Page 35 of Untempered
And then I’d survived the war in the South.
And then I’d fought at Wolfswail.
And now I had to pay for my wife’s crimes with favors to bad people.
Swallowing down bile, I passed through streets unchanged since my youth, into the guard tower over the Outer West Gate. I pulled on my tabard, revealing my shield. I tried not to see the other two men who arrived and took the wall either side of me.
Had Mikus’ men come to all of us in the night?
Had they been struck down by their dreams, too? Or by their fears, and turned, like so many did, to the whispered Old Ways, trying to find hope?
I didn’t want to know.
“Two hours to dawn and all’s well!” came the call from deeper in the city.
I listened to it spread, the peaceful ripple of voices. When it reached me, I joined the chorus, standing beside the wheel that would raise the gate. The words didn’t stick in my throat. I wasn’t green enough for that.
Hooves on cobblestones, the stomp of boots. I looked resolutely out into the darkness, running through the orders I’d been given in the depths of the night.Swap your watch. Raise the gate. That was it. That was all I’d been told.
But I knew who Mikus’ men were. And I knew the one person Mikus would flee.
Gerad’s hand had spread across the scarred wood of my table, the same one Rose had served me meals on since we were wed all those years ago. The same one Sandra had hit her head on when she was but a babe and racing around the room, before I’d known better than to join in with the frivolity. My girl still bore a scar from that table, from my poor, if well-intentioned decisions.
Not today, though. She’d not get another today. I had two orders. I planned to fulfill both.
The Duke would kill me, but Mikus would kill my whole family.
“Raise the gate,” I heard Mikus call from below.
I went over to the wheel. My Rose, she hadn’t meant anything by what she’d done. She was heavy with child and anxious, was all. Natural, even for a woman who’d been through it all before. And with her keeping me up half the night weeping after Gerad’s visit, it was no surprise my nightmares had been so vicious. But I didn’t blame Rose.
The wood was cold beneath my fingers, worn smooth by years of use. I could picture the tree my lovely Rose had visited yesterday, as plenty still did. Oh, it was outlawed, but it was a source of hope, too. Outlawing hope was a difficult thing. And she’d just been scared. She’d asked for a blessing of the old tree.
I hope it brought her peace for the coming birth, whatever happened. I hoped she didn’t carry the guilt with her. It wasn’t hers, not really. Dropping a few chicken bones under some roots…what did it hurt?
The whole family would hang if it were known. And Mikus would make it known.
I glanced up as I put my shoulder behind it, and my eyes danced over the mounted figures of Mikus and Wade, the guards down there wearing the same tabard I was. The Duke’s tabard.
Here we were, though.
I heard a muffled noise, female, distressed. “If that damned maid hadn’t fought so hard—” Mikus hissed, the words loud in the darkness.
An arrow punched through my chest and sent my heart into the stone wall behind me. I looked down, agony in every breath, in every fiber of my being. There was nothing there. No shaft. No wound. But I could feel it still.
“She’s worth it,” Wade said, dark delight in his words. “Yours might turn you into a duke, but that bitch on my cock is going to turn me into a king, my friend.”
“Well, your damned queen used up too much of the tonic,” Mikus said, raising a boot and kicking the struggling lady in the shoulder. “Shut up, bitch, or I’ll shut you up.”
I’d known he’d be going against the Duke. But by takingthe lady?
The lady. The lady was there, thrown over the saddle of Mikus. The lady was there, tied, but struggling. Her maid was there, tied, but still, her hair matted with blood. Not struggling.
My hands were stuck on the wood. I felt my heart still beating spans behind me, the pump of my own lifeblood.
I couldn’t do this. Not again.
I shoved Rose from my mind. Eyes were turning toward me now. “Come on, old man.” The speaker was young. He shifted his weight anxiously. Who did he have to lose? “Raise the gate.”
