Knightfall Chapter 1 - Jubilee Anderson

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of author except in the case of brief quotation in review or for discussion purposes.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental or used in a fictitious way.

To the Lord Jesus Christ

Chapter 1

Chink. Chink. Chink. Markus struck the oak doors with his gauntleted fist. A whiff of dampness wafted from the wood. Markus examined the pitted grains in the door. Like someone had taken a hammer and smashed it.

Augustus, his steed, snorted from outside the rubble gate surrounding the manor. Justice and Glory pawed at the ground with their hooves, and the knights who had accompanied Markus straightened in their saddles.

His gaze fell on the garden and he shuddered. Ivy spiralled up the rose bushes, trapping their suffocated flowers. Weeds choked the short grass that used to carpet the garden floor.

A twisted net of ivy stems crawled up the grey ashlar blocks that stacked the manor. The shutters were shut fast like the bars of a prison. Dark gray slate tiles overlapped the pointed roofs of the mansion.

A black cloud billowed over the afternoon sun and a lone wind whistled through the pine leaves.

Welcome home.

He lifted his hand rapped a second time. Where was the paper-crinkled beam of Hadel the butler who should have opened the door by now? Had no one heard him knock?

Markus turned his head and glanced through the broken gate. The two riders stared back. They were supposed to accompany him on the first part of the assignment, but Markus wished he had gone alone. This tarry at his family’s house would be anything but short.

A heavy scrape rolled behind the door. Markus studied the dents in the wood, his heart thumping. Was it Hadel? Or what if a stranger had banished his family from the house and was inhabiting it? The door clicked.

Creaaakkk! A figure moved in the dim light of the open hallway. A curly head poked out.

Markus drew back. “Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel gasped and flung the double doors open. He barreled into Markus before he could open his arms. “Markus!”

Markus pried his arms out of his brother’s bear hug and wrapped them around him. He breathed in the crisp scent of old books that settled in Nathaniel’s hair when he feasted on his library too much.

Markus pulled away and studied his brother.

The makings of a beard stuck out from Nathaniel’s chin. The Trojan horse dangled by a chain around his neck. It had been a year since he’d seen his brother. Things hadn’t gone well at their parting months before, but maybe Nathaniel had forgotten.

Markus smiled. “You haven’t changed a bit!” Unlike Markus. Markus had left for a summer of fun and returned with a load of responsibility.

“Will you be staying for once?” Nathaniel asked. Markus knew his brother had meant to tease him, but the words stung.

Why did every conversation turn out the same way? “I guess not,” he replied.

Nathaniel only shrugged and stared at Augustus’s empty saddle and at the two men who had ridden with Markus from Canater. “You were escorted?”

Markus dipped his head. One of the riders pulled his steed’s left rein in a sharp turn to ride through the gate. “Sire. Shall we come in?”

Markus nodded again. “Take my horse to the stable.” The two riders guided the horses past Markus and around the side of the manor.

Nathaniel took a step back. “Sire? Who are you? Look. You may have secrets but you’re still in our family, Markus.”

Not this again. The last words of Nathaniel from a year ago rang in Markus’s ears. All you care about is yourself! Would this conversation end like the last one? Markus braced himself.

Nathaniel swallowed and his gaze wandered across the hills beyond the manor. “I have something to show you before we get any further with this.”

“Let me go in first and say hello to Mother and–”

“Markus, please.” Nathaniel took a deep breath. “Come.” He brushed past Markus and whipped across the path that led around the manor.

Markus watched his brother’s retreating figure for an instant before hastening after him. Nathaniel kept his brisk pace and stepped onto the grass.

Markus followed him up a steep hill, his heart faltering. Why was Nathaniel acting so strange? Weeds slapped his legs, begging him to turn around. Where were the servants who cut the grass regularly? What was going on?

He glanced at his brother’s downturned face and started in surprise. It was as gray as the manor blocks. Nathaniel’s fingers played with the Trojan horse fastened around his neck. A tear escaped his eyelid and trickled down his cheek. He brushed it away.

“What’s…wrong?” Markus waited for Nathaniel to tell him it was all a joke, to take him back to the house. They would both laugh and the world would go back to normal.

Nathaniel didn’t answer.

They came to a halt at the top of the hill, wind tousling their identical dark hair. Suddenly Markus realised where they were. He could see the slab of stone that had been laid above his father’s grave over the jagged grass. His heart clenched. Emotions slammed into him. He fought to control his breath. Why had Nathaniel brought him here?

Markus followed Nathaniel’s gaze and fixed his eyes on the tall weeds a few feet ahead. He forced himself to take a step. Nathaniel stood, a white statue. Markus searched the grass.

