Page 148 of Ironling
More townsfolk made camp in the courtyard, and the castle kitchens and stores were open day and night to feed them. Businesses were boarded up; mills, tanneries, and breweries were closed; and the market stalls shuttered their doors. Many took up the offer to learn self-defense from the garrison, and more lent their labor to the city and castle smithies.
Forges bellowed smoke alongside the kitchens, baking steel and iron into arrowheads and shields. Some folk spent their days peeling carrots and potatoes, others sharpening poles into wooden stakes.
It filled Aislinn with pride to see her people come together. They didn’t complain, even with the impending threat. They rallied, and their steadfastness reaffirmed her own resolve.
They also accepted the large halfling at her side.
To be sure, there were murmurs of doubt, even hostility, toward their union. However, they were murmurs only, and as the strenuous days passed, the sight of Hakon by her side lost its novelty.
Aislinn leaned on her blacksmith, and she hoped the people saw how he never wavered. He set his own back into fortifying the garrison and castle, working alongside the other Dundúransmiths when he wasn’t accompanying Aislinn. He gave his sweat and blood to defending Dundúran, its heiress, and its people—and those people saw.
His care, for her and for her people, filled those parts of Aislinn that she hid away, the hurting and cracked parts. His calm, steady presence lent her confidence and reassurance, and even in those rare times when he wasn’t beside her, she had only to think of him and touch her whittled rose to keep the worst of her fears at bay.
When those fears grew too great, he was there, offering his hand to hold or chest to cry into. Rather than fight them, she allowed her fears their time, pouring out what she had in order to carry on.
With his help, she appointed and delegated, and the castle ran the better for it. The time it freed left her available to meet and strategize with those vassals who began to arrive with their companies.
As she walked the ramparts of the castle, hope coursed thick through her veins to see the growing army camp south of the city. Some earls could spare ten knights, some margraves came themselves with fifty. Each addition was welcomed by Aislinn and the people of Dundúran, and as the days passed and their numbers grew, the threat of Jerrod and his mercenaries didn’t seem so dire.
There was no word from her father, nor the king or queen, but that was all right. With Hakon beside her and the people of the Darrowlands united around her, she knew there would be but one outcome.
“You must hold still,vinya.”
“Sorry.” His mate smiled down at him contritely, but within a few moments, her attention had flitted back out the window. She rocked back and forth in her distraction, her mind no doubt in five different places, none of them in the smithy with him.
Hakon bit back his grin and held onto her hips to still her.
The apprentices and other blacksmiths looked on with mixed reactions, mostly annoyance that he was taking up time and space for his project, but he wouldn’t be deterred.
Last night, scouts had returned with word. Jerrod and his forces were drawing closer, would be here tomorrow. The city was a buzzing hive of activity, those townsfolk who hadn’t already done so moving into the castle for shelter or fleeing to the east. The people had dealt with the stress of an impending attack admirably, and now that they knew when the mercenary force would arrive, a strange sort of calm had settled over Dundúran.
Its heiress included.
Hakon had offered all the calm and encouragement he could over the past days, but now he wasn’t sure he had any left for himself. Especially not when she’d emerged from her meeting with her vassals with the strategy to meet Jerrod in the field.
“I want to spare the city and people as much as possible,”she’d told him as they lay in bed last night.
“I understand, but that doesn’t mean you yourself must lead it.”
Everything inside him roared and raged at the thought of his mate, untrained in the fighting arts, sent out to meet her brother and his mercenaries. He loathed the idea and said as much, multiple times and vehemently.
Aislinn was set in her decision, though. No matter how he argued or cajoled or withheld her orgasm.
“My mind is made. I have to do this. And you must finish what you start, or else I’ll be cranky with you.”
He’d heeded her threat, but even as his mate broke apart on his tongue, he still rumbled with a trepidation so deep, it nearly paralyzed him.
So, he’d extracted promises from her and gotten to work before dawn.
“I’ll meet Jerrod in the field. He may yet be reasoned with.”
“Fine, but you’ll do it armored.”
He hadn’t time to make her a proper cuirass, instead using an unclaimed set in the armory. He cut away excess metal, and when she arrived late that morning as promised for her fitting, he marked the plate with charcoal to determine where else he had to adjust for the best fit he could give her.
A close-fitting cuirass was better than a loose one, but he knew in the back of his mind that it likely mattered little. Still, she’d promised to wear it as some modicum of defense when she otherwise refused to stay within the safety of the castle walls.
She’d also promised that she wouldn’t fight but instead fall back to the safety of guards specifically assigned to her when Jerrod turned to violence, as Hakon knew he would. It was the most he could hope for, and he tried to content himself that she would be surrounded by hundreds willing to give their lives for hers.
