FLV

The keep gates were made of raw new wood, suggesting Jarl did care about the safety of his castle, after all. One of Jarl's gate guards knocked on it with the hilt of his axe; the sally port opened at once, and the guard disappeared. She heard shouts behind the thick gates, but couldn't understand what they were talking about. Before long, the gates produced a heavy, earth-scratching sound, and Morgana had to back off to not get swamped by the massive opening gates.

Inside, the keep was a ruin, with floors and celings collapsed and a pile of charred planks that seemed to have belonged with the old gates. There were another gates at the end of the keep, made of old blackened wood. The guards shouted at them, and she could feel the captive behind her back push her forward.

Her heart was thumping, loud as a drum in her own ears, echoing in every step she made. Alvarr will not help me here. She saw guards, four on the left, five on the right, and three at the gates in the other end of the keep. Morgana kept her ears prick, remembering the password they had agreed upon. In the meantime, the column of captives was moving deeper into the big dusty hall; she heard some of the guards whistle at her.

"I've hurt my leg!" a woman from behind the column screamed. "I have hurt my leg, somebody help me!"

"They'll help you soon enough, darling," one of the Jarl's guards laughed. "Now keep walking, you're slowing the horses."

Hurt her leg. The password. The carts are past the gates.

Morgana closed her eyes and let her thumping heart stop for a moment. She held her breath and than exhaled and she knew her exhale had the desired effect, for she could feel her own wrists free of ropes, and the sound of ropes falling on the ground all throughout the column of captives. Fools.

Morgana turned around to survey the scene of her triumph: she saw the captives rush to the cart with weapons, and before Jarl's guards could understand something, fighting began.

"SORCERY!" one of the Jarl's guards screamed. "They have a sorcerer!"

A witch, to be certain, Morgana smirked as she knocked the man off his feet by raising her arm and wanting him to fall down. She sprang to her feet, maneuvring through other captives, and grabbed the sword that felt so alive in her hand. When she turned around, she saw a Jarl's guard run at her. Morgana jumped back, parrying, but the man followed, pressing his attack. Turning one cut after another, Morgana saw people around her fight, as swords and axes were kissing each other and springing apart. Morgana felt as though she were born to do it, born to command death with every stroke of sword. The Jarl's guard proved a worthy swordsman, though, so strong were his blows that Morgana had to use two-handed grip as he kept raining steel upon her.

Time to finish it. She started to do what she always believed was right. He is stronger, but I am faster. I'll cut him left. Right. Left. Left again. Morgana was swinging so fast and so hard there were sparks when their swords came together. Before long, he was grunting like an old man at every crash, and then he could not reach her, cursing as she was slippng away. The guard was not swinging the swords as quickly as he'd done it earlier, and when he tried to catch a moment of respite, she finished him with a downcut that left him open from shoulder to groin.

She looked around to see three of the remaining guards kneel. The captives had lost two men and woman to the fight. The must be honored with a proper burial. Steel kept rining at the gates, but the main purpose was done: they controlled the outer gates of the keep. The gates are open.

The next moment, close to forty men poured in through the open gates, and she saw Alvarr among them at once, with the sword in his hand and the look that meant he wouldn’t know rest unless he found her.

“Morgana! There’s blood on your blade!” he knocked on her steel with his, smiling. “I told you to leave the fighting to others!”

“I was meant to fight,” Morgana said, so happy to see him lose his head because of her.

“Your plan worked! This worked!” he grabbed her by the gown and pulled her close to kiss her in a battle fever; she felt her nipples stiffen in response. This is sheer madness. We’re fighting. “I was so worried you wouldn’t be able to free all the people of their ropes…”

“Freeing was easy. We lost three to the fight.”

“We would have lost many more if we started storming the gates,” Alvarr was trying to outdo the loud shouts of the warriors. There were now more than sixty men and women, all armed. “OPEN THE BLACK GATES!”

His men rushed forward, ready to open the gates of blackened wood in the other end of the hall.

“Listen, trying not to get in the first row, will you? May the fire help us, we’ll catch Jarl unawares. Sixty men’s enough to put an end to this cesspool.”

The gates creaked and Morgana squinted her eyes from the firefall that stormed between the parting of two doors. She heard a loud battle cry and saw men running into the inner yard.

