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When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.
"One vulture, one ogre, two raccoons, three hyenas, a few rats, five dryads, seven wolves, eight dwarves," she says.
Flit beats his wings harder, straining to his absolute limit for as long as he can. He's big and heavy, but his wings are strong. He keeps ahead of the vulture.
The dryad with the slingshot aims at one of the winged horse's wings as the vulture gives chase.
"Besides you and me and the household noncombatants what've we got in range?" asks Isabella, picking up her bow and arrows.
The stone falls short, tumbling in the mighty downdraft from Flit's wingbeats. He whinnies nervously anyway.
"Flit found them. He's bolting for Cair Paravel as fast as he can, but I think he's being pursued and he hasn't said by what or how fast they are. Fighting knights who can get here in time - one unicorn, one griffin, one leopard, one fox, one badger, two centaurs, five dwarves. More on their way, but that's going to be the first wave. I'm going out on the ground; depending how close they are to the castle when we engage, you might want to be up on the walls, or out where you can get at the wounded."
"Out, I think. I have armor on top of the new weapon." She buttons the cloak, pulls up the hood.
She tries it again, slinging harder with a snarl.
One knight in particular is beginning to really outpace the enemy at last, flying higher farther faster more desperately than he ever has in his life. This shot misses him too.
And the vulture isn't catching up. He leaves off, descending with the rats to rejoin the rest of the company. They proceed forward double-time, rats on the backs of wolves, ogre carrying two of the slower dwarves. The dryad keeps slinging rocks at Flit but no longer really expects to hit him while he's fleeing.
Isabella follows, patting her bag to make sure she's got her cordial in there.
"Think you and your bow are up to archery from griffinback?" she asks on the way. "If so, I'm telling Sunstone to pick you up. If not, I'll assign you a guard."
"I can ride Sunstone and shoot, yes. I'll have him land if someone on our side's badly hurt."
"Okay." She finds Sunstone's knight-pin and tells him, "You're carrying the queen for this battle. She'll be using her bow and asking you to land if she needs to heal someone."
"Yes, your majesty," Sunstone replies through his pin. "I'll be there in a quarter-hour."
Speaking of which, Flit seems to be finally slowing down; she judges that he's far enough ahead of the incoming creatures to let himself coast a little. Also good. A handy way to track their progress, even without making him waste his precious breath on reports.
And now the waiting, once she's chosen her ground - the top of a slight rise northwest of the castle, so the tired enemy will have to come at them along the gentle upward slope. If she squints, she can just make out a dot in the sky that might be Flit on his approach.
Isabella, meanwhile, finds that an incoming knight-dwarf is favoring a foot, obliges him to take a bit of cordial before there's thick fighting making it difficult for her to offer it to him, and scans the terrain with a view to what's relevant for an archer on griffonback.
James keeps track of all the knights as they draw closer, giving some of them directions to meet each other on the way if it won't slow them down, informing them all of the composition and trajectory of the attacking group and guiding them out of its path.
Sunstone arrives when he expected to, alights before the queen, bows, and suggests a practice flight. Isabella agrees provided they don't go high enough above the treeline to give the incoming force free advance warning about what they may expect to meet. They take advantage of the leadtime to figure out how she's going to maneuver her bow around his wings, and then land again, her still mounted and ready to take off at a moment's notice.
And finally, all the knights who are going to get here in time are here, and Flit is clearly visible soaring toward the castle, and she glimpses a hint of the other creatures following him - then more than a hint.
"They're here," she says. Everyone on her side is wearing a pin, so she doesn't have to say it very loudly.
She thinks she can pick off the ogre, at least, nice big target, but she doesn't fire yet. "Odds they just want to talk?" she murmurs wryly into Sunstone's pin.
But she asks Flit - "What did they do when they saw you?"
"Threw rocks," he says mournfully. "With a rock throwing thing."
She addresses Sunstone's pin again. "They attacked Flit on sight. If you want, you can wait until they see us and see if they stop to negotiate. Otherwise, go ahead."
Isabella doesn't think she fancies being within range of the rock-throwing thing.
She fires at the ogre, the ogre falls, and everyone gives up on stealth at once.
Which is a good thing, because the Witch's creatures have numbers on their side, and the King's sword and the Queen's bow aren't making as much difference as she'd like.