Fan Fiction ❯ Pledged ❯ Link ( Chapter 1 )

Pledged

Disclaimer: I don’t own Zelda.

I really, really, shouldn’t be writing another chaptered Zelda fic, since I have one I haven’t updated in a long while, but the idea for this one came to me and wouldn’t leave. Hopefully writing it down will get it out. A caveat: this isn’t the "traditional" Zelink fic, or at least I hope it’s not. If you want pure fluff, look elsewhere.

I’ve done some research on siege warfare (thanks, Google!), and I hope it’s enough. But if you’re more knowledgeable than me about this sort of thing and want to correct some glaring inaccuracy, please do so. ^^ I’m always looking for ways to improve my writing!

Anyway...please enjoy! ---   Like a thousand fallen stars, the nightfires of the besiegers below began to blaze beneath the bruised purple sky.   From here, the top of Hyrule Castle and the end of his world, Link thought he could hear the song they sang, a prayer issuing from a host forty thousand strong. Sweet Nayru, bless us with your gentle tidings...   A stiff breeze picked up, blowing the smell of death, smoke, and shit his way, and his mouth twisted. Would that she would bless me. He had never been especially blessed though, and most certainly not by Nayru, so he set his mouth and kept the silence while he walked. As he approached the catapult, he attempted to count the nightfires, that he might know what to expect when the host set up their trebuchets for that night’s assault. He lost count around five hundred, but the falling night seemed darker to him than the one before. Less fires than I’ve seen for a moon’s turn...but is that to the good, or only a ploy to get our guard down?   The butt of the soldier’s spear nudged casually against his back, a nagging ache. "Hurry up, we don’t have all night," came the high-pitched voice of his judge from behind. "We must needs ready the catapults for the counterattack; His Grace insists. I want this taken care of as quickly as possible."   The catapult loomed before him, too large and too menacing to be real. Mildew covered the wood in a greenish fuzz, but there was no mistaking the deadly potential it exuded even at rest. There was nothing he wanted to do more than to walk away from it, but there were enough soldiers behind him -- all half-starved, and nothing to fear under ordinary circumstances -- that he wasn’t willing to press the issue. After all, he was malnourished too, a shadow of the man he had once been.   Link stopped once more, exhausted, his heart throbbing in his chest. They’d brought him up to the roof from the lowest dungeons without stopping, a gruesome trip for someone who had broken his fast with horse and turnip only once in the past three days. It was the same for the soldiers around him, he knew; surely they’d be glad for the respite...   His judge swept in front of him, a dramatic display in his flowing black robes. He gave off the stink of rotting meat, but that couldn’t be helped; water was rationed now, too precious to be wasted on baths. Instead of focusing on a problem they shared, Link focused his hates on the man’s face, the pinched ratlike features he had in common with his father.   "If you will not move, so be it. I can sentence you just fine right here, turncloak," the man sneered. "Once it’s done, however, my men shall be constrained to carry you to the catapult. I can see that plain enough; the stink of cowardice is all over you."   Link grimaced. Was it necessary to name me traitor? Is it treason to find a way to save your king? He thought not; that was why he and a dozen other men had hidden hammers stolen from the armory in their beds, and at night hammered out a tunnel to freedom in Link’s cell. For the kingdom, they told themselves, but that was a noble lie...they only wanted to escape before the garrison was reduced to eating rats. Surely the lords leading the host would be satisfied with land concessions, they told themselves...only one of their own turned his cloak before they ever found out, and it was death to try to escape the castle. The king had decreed it. Soon they were all found out, and to a man they had been flung over the castle walls, left to the mercy of the host that awaited them. Link was the last that remained.   He faced his fate unafraid...or, at least, his anger dominated the fear for now. It was one of the king’s bastards who served as his "judge", since the king and queen couldn’t be bothered to judge such lowborn filth.   