When Ayla's horse, half-dead from exhaustion, crashed to the ground before the bridge, dozens of soldiers cried out in alarm and hastened to aid her. Yet she jumped up and held out her hands, directing them back to their posts. Her ribs hurt terribly from the fall, but now was not the time to show weakness.

“I'm fine! Eyes on the enemy, men!”

She had ridden like a demon to get back to the bridge in time and seemed to have managed it. The enemy had just about covered half the distance. Her horse, however, might not survive the experience.

So what? a tiny part of her thought. We are all going to die anyway.

All emotion had drained out of her. She had cried all she could up at the castle. Now, all that was left was a blazing determination to carry out this insane plan of a silly merchant who had delusions of grandeur and fancied himself a military commander. Why not? It was no worse end than any other. At least she would go down fighting.

“Have you lost your mind?”

Someone grabbed her from behind. As she was turned around, she could see that it was Burchard. “Riding down the mountain like that—you could have broken your neck! What game do you think you're playing?”

“War,” she replied curtly. “Bring me three barrels of lard, and tell the archers to wrap rags around their arrows.”

“What? You haven't...”

“That was an order.”

He studied her for a second, then bowed his head and ran off as fast as his stout legs would carry him. Ayla looked over to the archers who were supposed to be arrayed along the bank of the river in a watchful line. Now they stood in a loose group halfway between the water and her panting, fallen horse. They were all eying her warily.

“Eyes on the enemy, I said,” she yelled, and marched towards them. “Someone bring me something that burns, anything! The rest of you, form a line facing the water!”

They looked uncertainly between Sir Waldar and her. None of them was used to taking direct commands in battle from a woman, especially one as young as her.

“You are sworn to obey me! Move!”

None of them moved. They still looked uncertain.

“And I'm sworn to protect you,” she added, in a softer voice. “Now, for the last time: move.”

They unfroze and hurriedly formed a line at the edge of the water.

“What are we going to do, Milady?” Captain Linhart asked, undisguised fear in his eyes as he watched the boats of the mercenaries draw closer. “They will crush us.”

“They will never reach the shore,” Ayla replied with a conviction she didn't know she had. She most certainly didn't know where it was coming from. This entire inane plan was based on the ideas of a fever-stricken merchant, for heaven's sake!

A fever-stricken merchant who knows how a feudal army is structured and commanded.

“We cannot stop them, Milady,” the captain said in a soft voice. “Our arrows won't harm them. We already tried that.”

Ayla fixed him with her most lady-of-the-castle-like stare. “I wasn't suggesting to try that again. We have no time for arguments. You will just have to be silent and do as you're told. Can you do that, Captain?”

Linhart hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, Milady.” And by the resigned tone of his voice, Ayla knew he had said it because it didn't much signify to him how he was going to spend the last minutes of his life.

He thinks he will die here, she mused. Do I think that, too?

And she realized that no, she didn't. She had thought so only minutes ago, but now... Reuben was right. She did trust him. It made no logical sense, but she was actually beginning to think his plan was going to work.

With a small smile growing on her face, she watched several deathly pale villagers carry three barrels of lard towards Luntberg's archers. Bemused, she noticed Captain Linhart peeking at her out of the corner of his eye. He probably thought she wanted to start baking pastries or make sausages on the battlefield. Maybe he thought she was losing her mind. Well, maybe he was right.

“Place the barrels here,” she commanded the villagers, pointing to a spot directly before the archers. They did as she asked and then ran. Maybe to bar their doors, maybe to grab what they could and flee. Ayla didn't know, and in that moment, didn't care. She had a task to accomplish.

“Dip your arrows in the lard,” she commanded. “Make sure that the rags are soaked in it.”

Now all the men looked at her as if she was crazy.

“Do it!”

Hastily, they did as she said.

“Fire!” she called. “Where is my fire?”

A guard hurried over from the bridge with a burning branch in his hand. Ayla gave a silent prayer of thanks for the fact that the men always had a cooking fire going to heat up gruel or some hot drink. In her panic, she hadn't thought of where the fire she needed would come from before leaving the castle.

Hurriedly, she waved the man with his makeshift torch towards the line of archers. “When I say so, you will set fire to the arrows. Understood?”

He swallowed. “Yes, Milady.”

