“I can't say I feel the same,” Ayla replied. She wondered how she managed to keep her voice as calm as it was. Inside, she felt like boiling. Or exploding. Or...

“Before you get any ideas,” Sir Luca said, “you should know that I come under a flag of truce.” He held up a white linen handkerchief. “Here, you see?”

“You call that a flag of truce?”

“Well, it's not very big, I admit, but it's white enough. I think it works.”

Ayla gritted her teeth. “I wasn't referring to the size of your flag, but rather to the fact that while we speak, your soldiers are setting my village ablaze!”

“Ah, but it is your village no longer, Milady. By right of conquest it belongs to the Margrave now. So my men can do whatever they damn well please.”

Ayla sucked in a breath. She was sorely tempted to call one of her archers and have him shoot this man. But she knew she wouldn't do it. She didn't have it in her to be dishonorable. And anyway, the Margrave would just send someone worse to replace him—though he would probably have to search for quite a while to find such an individual, if indeed one existed.

“Since you come here under a flag of truce,” she said, speaking the words with all the disgust she could muster, “what is it that you wish to discuss?”

“You have to ask? I thought it would be obvious.”

“Just pretend I'm very dumb.”

The red knight nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I think I could do that.”

She heard his suppressed laughter and again had to fight an urge to call for her soldiers. No, she wouldn't call them. She had to fight this battle on her own. It might not do for the men to hear what he had to say, or what she had to say to him in return.

“State your business, Sir Knight, or begone. What is it you want?”

“What I want? Why, to dictate the terms of your surrender, of course.”

“What?” Ayla stared at the metal-clad man in utter amazement. He, through the slits of his visor, stared just as fixedly back at her. “We have fought four battles so far,” she pointed out. “What makes you think that I would suddenly give up now?”

“Well, let me think...” He scratched the side of his helmet in mock preoccupation. “There's the fact that you've lost a major battle, that you are surrounded and cut off from any supply chains, that we still outnumber you ten to one, and that generally speaking, your situation has become completely hopeless. How about that?”

“You can take that and stuff it up the devil's derriere!” Ayla growled, her hands balled into fists. He was right. And the fact burned her from the inside. She would rather have died than admitted it.

“Dio mio, Milady is getting feisty. Well, perhaps this will persuade you: in his heavenly mercy, the Margrave Markus von Falkenstein has decreed that, in spite of your resistance, if you are willing to surrender, he will spare the miserable peasants who infest your castle at this very moment. If, however, you do not surrender and we are victorious, as we surely shall be, he will decimate them, as the ancient Romans used to do to their rebels.”

“Decimate?” Ayla's voice was hardly more than a whisper. But somehow the red robber knight heard it.

“Kill one in ten men.” Sir Luca shrugged. “A harsh but just punishment, don't you think?”

“And what guarantee do I have,” asked Ayla, her voice not as steady as it had been before, “that the Margrave will not inflict this 'just punishment' in any case?”

“Why, his word of honor, of course!”

“I see. Like the word of honor he gave when swearing friendship to the three other nobles whose lands he has since conquered?”

“Yes, Milady. Exactly like that.”

“Why are you even here?” Now her voice was firm again, cold and demanding. She could have sworn that, behind his visor, she saw teeth glitter in a grin.

“To let you see that you have no way of escape, Milady. Your fate doesn't belong to you anymore. It is in the Margrave's hands now. He may choose to have mercy, he may not. Personally, I think the latter more likely. But you can always hope. If you persist in this folly, however, trying to resist your future husband, you will only bring more harm down on yourself and your people. That I swear by every bone I've broken and deadly blow I've struck.”

Putting her hands on top of the parapet, Ayla leaned over the wall.

“I shall never give in!” Her voice was as hard as the rock beneath her feet. “Never! Not to a villain like you! Not to someone who kills others for money! Not to someone who burns the homes of innocent people. Not to a knight who disgraces his station by robbing defenseless women in the forest! Never!”

There were a few seconds of silence.

“Robbing defenseless women in the forest?” he asked, actually having the gall to sound surprised. “Maybe Milady is better informed than I about my many misdeeds, but as far as I know, I have never robbed anyone. I've always paid other people to do that for me. Much simpler.”

“Don't lie to me!” Ayla hissed. “What's the point? I'd recognize that armor of yours anywhere! There isn't another like it in the Empire!”

“This armor?” He looked down at himself. “You recognize it? Interesting. When was it that you were robbed, if I may ask?”

“As if you didn't know!”