Aye, the king...how could I ever forget about the king? King Berent Pollard, the First of His Name. Zelda’s royal husband. Her husband...he remembered that day, the sweet summer day she had come to him in the forest dressed as a peasant -- but this time, unlike all the other times she’d visited, she fell to her knees and pleaded with him to attend her wedding. For friendship, she said, but even so there had not been a thing he’d wanted to do less. Yet he knew his duty. So he went to see her wed in the Temple of Time, feeling awkward in the crowd of lords and ladies. She had been more beautiful than he’d ever seen her when she swept down the aisle in her virginal white gown to her destiny; her betrothed had been past fifty, and so feeble he had to be carried in a litter to his maiden bride. Afterward, at the wedding feast, Link had settled for kissing Zelda’s fingers and wishing her marriage every happiness. That was the last he saw of her. Once she’d passed from her father’s protection to her husband’s, he had gone across the sunlit sea, knowing Hyrule no longer had a place for him...   ...Only to find ten years later, his fighting across the water done, that he had a place in Hyrule. Her letter found him on the shores of Calatia, bloody and exhausted from his adventures. He held the parchment stupidly, examining her spidery hand as if it could convey some special meaning. Finally he took it to a man who had his letters and listened to the correspondence with a faint amount of shock. She welcomed him back into the king’s peace, and craved his return to Hyrule. She meant for him to stay in Hyrule Castle with a high post in the castle garrison, and all the honors due him. She hoped the letter found him in good spirits... She remembers me, he remembered thinking incredulously.   He sailed back across the sea, wondering what it would be like to see comely Zelda as a woman grown -- but when he came ashore, his fantasies were shattered against the jagged rocks that prevented safe anchorage for the trading vessel that had brought him home. The world had gone mad. House Pollard, now ruled by the second or third son, had called its banners and was preparing to march on Hyrule Castle. Lord Pollard had declared Good Queen Zelda barren and no fit wife, he heard in winesinks along the way to Hyrule Castle; the lord wanted her put to the sword, that his brother might marry one of his cousins. The king, in his good judgment, declared his brother a traitor to the Crown, and accordingly stripped him of all lands and incomes. It was an insult that could not go unanswered, and Lord Pollard declared war shortly before his host began its slow march north.   Link found no high post in the garrison awaiting him when he came to the castle, no honors, and only laughter when he presented his ragged correspondence from Zelda to the guard at the gate. Hyrule Castle had an insatiable need for soldiers, however, so he was able to join the garrison anyhow.   He was still in training when the armies met outside Hyrule Castle’s gates, so he was not among the thousands who had smashed themselves to bloody bits against the shields of Pollard’s massive host. Only when his loyal lords’ armies had been depleted and the number of men in his garrison dropped to a thousand did the king draw back behind his walls. Link was disgusted; apparently, sixty years in Hyrule had not taught the king caution. At least the women and children were gone, housed with the sympathetic lordlings who still pledged fealty to the Crown. Only Good Queen Zelda remained; she was made of sterner stuff than the pampered ladies of her court, it seemed. Yet we’ve lived in the same castle for a year, and I have not seen her.   And how desperately he wanted to see her again. Did she look as he remembered? Was her wit as sharp now as it had been then, when the long conversations they had seemed to last twenty minutes instead of two hours? Not that he was like to find out -- not with the siege all around them. While a part of the garrison, he spent his time piling huge mountains of dirt against the castle walls so Pollard’s men could not use siege towers, boiled oil day and night for the murder holes, and picked off the more careless with arrows, but it wasn’t nearly enough. One day here was much like another, and soon he was only aware of the changing seasons -- and that Zelda had not once bestirred herself from her apartments, or so it seemed. Would that I could see her just once before I die.   The last notes of the prayer to Nayru reached him, swelled, and finally fell. As it faded Link realized the song had sent him into a trancelike state, a knowledge that left him cold. He must needs get something in his belly before he died raving...only that wasn’t a problem anymore, was it? Anything’s possible so long as I live, he reminded himself.   "That was folly. Have they lost their wits?" The bastard was frowning, his gaze fixed past the ramparts and on the host on Hyrule Castle’s once-green grounds. For a moment Link allowed himself to hope, till his judge turned back around to face him. There was nothing in his eyes but contempt. "You’re dead, traitor. Men."   