Ayla took a deep breath and looked out over the river. The enemy boats had now crossed more than half the distance. She could see the greedy eyes of many a soldier fixed upon her, the only woman on the battlefield. Well, she would see to it that these men remembered her until their dying day.

Or in other words: until today.

This was it.

She remembered the words, remembered them exactly from that time Isenbard had shouted them out and brought down the enemy's cavalry.

“Nock!” Ayla called.

Twenty archers put arrows to the strings.

“Mark!”

The arrows swiveled to face the enemy. The mercenaries raised their shields in preparation. Before their wooden protection went up, Ayla could see their malevolent grins. They felt safe and superior. As earlier, nasty laughter drifted over from the boats.

“Draw!”

The archers pulled back the strings, their muscles bunching under the tension.

“Set fire to the arrows!”

The man with the burning branch hurried along the line of archers, trying not to disturb their aim while he lit one arrow after another. Flames sprang up along the line of soldiers and enveloped the slim wooden shafts on their bows. Ayla knew she had only seconds before they would be consumed. Feeling the weight of rule descending on her shoulders, she raised a hand, just as Isenbard had done in this very meadow, not so long ago.

There was an immeasurable second of silence, during which Ayla's eyes sought the red robber knight on the opposite shore. He wasn't sitting quietly anymore. Instead, he had ridden closer and was watching the proceedings with suspiciously narrowed eyes. Ayla fixed those eyes with the closest approximation of a death-stare she was capable of, and let her arm fall.

“Loose!”

*~*~**~*~*

Reuben lay on his bed, breathing heavily. The effort to go over to Ayla at the other side of the room had cost him a lot of his limited strength, and he was sweating all over. But that wasn't the only reason he was panting like this. He had held her in his arms. For just a few moments, he had felt her soft, slender figure pressed against him. It had been an exhilarating experience.

At another time, he might have spent more time thinking about this. But right now, the unwelcome knowledge that he might very well have sent Ayla to her death was a little bit distracting.

I might never see her again, he realized. Then that memory will be all I have left of her.

The thought was so incredibly painful. He choked out a half-laugh. A few weeks ago nothing in the world could have hurt him, and now a mere thought could inflict pain on him? How pathetic was that? If he only knew how the battle was going. If he only knew whether or not Ayla was still alive.

*~*~**~*~*

At Ayla's command, the archers let go of their bowstrings and twenty fiery predators arched through the air. They hit the enemy boats, and again Ayla could hear laughter from the mercenaries—which abruptly cut off as flames began licking up the sides of the boats and over the soldiers' wooden shields.

Had the enemy kept a cool head, Ayla realized later, things might have gone differently, considering how fresh and wet the wood of the boats had to be. Had they kept a cool head, Luntberg Castle might have fallen that day. Yet it is difficult to a keep cool head in the face of fire.

Ayla watched as the first shields dropped, listened as yells of alarm went up from the boats. Suddenly, things weren't going as planned anymore for the mercenaries. More shields were thrown aside or simply dropped into the water to see where the hell those flames were coming from!

“Dip!”

Ayla's soldiers followed her order immediately this time, dunking their arrows into the barrels of lard, their eyes wide with disbelief as they stared at the enemy vessels: by now, the mercenaries were frantically trying to put out the fires spawned by the flaming missiles; many of them had lost their shields already and most had stopped paddling. Some boats were turning around and around in circles, because only the soldiers on one side were still dipping their oars into the water. The enemy attack was falling apart.

“Nock! Mark! Draw!”

Again, twenty strong arms pulled back bowstrings. The man with the makeshift torch didn't need prompting this time. He hurried along the line of archers, leaving fire in his wake. Twenty flaming projectiles pointed skywards.

“Loose!”

The second volley of arrows struck the enemy undefended by their wooden shields, most of which were floating downriver by now. Screams of anger and surprise turned into screams of agony as, this time, flaming blades cut not into wood, but into flesh. The mercenaries' thin clothing and oiled armor ignited like dry tinder, and screams of agony morphed into bestial roars as men turned into living torches.

Ayla would have liked to look away—but she could not. It was her duty to look, and to command, and to continue.

She had to look at the burning men, if only to know what it was she had done.

So she watched, as again the flaming arrows buried themselves in the sides of the enemy boats—boats which by now were burning bright red. The mercenaries that were still alive tried desperately to extinguish the flames, screaming at each other to get water out of the river, or to rip the arrows out, or simply screaming in pain as they, too, caught fire. Chaos was spreading with the flames, and man after man fell into the water, crying out wordless prayers and curses. Most of the men didn't resurface.

