The beach was perfect that day. The sun was warm yet not harsh, the wind refreshing yet not overwhelming. Of course, I did not enter the water as that was reserved for the common folk, but I enjoyed basking in the sun's rays and drinking the icy bloodberry juice that my two attendants brought me. They had laid out a large cloth blanket across the sand and dirt, and weighted the corners with heavy stones so that it wouldn’t catch in the wind.

It was upon this blanket that I lay. I was supposed to be occupying my time with homework, but I considered my education a waste of time. My family’s admonishments were soft and irregular: I was third in line for the County throne, and allowed to live mostly as I pleased.

I caught sight of a burly figure in blue silk clothing walking towards me from the castle end of the beach. Timoth, my brother. Despite his fine court garments, his feet were clad in brown leather boots that sunk into the sand with each step. I sighed. No doubt he had come to confirm that I was concentrating on my studies, and to chastise me upon the realisation that I had brought no scrolls or books with me.

He stepped up to my blanket, unable to prevent himself from kicking up a small spray of sand as he halted beside it. 'Saemara...'

'Spare me,' I said, watching the waves crash into the beach rather than facing my brother. 'I have time enough for my studies while I wait to find a husband to render them unnecessary.'

'Spare me,' Timoth replied. He'd listened to my childish complaints for some years, as had my parents and sister. He knew that while I was not unhappy with my lot in life, I did not see the point of pursuing political, economic, religious, and magical teachings. I was unlikely to ever wear the circlet as a ruling Countess of Ebonreach, so my main duty to my family was to wed a noble husband. Hence why I was focusing on my tan.

Timoth would not be so easily swayed. 'I do not come to berate you for your laziness,' he continued, allowing his tone to contradict his words. 'I come to escort you back to the keep. The watchtower on Thorny Island has lit the signal fire. Raiders are near.'

I rolled my eyes, though I noted that I had not heard the warning bells of the castle monastery, probably due to the distance between the castle and the beach. 'They will fall to our arrows.'

'Please just come with me,' he pleaded, lacking the energy to convince me of what he said. Truthfully, I had already accepted that I should leave. I had no wish to be nearby when the fighting started.

'Fine,' I eventually caved. 'But only because I’m already treading such a fine line. Too much tan is unbecoming of a noblewoman, you know.'

'Noblegirl,' he teased me. He was two years older than me, but last spring he had celebrated his coming of age. My recent sixteenth birthday had enjoyed considerably less ceremony. I’d heard talk that in the southern Borderlands a girl was considered a woman on the arrival of her menarche, but that was not our custom. My first blood had come many months ago and my life was still the same waiting game it had always been.

I allowed Timoth to lead me back inside the castle walls. My attendants gathered the blanket, shook it free of sand, and carried it behind us. One of them, a redhead in her twenties named Gwaeda whose striking height superseded even mine, handed me another glass of bloodberry juice as we walked. I did not thank her, as I did not deign to thank servants for merely performing the tasks for which they were paid, but I rewarded her with a small smile to encourage her thoughtfulness.

As I emptied my cup I realised that Timoth had been talking the whole time.

'...tribal wars across the Western Sea have decimated the lands of our enemies. Father says that we should expect to see many more raiders in the coming summer attempting to find wealth down the Haelling.'

I suppressed a yawn. My brother was deeply interested in the conflicts that raged in the wider world, but I’d never shared his fascination. Father took care of the raiders, as had his father before him. And Timoth would take care of them when Father eventually passed away. The raiders were always greedy and disorganised, and the longbowmen of Haelling Cove Castle protected the mouth of the river Haelling with their flaming arrows.

The watchtowers on the outlying islands provided warning of a raid through a series of signal fires. Most of the time the raiders realised their error when their longboats were set ablaze by the longbowmen. Some would attempt to turn back to take advantage of the river's soft seaward current, while the smarter ones would labour down the river, fighting the current until they were out of range of the longbowmen. The latter raiders often arrived heavily-laden with metal shields and pails of water to attempt to survive the fire arrows, and these were the real threat. If a longboat passed the castle intact, its crew would be free to plunder the rich farmlands of Ebonreach unmolested.

In fact, the Haelling ran even longer than our modest county, latitudinally bisecting the Kingdom of Halivaara all the way to the mountains which marked its easternmost extent. Despite this, most raiders were content to plunder closer to the river mouth so that they could leave the same way they’d come before a defensive force could be mustered to oppose them on the ground.

Timoth asked me if I wanted to watch, and I nodded. Strange how he’d chide me for putting off my homework if I did so to better my chances of attracting a noble husband, but if I procrastinated in order to watch a battle he would encourage me.

He led me to the top of the quatrefoil gatehouse. It provided the best view of the river mouth from inside the castle, though one could trade proximity for height if they wished to ascend the keep's unending staircases. I was concerned that my sunbathing garments were too revealing to wear around men-at-arms, but Gwaeda draped a fur coat over my body to cover my exposed skin and then departed, presumably to prepare my chambers for my return after the raid. My other attendant, Daegwin, a raven-haired girl my age and seemingly half my height, stayed by my side.

