Matilda rounded a corner and almost walked right into Lord Callum, who was half-running down the hall.

"You!" he exclaimed. His dominant hand went to his waist, where a sword should have been. But he had nothing there.

"Lord Callum," Matilda said, curtsying with a dark smile. "I understand you have been of great service to my cousin. But to think that someone from such a martial family would grow so comfortable in an administrative role that you would be walking around, at the height of a siege, without a weapon on you—"

He crouched, clearly going for a dagger sheathed at his ankle. Quicker than he could react, she grabbed hold of his arm.

"Please do not try it," she whispered. "I have no particular desire to permanently disarm you."

He swallowed nervously, then rose slowly to a standing position again.

"What are you doing running free?" he asked, clearly afraid of her.

"Do you see this?" She pointed at the absence of a collar around her neck.

"I do."

"Do you know what it means?"

"Someone set you loose."

"A member of the Royal Family set me free," Matilda corrected, scowling. "Not loose. Free. And I have been given a specific mission." She lowered her voice. "I am to cover their retreat from the city."

The man's eyes widened. "Right," he said slowly. "The King is dead…"

"So long live the Queen," Matilda replied with a trace of amusement. "The mission becomes to protect the Royal Family. At any rate, your task is simple. Gather a squad of your best magical knights for me. We sortie with the enemy—"

"I do not work for you," Lord Callum began.

Matilda grabbed him by the collar with one hand and lifted him effortlessly into the air.

"Today, little man, you do. If I am not mistaken, the Royal Family's departure from the capital will leave me the closest in blood and right to the throne. I am not allowing a mere pea counter to lead the defense of this siege. Leaving this country to people like you was Alistair's mistake. The warrior caste should be running things, not the little men of petty details."

"Even if I wanted to do as you commanded, there are practical difficulties. Do what you want to me! I will not make a decision that is not best for the defense of this city."

The man made an expression of what Matilda could only interpret as courageous defiance.

How laughable!

She was about to strike the defiance from him with her bare hands when there was a distant, but very loud sound, like a thunderclap.

"Did you hear that?" Matilda asked.

"I—I did," Lord Callum said.

"Do you know what it was?"

He shook his head.

"That is the sound of a battering ram striking—"

There were suddenly several sounds similar to what they had just heard, coming from multiple places.

"Of several battering rams striking the city's main gates," Matilda finished. "Do you know what that means?"

"We must defend the gates," he said.

"We must distract the enemy!" Matilda corrected. "We have to engage them in combat. Paint the exterior walls of the city with their foul blood."

He swallowed again. "I suppose," he said slowly.

"Do not suppose! Get me a horse, and get me my knights! Send them to meet me at the Butterfly Gate. If there are no knights there in ten minutes, I will take the nearest guardsmen and form a corps from them, and we will fight the Empire without the Kingdom's finest, whatever that may do to the defense of the walls."

There was another loud bang, from roughly the same location the first noise had originated from.

"Another thing," Matilda added, almost as an afterthought. "Do you know of anyone in the capital who has an armor set in my size?"

Ten minutes later, Matilda sat comfortably in the saddle of a horse that had belonged to the King. Fifty men in armor rode alongside her, armed with lances, swords, and varying secondary weapons. They were not all magical knights. Half had not been knights of any kind prior to today. But the capital needed every strong pair of arms they could muster right now, and they had been in possession of more suits of armor, lances, and swords than they had trained knights to take up those weapons. One important aspect of a small offensive sortie was keeping up morale. People would be watching from the rooftops and from the walls. Men would be watching on the other side, too, looking for signs of weakness.

Having fifty men instead of a mere twenty-five, even if half of the men could not endure a single blow from Matilda herself, would be beneficial for intimidation, for the efficacy of the initial, violent charge, and for the image it would convey to the city. Claustria still had a plethora of gifted warriors to throw at the enemy, not just the dead King.

And Matilda imagined that any survivors would more than earn their knighthoods with the deeds they were about to perform.

If there is a recognizable Claustrian hierarchy left after today, she thought.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She would not allow herself to dwell on the possibility of failure, but her task was daunting.

I have to disrupt the attacks on the gates, and if we're lucky, I can do more than that. Kill the men hitting the gates, destroy their battering rams or seize them, put fear into the rank and file. Singlehandedly change the direction of the siege…

Even she was not quite certain whether she believed that last one. But it was part of the justification for her plan.

She stopped twenty feet from the gate and dismounted her horse. All of the other men with her stopped and remained in place where she had stopped. Matilda approached the gate alone and began giving instructions to the men defending it.

"I am Duchess Matilda, cousin of the late King. I am taking command of the siege." She handed over a scroll from Lord Callum with the King's seal on it. "When the enemy next draw back to build up momentum for another ram, I want you to open the gates. We will hit them with a wave of force the likes of which they will never expect."

"It seems the Goddess has smiled upon us," the Captain of the Guard said, nodding. "I will do as you command, milady."

He had not even opened the scroll, just glanced at the seal, which told Matilda he was probably illiterate. So her limited mandate from Lord Callum could be stretched a bit further.

