Ayla had thought Reuben already inflicted strict discipline on his men before he started training them on the crossbows. She had been wrong.

He had told her not to come and watch him train his fighters. So of course, the first thing she had done when she had a little free time on her hands was come and watch. After five minutes, she had to sit down on an empty barrel that stood against the bakery wall. She got tired and slightly queasy just from watching.

"Why do you make them run endless laps around the castle walls, carrying stones and buckets of water and God knows what else?" she demanded when Reuben was finished torturing his victims for the day. "I mean, where's the sense?"

"The sense?" he said, cheerfully. The training always seemed to put him in a good mood. "The sense is that they learn to do whatever the hell I tell them to until they collapse. And then I kick them in the ass until they get up and do it some more."

"And that makes sense because...?"

"It builds discipline and is good for moral."

"And the fact that you enjoy it has nothing to do with it?"

"Milady! You wound me!" He placed a hand over his heart and managed somehow to actually look hurt. "Here I am, slaving away in your service, and you accuse me of base motives!"

"Do you have base motives?"

"Well, yes, but that's not the point." He gave her his most dazzling, devilish grin. "You shouldn't accuse me of having them, whether I have them or not. You shouldn't be so suspicious. Especially not," he added, leaning towards her until his stubble tickled her face, "of the man who loves you."

"Don't change the subject!" It was supposed to sound like an accusation, but with Reuben's lips skimming down her cheek, over her jaw and down her throat, it ended up as more of a moan.

"I'm not trying to change the subject," he whispered against her skin, and Ayla nearly fell of the barrel at the sensation. "I'm trying to change positions, from vertical to horizontal. But you're being stubborn, as usual."

"Reuben! The whole courtyard is full of people! They'll see us..."

"Oh, trust me, we won't be interrupted. They're shooting, and I've told them if one of them turns around, away from the targets, they'll have to do fifty laps around the outer castle wall, carrying Sir Waldar on their back."

"Reuben!"

"Yes, I know, I'm abominably cruel, aren't I? But at least we have our privacy..."

He went for her mouth and silenced her in the most delicious way on God's wide earth.

*~*~**~*~*

After this little discussion, Ayla vacillated between not coming back to the training grounds because she didn't like to see how hard Reuben was riding his recruits, and coming back regularly in order to distract him and maybe lighten their life a bit. The latter option also had the added advantage of being clenched in his passionate embrace, with a noble reason for for her actions that helped to assuage her conscience. After all, if it helped ease the life of a few hundred poor, exhausted people, kissing Reuben couldn't be that immoral, could it? It might even be downright noble!

Needless to say that over the next few days, she took pity on Reuben's recruits quite often.

"You're distracting me from my duties," he growled against her mouth, pressing her into the castle wall. Leaves of the ivy that grew up the wall behind her tickled Ayla's face and neck, but she didn't mind at all.

"I know." She smiled.

"You're a temptress, do you know that? You shouldn't be making me neglect my obligations. I have to do everything in my power to protect my liege lady. What would she say if she knew what I am doing right now?"

Raising her hand to cup his cheek, Ayla tickled a spot behind his ear, eliciting another deep growl.

"Oh, she's a very sweet, lenient creature. I don't think she would execute you."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. She might have you chained to the wall in one of her dungeons for a few days, though."

Reuben's eyes flamed with gray fire. "And will she be there to oversee my punishment?"

"Certainly. You don't think she'd leave a task as important as that to anyone else, do you?"

Turning her head into the Ivy, Reuben kissed his way up her cheek to her ear, and gently bit down on the lobe. Ayla felt herself twitch, and melt into him.

"What a sweet creature. She makes all my dreams come true."

Dreams come true...

His words caused painful images to rise up in Ayla: a church, bells, ringing, Reuben holding her in her arms, forevermore... Her dreams. Were his different? Or were they the same?

"She wants to," Ayla whispered. "If only you'd let her."

Reuben froze.

Slowly, he drew back. She wanted to protest, but stopped herself when she saw the look in his eyes.