“Dip! Nock! Mark! Loose!”

Ayla's lips moved almost without her being aware of it, pronouncing the death of her enemies. It had only taken a couple of minutes to completely reverse the situation, though it seemed much longer than that. Where a few minutes ago the mercenaries had been sure of victory, now they were being crushed. Most of the boats had been overturned or were rotating aimlessly in the river, most of their oarsmen were gone. There was burning chaos among the enemy. Clearly, none of them were thinking of attack anymore, not even of retreat. No, they thought only of flight, desperate to get away.

Away from her, Ayla suddenly realized. They were afraid of her. The knowledge was chilling, but also sent a grim surge of satisfaction through her veins.

Her eyes straying to her own soldiers, Ayla saw the awe and fear in their eyes. She understood, because she was feeling exactly the same. Everybody knew that lard burned, and that wood could be burned. But to see these simple elements wreak such untold havoc was deeply disturbing. Ayla knew that if she hadn't been there, the soldiers would have stopped shooting, or at least stopped igniting the terrible fire on their arrows, now that most of the enemy shields were floating in the water. But she kept them repeating the hailstorm of fire, again and again.

You are killing people who are fleeing, said a voice in the back of her mind.

I am killing people who want to kill my people, she thought, determinedly. Each mercenary that falls today can't strike a blow at us tomorrow.

This was no time to get skittish. She was a leader and had to act like one.

Soon, no more boats were floating on the water. The only things that were floating were burning pieces of debris, and men—face down.

Ayla lifted her eyes from what she had wrought to meet the gaze of the red robber knight on the other side of the river. He didn't curse, yell, shout—in fact he didn't do anything but raise his hand again. This time, Ayla knew, it was no warning, but a respectful salute.

She nodded.

The robber knight whirled his stallion around and galloped back to the camp, leaving his dead behind to rot.

After a moment to gather herself, Ayla walked down to her soldiers. Smoke was drifting over the battlefield from the river, but Ayla forced her eyes not to water. She couldn't afford to cry. Not here, not now. Not in front of the men she had commanded.

The captain met her, the others behind him. They all looked like they had woken up from a dream. Not a nice dream.

“Milady.” The captain nodded and gestured to the destruction on the river. “I gather Sir Isenbard has awoken?”

Ayla raised her chin and met his gaze head on. “No, Captain, he has not.”

Linhart's eyes widened. “Then you...”

“What did you think, Captain?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “That the feverish merchant in the castle's guest chamber came up with the battle plan that saved all our lives today?”

The captain fell to his knees, and all his men followed suit. “Forgive me for ever doubting you, Milady. Your wisdom in battle surpasses all that I have seen before.”

Well, she wanted to say, my wisdom in battle is about comparable to that of an oyster, and as for doubting me—great job you were doing! You were spot on! Go right on doubting me.

Instead, she just nodded gracefully.

“All you men have done me proud this day,” she called, gesturing towards the river. “You have stood between your families and the enemy, and you have not faltered but won a stunning victory. If we continue to be as vigilant, I have no doubt we will prevail, no matter the odds.”

She took a deep breath.

“Captain, I shall leave it to you to establish a guard that patrols the bank of the river night and day. If the enemy should attempt another crossing, you know what to do now. With the Lord's help, we will destroy them!”

Her eyes fixed on the burning debris and the dead, she added, in a low voice: “Fire and sulphur rained from heaven and destroyed them all.”

The captain rose, a new determined light shining in his eyes. He may not have been familiar with much of the Bible in his mother tongue, but he was able to recognize the word of the Lord when he heard it.

“As you command, Milady,” he said, his voice reverent. Then he raised his arm. “Three cheers for our Lady Ayla!”

Ayla's mouth dropped open as a cheer went up for her. And another. And another. Soldiers were cheering her, as their leader. It was an overwhelming feeling, one that she had never expected to experience. And she hadn't missed the significance of what the captain had said: Not “yes, Milady” or “as you wish, Milady” but “as you command, Milady.” She was a commander now. And all these men had accepted that, placing their lives in her hands. Even Sir Waldar was cheering along, though his cheering was interrupted by loud bursts of laughter. They believed in her ability to lead them through the coming battles.

Mary, mother of God! What was she going to do?