“Be careful!” she shouted, hoping it would mean something to Alvarr. Of course it won’t. He’s as careful as me. He was born to fight.

It was a slaughter, a red slaughter. The Jarl’s guards were not ready for an attack, nor had they any reason to suspect one was planned. The curtain wall of the castle had been gone, but the four that remained stood in such a way that the inner yard was protected on all four sides by tall crumbling walls. The gates of three of the four keeps had been sealed and piled with stones, and the only gates in and out of the inner yard were thought to be guarded.

By the time most of the guards reached their weapons, half of them had been cut. The druids then separated into three groups: Alvarr led men into Jarl’s keep to seize the slavetrader himself, another man was sent into the guard’s keep with twenty five drudis, and Morgana commanded ten people into the keep where slaves were kept in pits.

By the look of it, it was the least guarded keep, and rightfully so – small chance was there that people would be able to get out of the barred pit unless they managed to life the bar and get the ropes from somewhere.

The guards yielded, and Morgana agreed to spare them: they were thrown into the pits once they helped all the slaves get out of there. It warmed her heart to find out there were neither women nor children inside the pits. Seeing the most harmless people suffer from tyrannical leaders is the worst trial life can give you conscience, Morgana thought.

“You’re free now!” Morgana told them. “I suggest you wait until the fight is over here. You will fight the yard not the safest place at the moment.”

Shouts and havoc, and utter hell had seized the inner yard. Those guards of Jarl who had or managed to grab their sword were putting on a fight. Morgana hated to stay away from the fighting, but she realized the slaves were more vulnerable than Alvarr. She looked at their faces, freckled faces, lumpy faces, sallow faces, bony faces, doughy faces, round faces, brutal faces… So many faces looking at her with unfeigned gratitude.

“Who do we have to thank for this, my lady?” an older man, slender and tall, asked as his face remained twisted in fear from the sounds that were coming from the inner yard.

“I’m no lady,” Morgana replied, smiling. “My name is Morgana, I come from the druid folk. We mean to seize Jarl and put an end to his affairs. After the fighting’s done, you are welcome to join our new settlement in Camelot or go wherever you desire.”

“MY LADY!” former guards’ hysteria was now filling the pit. “MY LADY, I SWEAR WE DID NAUGHT! WE ONLY STOOD AS GUARDS! NEVER SOLD NO ONE, MY LADY, IT WAS JARL, JARL, JARL!”

Morgana hit the bars of the pit with her steel; it made an awful screeching sound and silenced the former guards at once.

“You will keep quiet down there, unless you want these pits to become your graves! No man should ever earn his coin this way! People are not slaves!”

Yet Morgana knew it was wishful rather than real. She remembered Geoffrey told her the romans had a great number of slaves the romans would use in so many spheres of their life, from personal attendance and domestic service to farming. Textile producers, pottery makers, craftsmen – they all used slaves in Roman empire. Romans were said to be enormously powerful, and they turned hundreds of thousands of people into slaves, according to Geoffrey would say. Then where are they now?

She paid no mind to further outcries and waited, waited, and waited. They had locked the keep’s doors and started talking to the slaves to take their minds off the fighting that was happening in the inner yard and Jarl’s keep. How many guards could the Jarl have? Hardly more than sixty. Why would a slavetrader have more? He had nothing to guard here except slaves, and slaves are not treasure. Jarl can turn slaves into gold because he has purchasers. Without Jarl’s purchasers, these slaves can bring no fortunes. Waiting is awful. Goddess, I need to go out and help. I need to find Alvarr, what if something happened to him? What if he’s taken a wound? What if…

However, it was Alvarr himself who brought the world, staggering through the door and wrapping Morgana in his fleshy arms and whirling Morgana around and around the creepy hall with all the people watching. Morgana felt so happy they all looked, so happy she didn’t need to hide anything, didn’t have the silly court stare at her.

“Everything’s done!” Alvarr was hopping from one leg to another. “We defeated them, some fled, but who cares. Jarl himself is captured, he’s cursing at everyone, but we have him in our hands, Morgana!”

The road is free for the clans to deliver the food from Essetir clans.

“Take me. I want to see him,” Morgana said.

