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Finally, Garron said, “We have only another hour or two of daylight. I wish to be at Wareham before night falls. I wish to sleep in my own bed this night.” How odd that sounded—his own bed, the lord’s bed, not the small narrow cot he’d shared with his younger brother, Kalen, years before, a younger brother long dead.
He kicked the boot of one of the dead men as he said, “We have no tools to dig graves, so we will leave them.” He looked again at the sun, wondering if he should search more for the boy. How far from home was he? And that damned man in his red tunic who’d kidnapped him, who was he? Garron shouted yet again, “Boy! We mean you no harm. We have killed your captors. I promise you safety. Come out now!”
After a few minutes of silence, Garron realized there was no hope for it. “We’ve done our best—either he’ll survive or he won’t. Let’s go home.”
As they walked back to their horses, Garron asked, “Did any of you recognize their leader, the man in the red tunic? He would not tell me his name or that of his master.”
“Nay, but he’s an old hound,” Gilpin said, and spat on the ground.
“You are but fifteen years old,” Garron said, and buffeted his squire’s shoulder, nearly sending him to the ground to land on his own spit. “I am an old hound to you, and Aleric yon is a veritable graybeard.”
“No graybeard there,” said Gilpin, his voice cocky, his hands on his narrow hips, “since Aleric is bald as a river rock and his chin as smooth as a pebble.”
Aleric waved a fist at the boy. “Well, puppy? Think you I’m an old hound? With my bald river rock head?”
Gilpin gave Aleric a singularly sweet smile. “Oh, nay. My lord is nearly my own age and you, Aleric, you are a wise and generous protector, of no particular age at all. Your head is a beacon to all those who seek justice and hope.”
Aleric shouted with laughter.
Garron shook his head at the two of them. “I shall surely puke.”
Gilpin said, “Nay, my lord, do not since I should have to clean your boots. Methinks the boy is afraid to come out because he saw Pali’s red leaky eyes and believed him the Devil.”
Pali, those long legs of his making him even taller than Garron, gave Gilpin a terrifying smile. “If the boy saw me, Little Nothing, he’d fall on his knees before me.”
“What?” Gilpin said. “You are God, not the Devil?
”
Garron said, “Were I you, Gilpin, I’d shut my mouth. It might save you a hiding.”
“Or Pali would wrap one leg around me and squeeze the life right out of my heart.”
“Half a leg,” said Pali, and scrubbed his fists over his eyes. “I can do nothing about my eyes, they turn red with the coming of spring.”
Garron said, “Stop rubbing them, Pali, it just makes it worse. Pour water on your eyes. Now, enough. Let’s leave this place.” His voice deepened. “Let’s go home.”
Gilpin looked around, and said, “I hope the boy will be all right. He had guts. Did you see him kick that hulking brute and bloody his nose?” And he threw back his head and shouted, “Boy! Come here, we’ll take care of you! I’m a boy too, like you, come out.”
A horse whinnied, making Garron smile. “Hobbs, get the villains’ horses. We’ve just increased our stables.” Horses loved Hobbs; he had only to speak in his low musical voice and they came trotting eagerly to him, legs high, heads tossing. In just minutes, three horses were blowing into Hobbs’s big hands.
An hour later, Garron pulled Damocles to a halt. He raised his hand to stop his men behind him and looked toward his home. Wareham Castle, just shy of two hundred years of age, sat like a great fist of gray granite in front of them, a massive sentinel atop the end of a desolate promontory that stuck out into the North Sea. From the sea, Wareham was impregnable; black basalt rocks surrounded the promontory, spearing up twenty feet into the air, and the tide would do the rest, ripping boats apart.
Garron felt an odd surge of satisfaction as he looked at the stark fortress that now belonged to him. It would be his line to call Wareham home, not his brother’s. This was the first time he’d been back in eight long, gritty years.
It was a beautiful spring evening, not yet dark, an early, nearly full moon beginning to climb into the sky beyond the castle walls. Stars would stud the sky tonight, another hour, no more. An evening breeze was warm and soft against his flesh. It was completely unlike that night eight years before when a storm from the sea had raged hard, hurling heavy rain, frigid winds, and a thick curtain of cold fog on anyone unlucky enough to be outside. He’d been sixteen the night he and his best friend, Bari, the armorer’s son, had ridden into the storm, not waiting for morning, only two days after they’d buried Garron’s father, his brother’s words sounding stark in his ears, “There is nothing for you here, Garron. You are strong and you have a brain. ’Tis time you made your own way.” He’d never forget the moment he’d turned in his saddle for a final look at Wareham. The black clouds had suddenly parted, the swirling fog had lifted, and he’d seen the castle outlined by a hit of lightning, stark against the black sky, an eternal beacon, and he’d wondered bleakly if he’d ever see his home again in his life.
Well, he was here now, but Bari wasn’t with him, hadn’t been since he’d choked to death, coughing up wads of blood so many years before. Wareham Castle and all its surrounding towns and farms were his, his legacy, his future, his responsibility.
4
I have surely vomited up my guts on the ground.” Merry moaned the words into the soft, soundless air, so weak and shaky she didn’t yet try to move. At least the fighting was over, her captors dead, except for their leader, Sir Halric, Jason of Brennan’s man. She lay not twenty feet away from her saviors, tucked beneath leaves in the hollow opening of an oak tree, listening to them talk, praying they wouldn’t come after her. In truth, she might have answered when their leader had called out to her, but she was vomiting from the clout on the head that huge man with his smelly beard had dealt her. It hadn’t killed her, praise St. Cuthbert’s padded belly.
She managed to crawl away from her own sickness to lie on the floor of the forest, breathing lightly, waiting for her innards to settle and her head to stop pounding. She remembered their laughter. Surely they couldn’t be bad if they laughed so much. But how could she know? To jump from a boiling pot into the flames, it would be just her luck. And so she’d kept her mouth shut, too afraid to do anything.
The large man dressed all in black—he was a young man, strong and hard, and he had saved her. She’d watched his knife plunge through the man’s neck, and she wished in that moment she’d had the knife and done the throwing. She didn’t know if she’d be as accurate as he’d been, but she’d have liked to give it a try. Aye, he’d been very sure of himself, and he’d not doubted his own skill. She liked the looks of him but she knew all too well he could be as rotten as Sir Halric. With men, she’d learned in her young life, one simply couldn’t be sure. As for women, she shuddered, her mother’s beautiful witch face, surely too young, clear in her mind.
It was a pity Sir Halric had escaped, but she’d learned too that evil usually managed to slither safely away, never to die, always to return and wreak havoc.