And then he stopped. His heart caught in his throat. Something gray poked above the yellow stems. Something stone. A crooked crack sliced it in two. Another headstone. He took a step. He heard Nathaniel’s quiet sobs behind him.

Markus bent over the stone. A single slab rested on the sunken mound. In the middle, three crude words were etched.

Celestia de Castor

He knelt and reached out a trembling hand, tracing the cold letters with his finger. The wind whispered her name and then shrieked it. Estia. Estia! Markus’s chest tightened. He tried to suck in air. He gripped the stone with both hands as if to pull it from the ground and bent his head over it.

No. Not my little sister.

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Markus crushed a clump of dirt and looked back to see it crumbled in a boot print of flattened grass like his life a few minutes ago. Another tear streaked his face. He wiped it away. The wind stung his wet cheeks.

“How?” he whispered.

Nathaniel’s voice cut through the quiet. “They came… they wanted to take her to be a maid in Lord Kend’s palace.”

Just like Charlotte. Markus’s heart throbbed remembering his betrothed. The lovely maiden. Charlotte. Nathaniel continued.

“Mother tried to talk to them and they almost… but then— ” He broke down into sobs, and Markus fell silent.

As he passed the manor wall, he flung his hand and beat one of the grey ashlar blocks. His knuckles smarted but he didn’t care. Who were they? Why had they killed her? If he’d been home he could have stopped everything.

Nathaniel mounted the path and jerked the double doors open. They slogged into the house. Nathaniel shut the door behind them. Markus followed him down the hall, the knot in his throat rising. Where was Mother?

Markus’s boots tread across the green and brown mosaic spread across the hallway. Behind him the roots of the tree stretched to the door, and before him, strong green branches sprouted in leaves. Each family member had a branch. Markus pinpointed his own branch. Right in the middle.

Something was different, though. The day after Father had been murdered, Hadel had accidentally dropped a hammer on Father’s branch. A crack ran across that tile. But now Markus noticed another crack. A crack on Estia’s branch. It couldn’t be a mistake. Someone had purposely broken it. He stared at it, desperately trying to keep his tears inside where they belonged.

An arm wrapped around his shoulder and fragile hands pulled him into an embrace. Markus wrapped his arms around his mother. He sucked in his breath, but the tears spilled down his cheeks and into Mother’s hair. He choked them back, burying his face in Mother’s neck.

“Hello, son.” Mother said. He took a deep breath and let it out. Markus lifted his head and brushed the tears away. He stared at her shriveled face. Her shawl seemed too big for her thin frame and her hair was whiter than he remembered. He missed the scent of lemons and roses that used to hover around her.

Poor Mother. Was there anything I could have done? How could I be so selfish?

“We were just having supper, Markus. We don’t have much, but please join us.”

Markus took his mother’s hand and accompanied her down the hall. He stepped into the private dining room his family used when they didn’t have guests. He breathed in the smell of the hundreds of meals eaten there. Red and purple tapestries of heroic deeds done by Markus’s ancestors lined the walls. In the center, above the mantle, a painting had been hung. A painting that had been taken down ten years ago. Father’s painting.

Markus glanced at the table.

No centerpiece. No butter-server or silver plate or knife. Only three bowls and three spoons. Markus stared at his hands. Why would no one explain to him exactly what happened? Why hadn’t he been there to stop it?

But he chose to depart. He chose to go with Grandfather. He chose to abandon Nathaniel to support Mother and Estia alone.

Markus replayed Grandfather’s words in his head. He has risen up again. He has already killed your father, Markus. Beware of him.

He wandered to his seat at the table and rested his hands on his chair. Grandfather had been referring to Lord Kend. Those words had been spoken one day before Grandfather’s own death. Emil, the castle physician, publicly announced that he’d died of old age, but later he came to Markus privately. “Something in his wine was poisoned. Be careful with what you eat, Markus.”

Markus glanced down at his bowl. It was little more than warm water and a diced, shrivelled-up carrot. Mother and Nathaniel would never poison him.

“We’re better off than some. We get carrots for supper today.” Nathaniel’s eyes shone.

Carrots? What about velvety soup with noodles and tender meat, heaps of vegetables? Several courses brought by the servants…

Markus pulled his chair out. “Where are the servants?”

Mother lifted her head. “We couldn’t afford to keep them.”

Food taken and taxes raised. That was the only explanation. Whoever did it was a tyrant. Suddenly Markus didn’t feel hungry. He shoved his chair in.

“No one has done anything about this? Who rules this country?” He turned from the table and strode out the door, ignoring Mother and Nathaniel’s stares after him.

Markus broke into the first door he saw, which happened to be the drawing room. He heard Nathaniel’s hurried footfalls behind him, but he flung the door closed. He just needed to get away for a minute. He spanned the room and collapsed on the couch.

