Princess Kate took several retreating steps away from the emperor's throne, as did her maid, the party's cook, and their physician. Manfred and Andre also followed and kept an eye on the open throne room doors behind them. Meanwhile, the four Monteraynian bodyguards lined up to form a protective wall in the front.

With a casual wave of his hand, Emperor Hakentaknid ordered his guards to attack. Limping under the weight of their crude armor and further burdened by their clunky shields, they advanced with axes and hammers raised to strike.

Though doubly outnumbered, the Monteraynian bodyguards kept the Innutukians at bay with their spears. The repeated thrusts of the sharp points failed to connect, but they did force the emperor's guards to focus on defending themselves, effectively keeping themselves out of range for any retaliatory strikes.

Kate squinted at the Innutukians' armor from where she stood, her archer's eye analyzing it for weaknesses and openings, of which there were many. No uniform design protected them all, but rather it appeared each man wore whatever hunks of raw metal could be found, crudely strapped together by leather bands. In some cases, very few openings presented themselves. In others, the men were left wearing little more than an uneven breastplate and perhaps some leg protection. If not for the bulky shields they carried, the Innutukian guards might be dead already.

She gasped when two of the emperor's guards teamed up on one of her bodyguards, pinning his spear between their two shields and wresting it from his grasp. With the Monteraynian disarmed, they rushed in and beheaded him with their axes. Kate's eyes widened and moistened at the gruesome sight.

One of the fallen Monteraynian's comrades moved in to avenge him while the two murderers still reveled in their victory. A swift thrust of his spear caught the nearest of the Innutukians unaware and entered his ribcage. He dropped to the ground with a bloodcurdling scream, reddening the stone upon landing. Meanwhile, his accomplice rushed forward to avenge the avenging.

While the Monteraynian spearman confused his Innutukian foe with an unpredictable pattern of high and low thrusts, he failed to keep an eye on his back. After causing the chief bodyguard to stumble back a few feet, one of the emperor's other fighters swung a hammer at the Monteraynian's shoulder. Though a plate of armor intervened between hammer head and flesh, the concussive damage still blasted through, and though not fatal, the man had been shocked long enough for the axe-wielding Innutukian to rush in and take off another Monteraynian head.

Kate gulped and stepped back again. Manfred slowly orbited her with his sword raised in a low guard that covered most of his body, grave eyes darting over the four Innutukian warriors who had broken off from the main fight and now crept in on Kate. Andre also stood in a defensive stance, but he appeared more like a lion waiting to pounce than a mother bear protecting cubs.

A sharp cry drew Kate's attention nearer the throne again, where her chief bodyguard had ran one of the Innutukians through, spear targeting a gap between the plate protecting his body and the one on his hips. She averted her gaze immediately at the bloody sight of some organ or another peeking through the hole once her bodyguard had yanked the spear back out.

With two Innutukians facing off against her remaining two bodyguards near the throne, and four more of the foreign warriors closing in on Kate, their plight had deepened. As her fear increased, she found herself forgetting to breathe. A dreadful feeling of helplessness descended over Princess Kate as the Innutukians closed in on all fronts. If only I had my bow right now.

Kate's attention snapped to Andre when he exploded into action, his momentum and body weight together slamming into the nearest Innutukian's shield. The impact knocked the man to the ground. With his free hand, Andre twisted his foe's wrist until he released the axe in his hand. All the squirming and kicking the Innutukian did in an attempt to escape amounted to nothing. Andre slit his throat with the blade of his sword and immediately leapt up to face the next guard who'd waddled over to challenge him.

Andre's dazzling series of swift sword strokes forced his opponent to raise his shield in defense and make a clumsy backwards walk toward the wall. With the shield no longer covering the Innutukian's belly, Andre swiftly pivoted his blade down and struck there. But it clanged against metal and bounced his weapon away. He himself side-stepped to avoid a hammer crashing on his head.

An abrupt grunt drew Kate's eyes back toward the throne, and the sound soon tapered off when another of her bodyguards dropped dead. His Innutukian foe had first smashed a hole in his armor with a hammer before picking up a fallen spear and impaling him with it. Now only her chief bodyguard remained to fight off the two Innutukians nearest the emperor.