The soldiers moved forward, the heavy plate they wore clinking. For a moment Link was seized by an animal fear, till he remembered that he must be brave; after that, he forced himself to walk forward on unsteady feet and weak legs, unable to close his eyes to his doom any longer. Zelda, he thought, when I’m killed for a traitor, will you remember me still?   Zelda... He had thought himself defenseless as a babe in the face of his death sentence, ever since they’d found his tunnel he’d thought it, but that wasn’t true at all. There was one defense he had left, so he stopped before his judge and tried it. "You’ll not execute me. You need me."   The bastard’s gaze was hard, unyielding. "Give him one more chance to get into the catapult. If he won’t, make an end."   Link drew breath, knowing he must show no fear before that gaze or all was lost. He would have to rely on his words -- such flimsy things they were, yet somehow all the shield he had. He used them now. "I was a friend of the queen, once. She will be grievously upset when she learns of my death."   Not getting the overt hint, the bastard’s eyebrows drew together. "I think I know Her Grace a deal better than you do, turncloak."   There was a tenseness in his frame, a venom with which he said the title that made the younger man decide to try a different approach. Link smiled; it was time to cast the die, to take the chance. "Do you? Ah, of course you do. How could I ever have doubted that? Why, I’ll bet the queen treats you as though you’re one of her own. Why don’t you kill me, then? I’m sure your sweet loving mother will understand."   "Stop it!" The bastard was beet red, and while Link was glad his words had the desired effect he did not allow himself to feel relief. That would be too easy, and he knew the hard part was just beginning. "I’ll not have my honor questioned by an ill-bred--"   "Oh...I am deeply sorry if I gave offense." The bastard was prickly for his age; he looked to be forty, yet the subject of his father’s royal wife still bothered him. Link decided not to push the issue any further, unwilling to lose any advantage he might have gained by goading his judge to further anger. "There’s an easy way to prove I tell it true, you know. Take me to the queen. She’ll be of a mind to confirm everything I’ve just told you, I think."   Choosing between his father’s orders and his stepmother’s potential pleasure was hard, Link saw, but not hard enough; he could see Zelda winning the battle being waged behind the man’s eyes. Excitement, and dread, and anger mingled in his belly till he felt sick. Soon, he promised himself, soon I shall see Zel--   "Trebuchet!"   The warning was too little too late. Burning rocks began hitting the ramparts long before the first man had turned to run. Most of the rocks bounced harmlessly off the castle’s fortified walls; some found their intended targets, though. In an instant the catapult intended to fling him over the castle walls was afire; another rock hit an idle soldier in the head, sending him flying backward into a pile of hay. He died screaming, his brothers allowing the fire to burn itself out for lack of water. Men were approaching the dead soldier by the time the fire had dwindled to embers, looking for armor to salvage. Nothing would go to waste.   Link had been watching with an expression of queer interest, his mind elsewhere -- he had learned to do that long ago on his adventures, to separate himself from horrible acts, and he found he’d come to rely more heavily on that talent during this year-long siege. By the time he returned to himself the bastard had hold of one of his arms, and was taking him to the ladder that led down to the lower levels of the castle. Fear and pleasure battled for dominance in him. What new horror awaits me, now that the catapult is destroyed?   A fleeing soldier passed them, but paused long enough to smile at the bastard. "Good, you’re keeping him. We may soon be forced to eat our dead. No sense wasting good meat."   The nonchalant words chilled him. He’s resigned to his fate, Link observed as the soldier trotted away, but I’m not. Did that make him a traitor, or merely an optimist? In this castle it was becoming increasingly hard to tell.   They descended the ladder as the second wave of burning rocks hit, sending up a flurry of agonized screams that chased them down into the corridor below. The bastard seemed helpful enough as they climbed down, but when they reached the bottom he gripped Link so tightly he thought his arms were like to break off. "I’ll take you to the queen, as you ask," the bastard growled, "for I’ll not be blamed for killing one in her favor. But if you play me false, I will use you for meat when the rats and radishes are gone. You hear me?"   "I do." Link knew then that the bastard was his, which was all to the good. He’s no friend of mine, but he’ll prove useful in doing as I ask.   The bastard nodded once, curtly, then turned to lead him through the labyrinthine corridors that led to Zelda’s chambers. Left, right, left, then right and right and right till he was dizzy. The dizziness didn’t stop the other feelings, though. Will I find her abed, too weak to stand or even speak? Will she be as thin as the rest of us? Or will she be crying, her eyes red and her hair in disarray from grief? She will share her tears with me, I’m sure of it.   They stopped before a door not unlike any of the others they’d passed on their way here. "Her Grace’s chambers," the bastard announced, then smiled a slimy smile. "Do you fear to enter the door of your beloved friend?"   "No." Annoyance pricked at him. Didn’t the man understand the significance this reunion for him? "I’m waiting for you to leave."   For a moment, the bastard looked fairly shocked. Then he laughed, but Link could see submission rising to the surface all the same. "Leave? As you wish...but you best not be thinking to run away. You’ll be lost in the corridors of Hyrule Castle if you don’t know where you’re going, and you’ll never be found...or so I hear."   With that, the bastard walked away, his steps light. When he was nothing more but a faint echo on the stones, Link breathed in, slow and smooth, and stepped forward. As he approached the door, he remembered a great deal of things: how they met for the first time, the meeting they’d shared the day before he left for Termina, the sweet summer day she’d told him of her wedding...he tried to recall how her face had looked when she told him that, but the memory of it was lost to him. In a moment I shall see her again, and I will never forget her face, he resolved.   The man that knocked on the door could not be him, could not, yet it was him who heard the queen when she yelled out, "Enter!" The handle felt strange in his suddenly clumsy fingers, yet he opened the door all the same -- and there she was, where he had seen her a thousand times when Hyrule Castle had been sunlit and flag-lined. Zelda, he tried to say to her as he entered, Zelda, but her name was stuck in his throat.   Zelda. She sat at her desk. Before her was a half-eaten capon; she was spearing chunks of meat on the point of her dagger and eating it in small sharp bites, throwing aside the bits she misliked. She throws a goodly part of the bird into the rushes while the garrison dines on horse stew...   Zelda. She was more elaborately draped than she had ever been. The white gown she wore was sweat-stained, but silk all the same. The dagged sleeves reached the floor, and swirls of rubies red as blood dripped down the side of that rich fabric. A slim crown rested in her golden curls, glowing with rubies as beautiful as those on her gown. There was no mistaking her for a peasant now; it seemed that queenship had won her -- in body, at least.   Zelda. Yet the years had not been kind to her. Though she couldn’t have been more than thirty her body sagged and bulged beneath the beautiful gown she wore, bearing the signs of recent childbirth and lazy living. Somewhere in the time he had been away from her she had fallen victim to a pox; she wore the scars from it all over a face flushed with drink. Yet her eyes were as he remembered, pale blue and sharp with intelligence...and her thick golden hair, though undressed, tumbled down her back in those loose curls he liked so well. She turned to face him more fully when she heard him enter, and though she seemed to look at him her face was so still that Link wondered if she was seeing him at all.   "Link?" she finally asked in a whisper that trembled. Her eyes filled with tears. "Link...is that truly you? You still look half a boy." The dagger fell to the rushes, forgotten. She rose with surprising grace for all her weight, and started toward him with such temerity that Link knew she thought him the manifestation of her dreams. "I dreamt you dead half a hundred times. You are cruel to come to me now. How did you get into my castle? Have you come to play the champion once more, is that it?" She stopped before him, touched his face with cold fingers, and seemed to disbelieve even then.   The stink of wine was on her, sour and unpleasant, but it didn’t matter, no more than anything else did now that she had touched him. "Your Grace--I--" His voice broke; his bravado failed. He fell and bent the knee to this woman, to this queen, moved by some strong emotion he did not recognize, or pretended not to. "Your Grace... I am come to you once more to deliver you to safety. It has been...so long."