"Have a dozen of your archers standing by here—" she gestured at both sides of the gateway—"to feather them with arrows just before we come out. Just a quick burst of fire. And after we smash them…"

She outlined the rest of her battle plan.

"That… is that not a great sacrifice, milady? We have mages all around, reinforcing the gates…" He coupled this latter point with a gesture, pointing at several sweaty men who were laying hands on the city wall, pouring out large quantities of mana that Matilda could see clearly.

The Captain was clearly trying to say, as politely as he could, Are you insane?

She might be, but that did not mean she was going to change her plans.

"The proper style of address for a Duchess is actually, 'Your Grace,'" Matilda said, smiling. "But since you will probably never speak to me again after this, I can let it slide. It is a great sacrifice, but you must believe me and Lord Callum that it is a necessity for the salvation of this country."

She purposefully did not say "this city." Wayn itself was almost certainly a lost cause, though she would not concede it while she still drew breath. But if the Royal Family survived, then even if the capital fell, the nation might someday be recovered from the grasp of the Empire.

"As you command, Your Grace," the Captain said. He saluted, then extended his hand. "If I may, Your Grace?"

She shook hands with him.

He lowered his voice. "Thank you for your sacrifice. I and any others I know who live through today will make sure it is never forgotten."

Matilda resisted the urge to smile. That was just what she wanted, to be remembered in this specific context. History would add more information than the rumors the guardsmen would spread, but the word of a few soldiers on the ground was a fine foundation to build a legend on.

"May the Goddess be with you," she said.

She walked back to her horse, mounted up again, and turned her head sideways to speak.

"On my signal, we show them what we are made of!"

A small roar of approval went up from the men. The knights had been cooped up for days with little to do. Even the men who were less trained still had some fighting experience and wanted to do their parts. She could feel that this would work.

There was a loud boom that broke the noises of the men's cheers. Another battering ram impact from the other side of the city. That was just fine, though. Perhaps if it had gone on, the besiegers would have overheard and anticipated what was about to happen.

Matilda couched her lance under her arm and simply waited.

A little less than a minute passed, and then the gates began to swing open.

The former slave made a single, forward chopping motion with her unoccupied hand, and then she rode forth, counting on the others to follow.

A thin stream of arrows struck the front of the enemy force as she began to move. The dozens of men holding onto the battering ram at this gate had shields raised overhead, but their front was much less armored.

That is a strange battering ram, Matilda thought. It was made from an unfamiliar black stone rather than the usual wood.

But she did not dwell on it, nor did she take much note of the condition of the gate itself, though there were many cracks across the surface that were revealed as it opened. It was doing much worse than a structure reinforced by magic normally ought to be after taking a series of non-magical physical attacks.

No, Matilda and her knights focused on a single thing as they sallied forth. The moment of impact.

Seconds after they rode out, their lances smashed into the enemies who now tried desperately to abandon their positions at the sides of the battering ram. Matilda personally felt and pushed through the jarring thuds as her weapon drove through one, two, and finally a third man who stood in her way.

The lines of the enemy that had been holding back out of archer range, waiting to pour in after the gate was destroyed, immediately began boiling up toward where the fifty armored and mounted men rode.

Matilda smiled. Perfect.

Without needing her signal, the men under her command acted as they had been ordered.

The twenty-five non-magical knights dismounted from their horses, grabbed the handholds for the battering ram, and began half-carrying, half-dragging it back within the gates, behind the city walls. That was what they had been ordered to do if the ram could not be simply and easily destroyed, which this unknown black stone probably could not be.

Matilda and a handful of knights close to her met the first small group of men who had charged forward from among the Empire's lines.

Brave men, but only twenty of them, and none of them mounted or armed and armored as well as herself and the magical knights beside her.

They smashed, trampled, stabbed, and otherwise made quick work of the brave demon soldiers. Matilda glanced back toward the city. The twenty-five non-magical non-knights had made it back behind the walls.

The gates began to close behind them, cutting the elite knights off from the possibility of retreat. This too was in keeping with Matilda's orders.

Her plan was to try and cut through and around the walls to make it to the next gate. If she and her knights managed to butcher enough soldiers and make it there, the twenty-five non-magical knights and a large group of archers would support them, and they could steal or disable another battering ram.

But she and the other magical knights with her were not the Kingdom's entire elite corps. There would be other knights. There might be other sorties outside the other threatened gates even without Matilda and her group.

And most importantly, Matilda remembered the function she actually represented for Carolien and the rest of the Royal Family. A distraction.

She smiled as she saw more and more of the Empire's force pulling from the further areas of their lines, preparing to attack. Whoever was in command of the Demon Army knew that Matilda and these elite magical knights would not easily be crushed, would not drown even in an ocean of ordinary soldiers.

The more men they pulled from the rear and peripheral parts of the battlefield, the less likely the Demon Army was to spot the Royal Family at the place where their escape route let out.

She began to speak as the Demon Empire's nearest group of hundreds of men drew close, choosing taunting words meant to provoke and short circuit critical thought.

"This is the fight you were afraid of," Matilda boomed. "The reason you poisoned and betrayed King Alistair! I am his blood and every inch his equal. Come and taste my steel!"

They did.

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