remaining Saxons. They aren't
laughing anymore. But now I have four to face instead of just the two
that my love, my beloved, had to defend against. I can feel the blood
draining from my face. I can barely hold my own against my father's
arms master, and I'm almost sure that he's been holding back against
me. Suddenly the man in the middle, directly in front of me, charges.
He, unlike the others, wields a true Briton broadsword. I try to evade
him, but he is reckless and I am as yet too unskilled. 'Father was
right.' I think, 'I should never have started learning the sword.'
And
with that, I fall. The barbarian's sword sheathed in my body. My last
vision is of Kevin. His lifeless gray eyes staring at me as I lay there
in the pool of our mingled blood.
________________________________________________
She sat up in bed with a start, her heart pounding as though she'd just run
a marathon. Or two. Back to back. Her delicate, pale hand pressed to
her chest as she tried to calm the beating of her heart. Her hair
appeared silver in the shadows of her dark room. The panther sprawled
across the foot of her bed seemed just a darker shadow in the gloom of
the starless night. Outside the open curtains of her window, a storm
was rolling in, dark clouds billowing across the sky, obscuring the
face of the moon, "It was only a dream..." Her voice sounded strange in
the stillness of the room. Too rough. Almost as though she'd been
screaming. The panther perked her ears in her sleep, as though checking
to see if her mistress would say anything more. The girl obliged,
clearing her throat first, "Only a dream." That sounded better, more
human. She lay back down and rolled to face the window, murmuring to
herself as she went back to sleep.
Outside, the first flash of
lightning struck, illuminating the room for a split second. There, in
the far corner of the room, between the closet and the door to the
hallway, was a sword. A Briton broadsword covered in half dried blood
up to the hilt.