Edris must send an army after this man. Why hasn’t he done anything already? Markus sensed Nathaniel easing the door open and tip-toeing to situate himself across from him, but Markus fixed his gaze on the floor.

When Grandfather summoned him to go on the assignment, had he foreseen this? Markus met Nathaniel’s stare. “If Lord Kend did this, then I must ride to the castle at once to inform Edris.”

Nathaniel folded and unfolded his hands in his lap. “I tried informing his Highness already. Only a few days after you left me again.”

I know I was selfish. You don’t have to pound it into me. “What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Nathaniel pronounced, and stared at the floor, fingering the Trojan horse around his neck.

“What? Edris is a fool if he allowed injustice like this.”

“You call your own friend a fool?”

“Lord Kend killed my sister and my father. Edris is a fool if he can’t stand up for what’s right!”

“King Edris is dead.”

What? Markus met Nathaniel’s eyes, but he envisioned Edris’s face.

“Goodbye,” A younger Markus said.

“I will miss you, friend.” Edris had embraced him with tears in his eyes and then Markus had mounted his horse and cantered away.

My dearest friend….dead? Markus tried to swallow the knot in his throat. Each time someone died, he felt as though pieces of his heart broke off and melted away. Father. Grandfather. Estia. Now Edris. One day his heart would be gone.

A flood of tears threatened to pour down his cheeks but he forced them back. Lord Kend did this. The words echoed around his head until it ached. The tyrant! My family… Edris. Why? And he wasn’t there to save them. Why hadn’t he been home? Why had he chosen to leave? Why was he crying about a choice he could have controlled?

Markus rose from the armchair and shuffled to the bookcase beside the sofa, studying the titles. I never asked you to come in, Nathaniel. Markus tread down the length of the shelf and back again, trying to keep the knot in his throat from escaping. It was his fault.

The quarrels they got into about the situation. Nathaniel’s pleas for him to cancel his trip before he rode off.

Grandfather had offered to train Markus, not Nathaniel, and the opportunity for such a level of training was irresistible. But training is nothing compared to family. Nothing to seeing Estia one last time. Nothing to saving her from death.

Markus jerked his arm across top of the bookshelf. A thud rattled on the floor.

He had to protect their family somehow. He was the head of the household. And he must protect his country and his people. Which meant he must get rid of Lord Kend. The full weight of responsibility entrenched his mind.

Markus dusted his hands and bent to retrieve the item. He froze.

With shaking hands, Markus plucked the toy from the wood tiles and fingered the wood. He remembered its soft feel again and its ridged limbs. Its twig-sword was thrust above its wooden marble head. Father had carved the figure for them, along with the other nineteen.

Tears pricked Markus’ eyes. It was the wooden soldier he’d dropped that fateful night…

“I warned you, Anrew.” Lord Kend tread toward Father, hand clenching his hilt. The grown-ups seemed frozen in place. Mother gripped Father’s shoulder. Young Markus squeezed his shoulders between the bars of the staircase. He clutched one of his twenty polished soldiers with one hand and the rail with the other. When would Father finish with Lord Kend so he could kiss him goodnight?

“Lord Kend. You know I could never do such a loathsome act to Edris himself. The king is merely a lad.”

“But Anrew. It must be done. Edris killed my own brother and stole what was rightfully mine and he will pay for it whether you help me or not. And I believe you have something else I need, as well…”

Markus leaned a little farther, but his sweaty fingers slipped off the edge. He gasped, pulling himself back onto the staircase. The wooden soldier tumbled out of his hand. It thudded on the mosaic floor. He held his breath. No one looked at him.

“Please, Anrew, agree!” Mother whispered frantically. But it was too late. Father paled as Lord Kend unsheathed his sword and drove it into his stomach. Father doubled over and fell on his knees. Blood trickled where the point of the sword stuck out his back.

All that came after was a blur. Screams. His heart breaking, shattering, falling to bits. Goblets clattering on the floor. The shutters swinging in the wind. Realisation that Father would never kiss him goodnight again. Anger.

Father’s coffin lowered into the ground. The wooden box at the bottom of the hole. Mother kneeling beside the mound, sobbing, her black dress sweeping the dirt. The neighbors’ empty condolences. Walking away from the gravesite for the last time.

Markus snapped his eyes shut and tore at his hair. Stop! Stop! He couldn’t think of that. Not now, not ever. Markus thrust the wooden figure on the shelf and reached for the arm of his chair to steady himself.

He wanted to kick the chair and smash it to pieces. If he could have run down the stairs and stabbed Lord Kend as he leapt out the window, none of this would have happened.“I’ll march my army.” Markus said to the wall. You won’t live long, Kend. When I’m done with this assignment, I’ll kill you.

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