Metal rang out not far from Kate's ear, coaxing yet another gasp to her lips. Manfred had warded off a heavy blow from a mace. His Innutukian foe attempted sliding his own weapon down so the sword's blade would catch in the spiked section higher up, but Manfred pulled back and swung at the man's neck. Blood spewing from an artery, he dropped away.

But Manfred's trial hadn't concluded, as two more Innutukians rushed at him with shields raised. He kicked at the warrior to his left, whose armor ended at his shins. With a hiss, the man stumbled away long enough for Manfred to temporarily focus on his comrade. His opponent's hammer constantly batted the sword's blade away as he tried to attack, but Manfred persisted.

Kate snapped to attention. The Innutukian who Manfred had kicked now limped around, and as Manfred was still distracted by the other guard, the staggering man's access to Kate was only a few steps away. She gulped and prepared to defend herself however she could with no weapons.

Just when the Innutukian drew his arm back to swing his axe, Kate's physician lunged forward and took the blow for her. His life ended in a gory spray of blood and small bits of flesh. She grimaced, but had no time to dwell on it, as the guard didn't plan to end there. He swung at Kate's head, but she dodged to the side and backed up. She puzzled over how a weaponless princess could take down a man who towered over a foot over her and had both a shield and axe in his hands.

The Innutukian's advance continued. A wicked grin stretched across his face as he used the mere threat of his impending attack to bully Kate whatever direction he wished. She dared not draw any closer and suffer the same fate as her physician. But then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a spear on the ground a few paces back she could use to even the odds.

Kate took the backward steps she needed, and hooking the heel of her shoe on the body of the weapon, she kicked it up and grabbed it in midair. The princess was untrained in combat with spears, but keeping her opponent at bay with its pointy edge was no difficult task. She bothered him further by pricking each of his biceps in succession. When she came in for a poke at the first arm again, he caught on and moved the shield in the way.

Kate occupied the Innutukian in defending himself for several moments, an occasional thrust penetrating his flesh in the armor's weak points. But then she spiced things up, grabbing the spear farther back on the shaft and swinging its blunt heft at his leg. Having already endured Manfred's kick, the man cried out all the louder, and he appeared barely able to keep on two legs. His reflexes slowed, allowing Kate to speed behind him, where she'd spotted a gap in the armor on his back previously. One stab to the heart from behind, and he dropped.

Now Kate glanced about to update herself on the status of the other skirmishes. What she saw drew her hand up to her open mouth in shock. Her spear clattered to the ground.

Princess Kate's chief bodyguard lay prostrate at the emperor's feet, armor all torn apart and flesh splayed out from multiple wounds. Back where she had stood for a while, both her cook and maid had suffered untimely demises of their own. And while Manfred and Andre had defeated the men they'd been battling when she'd last looked at them, now more Innutukian guards had entered the room, about a dozen in number. The young swordsmen found themselves hard-pressed to continue the fight alone.

Kate swallowed and picked up her spear again. She also stooped down and retrieved a fallen Innutukian's shield. The weight pulled her shoulder down a bit if she didn't exert herself to raise it, but she couldn't afford to compromise her protection. After a short internal debate, she slipped out of her high heels. It would truly be a shame to get killed merely because she broke her ankles mid-fight and gave her enemy an opening in that way.

As Princess Kate charged across the throne room, the balls of her feet pounded on the cold, gritty stone before suddenly being cushioned by fluffy velvet carpet. And then she forgot all about those sensations when her first thrust sent her spear through an unaware Innutukian's ear and clear through his skull to the other. She didn't even bother removing it. Instead, she opted to snatch the mace from his hand before his body fell away.

In this way, Kate fought her way toward Manfred and Andre, and once the trio of Monteraynians had been reunited, they stood with their backs to each other in a sort of triangle and battled Innutukians coming in from all directions. What Kate lacked in raw skill, her shield made up for in an intuitive and thorough defense. And the two swordsmen performed admirably as well.

But despite their greatest efforts, the Innutukians kept crowding in, and more appeared constantly. Kate's arms quickly tired from holding the heavy hunks of dense metal. She drew in a sharp breath when one axe almost succeeded in circumventing her shield. She barely managed to raise the protective mass of metal in time. Manfred and Andre also appeared to have tired significantly, their strikes losing power and becoming sloppier as time went on.

