Bravely(84)

“For DunBroch!” came the call from downstairs: Fergus’s men getting ready for battle.

And then the Dásachtach’s men were at the gate.



The fight began.

It wasn’t anything like any of the songs or ballads Merida had ever heard about war. In the sagas, there were leaders. There was reason. There was a pattern, a flow. There was a goal. This was destruction; chaos. The Dásachtach didn’t mean to take DunBroch as a stronghold; he meant to destroy it as a warning. There was the smell of fire from the woods; they were burning the trees, the woods, the game fields. Destruction for the sake of destruction.

At the base of the castle, the Dásachtach’s men gathered in knots, smashing battering rams against the doors and flinging grappling hooks up toward the windowsills. This was where Merida and the triplets and the girls came in. From the music room, they threw furniture from the windows at the intruders down below as Merida shot arrow after arrow into the dark, knowing she’d run out of arrows long before she ran out of men to shoot at.

Crash! A mirror went out the tower. Crash! A lion-footed chair. Crash! The game table they played Brandubh at.

Hamish clung to the big harp, trying to decide if he could bear to throw it from a window and crack someone’s skull with it. Merida couldn’t decide if she could bear to tell him to.

“Don’t, Hamish,” Harris said seriously. He’d wrapped a stone urn in a tapestry and now he lit it on fire. He did it with such skill that Merida suspected he’d thought about doing it for ages. “They’ll remember this more.”

His flaming stone dropped out the window. The shouts from below indicated he hadn’t been wrong.

But then another set of shouts rang out. A tower! One of the guard towers in the wall! It was falling, terribly, in slow motion, the stones cascading over one another. The wall where Merida had walked with her mother so often.

With a sinking heart, Merida saw the army carrying the battering ram they’d used to destroy the guard tower. It was enormous; it required dozens of men and horses to move it.

It inched toward DunBroch itself.

“You earned this!” roared the Dásachtach. How was he audible over all of this commotion? “I was nothing but fair!”

It felt hopeless.

Think, Merida, think.

In this game of Brandubh, though, she could not think of what the Black Raven might be. The Dásachtach had no interest in peace. He was only interested in proving a point. They might be able to win if they had the support of all the people from the surrounding towns, but there had been no warning. And even if someone could somehow get out to them, there wouldn’t be a way to get to them to gather any forces swiftly on a winter night like this.

It would take a miracle.

Merida thought about the story of the Cailleach saving her mother and the triplets. The Cailleach had worked hard this past year to make sure Feradach didn’t destroy them. Surely she didn’t want the Madman to do the job instead.

Maybe she had another miracle to spare.

What had Leezie’s mother done to ask for one? She’d given her precious things to the Cailleach’s well. Merida could do that.

“Stay here,” she told her brothers. “I’ll be right back. Leezie, if anyone but me comes to this door, don’t open it for anything!”

She hurried to her room. Her old familiar room, with all the things she’d had since childhood. She touched everything in it. But with each thing she picked up and put down in her room, she doubted that it was precious enough. Yes, she’d miss the toys her parents had carved, but they were just decorations now, and yes, she was fond of her old bow, but she could always get another. The scene on the tapestry was a memory that she’d still have even if the tapestry itself was gone. She had jewels to wear for public events, but she didn’t care about them. She had perfumes she’d been given and rocks she’d collected.

Nothing in here was important to her, she realized.

It had been important at one time, but it wasn’t important now. Nothing had been added to this collection for a long time. She hadn’t even brought back anything from her travels before this year began.

What’s precious to me? What’s precious enough to trade for a miracle?

Her family was the only thing that she could think of, and they were what she wanted to save.

With a shock, she realized there wasn’t anything else to her but how she felt about her family.

A storm that moved no roofs—

She could feel despair rising.

Think, Merida, think.

But she couldn’t think. She moved from her room to the stairs, looking for anything that might be used to win a miracle from the Cailleach. She looked in the tapestry room. The hall closet. She went to the Great Hall balcony, but she didn’t know what she was even looking for. Should she just go back to the room with the triplets, with Leezie and the orphan girls, to make a last stand there?

Hopeless.

To think that after all her work, this was how it would go. What a dreadful end. Ugly and desperate and very unmagical.

Then, in her quiet despair, over even the sound of chaos happening outside the castle, she heard hushed voices coming from the solar.

Feradach’s voice.

And the Cailleach?

Here in the castle?

She drew close enough just to peer in the crack of the open door, and sure enough, she saw the two gods standing in the midst of the room. The Cailleach looked as wild as before, her powers unchanged by the mundanity of being in guest quarters. The greenish starshine that lit her continued to light her, and her single eye was like a candlelight in the room.