Chaos.

The knights closest to Amelia all started arguing at once.

“This is madness My Lady.”

“You cannot possibly do this.”

“You could be killed.”

“If we fall back to the inner keep, we can…”

“Enough!” Lady Amelia shouted, their voices dying away instantly. “I would not have you all risk your lives while I covered away in this castle,” she said focusing on her cousin Welwyn who had the decency to lower his eyes. “I will fight as my father did, side by side with each and every one of you and together we shall drive these men from our walls.”

Amelia saw no more signs of argument from the men and gone too was the fear she had witnessed earlier. She knew that fear was the greatest enemy for the people trapped with a siege. It was fear that would defeat them quicker than any army could.

Amelia’s brother, the intended next Lord of Arrowthorn, had died of a fever when he was fourteen and not yet a man. Lady Amelia had always been a small child and although she was five years older than her brother, when he had past, she knew that the armour her father had crafted for him would fit her smaller body. Squires were sent running for the suit armour which had been kept on display in her father’s private audience chambers. There was no shortage of men willing to help Amelia into her brother’s plate and indeed many full knights aided in binding the many buckles and ties that kept it all in place. Amelia’s handmaiden Jacinta had refused to allow Amelia to go out into battle without her and a squire’s padded gambeson was found for her also. Her brother’s sword would have been much too heavy for Amelia though so a pair of smaller short swords were furnished for her and Jacinta.

Armed and armoured Lady Amelia led the many soldiers that had gathered in the great hall back out of the castle. In a wave they charged through Arrowthorn’s bailey and out onto the great flight of stairs that lead to the castles massive defensive outer walls.

Word had quickly spread that Lady Amelia was leading the defence of the castle and each knight and common solider alike were eager to show their bravery to her. So much so that a wall of armoured bodies ringed Amelia and Jacinta. Caught up with the flow of battle, they were cast a drift along the walls of the castle. The beachhead that Lord Maugh’s and his ally Duke Blackmuir’s troops had managed to take on the battlements was cast down upon in a fury of blood and steal. Faced with such savage defence that can only come from defending ones’ home, the opposing men were swiftly cut down and the siege tower once again toppled. As it fell this time, its structure gave way and it collapsed into a pile of timbers. Oil was throw from the walls onto the broken siege engine which was quickly set alright by flaming arrows. Their only siege tower broken and their one clear point to mount an offensive gone, the enemy broke and retreated back to their own camp blocking the path to the great keep.

So well-guarded had Lady Amelia and Jacinta been by the men surrounding them that the only time they came close to danger had been when an enemy solider, thought dead, had suddenly come to life in front of them. Rising up from where he had been lying amongst the bodies, the two girls had lashed out with their short sword, basing the man around his helmeted head, before a knight stabbed him through the back with his sword, ending his life.

With the battle won for now, it was time to regroup and for Lady Amelia to check on her wounded father. All other pressing concerns could wait until then.