The last of the beeswax candles in the Great Hall had burned down to black stubs by the time Mordred made it back to her chambers, their melted remnants pooling cool and opaque upon the iron sconce.
The moss-green gown still clung heavily to her shoulders, damp from the night air and thick with the lingering scent of rosewater that clung to the floor.
Maeve had already peeled the gold leaf clasp from her collar, setting it quietly onto the rough pine table beside a pile of unworked raw cotton and a small iron file.
Sitting heavily on the edge of the cot as the hemp rope frame groaned beneath her weight, Mordred reached up with both hands, hooking her thumbs beneath the edge of the leaf-patterned leather mask to pull it free.
Her thumb caught on her chin strap, dragging across skin that felt cold and slick with sweat for the first time in hours, before she dropped the mask onto the blanket resting between her knees.
‘Fifty spears in the lower valley.
Midnight crates with the three red fish.
Private dinners in the bailiff’s lodge every Tuesday.’
She turned the numbers over once more, flexing her toes inside her narrow shoes and rolling her ankles until the joints popped in the quiet room.
Across the floor, Maeve gathered the green skirt by its hem to keep it off the flagstones, lifting the heavy fabric over a wooden rack and smoothing the pleats down with two flat strokes of her palm.
‘Arthur was collecting the exact same trail from the other side of the hall.
Horse purchases.
Old silver.
River tolls.
Neither of us said a word to the other.’
She stopped, staring down at the leather mask on her thigh.
‘And Rowena.
That woman looked at me like she was taking my measure with an iron ruler.
Bristol can wait a few hours, but Princess Rowena’s questions are going to be a real problem.’
Maeve smoothed the green sleeve down the wooden frame, her hand lingering against the hem as she turned her head.
“You are still thinking about the hall.”
“I am thinking about Bristol,” Mordred answered, tracing the sore red indentations the mask’s wire had pressed into her cheeks, feeling the residual heat of the gold-working still pulsing beneath her skin.
“Something is moving there, and it is not small.”
Maeve did not ask for details.
She reached instead for the stoneware pot resting on the hearth to pour a dark liquid into a clay cup before setting it on the side table.
Her footfalls made no sound as she pulled the door back and stepped into the passage, letting the latch drop into its groove with a soft click.
The silence lingered for several heartbeats after Maeve left, leaving Mordred leaning back against the rough wall as she turned the clay cup slowly between her palms, warming her hands against the unglazed earth.
‘Arthur heard one half of it,’ she thought, watching the steam curl toward the rafters.
‘I heard the other.
Wine merchants talk about silver and horse feed; footmen talk about spear crates and secret suppers.
Put ’em together and it’s one big target.’
Frowning, she set the cup down so hard it sloshed against the wood.
‘I should have said something.’
She scoffed under her breath, staring at the darkened doorway.
‘Right.
Like I could just walk up while she’s surrounded by ten lords and three priests.
Besides…
she probably already connected half the dots herself.’
Mordred drank the tea in three long swallows, kicked off her shoes, closed her eyes, and let sleep come in short pieces broken continuously by the distant sound of boots on stone four floors down.
Elsewhere in the fortress, a single lamp burned quietly in the upper scriptorium, where Princess Rowena sat alone at a narrow oak desk with her vellum notebook open beneath one hand.
The page held only a handful of neat entries.
Lady Morrigan.
Gold reshaping without conventional tooling.
Hands of a trained swordsman.
Exceptional awareness.
‘She moves like steel dressed up in cotton,’ Rowena thought, her thumb tracing the edge of the fresh ink.
‘No sheep-farmer’s daughter carries her shoulders like that.’
Her quill hovered over the page, dipping slightly as a drop of black ink clung to the nib, before she brought it down to write two final words beneath the bottom line.
Investigate discreetly.
Closing the notebook with a quiet tap of leather against wood, she set the quill in its porcelain groove and blew out the lamp.
Grey morning light had just begun to push through the narrow window, cutting a pale square across the foot of the cot, when three hard, iron-on-oak strikes hit the heavy door.
Maeve was already moving before the third strike finished fading, crossing the room to unlatch the bolt without a sound as she cracked the door just wide enough for a single eye to pass through. This chapter is updated first at novelping . com.
Standing in the drafty corridor with his breath fogging in the chill air, a squire in royal blue livery was blocked from seeing into the chamber as Maeve shifted her shoulder to fill the gap completely.
“Message for Sir Mordred,” the squire blurted, his fingers twitching against the hilt of his unbelted sidearm.
“Bristol has risen.
The King requires the Round Table at once, and Sir Mordred and Sir Galahad are named for the vanguard as three thousand muster in the outer bailey.”