The inner yard had blades and bodies carpeting the ground. Some were still alive, asking for mercy and help. Morgana didn’t want to look at their faces, for when she did, they seemed so vulnerable, so pain-tortured and humane that compassion to the dead and the wounded alike was stirring within her. Yet the next moment, she tried to imagine the number of men these brutes had helped to capture and ship off to the Wide Bay. Bayard is playing a part in it. He was purchasing slaves from Jarl and re-selling them to Kent and Anglia who in turns would offer these slaves to the Saxons to stop their raids.

Jarl’s hall was a signature of a wisdom Morgana had once heard from Lady Dindrane at the court of Camelot. When commenting on the dress worn by Uther’s aunt Vyda who had come on a visit to the castle of Camelot, Lady Dindrane mentioned that all the gold in the world couldn’t buy a good taste. Jarls’ hall had six round grey columns (including two destroyed ones), horns and other hunting trophies hanging on those columns next to his self-styled banners of black snakes on white cloth. A bloody idiot. You don’t put banners and hunting trophies in one room, every child at court knows that.

His throne seat was masterfully made, though, and looked like a present from some rich purchaser that favored Jarl’s services. Jarl himself, a man with prolonged face, short greasy hair the reminded of a dirty fox tale, small eyes and smaller mouth was on his knees, bound and guarded by two druids warriors.

“Filthy vermins!” he spay, trying to bite one of the guards before he slapped the slavetrader on his cheek. “Vermins! Cowards! When my purchasers hear about this treachery, they will finish what Uther started to teach you filthy forest vermins a…”

The next moment, his face looked as though he had run out of air, he tried to reach for his neck, but his hands tied behind his back, all he could do was twist and jerk, and soon he was on the floor in convulsions, his mouth wide open, but air not getting into his lungs for some reason.

Morgana’s eyes were ablaze with golden light the whole time Jarl kept battling for his life, and when she blinked, he inhaled with a terrible sound. She finally learned, she understood: the stronger the emotion the mightier the magic. When King Ryence’s patrol caught them in the castle of Idirsholas, she was afraid, and fear let her burn the hilts of the sword of the intruders. She made the roped untie the druids when she felt threatened by the guards and feared losing Alvarr. She choked Jarl when she was angry to hear him talk about druids. Fears, threats, anger – those were the things that largely composed her castle life ever since she had found out she had magic. However, there were few opportunities to channel those emotions – swordfight was prohibited, and her verbal sparring with Uther came to a point where even Morgana could no longer take risks. Instead, she remained at court, with witty japes as the only option to unleash her anger. Now I am unbound. I will not let this anger well up in me and consumer from inside. I will channel it into magic. To protect the weak. And make those who abuse their power suffer.

“The next time you threaten druids, I will make sure it’s the last threat you ever utter,” Morgana warned him.

The warning didn’t work.

“Vermins…” he was soon whispering since his throat was hurt too much to permit loud sounds. “Filthy vermins...”

Alvarr gestured at the door, and the druids guards carried Jarl away. He’s beyond repentance. He doesn’t understand how wrong he is, and nothing can make him realized selling people against their will is bad.

When Jarl was taken away, she turned to see Alvarr climb the steps and take the throne seat.

“You have everything you want now,” he said, drumming on the leather wood. “Everything you wished.”

“Not everything,” Morgana said with a smile and turned back. Her eyes gleamed, and the doors were shut. She ascended the steps, seeing – by his ready gaze, his half-open mouth that Alvarr was as longing as she. Were it the fever of the battle or the joy from her first success as a rebellion leader, she didn’t care, wouldn’t care until she was in Alvarr’s arms, sitting on his knees and then pressing him to the throne. His hands were behind her gown, clutching by her waist as though it was the most treasured thing in the world. She felt goosebumps at the back of her neck when she let herself devour Alvarr’s mouth.

“Morgana,” he was whispering now. “If your sister…”

Morgana kissed his ear and stroked his bristly hair. She would not hear of Morgause. Not now.

“Stop bringing her up. For Goddess’s sake, I will never let anybody  decide from me. Not even my sister.”

“But we could… It’s not…the best…place…not here…not now….”

“I will have you hear and now,” Morgana closed her eyes as she felt his hand slide up her thigh and further underneath her smallclothes. Her hand helped guide him.

“Now do me.”