“Just pretend for the moment that I'm very forgetful.”

“Very well, if you want to play games with me... It was the very same day that your master's herald came, making the same insolent demands as you just did.” She was about to say more on the subject of his insolence, when he interrupted her.

“Was it? Well, Milady, then this is a rare occurrence. It seems I am accused of a crime of which I am actually innocent.”

“What?”

“I,” said Sir Luca slowly and clearly, as if speaking to a child, “did not rob you that day in the forest. I didn't have this armor until a day later. My men pulled it off some fellow whom they shot down and left for dead in the forest—after he had slaughtered several lances of good men, I might add.”

His words, so obviously spoken with the conviction of utter truthfulness, left Ayla reeling. For a few moments, she didn't know what to think. And then, comprehension washed over her like ice-cold water.

A man without armor.

Alone in the forest.

A man who was muscled like an expert fighter.

A man strangely knowledgeable about all things military.

No, please, no, God, let me be wrong. Let me be wrong in this!

“This man,” she asked, her voice having lost all strength and now sounding strangely toneless, ringing in her ears like an echo from far away, “how many arrows did he have in his back?”

“How many arrows?” The red robber knight's surprise was evident. But no, not robber. Just red knight. He was not the robber knight. But someone else was. “You want to know how many arrows we shoot our enemies with?”

“Yes, please,” she replied, her voice still sounding strange in her own ears. She was somewhere else, only listening to the things this young woman on the wall was saying. She was in a place of terror and uncertainty, a place as thin as a razor's edge. She would fall off one side or the other, depending on the answer of this man she hated.

“Three, I think. Though I would have to ask my men to check. Why? Would you prefer we used a different number of missiles?”

He was probably trying to mock her, some rudimentary part of her brain noted. But her mind, her heart, her self, did not care. She had fallen off the edge—and not in the right direction, the one she had desperately hoped for.

It was so abominably obvious now.

Three.

Three arrows.

Three arrows in the back.

A man with three arrows in the back.

A man in red armor, threatening her, robbing her of her friend, her Eleanor.

The red robber knight.

Reuben.

Without deigning to glance at Sir Luca one more time, she turned and began the descent down the wall.

“Milady! Lady Ayla!” Behind her, she heard the red knight shouting, but she didn't care. He was a pretender. He was not her foremost enemy. That title belonged to another.

*~*~**~*~*

Seething with rage, hurt, and humiliation, Ayla stormed up the steps to Reuben's room. Questions whirled in her mind like a maelstrom: Why did he hurt me like this? What is his game? Does he have any real feelings for me at all?

She wanted to laugh at herself for the last question. Or maybe punch herself. Or cry.

Feelings? For me?

He probably had been using her this whole time, trying to get what he wanted by smooth-talking her.

But then, said a very small and sad, but also hopeful voice in the back of her mind, why did he help? Why didn't he leave when he could have?

The voice was soon silenced. Too heavy were the hurt, the anger, the feeling of betrayal.

Ayla marched down the oh-so-familiar corridor and stopped in front of Reuben's door. All the questions in her mind had vanished now, had coalesced into a single, overriding, all-encompassing question: Was she going to do as she had vowed and hang Reuben from the highest tower of the castle?

Ayla stretched out her arm. Then, with all the force her slender body could muster, she threw open the door and entered the room.

THE END

of

THE ROBBER KNIGHT

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

My Lords, Ladies and other dear readers,

Thank you for reading this medieval tale of mine. I hope that you enjoyed it and that the dramatic ending did not give you undue alarm. It may please you to know that I am already working hard on the sequel to this book, and if my university studies don’t get in the way of my writing too much, it will not take too long to finish.

I realize that many booklovers (myself included) do not have the money to buy all the books they would like to devour, and that is why both this book and its sequel will be available as free eBooks. Still, it is my dream to become a professional writer, and in order to achieve that I unfortunately have to actually sell some books.

That’s why I have published a ‘Special Edition’ of The Robber Knight (available both as eBook and paperback) which, for a few dollars, contains not just the story you have just read but also several additional chapters exploring Reuben’s mysterious past. If you would like to support me in my dream of becoming a professional full-time writer, you can purchase this Special Edition and/or leave a review for The Robber Knight on Goodreads or your favorite online bookseller. Constructive criticism or suggestions for improvement are just as welcome as praise.

Thank you for your support!

Farewell until we meet again (hopefully in the next book)

Your part-time medieval knight and storyteller,

Sir Rob

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