She stepped back inside. She would take what was coming. She wouldn’t run like her father had run! She looked around and thought about tying her bed linens together, but she didn’t trust the makeshift rope would hold. She lined up heavy things to throw at anyone trying to get in. She’d hold them off as long as she could. Maybe until her father arrived with more of his men.
After a quarter of an hour passed and no one, friend or foe, had come to get her, she approached the door and leaned her ear against the wood. Had they left? Should she open the door and find out?
She grabbed a wooden horse about twelve inches long. It was heavy and could hopefully kill a man.
She unbolted the door and peeked out. When she spied the burly-bald-headed warrior coming up the stairs, her heart nearly stopped. She hated him and his enormous, fit body strapped in leather. What would he do to her?
She leaped back, shutting and bolting the door and hurried back to the window. She’d fight, and then she would...she looked down.
The brute tried the door and found it locked. “Open the door or I will kick it in,” he demanded on the other side.
“I will not open it!” she challenged back and prepared to jump. “Kick it in then!”
He did. With one kick he broke down the door.
Willow let out a short gasp of terror and desperation. She was going to have to jump.
Someone called him from downstairs. “Jonas!”
He ran out of the doorway and disappeared.
After a moment, Willow went to the open door and looked out again. Everyone had hurried to the one who’d called, whom Willow suspected was the commander. She tiptoed to the railing of the stairs and looked down at them. There were about twenty men, but more were returning from their search of her father.
“Baltrasard has escaped,” the lead savage called out.
Willow silently rejoiced, though he’d abandoned her.
The commander’s voice was imbued with authority, but there was a thread of regret and disappointment so deep that the one called Jonas offered him a sympathetic look. Though it was hard to tell through his thick, orange mustache if he was sympathetic or smiling.
“We have the castle,” Jonas offered.
“I don’t want it. That’s not what I came here for.”
Willow didn’t think her blood could run any colder through her veins. They had the castle! Where were the remainder of her father’s men? Had they all been killed? What did it mean for her? Would they kill her? Worse?
“How about his daughter then?” the bare-chested warrior asked with a ruthless smile that lifted the corners of his thick mustache.
The commander’s gaze glinted with something almost feral. “Where?”
Jonas pointed with his chin up the stairs. “We’ve also found their water supply. About thirty gallons.”
“Good. I want every drop,” the commander let him know. “Are there any other women here? Anyone at all?”
The hulking Warrior shook his head and then ignored his leader’s oath.
Willomenia wanted to cry—to scream. But it wouldn’t help her. She ran back to her room. She’d left the horse by the stairs! She’d have to use something else. To hit the barbarian with. She wasn’t going to go down easily!
Chapter 3
Caleb had lost him. All this time preparing, waiting. All the time away from home, and away from the things he loved.
He couldn’t let Baltrasard get away. He’d go to Beldar, but it might take him another two weeks to get back. He’d already left everything at home for too long.
He’d ordered seven of his men to spread out and try to find the cowardly king. How could there be no trace of him? How could any man be so sure-footed and agile? Was this how he’d beaten the last king and usurped him?
“Where is he?” he called out as he journeyed upward to where the girl they believed to be his daughter, was hiding. He took his time, wanting to sooth his anger before he reached her. For as the Holy Scripture said, ‘Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.’ Caleb was no fool.
He'd had seen her standing at the top of the stairs while he fought with her father. He’d taken an instant from the fight to admire her, for she was very beautiful, with dark hair braided over her slender shoulder and wide, frightened dark eyes.
He was going to have to take her with him now because everyone here was