"You think I don't want you? I'm yours, Ayla. As soon as you say the word."

Her heart made a leap.

"Really?" A tentative smile broke over her face. "You really mean that?"

"Yes, of course." His gaze burned into her, fervent and earnest. "We can go this minute. Let's find a bedroom, and get down to business."

Ayla's heart froze in the middle of its leap, plummeting towards the ground and crash-landing with a resounding thud. A bedroom. Not a chapel, church, or priest. He wanted to find a bedroom.

Well, so did certain parts of her, if she was being totally honest, but those were the sinful parts she had to ignore. Her crash-landed heart wanted something entirely different.

Reuben's gaze slowly changed from intense to puzzled, when he saw the look on her face.

"Um... why do I get the feeling that you weren't referring to wild, passionate fornication?"

Ayla felt her face heat.

"Because I wasn't!"

"You weren't? Really?"

"No!"

He bit his lower lip, thoughtfully. "That's a shame."

A certain aching part deep down in bodily regions the existence of which she had never really admitted to herself ventured agreed with him. Nevertheless, she raised her chin stubbornly.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well what?"

"If you weren't talking about doing a dance on the devil's pitchfork, what were you referring to?"

She blushed even more deeply. By the Apostles! Why hadn't she kept her mouth shut!

How could she tell him that she had been dreaming about him asking her to marry him? It would make her sound like the most pathetic, needy damsel in distress ever. And worse, what if he didn't want her that way? The thought was almost too painful to contemplate.

She raised her chin a little higher.

"Why do you think I'm going to tell you that?"

*~*~**~*~*

Reuben's mouth fell open. Had he heard right?

"Well..." he began cautiously. He had no fornicating idea what she was talking about, but he felt instinctively that for some reason, he was treading on thin ice. "It would be logical, wouldn't it? I mean, I can't give you what you want unless you tell me what it is."

Ha! There. That was very reasonable.

But apparently, Ayla didn't think so.

She shook her head. "No."

"No? What do you mean, no?"

"I mean that you should be able to guess this. You should know what I want instinctively. Your heart should tell you."

Reuben looked down at his chest, nonplussed. Apart from the usual thump-a-thump-a-thump, his heart was staying conspicuously silent.

"And you couldn't even give me a little hint?" he asked, giving her his most charming grin, which so far, had gotten her every time.

She crossed her arms over her chest.

"No."

Reuben sighed. Satan's hairy ass! What did women want? Well, she mentioned his heart, so...

"I'm guessing it's something romantic."

"You're getting warm."

Reuben's expression brightened. He had a lot of experience with what ladies considered romantic. He'd just have to dig around in old memories from the time when he had still been a chivalrous, dancing, flower-throwing fool.

"Well... let me see. I bet you want me to write a sonnet about you."

Ayla shook her head. "No."

"Oh... well... Now I've got it! You want me to pick flowers for you!"

"No."

"Hmm... I guess you don't want me to win a tournament for you, since we're under siege."

"No."

"Hmm... Do you maybe want me to hang from your windowsill one-handed for an entire day, reciting the lyrics of Bernart de Ventadorn backwards to prove my devotion? Hey, don't look at me like that. I knew this knight in Palermo, and he and his lady had very strange ideas about what was romantic. Besides, she really loved Ventadorn."

"I do not," Ayla told him, and if he wasn't mistaken there was a slight coolness in her tone, "have the slightest desire to see you hanging from my windowsill."

"Oh, well, I can always hang from someone else's windowsill, if you prefer."

That earned him an elbow in the ribs. After this little chat, Ayla didn't come to the training grounds quite as often as before. Reuben didn't worry about it. She would get over it. After all, if she wouldn't even bother to tell him what it was she wanted from him, it couldn't be that important, could it?

*~*~**~*~*

For a time, Ayla wasn't keen to see Reuben again, in case she wouldn't be able to keep herself from strangling him. But she went to the training grounds now and again anyway. There were other reasons why she wanted to be their besides Reuben.

