Napping Girl
an excerpt

A man in the crowd with only one eye cut off the head of one of the other men, and when he recoiled in surprise at a huge burst of blood that him in the one eye he had, he knocked over a torch. It landed on a pile of hay and the whole thing burst into flame. He caught on fire too, and burned to death running and screaming as loud as he could until he was a burnt corpse lying on the ground. Many of the people around him caught on fire too, and almost the entire crowd of townsfolk watching on that side set off in a run. The people on Lucy’s side took the hint too, and left.
Even Tom, who had been super excited about seeing the joust, was scared now. He took off, running as fast as he could, without thinking about Lucy, and when she turned around to ask him if he thought that they should go, he was gone. She debated what to do, looking back at the battle, and her heart nearly stopped when she saw who was in it.
It was Oswyn. The man who had given her the ring. She saw him cut off the arm of a man in Ambrose’s colours, and she realized he was was traitor to the Queen. She stared down at her ring, and she almost threw it off. How could this man she had liked so long be doing such a horrible thing? Tears threatened to form in her eyes, but no, she couldn’t do that now. She had to be strong. She was in the middle of a battle.
She looked around and realized that pretty much every one of the townspeople were gone. The fire was spreading towards her, and she knew she would have to go some place. She could head back to the village like everybody else had, but she didn’t want to quite yet. She had to see how this turned out, and she had to know what became of the man she liked. She quickly walked away from the fire and headed tot hes die of the jousting rink, watching the man the whole time. He grabbed the arm from the man he’d cut it off of. It had a knife in it’s hand and rather than take the knife out of the death grip, he threw the entire arm at an enemy and stabbed him in the forehead with the knife. Lucy cringed.
Another man ran towards Oswyn, sword raise high. Oswyn ducked as the other man swung it at his head and then Oswyn stabbed him in the stomach.
Oswyn turned around immediately after that and stabbed two men at the same time with his sword. He tried to pull it out but after a few tugs he realized it was stuck and as somebody was running towards him, sword raise, he grabbed the man he’d killed earlier’s sword and blocked him.
The man kept swinging his sword at him, so he jumped up on top of the wall of the jousting rink and the field. He stabbed his opponent through the top of his head, and then cut the head of, kicking into the crowd, where it hit somebody in the back. Then, holding his sword raised high, he prepared to jump down. Out of nowhere, and knife flew over and hit in the head on the handle side. He fell over the back into the field, only a few feet away from where Lucy was hunched down, watching the battle. At first she could only stare at him, wondering at the change of events.
Then she ran, ducked down, over to him. The knife had landed next to him and was sticking in the ground. She didn’t know the sword was, it must have gone over the other side. His head was bleeding, and there was a lot of blood already seeping onto the grass. It worried her, but she checked, and he was breathing. He must be unconscious, she decided.
She looked over at the knife and for a brief second she considered stabbing him for betraying the Queen, but the thought left her head as soon as it had come in. No, she still liked Oswyn, even if he did this...and anyway, she didn’t want to kill him! She kneeled down next to him, debating what to do next. She sighed and checked his head where the blood was coming from. Although he was bleeding profusely, the actual cut was really tiny. Lucy was relieved.
She wished she had some water to clean up the blood but since she didn’t she just moved his blood covered bangs off his forehead She took the sleeve of her dress and wiped off his sweaty forehead. She moved his head around to see if he has hurt anywhere else. The back of his head was definitely bruising from the fall, and she was sure he would have bruises other places too, from that.