“The summons went to everyone?” Mordred asked, her voice raspy from sleep as her bare feet hit the cold stone floor, sitting up on the edge of the cot.
“The captains first,” Maeve replied, taking the folded parchment before pushing the oak door shut until the iron latch bit into place.
Turning back into the room, Maeve broke the parchment’s red wax seal with her thumbnail while gathering the padded arming doublet from the chest.
“Sir Gawain was already crossing the upper courtyard before dawn, while Sir Bedivere rode from the western barracks not long after, and they were calling for Sir Kay as I came through the lower passage.”
Mordred grunted, yanking her undertunic straight over her chest.
‘Calling Gawain and Bedivere before sunrise?
This isn’t just a local skirmish anymore.’
Maeve held out the unrolled parchment, her thumb resting beside the broken wax.
“Bristol.
Open revolt.
You and Galahad for the vanguard, three thousand total.”
Staring at the parchment while her eyes traced the hurried, ink-blotted strokes, Mordred swung her weight off the cot, her knee joints cracking in the cold air.
‘Of course it has.’
“How many under arms on their side?” she asked, pulling the linen undertunic over her head and smoothing the heavy padded cloth down over her torso.
“The squire said over a thousand,” Maeve said, sliding the mail shirt over Mordred’s outstretched arms.
“No wages, no days off, and called out the moment the bed gets warm,” Mordred muttered, ducking into the heavy iron mesh as steel rings clinked cold against the padding.
“This job is a racket.”
Maeve worked without missing a beat, pulling the leather laces tight along Mordred’s ribs and tying them off in square knots before hauling the steel cuirass into place.
She adjusted the shoulder pauldrons and pulled the brass-bound greaves snug against Mordred’s calves, each iron buckle clicking securely into place beneath her calloused thumbs.
When the last steel strap on her thigh was buckled, Maeve lifted the horned helmet from the bench, holding it by its lower cheek-guards.
“If Princess Rowena asks after Lady Morrigan,” she said, her thumb rubbing a faint smear of grease off the cheek-plate, “I’ll tell her she returned to the northern hills with her sheep.”
Groaning as she took the helmet, Mordred checked the leather neck guard before resting the heavy iron on her knee.
“Please don’t encourage her.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Maeve replied, reaching down to secure Mordred’s broadsword belt around her hip.
“I’m simply preparing for the inevitable.”
Lowering the heavy iron over her head, Mordred felt the metal settle into the neck groove with a dull clank, locking her chin in place as the familiar smell of oil, sweat, and cold steel filled her nose while the world narrowed to two horizontal slits.
She let out a long breath inside the dark iron.
‘That stupid cotton dress was suffocating,’ she thought, rolling her shoulders as the heavy plate locked into place.
‘If I’m forced to be wrapped up head-to-toe anyway, it better be in something that lets me break things.’
The outer bailey already smelled of wet horse leather, coal smoke, and unwashed wool by the time her boots hit the yard gravel, filled with three thousand men and horses packed between the curtain walls in crowded ranks.
Banners snapped in the sharp morning wind coming off the river while iron horseshoes clattered against the wet cobbles as mounts shifted their weight in the cold.
Waiting near the iron-studded arch of the eastern gate, Galahad sat high in his saddle, shortening his leather reins as his horse stomped its hoof, its breath rising in white plumes.
He looked pale behind his open visor, his dark eyes fixed on the gatehouse road while his left arm adjusted the heavy cross-marked shield strapped to his forearm.
A short distance beyond him, Sir Bedivere sat mounted beneath Arthur’s banner, unrolling a fresh parchment dispatch against his thigh while quartermasters hurried from wagon to wagon with wax tablets in hand.
Meanwhile, Sir Kay was leaning down from his saddle, pointing a gauntleted finger at three supply clerks over fodder allocations, insisting that somebody had misplaced six barrels of oats.
Near the head of the column, Gawain checked the girth strap on his charger’s belly, giving the buckle a hard yank before exchanging a few quiet words with Arthur, who stood on foot beside her mount holding her map case.
Lowering the map case beneath her arm, Arthur let her gaze travel once along the assembled column, her hand resting flat against Excalibur’s pommel.
‘Bristol moved faster than the scouts predicted,’ Arthur thought, scanning the heavy wagon line.
‘The missing silver, the western horse buys…
it wasn’t preparation.
It was the mobilization.’
Approaching on foot with another dispatch already broken open, Kay handed the parchment over to her.
“Scouts from the eastern ford?”
“Send them ahead.
I want every bridge counted before sunset.”
Kay inclined his head and turned back into the bustle of quartermasters and runners, leaving Arthur to pause for a moment before gathering her horse’s reins and swinging up into the saddle in one fluid motion.