Watching the recruits was heartening. At the beginning, most of them hardly ever hit the scarecrows which they used as targets. Yet under Reuben's expert tutelage, and his expertly threatening stare, they learned quickly. After only a few days, the dummies were regularly riddled with crossbow bolts.

Whoever was too young, old or sick to participate in the battle, Reuben set on other tasks: some he made shoot down all kinds of birds that flew over the castle, others were entrusted with the task of plucking them and making their feathers into fletching. Yet others were made to go through the castle and find every scrap of wood that was expendable.

The wood was for the carpenters. They and the other craftsmen that lived in Luntberg castle were the only ones that didn't have to train as hard as the others, because most of their time was taken up with making new crossbows and bolts.

They wouldn't remain exempt from training for long, though. They already had nearly enough crossbows for all the recruits when they started started. It made Ayla wonder how long exactly Reuben had planned this ahead, how long he had seen this battle coming.

When she asked him one day, he looked at her, long and hard, and then said:

"From the very beginning, of course."

"You mean when the second herald came, to bring us the Margrave's threats?"

He shook his head. "No. From the moment I beat the Margrave's first army. I knew he would send a second one. And I knew that when he did, it would come to this."

Ayla couldn't suppress a slight shudder.

"Sometimes," she mumbled, "I'm really glad you're on my side."

He flashed her a grin, which immediately made her feel warm inside again. "Only sometimes, Milady?"

Thus, the training progressed. After a while Reuben had his recruits switch to training with moving targets: he'd attach the scarecrows to ropes, hanging between the inner wall and a window of a keep. Guards up on the wall and at the window would pull on the rope, and the scarecrows dangling from it by others ropes would dance like puppets in a theater.

This took some getting used to, but eventually, the recruits mastered even this hurdle. They were making progress by leaps and bounds. Ayla had no doubt that, come next Sunday, Reuben's fighters would be turned into a deadly force of crossbowmen.

There was just one problem.

Not all of the crossbowmen were actually men.

"You can't let women fight at the front, Reuben!"

It was late evening, and the training had just ended. Ayla tried her best to ignore the dozens of village women with crossbows over their shoulders, laughing and chatting as they left the training grounds.

"You can't make women fight," she repeated for about the hundredth time, lowering her voice to a threatening whisper.

"Why not?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Why? Because... because it's just wrong!"

"For the enemy, yes. They'll have to deal with twice as many crossbow bolts coming their way."

"I meant for the women!"

"Oh, really? Well, I don't think so."

"If it's such a grand idea, why didn't you recruit them already? Why didn't you make them fight long before now?"

"Because before, we were fighting with spears, axes and swords," he told her. "Heavy weapons that require a lot of muscle and training. I might have been able to train the women to use them, but it would have taken months. Months we don't have. With the crossbow, the situation is totally different."

By the Apostles! Ayla felt the urge to punch something. Why did he have to be so asininely logical?

"But... but... fighting isn't ladylike! Women don't have the bloodlust in them that is necessary to fight in war!"

"Really? What about your own bloodlust?"

"I?" Ayla's voice rose two indignant octaves. "I don't have bloodlust!"

"Really?"

"Yes!"

"So you've never, ever looked at me and thought 'God, I'd like to kill him!'?"

Ayla felt her face heat.

"Admit it," he teased, grinning his most evil grin. "There are times when you just really want to ram a knife in between my ribs."

She blushed more deeply. "No!"

"Really? Lying is a sin, remember?"

"Well... maybe sometimes! But it was only a thought!"

Still grinning like a demon, Reuben slid his arms around her and pulled him towards her. "I rest my case. Now come here, will you?"

"Reuben, I–"

His lips silenced any further protest.

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My dear Lords and Ladies,

Sorry for the late update. I felt a little sick today :(

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GLOSSARY:

Bernart de Ventadorn: A famous French twelfth-century troubadour. As far as historical research has revealed, he never intended his work to be performed while hanging from a windowsill.

Fletching: The feathers attached to the rear end of a crossbow bolt which keep it steady in flight.