Let Slip The Princesses of War by David Schenck

the dark.  Maybe I couldn’t bear the thought that I might pass right over it and feel nothing.  Just another stretch of road in the night. 
    So we rode on towards the capital in the morning.  The flags so close together now that they were more like a wall.  And then I saw it.  A spot in the road, like any other, within sight of the city walls, but in my memory stained with blood.  And I stopped my horse, and I waved the others on.  I dismounted and I knelt down in the dirt and I wept.  And, maybe, I lost my mind for a moment, my face on the ground and the ground turning wet with my tears, just like it had been wet with their blood. 
    So, when the ground around me suddenly erupted with bodies, I was slow and I was caught before I even put my hand to my whip.  Two trolls held me in iron grips.  Cinderella and Pea turned back but it was hopeless.  These weren’t the random monsters we had dispatched in the forest.  They wore the uniform and badges of Mallory’s personal guards.  Two, even two as tough as Pea and Cindy, had no chance against more than a hundred.  And Pea had Emily.  I caught her eye as she struggled to break free from an ogre who had a grip on her horse’s mane.  “Go!” I told her.  “Save Emily, save the mission.  For the fuck’s sake, save yourself!”
    She didn’t want to. I could see that, but she did.
    One of the trolls, smashed me in the face.  My nose broke, blood streamed into my mouth.  Then the other one hit me and they took turns until I could barely see, until I couldn’t hold my head up.  Just as I thought I was about to pass out a pair of boots entered into my blurry, bloody field of vision.  Dragon-hide boots.  Even in my current state, I recognized those boots.  I’d commissioned those boots, gone personally to the boot makers, chosen the design, the silver phoenix chasing the gold dragon.  The ruby eyes were from my own earrings. 
    I looked up.  And there she was, the last person I’d expected to see, Jinjur.  The General of my armies, the person I’d entrusted with the defense of my people.  Wearing the boots I’d given her the day I’d made her general, and the insignia of Mallory’s guard over her breast. 
    I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t form words.  Maybe it was the beating I’d just gotten, I had a tooth rattling around in my mouth.  Maybe it was shock. 
    “Queen Rapunzel!  I never expected to see you again.  And under such wonderful circumstances!  We are going to have such fun together!  We’d had reports of Snow White’s people in our territory. When I finally managed to get Queen Mallory to use her magic to locate the intruders, imagine my surprise and delight when she told me it was you and that you were heading to your old capital!  It’ll be just like old times, except, you know, with me in charge.”
    I spat the bloody tooth at her.  I’d hoped to hit her in the eye, but it just bounced harmlessly off her cheek.  It was that kind of a day.
    “Bring her!” and she turned and strode away.  And I followed, dragged by my new companions.   
    They took me to the dungeon and chained me to the wall with a cuff around my ankle.  Like most dungeons it was dark and dank and damp.  It stank of mold and death.  It’s funny because, when I was queen here, we’d converted the old dungeons into a play room for the twins and the children of the castle.  They had reconverted it back into a dungeon, it was impressive how they’d recaptured that old dungeon ambiance in just a few years.  I wondered if they’d had to import the mold. 
    I sat in the filth.  It was too dark to see much, the only light came from a single torch that shone through the small grate in the door.  My whip hung on a peg on the far wall, out of reach.  I stretched out my hand and willed my whip to come to me.  Straining with the effort.  I gave it everything I had and then a bit more than I had.  Calling it to me.  But, nothing.  That