There were guardsmen on duty at the top of the gatehouse, and they tipped their kettle helms as we approached. Timoth delivered a respectful greeting, but I strode past them to the edge of the battlements. I could see the longboat approaching. Its sail was painted with vertical stripes of dark blue and red, and it sat low in the water due to the weight of a wooden baricade that had been erected along the castle-facing side of the longboat. Across the barricade were nailed a dozen animal skins which somehow reflected the sunlight.

'Tokuans,' my brother said. I recognised the word, Toku. It belonged to one of the petty tribal kingdoms in the savage lands of the Western Island, the continent that lay across the Western Sea. Somehow he'd identified the longboat as belonging to the people of that nation. I shrugged, having never paid much attention to foreign symbology. Most of my knowledge of noble houses and provincial borders was rooted firmly within my own Kingdom of Halivaara. ‘See how the animal skins shine? They’ve been soaked to retard the fire arrows. I haven’t seen such a strategy before.’

'How did they cross the sea with that heavy wall on their vessel?' I asked. It would be a risky voyage to undertake with a ship so heavily encumbered.

'No doubt they've merged their portals, weak as they likely are, and stowed it within' Timoth said.

I bowed my head to conceal the crimson that had appeared on my cheeks. I knew that he did not mean to rebuke me, but my own portal magic had yet to manifest and this had become a source of embarrassment for me. Portalmancy was strongly associated with nobility, and my siblings had both created their first portal by my age.

What Timoth meant was that portalmancy was less common in the western lands. There were at least forty men on that boat, possibly as many as sixty. Even with weak portal magic, they could have kept many such implements safe and protected from arrow fire in the portal realm.

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Longbowmen methodically took up positions along the castle wall and one side of the gatehouse. Well-trained men-at-arms lit braziers between each of them that would be used to set their arrows alight. Their iron chestplates were striped in the light blue and white of House Tfaeller. My House.

'Would you like to give the order?' the sergeant asked my brother. It was not why we'd come, but Timoth could scarcely resist the opportunity to participate in the military machine. He nodded, and walked further along the wall so that the assembled archers could hear him.

'Archers, alight!' he commanded. I rolled my eyes. Timoth was barely more than a boy, but he took such boyish pleasure from the act of commanding men. I did not share his passion for warfare. Soldiers are a dirty breed, foul-mouthed and unclean, and I did not care much for their presence. When Timoth went to command them instead of accompanying me, I almost left. No doubt Gwaeda would have drawn a bath for me by now, and there was sand caked to most of my body. I pulled the cloak tight so as not to distract the soldiers, but resolved to stay. Once inside the keep I would no doubt be nagged to attend to my studies, and that was something I wished to avoid.

The longbowmen dipped their arrowheads in oil and then in the brazier, setting them alight. 'Archers, draw!' My brother commanded. They aimed high in the sky, relying on gravity to bring their arrows down upon their foe. Timoth turned his gaze to the longboat, now coming to the mouth of the Haelling. He waited to be sure that they were within range, before giving the final order. 'Archers, loose!'

The soldiers loosed a volley into the river. Those who had been enjoying the pleasures of the beach had presumably been evacuated shortly after me, so it was unlikely that anyone would be harmed by stray arrows that fell short of their mark.

I was surprised by how many missed, but I knew that it was the quantity of archers and volleys that made Haelling Cove such a fearsome fortification. Several arrows thudded into the skins protecting the longboat and her crew. Some of them continued to burn, but the skins did not catch alight.

'That is not water,' Timoth mused, referring to the coating the skins had received. He spoke as though he admired the Tokuan stratagem. 'Perhaps it has been treated with unslaked lime.'

'What do we do?' I asked him. It seemed a powerful response to our primary defence.

'The wall is erected towards the castle, that is their folly,' Timoth responded. 'They would be better served by a roof: our arrows fall from the sky. We will yet fire their ship.' Then, to the longbowmen. 'Archers, fire at will!'

The archers did as commanded, using their great strength to draw and loose arrow after arrow. Men-at-arms scurried about replenishing emptying quivers. The longboat had the wind at its back and its crew at the oars, but its progress was slow under the weight of its protections and against the flow of the current. Arrows began to fall upon unprotected raiders and fires burned at the ends of the ship. Still, the crew did not panic. Those who died were unceremoniously thrown overboard to lighten the vessel, and spotfires were quickly remedied with pales of water.

Haelling Cove possessed an onager, and I could see its flaming boulders crashing into the water beside the longboat, originating from a location out of my sight. A single hit would surely sink it almost immediately, but it could not properly be aimed at such a small target. I recalled Father admitting that the onager was better suited for battering down a wide castle wall than picking off a distant vessel, but that it was useful as a weapon of fear. Today, however, it dissuaded no one.

In truth, the battle was taking an awfully long time to conclude. My patience began to diminish and I thought to leave Timoth to his warmaking when I noticed the longboat's change in course. It was now approaching the beach.