No one smiled.
The easy conversation that usually filled a morning muster was replaced entirely by clipped orders, the clatter of iron gear, and the steady rhythm of men preparing for a campaign.
Mordred adjusted her grip on her mount’s bridle, her eyes narrowing behind her visor as she looked across the crowded bailey.
‘Fifty spears in the valley.
Red fish crates.
Private suppers,’ she thought, her knuckles tightening against the reins.
‘That wasn’t drunken gossip from footmen.
That was the front line.’
Across the bailey, Arthur spoke briefly down to Bedivere from her saddle, accepted another sealed report from a courier on foot, and shoved it straight inside her saddlebag without opening it to save time for the road.
Watching Arthur shorten her reins, Mordred patted her stallion’s neck to keep him steady.
‘She already looks like she’s five moves ahead.’
Bringing her mount alongside Galahad’s as the leather of her saddle creaked under the weight of her plate, Mordred turned her helm, her gauntleted hand resting on her hip as she looked back down the line of spears stretching toward the inner keep.
“How come there are only three thousand men in this force?” Mordred asked, her voice rattling inside the iron helmet.
“That is way too small, considering a crowd like this wouldn’t last me half a day of solid swinging.”
Galahad’s face darkened as his knuckles tightened on his leather reins until the hide groaned, pulling his horse’s head around to face her.
“Think about the actual population of the island for five seconds.
Deploying three thousand fully armored knights at once is a massive force, and it only happened because the scale of this revolt is huge.”
‘Three thousand is a tenth of our entire standing strength,’ Galahad thought, his gaze darting to the armed ranks clogging the gatehouse.
‘Against a thousand rebels, this isn’t just a military response.
The King is making a statement.’
“Why does every knight need to be wrapped in this much iron anyway?” Mordred asked, resting her gauntleted fist on her saddle pommel as the metal rasped against the leather, shifting her weight in the stirrups.
“If they cut down the weight on the gear, the troop count could easily double.”
“Look at yourself before you lecture others,” Galahad retorted, pointing a finger at the flared cheek-guards of her spiked helm while his mount shifted beneath him.
“Your iron shell is thicker than anyone else’s here, so if we start cutting down gear weight, we start with you.”
“Believe me, I had enough discussions about clothing yesterday,” Mordred said, waving her iron glove in a dismissive arc while Galahad blinked in confusion behind his visor before shaking his head and adjusting his grip on his shield strap.
“Forget about that.
The King is supposed to be sharp and fair, so why would anyone kick up a rebellion under her watch?”
“Word is that certain noble houses are pulling strings from the shadows,” Galahad explained, leaning forward in his saddle to scan the treeline lining the eastern ridge.
“They provoked a few foolish knights into drawing steel first, and since there is no hard evidence to arrest the ringleaders yet, we have to put down the active revolt first.”
He paused, turning his horse slightly to bring his visor back to hers, his dark eyes fixing her with a warning stare.
“Don’t do anything stupid.
Executing high nobility without a formal trial will trigger a complete disaster at court, and I know how you operate.”
‘If he goes berserk out there without a commander to hold him back,’ Galahad thought, feeling a cold knot form in his stomach, ‘he’ll execute every noble in the province and start a civil war before noon.’
“Relax,” Mordred said, tilting her helmet up slightly as she adjusted her seat, her fingers lightly tapping the pommel of her sword.
“I know how to handle myself.”
“I will take your word for it for now,” Galahad muttered, tightening his grip on his reins as he settled his plain cross-marked shield lower against his knee to protect his side.
“Just don’t make me regret it.
In any case, everything we do is for the King.”
“Hmph,” Mordred grunted, her left hand dropping down to the leather-wrapped hilt at her hip as her thumb popped the crossguard free from its scabbard notch.
Feeling the cold pommel press against her gauntlet, she shifted her weight forward in the saddle, driving her boots deep into the iron stirrups to set her center of gravity low over the stallion’s neck.
“Time to show everyone what I can do.”
‘Oh, this is going to be fun.’
Crimson mana burst from the articulated joints of her cuirass with a violent CRACK, jagged red arcs skittering across her greaves as she slammed her iron spurs into her horse’s flanks.
The heavy warhorse surged forward just as the fortress gate opened up into the widening expanse of the dirt highway, its chest cutting through the morning mist while iron horseshoes tore deep ruts into the packed earth.
Galahad’s warning shout was swallowed instantly by the roaring wind and the thunder of hooves on dirt.
“All units, keep up with me!” Mordred roared through her visor, her broadsword ringing loudly as she pulled it two inches from the throat of the scabbard before slamming it home with a heavy metallic snap.
“Full speed ahead!”