Damsel Knight by Sam Austin Page A

where is it now? She’s not naive enough to think it might be defeated by one swing of a sword. Scared off if she’s lucky, but not defeated.
    “Bonnie?!” Neven’s voice calls out of the darkness. “Where are you Bonnie?!”
    He sounds scared, desperate, and alone. It could be a trick. The real Neven could be dead already for all she knows. There’s no way to tell, except to follow the voice and find out. Follow the voice or walk away?
    She follows, sword kept firmly in her hands. This time she keeps a steady pace, using her blade to find and avoid trees. Roots are more difficult to avoid. They seem to appear out of nowhere. Her mother’s dance lessons come in handy for keeping her balance.
    Finally she sees him ahead, bright in the solid black. It’s only seeing that black curtain surrounding them again that she realises that it hadn’t been there while she’d been walking. When had it gone? It was there when the thing was talking to her, she remembered, but after she’d cut it, the wall had gone as well. She files away that thought.
    “Bonnie!” Neven says, sounding relieved. “I couldn’t find you. I looked and looked, but there was all this black. But I think I saw some smoke coming from over there. We should go. It might be someone who can help.”
    “You don’t want to help,” Bonnie says. She slices her sword through his body, neck to groin.
    He stares at her with wide brown eyes, then fades into a bright white mist and disappears. The black curtain goes too. It’s still too dark to see her hand in front of her face, but it’s less heavy. And she can hear Neven again - the real Neven - from the direction she’d been walking.
    She starts on her way, quicker this time. It won’t be long until it comes back.
    “Neven?”
    “Bon-Bonnie?”
    Close. So close. She fumbles her way to him in the dark. He’s standing with his back against a tree. She might have walked right past him, were he not hyperventilating. She’d have to be deaf not to hear the racket he’s making - or separated from him by that curtain again.
    “It’s me Neven,” she says, reaching out a hand to touch him.
    He clings to her arm like he’s drowning, and she’s the only thing keeping him afloat. His grip is painful, but it’s also real. That thing wouldn’t feel like this, she knows somehow. It would be cold, she thinks. Beyond that she’s not sure, and doesn’t think she wants to be.
    “I thought it was Ness,” he says, the words clumsy and stumbling. “It sounded like Ness, and it looked like him. He was dressed all in uniform. He was covered in blood Bonnie! Every inch of him from head to toe, like he’d bathed in it. And - it - he - I think he was dead. He kept asking ‘why did you leave? Why didn’t you take me with you?’ Why didn’t we Bonnie? We could have. What if he goes to war and never comes back?”
    “It wasn’t him,” she says, finding his shoulder and clasping it tight. “It’s something else. It must have lured the princess away like it did us. It wants us separated and scared. We have to stick together and stay calm.”
    “It’s not him now,” Neven says. His voice hiccups wetly, like he’s been crying. “But what if it’s showing us the future? What if Ness dies like my father? What if everyone dies because of what we did?”
    “King Robin is a just King,” she says. “Everyone says so. The soldiers attacked your father because he attacked them. Everyone else fled. As long as they can’t prove they were involved, they can’t hurt them. Ness will go off to war and have as much of a chance as everyone else - more even. He’s young and strong. Were he born into riches he would have already squired and become a knight.” What she doesn’t add is that he would have trained since toddler-hood with a sword as she had to get that knighthood. Ness may be strong, but strength doesn’t compete with years of training. They have to hope whoever he faces has as little training as he