'What is their intention?' I asked. I felt a small tremor of fear that the raiders would be landing so close to the castle in which I lived rather than continuing upstream.

'I'm not certain,' Timoth said, furrowing his brow. The sergeant shook his head to indicate his absence of an answer, and so we turned back to the battle. The raiders beached their ship a few metres from where I'd been sunbathing not one hour earlier. They collapsed their mainsail to prevent it from being holed. Our archers rained death from above, but the raiders calmly tossed aside their dead and filled their pales with water.

A man emerged bearing two circular shields, one on each arm. I'd never seen a warrior so armed and I thought it to be rather useless in the event of a battle. He leapt from the ship and ran through the low water onto the sand of the beach. 'Archers, target that man!' Timoth commanded, and the longbowmen lowered their aim to fire directly at the runner.

'He's coming straight for the castle,' I said, unable to keep the concern from my voice.

'Perhaps the Countess would prefer to watch from the comfort of the keep,' the sergeant suggested.

Timoth ignored it. 'Sergeant, send out men on horseback to deal with that runner. I cannot fathom his purpose but I do not intend to make it easy for him.'

'Aye, Count,' he replied. It was customary that the sons and daughters of nobility be conferred the titles that belonged to their parents. Thus, Timoth was a Count, and I a Countess. The sergeant hurried down the stairs to organise the horsemen, leaving Timoth in charge of the archers.

The man with two shields stopped only a few dozen metres onto the beach. I knew he could not survive long there, but he stopped nonetheless. His shields were impaled with countless arrows, and he discarded one after a further arrow tore a wooden plank from its metal frame. He knelt behind his remaining shield and continued to wait. Five horsemen erupted from the gatehouse below me and sped towards the beach. In all, a minute or two passed, and the monastery bell rang sixteen times to announce the time.

I gasped as, upon the sixteenth chime, a portal opened several metres from the runner. The unwholesome shimmering blackness of the portal appeared as a void antithetical to the brightness of the sun-scorched beach.

The runner’s expression of astonishment betrayed the fact that it was not of his own making. The horsemen were very close to him, but he took his surviving shield and ran to the portal with no further hesitation. It was clear that he’d known that the portal was going to open at precisely four o'clock in the afternoon.

Out of the portal stepped a man clad in dark brown leather. The runner handed the man his shield and they both raced back to the longboat.

Without the protection of his shield, the runner was quickly felled by arrows before he could reach the water. The horsemen were mere metres from the men, but were forced to cease their pursuit as they neared the longboat for fear of friendly fire. The man from the portal stumbled in the water and lost his shield, but several men leapt over the side of the ship and protected him with their shields, even at the cost of their lives. They escorted him onto the ship and began to push it back into the water, unbeaching it.

'Archers, target the longboat!' Timoth commanded unnecessarily. The onager kept firing its wayward boulders into the Haelling, kicking up a massive splash of water that would occasionally be close enough to shower the raiders.

I was glad I'd stayed to watch the battle, for it had been more eventful than most. Raiders and longboat pirates appeared at Haelling Cove with almost weekly regularity this time of year due to the town's location on the westernmost tip of the Halivaaran coastline and its access to the bountiful and penetrating Haelling river.

Presently, however, this raid – if that was what it had been – was coming to an end. Most of the men unbeaching the longboat perished to the relentless torrent of arrows, but they succeeded in their task. The crew took to the oars and, with the support of the current and the loss of nearly half of their men and shields, made good speed back out to the open ocean. Their ship was heavily scorched, but they had not passed down the Haelling as most raiders did, and as such had not been exposed to the fire arrows for long enough to fire their ship, even with their brief stop to pick up their passenger.

I wondered who he was. Clearly, he'd come to the beach during the small hours of the night, concealed as he was in dark clothing, and taken himself and a timepiece into his portal. I shivered to think that, had his timepiece been incorrectly adjusted, he might have emerged beside me while I was tanning without military companionship.

The man had somehow been in contact with the raiders of Tokua, as they’d arrived at almost precisely the same moment that he had emerged from his portal, probably after anchoring somewhere out sight for hours or even days. Perhaps he had been a Tokuan captured in an earlier raid, though that didn't explain how he had managed to contact his home kingdom.

'Archers, cease fire,' Timoth commanded as the longboat was spat out of the river mouth. Out of range.

The sergeant had reappeared. 'Thank you, Count,' he said. 'A shame we were not able to sink them.'

'A shame indeed, sergeant,' my brother responded. I caught the sergeant looking at me and I pulled my cloak tighter to cover my body. He looked away, and my brother continued. 'Send men out to capture any raiders that yet live. I'd best report to Father.'

'Aye, Count,' the sergeant said. Men-at-arms extinguished the braziers. The longbowmen stretched their burly arms, pained from the effort of pulling back their lengthy bowstrings. I knew it was time for me to leave, though I saw an opportunity to avoid my homework once more if I stayed with Timoth as he went to see Father.