The Robber Knight's Love (The Robber Knight Saga #2)(32)
“Yes,” the whitebeard replied, eying Reuben with a small, satisfied smile on his lips. “And I think I have found it.”
Then he turned and left the room without another word. Reuben gaped after him. What had that been all about?
~~*~~*
Ayla stood on the gallery and looked down into the main hall. People had begun to settle down there. With what few possessions they had left—pieces of cloth and string, earthen bowls, and the like—they had demarcated their personal space in the large room, and, with Ayla's permission and against the protest of the castle cook, had used the large embroidered feast tablecloths owned by the Luntberg family to make makeshift beds for themselves and their children.
Now they were sitting around without much to do. And as it always is with people who know each other and don't have much to do, they started gossiping. First, they talked of the mysterious occurrence of this morning, of the merchant who had come riding into the castle dressed in a knight's armor, with an army at his heels. Normally, such a topic would have provided enough to talk about for weeks on end. But these were not normal times, and people's thoughts soon returned to the army in front of the gates, the merciless infamy of the Margrave von Falkenstein, and, ever more often, the specter of doom that threatened to engulf them: starvation.
Ayla listened from the shadow of a stone pillar as the worry of her people grew. She had come here after her conversation with Isenbard, wanting to see if she could help them in any way, if they needed anything—only to realize that they needed exactly those things she could not provide for long: food and safety.
They all knew what nobody would say aloud: that the safety of the castle was just an illusion, temporary and fleeting. Soon, their supplies would run out, and then they would be at the mercy of their enemies, hopelessly outmatched. Fear was spreading like an epidemic.
Only one person seemed to be entirely confident.
“And then,” declared Fey and let the stick in her little hand swish through the air like a sword, “Sir Reuben will hack his enemies into tiny little pieces. Really, really tiny little pieces, you know? Like mincemeat, only muuuch bloodier.”
“Um…I'm sure he will, dear,” said Margaret, the despairing mother. “But hush, will you? There is a man who is actually called Reuben, and he is a guest in our lady's castle! You shouldn't call your doll by the same name. If he hears…”
“Why not? He should be honored I named it after him, shouldn’t he? It's a knight's doll, after all, and he's just a stingy, money-grabbing merchant.”
“Yes, dear, but he or Lady Ayla might not see it that way…”
“Then I'll go to them and explain. They'd have to be really silly not to see I'm right.” Fey rolled her eyes at the thick-wittedness of her mother. Then she lost interest in her parent altogether and began practicing blows with her stick sword again. “And then, if there are any enemies left which Sir Reuben hasn't cut into tiny little bloody pieces, he will give them to his personal torturer. And he'll put them on the rack and pull them reaaaaally long. You know, until they're ten or eleven feet tall or something like that. And then they'll have to walk around like that for the rest of their lives and will continually bump their heads when they want to go through a doorway.”
“Fey! You shouldn't say such things!”
“And the Margrave he will pull even longer, so that he won't fit through a doorway anymore at all! And after the baddie has hit his head often enough, Sir Reuben will take him and chop him into pieces which will be even more tiny and bloodier than the pieces he chopped the others into!”
“Fey!”
In the shadow of the pillar, Ayla couldn't prevent a smile from flickering over her face. Oh, if only Sir Reuben could really hack her enemy into tiny little bloody pieces. Then her world would be so much simpler. But even if she had been able to trust him, even if she did not need to keep him under guard all the time, what could one man do against an army of six or seven hundred?
Nothing.
Despondently, Ayla shook her head and, as she did so, from the corner of her eye, saw a shimmer of reddish light reflecting off her hair. Looking out of the window behind her, she saw that the sun was already setting, flooding the land with crimson. She had stood here longer than she had thought.
What now?
She supposed she could only go to bed. Awake, there was nothing more to do but worry. Hopefully, sleep would help her save her energy and endure a little longer. Soon enough, she would be kept awake by the gnawing hunger in her belly.
Ayla returned to her chambers, which she now shared with Dilli and three of her other maids. After much arguing, Burchard had accepted that sleeping in their company might not be totally morally unacceptable. Ayla lay down on her four-poster bed. Normally, she would have drawn the curtains to keep the warmth in, but the curtains had been taken off at her order to serve, along with the castle’s tablecloths, as bed sheets for those of the villagers who didn't have anything else to sleep on. So she simply curled up into a tight ball and pressed herself into the mattress, wishing heartily that, when she woke up, all this would prove to be a bad dream and the feud would have never happened.
~~*~~*
When she jerked awake, it was dark, and a knife was pressed to her throat.
“Not a sound, girl,” growled a rough voice out of the darkness, “or you're dead!”