Chapter Fifty Three: A Most Stubborn Rescue

The city square erupted into a chaos of clashing swords and gunfire, as Captain Banen and his men made their move to rescue Charlotte before the Arakesh attacked, just as Aya had suggested. She had not suggested they go shooting right toward her friend as she was leaning out the window giving happy waves to the crowd though, but at least Carnen acted quickly to pull her out of harm’s way and lock her safe inside that armored carriage.

She expected their carriage to turn right around now and flee back inside their fortress – wedding successfully delayed. Carnen gave quite a different shouted order though. “Send up the flag!” A red flag flew up out of the sleeve of one of his captains and hundreds of additional archers rose from concealed positions along the castle walls. They cut down the exposed targets of Banen and most of his men in a single volley, and Aya went racing instantly to cover, just like the rest of the panicking peasantry.

She crouched in the gutter with Kareem most irritatingly hovering right over her with arms circled protectively around ‘his woman’. She batted aside his hands and reminded him sharply, “Keep your distance and keep your hands off of me.”

“I must defend you, my gem, for we have already lost the true Charlotte.”

“We did not lose her!” Aya insisted, even if Charlotte had been beaming with happiness mere moments ago, clearly entering into this marriage most willingly…

Damn it, she really was lost to them.

Perhaps Carnen had already taken her these past few nights, up in his tower, or even within the royal bedchambers themselves where Charlotte had last been sighted. Perhaps Charlotte would defend him now just as ardently as Clara did Yuri, gushing to Aya all the unasked for details of her and Carnen’s most passionate--

Aya blocked the images from her mind and fixed her gaze on that carriage. It rolled forward in a rumbling of wheels and charging northmen, steering around the densest tangle of corpses and rolling right over the other few stray bodies of their fallen attackers. They reached the doors of the church within seconds, and the carriage door banged open.

Carnen emerged unarmored, but with sword in hand, and one desperate civilian made the patriotic charge to put an end to the invading prince. He drove his dagger right toward Carnen’s back, but the savage prince whirled around and cut the man in two long before the blade found flesh. “Keep a tighter perimeter, captain,” he chided his chief officer, and the man gave his earnest apology, redirecting his men in a tight, three-layered semi-circle of prickling spears around the carriage and chapel doors.

Carnen turned back to the carriage and lifted out Charlotte, who had passed out in a faint and not yet awoken. The prince swept her up into his arms and shoved his way into the church already packed with nervous nobles and clergymen. “Take your seats!” Aya heard his distant last shout, before those doors sealed shut once more. “This wedding will proceed…”

No, it most certainly would not, because Charlotte was unconscious and Aya had resolved to rescue her. She could not waver now, regardless of the odds. No fight was lost until you either surrendered or died.

“Skilled as I am, I cannot fight my way alone through fifty armored men, cali,” Kareem sighed into her ear, because despite her warning, he had not at all taken his distance and she could still smell him all around her. “Charlotte is surely lost to us this day, but we can make our retreat back to my father’s fleet and have this unjust marriage annulled, once that northern savage lies dead--”

“They are not getting married,” Aya cut him off angrily, striding away from him and deeper into the twisting shadows of the buildings ahead. “We just need a smarter way into that chapel.”

And in all her years of shadowing her mentor on field missions, the rooftop approach had never once failed her for a break-in. She shrugged off her burlap dress. The long skirts were nothing but a hindrance now, and she no longer required the camouflage. She would make this climb barefoot in the black trousers and top that Captain Banen had lent her.

“This is no place to make love,” Kareem remarked, and she froze, eyes lighting with fury.

He was glancing in distaste at the trash littered alley around them, advising her insultingly, “We could head inside and borrow the bed of whoever’s residence this is, but we’ve no idea who might be inside--”

“I am not fully stripping for you!” she snapped. “I am most obviously just preparing myself to-- Forget it.” He wasn’t worth the explanation.

She scrambled straight up the wall of the wood-slatted shop and heard Kareem’s disapproving sigh from below. He probably did not think she could understand when he muttered in Arakesh that he should not be lying with an animal anyhow, especially not a monkey. That final insult solidly eliminated any chance there was that she might throw him down a rope and let him follow her.

She started off across the rooftops, keeping low to the ground as she sprinted and vaulted and leapt between buildings with the silent grace of a panther. “Not a bloody monkey,” she muttered beneath her breath.

She reached the ten story inn adjacent the cathedral within seconds and finally drew out her rope. She tied a sturdy, black-painted hook to its end that would not catch the light and began twirling it rapidly out to one side of her so it could gain momentum before she hurled it toward the winged buttress jutting out from the eaves of her destination. The grapple locked in, and she pulled it taut.

The northmen below never looked up at her as she made the thrilling swing between buildings. Their eyes stayed searching the streets around them, never raising their gaze to the heavens where the true vulnerability lay. Aya swung in right below the lip of the chapel roof, pushing lightly back with her feet before scrambling hand over hand toward the hook of her grapple. She climbed up that fiercely angled roof and right into the bell-tower where there were steps leading down to the chapel proper.

There was a white-robed servant stood atop that bell tower, but Aya had her hand over his mouth and her needle in his neck before he even spotted her intrusion.

She lowered him to the ground and started racing down the steps as quickly and stealthily as she could manage. The ceremony had already started. The arch daises conducting this marriage was already wrapping up his introduction and moving on to vows. Charlotte was going to most eagerly accept her groom’s swear, and invader, Prince Carnen, would be made a legitimate Stalis lord in a matter of minutes.