(Authors commentary): I admit it, I am still not entirely sure what age-group this novel is aimed at. My daughter pointed out that any book about princesses will be ignored by girls once they are over the age of twelve or thirteen, but there is violence, even though I have chosen not to make it graphic. I mean, this isn’t the Hunger Games. That being said, I am enjoying writing from a female perspective for the first time. I am getting in touch with my feminine side.

I particularly like the part in this chapter where Hildy and Sanara talk about their feelings in regards to being forced to kill men. It felt pretty real to me while I was jotting it down on paper, and I still liked it when I typed up the chapter yesterday. I also like the part where Hildy gives a staff-fighting lesson to the Caster brothers.

And the triplets are really starting to grow on me. Since I decided to stop trying to rush things, let the novel become as big as it wants to be, and let the characters have more time to grow, I have more time to let personalities lead the storyline.

So now, I am starting to think about relationships in a much longer scale. These are, after all, a bunch of teen and preteen children, thrown into a resistance movement against an evil empire, being forced to grow up rapidly. If they can kill people, they ought to be able to kiss people, am I right? It would be fun to have the triplets develop crushes on Nudge, the turncoat bad guy-turned-good guy. On the one hand, it seems like having the three young, bubbly, overly-enthusiastic princesses fall for the young, overly-enthusiastic prince will make for some really amusing dialog… and having them fight over him would be awesome. On the other hand, matching quieter, more thoughtful people with hyperactive people leads to other opportunities.

And what about the Caster brothers, those sons of a fisherman, the affable, charming but often annoying boys who don’t take anything to seriously and tend to be a little sarcastic?… (gee, who does that remind you of?)… Having a princess fall for one of them brings up all the baggage of the caste system, which would be interesting to explore.

And what about the boy-king, Aluff, who is sort of a jerk, but might be starting to become a better person? Or the young captain Tar? What of princess Lawry? Or the nephew of captain Reef, who now commands the newly-captured Skull ship? Everybody needs somebody, sometime, as somebody once sang.

Sorry, I know I got carried away on this commentary. But I like to include you in these musings. I like you to feel you are a part of this process. I want feedback, input. What other author let’s you inside their head while they are pulling their guts out and putting it down on paper?

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The Seven Kingdoms

Chapter 16

Hildy went back to snapping orders. A boat was sent to inform the soldiers on Flame that they wouldn’t be receiving a pack of wet, angry and unwanted visitors. Another boat was sent to retrieve captain Reef’s lookouts from the headland above the entrance to the bay. More longboats went scurrying off to deliver the twenty four Skull sailors and twenty Skull soldiers to various ships, as well as returning all the members of the boarding party to their own ships. These boats also took the new soldiers from Flame to be distributed among the vessels of the fleet.

Hildy returned to the Wavebounder, along with Sanara and Nudge, in the same boat carrying prince Dezlore. The man complained quite a bit, between demands for more wine, until Hildy threatened to have him gagged. Well before the sun began to lighten the sky, the fleet began to sail out of the bay. They would, captain Reef assured Hildy, reach Smilingman before darkness fell on the following day.

Hildy slept for a few hours, then donned her Evergreen soldier’s uniform, and stepped out on deck to start her day. It turned out that others had started it for her. The deck was awash with activity. The new Flame recruits, along with the handful of Skull prisoners that had ended up on the Wavebounder, were already busy, even though they hadn’t slept as long as she had. The soldiers and sailors already assigned to the ship were busy too.

Hildy watched as Flame soldiers sharpened points on their staves, the ones who had already finished that task were being put through spear drills by captain Tar, or were at the rail, slinging stones into the sea under direction of Sanara. The Skull prisoners were cleaning the deck, mending frayed ropes, and other assorted mundane chores.

Hildy spotted the young lad from the town where Nudge had grown up, helping a few other men, cutting new bits of hide to make more slings for the newest members of the resistance army. She also spotted captain Reef by the ship’s wheel. She went over to him. “I would like the Skull recruits trained in spear and sling when they finish their other duties.” She carefully did not use the word prisoner when referring to the men.

“Certainly, my Lady,” the captain replied. “I have gotten signals from the other ships. All the new men from Flame are being trained and reequipped, although we will run out of hides before we have slings for everyone. Also, the Skull sailor that was killed was buried at sea.”

Hildy nodded and glanced once more at Sanara. The girl seemed to be fine, but Hildy worried for her. She knew all too well that killing a man, no matter how good the cause, stayed with you. But if Sanara didn’t want to talk, Hildy wouldn’t press the issue. She hadn’t yet unburdened herself to anyone yet, either.

Hildy took a turn with the men, practicing the spear drills. She sparred individually with a few of them, giving them pointers and not going too hard on them. The Caster brothers came sauntering over to watch, taking a break from cutting hides for slings. After a few of their snide comments and bad jokes, Hildy became annoyed. “I’ve only seen you two practicing a couple of times. Since you are so confident in your abilities, why don’t you show us how good you are?”

The brothers took up the challenge. They dressed in some of the spare leather armor and helmets that the men took turns using. Then they squared off against each other. After they halfheartedly poked at one another with the blunt ends of a pair of staves, Hildy was even more annoyed. She stepped between them. “Look, if you aren’t even going to take this seriously, you are no good to us at all, because you will both be dead moments after our first real battle begins. So now, to make sure you do take this seriously, you are going to spar with me.”

The brothers exchanged amused glances. “Who do you want to lose to first?” asked Tolly.

“I have other things to do, so let’s make this a short lesson. I will take you both on at the same time.” Hildy gave them a pitying smile.