Finally, a pair of Innutukians lunged forward and hooked their hammers on the edge of Kate's shield. When they tugged together, she couldn't resist, and the thick disk clanged to the floor. One of the men wrested her mace from her grasp while the other yanked her forward by her wrist. Kate yelped.

No harm was inflicted on Princess Kate, but she still trembled, shivered and sweated under the Innutukian's firm grasp. A second guard snatched her other wrist, and together, the two all but dragged her to the emperor's throne. The clang of clashing weapons behind her faded out, and Kate glanced back only to see Manfred and Andre had surrendered themselves to the inevitable as well.

"As I told you," Emperor Hakentaknid said with a shrug, "you will be detained, princess. All this show of obstinance has proved nothing and cost you dearly."

"My father will never give Aroria into your hands, not after you take his daughter captive!" Kate snapped, "On the contrary, he'll have your head!"

"I shall look forward to his coming to retrieve it, then." the emperor mocked before waving his hand at his guards.

The Innutukians clasped Kate, Andre, and Manfred by their wrists and walked behind them, guiding them to a black door on a shadowed side of the throne room. Upon approaching it, a guard with free hands opened the dark slab of wood on its rusty hinges. A grating squeak accompanied the opening, and once Kate got her first whiff of the dank air wafting up the stairway beyond, she wrinkled her nose and hoped against hope that they weren't really going down there.

But her vain hopes were born only to be disappointed. Kate grimaced at the frigid stone steps beneath her bare feet that only grew colder the lower she descended. Once the somber procession reached the bottom, they entered a narrow corridor in the palace's depths, lit only by a single candle at the halfway point. The Monteraynian princess hung her head and blinked her stinging eyes.

Upon emerging from the dark hallway, they came to a chilly chamber where a man in a thick fur coat sat at an expansive wooden desk with several candles strewn across it and many more sheets of paper. In a dusty corner stood a trio of crates full of a variety of weapons originating in nations from Ferange to Danlash.

One of the guards stepped toward the seated man and laid Manfred and Andre's swords out on the little free space on his table. The two clucked at one another in Innutukian for several moments, cloaking the overall meaning from Kate's understanding. But she did pick out her name amongst the gibberish, and she found herself strangely disconcerted by that fact.

The man straightened his coat and pulled out a drawer from underneath his desk. He snatched out a loop of hemp to which had been fastened several wooden keys the length of a man's hand. He untied the coil and pulled one off before handing it to the nearest guard with another guttural remark.

With that, the Innutukians pulled Kate, Manfred, and Andre along again, walking down another dimly lit hallway lined with barred doors to holding cells. A cold draft filled the corridor, prompting Kate to pin her arms against her body and tuck her head down a little. Her gaze swept from side to side, and in her peripheral vision, she spotted the captives inside the cells she passed. Men and women of a whole spectrum of nationalities could be found confined down in this dungeon, but all shared one thing in common—misery.

The guards stopped at the last door and finally released the Monteraynians' wrists. Kate shook her sore arms as if that would alleviate the throbbing sensation on her raw flesh. She narrowed her eyes at the Innutukian nearest the cell door as he stuck the wooden key into a strange cranking mechanism a few feet to the right of the barred entryway. Once he'd twisted it, a lock disengaged, and then he twisted the crank to lower the bars into the floor.

That done, the other guards shoved Kate and her companions into the dirt-floored cell with two cots and a single unwashed blanket. Even though she'd anticipated this confinement, a dreadful sensation still washed over her once she set foot inside, and she immediately yearned to get out. Kate watched helplessly as the bars cranked back up.

"Sleep well tonight, boys." jeered one of the guards in a thick accent, "Because if you're lucky, your execution will be postponed until morning."

"Curse you!" Andre cried out after the Innutukians as they walked off, engulfed in communal laughter that faded into the distance.

Kate grasped the bars and knocked her head into them in frustration. Her bottom lip quivered and throat tightened as a scalding tear slithered down her cheek. It truly doesn't get much worse than this, she sobbed to herself, And now these two have to suffer even worse than I, and that through no fault of their own. This is all my doing. I am to blame for all this. 

**** 

A/N: Well, I don't  really have much to say other than that I hope you enjoyed the exhilaration of the fight and that you'd now be willing to offer your shoulder for Kate to cry on. Or else. 

And like the terrible person I am, this is where I leave you for the next six days. Hope you otherwise have a great one, and I hope to see you next Friday! 😂