Page 40 of Tears of the Wolf
Brynn wasn’t sure what that meant, but a bath sounded pleasant. “Yes. I would.”
“You must be tired from your journey, lady. We can introduce you to the servants and the rest of the household tomorrow.”
Brynn inclined her head. “I am grateful, Gaitha.”
The freckled woman took Brynn’s hands in hers. “Please send for me if you need anything at all, lady.”
Brynn waited until the door shut before sitting down on the bed. The mattress crunched as she did, probably filled with pea shells or something similar. She touched the furs on the bed, soft and clean.
She didn’t need an easy life. She didn’t need a safe life. Like she had told Cenric, she wanted a life of freedom. From the lack of ceremony and the comparative humility of this place, it seemed to her that it was exactly what she was looking for.
Brynn inhaled a deep breath, still hearing Edric and Gaitha banter on the other side of the door. She closed her eyes and counted backward from ten.
This was nothing like what she had expected, or what she was used to. Yet, she had been uprooted many times in her life and survived every one of them.
But she was tired. When she had married Paega, she had been sure she would spend the rest of her life in his lands, living out her days among a people to call her own.
Now here she was, starting over once again, for what felt like the hundredth time in her life.
Cenric
Aunt Aegifu’s plot of land was mostly untilled pastures used for grazing sheep. She had a cohort of young women—orphans and runaways, mostly—who worked for her and kept her house. But when it came to the hard labor of repairing walls or slaying monstruous beasts, she called on Cenric.
He'd never particularly liked the old woman. He liked her even less in this moment, but it was a matter of principle. He had a promise to keep.
Not to mention she had been the first person in Ombra to recognize him as alderman. He owed her, whether he liked it or not.
Cenric spurred his chestnut stallion, Bada, faster up the winding mountain road. Kalen rode close behind him on a dun colt. The horses seemed to be in a good mood, and flicked their tails, wanting to run faster. Snapper ran alongside them, projecting his usual unadulterated joy.
But it was a long journey, and they needed to pace the animals. Cenric reined in Bada a few miles from the longhouse of Ombra, on a ridge overlooking the river and the settlement.
“Did you see the fields on our way in?” Kalen asked. “It looks like much of the crops have been gathered in already.”
“Yes,” Cenric answered. “I did notice. Looks like Gaitha drove the ploughmen as hard as she drives Edric.”
Kalen laughed at that. “I wonder how much fishing they were able to do.”
“I want to finish that wall on the outer banks,” Cenric said, thinking of the partial barrier that currently enclosed the village.
He’d been working the past couple summers to narrow the lines of attack, especially from the river. There was always the risk the Valdari could go down the coast, up one of the river’s many tributaries, and cross the land to attack them. However, if anyone wanted to do that, they’d have to carry whatever goods they pillaged over land. It would be a time-consuming and dangerous venture. And there was always the chance a local lord—like Cenric—would hear of their coming and attack first.
Unlike Valdari raiders, Cenric would be able to muster mounted horsemen and archers. If he had the chance to attack first, both he and any potential raiders knew who would win.
That left the river and the coast as his most vulnerable points.
“Do you think Lady Brynn knows any spells that could help protect us until the walls are finished?” Kalen asked.
“I imagine if she did, she would have used them to protect her son,” Cenric answered. Not that he hadn’t wondered about it himself. He did want to ask her if perhaps she could make the existing walls stronger, like she’d done with the boots.
It was different, he supposed, but he wasn’t especially familiar with what sorceresses could do.
They rode in silence for much of the journey. The sun sank lower, transforming the sky into streaks of yellow and gold withswaths of purple and blue. Ombra at sunset simply took his breath away.
From here in the foothills, everything as far as the eye could see belonged to him. The lands had been a part of his family for generations. Sometimes, Cenric was sure he could feel his own heartbeat when he touched the soil, it was so much a part of him. But certainly not everyone in the shire felt the same.
Many of the farms of Ombra were now empty, their inhabitants having migrated south years ago. The southern lands had been ravaged by Aelgar’s war, leaving swaths of more forgiving land uninhabited. Not only that, but Cenric’s father and brothers had died, leaving the shire of Ombra without an alderman for several years before Cenric himself had returned. The uncertainty combined with the promises of land from southern aldermen had pushed hundreds of people into the south.
Cenric spotted several deer and one startled covey of pheasant—a good sign that there was still time for hunting before the winter set in.