First, she had them attack her side by side. Three times they tried, and each time, all they got for their trouble were bruises and the chance to pick themselves back up off the deck. To even the odds, she let them come at her from opposite sides. Three more times they found themselves knocked down, still without so much as touching her with their staves.

Hildy felt that she had made her point, but she still drove the lesson home. “Practice more, and do it for real, or every time I have a minute to spare, I will make you my sparring partners. Pretend your life depends on it, because it probably will one of these days.” With that, she handed the staff and armor to another man to use, and walked towards the cabin. Every man on deck who had stopped to watch cheered.

Hildy washed the sweat off her face with a wet rag, enjoying the cool darkness of the captain’s cabin. Her mind, as it always did when she had a moment of peace, turned to war. She searched her thoughts, or let them run wild, trying to think of anything that could give them the slightest advantage over their enemies, of anything that was being left undone or perhaps something that could be done better. There was a knock on the door. It opened, and Sanara appeared as a silhouette framed by golden light.

Hildy smiled. She had been half expecting Sanara to come to her, to talk, to unburden herself. “You know, you sleep in here with the rest of us girls. It’s your room too. You don’t really have to knock.”

Sanara returned the smile. “I didn’t know if you were busy with something, or maybe just needed some time to yourself.”

“The Caster brothers can be a bit much, but they mean well. They have been almost like brothers to Lawry and I.” Hildy wasn’t going to push the girl.

“But all of this,” Sanara said, waving her hands about in an all encompassing manner, “nobody has ever done anything remotely like this, ever. We are all trying our best to help, but it all falls on you.”

“Really? Does it? Because I seem to recall a day not so long ago when I was just waiting to see what a king would say. Waiting and doing nothing at all. That is until a brave girl from a small farm woke me from my trance.” Hildy meant every word of what she said.

“I just knew I could help teach people how to use a sling. And that got me thinking that we should all have slings, and some stones to put in them. Because, really, slings are all I know, unless you need some breadgrass grown.” Sanara was looking down and scuffing one toe on a rug on the floor.

“Is there something you want to talk to me about?” Hildy prompted.

“Yes, there is,” Sanara said, and then paused before going on. “When we get to Smilingman, we are going to need to buy more leather. There isn’t enough to make slings for all the new men, or the bags for carrying the stones. And we will need more stones, too, no doubt, but I hate to lay more work on you.” She said all this in a rush, hands clenched into fists at her side, eyes glistening.

“I killed a man too, Sanara, in the battle of Evergreen. I may even have killed more than one, but that one, I looked into his eyes as I did it, in broad daylight, standing in front of him. He was a man I had met before. In fact, he was to have been my husband. I watched him die. And, even though he was an evil man, and I don’t regret doing what I did, I wish it had never happened. I wish the Skulls weren’t forcing us into these situations where anyone has to die.” Hildy’s voice quaked with emotion.

Sanara’s voice was breaking as she sought to put her feelings into words. “I don’t even know if the man I killed was a good man or a bad one. I still don’t know anything about him. I just saw his face appear. He was going to shout. I had to stop him from shouting. I didn’t even stop to think about what I was doing.”

Hildy stepped closer and grabbed Sanara tightly in a hug. She whispered in the girl’s ear. “I don’t know if he was a good man either. But I do know this. He was standing with evil men in this struggle. If you hadn’t stopped him from giving the alarm, we might have had to fight our way onto that ship with the enemy holding the better position, stabbing down at us with those spears of theirs. And if that had happened, good men would have died. Good men that we have come to know and care about.”

And they held each other in the cool dimness, both crying without making a sound, for a good long while. At last, Hildy pulled away. “How much leather do we have left?”

“We still have a good sized pile of hides on this ship. I’m not sure about the others, but not enough to equip all the new men,” Sanara replied.

“There is only one way to keep from dwelling on the past,” Hildy said. “That is to keep your hands and your head busy. As you are our resident expert on slings, I have three new students for you. Teach them to make them and to use them. I promise you, for the time it takes you to do both those things, you will not have room in your head for anything else.”

It took them a while to track down the triplets. A sailor said that he had seen them exploring below decks, but by the time they had searched the ship and returned to the deck, the three sisters were surrounding captain Reef by the wheel, bombarding him with questions and comments. The captain looked bemused, but when he saw Hildy and Sanara approaching, the look he gave them contained a clear plea to be saved.

“But isn’t it confusing to have two black ships, each with a captain named Reef?” Miri was asking.

“Perhaps, but the Skulls don’t name their ships as the rest of us do, so it is really the black ship and the Wavebounder,” the captain explained.

“Well, we should name the black ship!” squealed Tam Tam.

“Ooh, that would be fun,” agreed Andita.

“What if we call it the Reef?” suggested Miri.

“That would be hilarious,” added Tam Tam.

“Can I try steering the boat? Andita wanted to know.

“It’s a ship, not a boat, and it isn’t quite as easy as it might appear,” the captain replied, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice.

In all the time she had known him, Hildy had never known the captain to become exasperated. She took the opportunity to step in. “Girls, I have very important tasks for you. Sanara is going to teach you how to make slings. We need quite a lot of them. When you get tired of working on them, you can all start learning how to use them.”

“That sounds like fun,” said Tam Tam enthusiastically.

“How many do we need to make, exactly?” asked Andita.

“Are we going to be able to use them to throw rocks at the Skulls in a real battle?” Andita wondered.

Unfortunately, they all spoke at the same time. Not only that, but they all launched immediately into more questions and opinions without waiting for any answers or comments. Sanara gave Hildy a look that might almost have been panic. Hildy smiled brightly at her. “If you need any more help, just ask the Caster brothers.” And, feeling rather proud of herself, she walked off to find herself a snack.