Chapter 3
The messenger was afraid. Gareth could smell it on him—the sour tang of sweat, the way his hands trembled holding the letter he carried.
The man had ridden hard to reach Greywatch, and now he stood in the great hall with his eyes fixed firmly on the floor, refusing to look at the lord who waited in silence for his report.
Not a dolt like the last one.
Gareth took the missive. Broke the seal. Read.
Lord Greywatch, it began. Not Lord de Clare. No one called him by his father’s name anymore. He was simply Greywatch, as if he and the castle had merged into one cold, grey thing.
Raiders have struck again at Benwick village. Three farms burned, livestock stolen, and two men wounded. We request your aid.
Lord Ashworth
Gareth set the letter aside. Looked at the messenger, who was now actively shaking.
He raised one hand and made a gesture. Wait.
The messenger nodded frantically. Gareth turned and strode from the hall, his boots echoing against stone that had never quite learned to feel like home.
Greywatch Castle was a fortress, not a manor.
Built to withstand sieges, not to welcome guests.
Its walls were thick, its windows narrow, its halls cold even at the best of times—colder still in these last bitter weeks of winter.
Frost clung to the arrow slits each morning, and the servants kept fires burning day and night against a chill that seemed to seep from the very stones.
The previous lord had died without an heir, and the place had sat empty for years before Richard granted it to Gareth.
Some said it was haunted. Gareth found that fitting.
He found Bertram in the kitchens, arguing with the cook about the evening meal.
The old steward turned at his approach, his weathered face creasing with an expression he reserved solely for his lord.
Part exasperation, part worry, part something softer that Gareth didn’t want to examine too closely.
“My lord.” Bertram bowed. “I didn’t expect you down from the hall so soon.”
Gareth handed him the letter.
Bertram read it, his lips moving slightly. When he finished, he sighed. “Benwick again. That’s the third raid this month.”
Gareth nodded.
“Will you ride out?”
Another nod.
“How many men?”
Gareth held up one hand, fingers spread.
“Five.” Bertram’s brow furrowed. “Is that enough? You know I trust your judgment, my lord, but if the raiders—”
Something flickered across Gareth’s face—there and gone, quick as a blade drawn and sheathed. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Bertram caught himself. “Forgive me. I know you’re more than capable.”
But Gareth was already walking away. He didn’t have time for Bertram’s fussing, well-meaning as it was. There were raiders to hunt. People to protect. A debt to repay—not to Lord Ashworth, who was merely an adequate neighbor, but to the common folk who depended on their lords to keep them safe.
He would not fail the people under his protection. Even if those people feared him.
He saw it in the servants who pressed themselves against walls when he passed.
In the guards, who snapped to attention with something like terror in their eyes.
In the cook who’d dropped an entire pot of stew the first time Gareth had entered the kitchens, certain the Silent Reaper had come to kill her.
He didn’t blame them. He’d cultivated this reputation deliberately.
Fear was a weapon, and Gareth wielded it as skillfully as his sword.
Let them whisper about the lord who never spoke, who never smiled, who dealt death without warning or remorse.
Let them tell stories about the scar on his throat and the ghosts in his eyes.
The stables were warm and smelled of horse and hay, a relief from the bite of the February wind that had followed him across the courtyard.
Gareth’s breath had misted before him on the short walk, and his destrier, a massive black beast named Shadow, stamped in greeting as he approached, sending plumes of vapor from flared nostrils.
“My lord.” Sir Miles Weddington, captain of the guard, looked up from checking his saddle. “Bertram said we ride?”
Gareth nodded. Held up five fingers.
“Five men. Benwick village?”
Another nod.
Miles grinned—the expression looked strange on his scarred, bearded face. “Good. The lads are getting restless. A bit of action will do them well.”
Gareth appreciated Miles. The man had served with him before, had been wounded in a prior battle, survived by sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, and said he’d never forgive himself for being confined to the healer’s cottage and not being in the forest that night.
He was one of the few people who treated Gareth like a man instead of a monster.
“We’ll be ready within the hour,” Miles said. “Unless you want to leave sooner?”
Gareth shook his head. An hour is fine. He couldn’t say it, but Miles had learned to read his gestures well enough.
He spent the time checking his weapons. Sword—sharp and balanced, the weight as familiar as his own heartbeat.
Dagger—hidden in his boot, a last resort he’d never needed but always carried.
Shield—plain, unadorned, bearing no sigil.
He’d removed the de Clare arms after returning from that forest clearing.
His family’s honor felt like another thing that had died in the frost and blood and silence.
When the hour had passed, five men waited in the courtyard, their breath clouding in the cold air. Good men. Loyal men. Men who would follow Gareth into hell if he asked it.
He wouldn’t ask. He’d never ask anyone to die for him again.
Go, he gestured. Ride.
They rode.
The raiders were long gone by the time Gareth reached Benwick village. He’d expected as much—these weren’t common bandits but organized men, quick to strike and quicker to vanish. The attacks had been increasing over the past months, always targeting villages under Greywatch’s protection.
Someone unafraid of his reputation was testing him.
Gareth walked through the burned farms while his men helped the villagers salvage what they could. The destruction was deliberate, calculated—enough to hurt but not enough to kill. Whoever was behind this wanted to send a message, not start a war.
Not yet, Gareth thought. But war was coming. He could feel it in his bones, the way old men claimed to feel storms approaching.
An old woman clutched at his sleeve as he passed. Her eyes were red from weeping, her face smudged with soot.
“Please, my lord,” she said. “My grandson, he was wounded, the healer says he might not—”
Gareth gently removed her hand. Nodded toward one of his men.
The woman was taken away, still crying. Gareth watched her go. His hands stayed at his sides, deliberately still, deliberately controlled.
They tracked the raiders for hours, following hoofprints and dropped supplies into the forest. But the men knew the land better than Gareth did, and by nightfall, the trail had gone cold.
“We could press on,” Miles offered. “Try to pick it up in the morning.”
Gareth shook his head. Pointed back toward Greywatch.
“Aye.” Miles didn’t argue. “They’ll be back.”
They both knew something else too. The raids had started six months ago—around the same time whispers began spreading that Lord Alaric de Montrevain was looking to expand his holdings.
Dunharrow Keep sat less than half a day’s ride from Greywatch.
Close enough to coordinate attacks. Close enough to weaken a rival without ever being directly implicated.
Gareth had no proof. Nothing he could take to the king’s justiciars, nothing that would hold up in any court.
But he knew.
He knew.
They returned to Greywatch as the sun was setting, painting the grey stone walls in shades of copper and rust. The light was thin and pale—winter’s last grudging gift before darkness claimed the moors.
The castle loomed against the darkening sky, solid and unyielding.
Home, if such a word still had any meaning.
Gareth dismissed his men and climbed to the battlements alone. This was his ritual—watching the sun die, standing in the cold wind, reminding himself that he was still alive even when he felt like something less than living.
The moors stretched before him, beautiful and treacherous.
Patches of snow still clung to the hollows where the weak winter sun couldn’t reach, and the ground would be treacherous with hidden ice for weeks yet.
One wrong step into the bogs and a man could vanish forever.
Gareth had learned every safe path, every hidden danger.
He’d made this land his own through sheer stubborn will.
And in the distance, barely visible against the horizon, sat Dunharrow Keep.
Gareth’s hand rose unbidden to the scar at his throat—rough and ridged beneath his fingers, a permanent reminder of the price of misplaced faith.
Alaric’s seat. His stronghold. The place where a boy of seven had been sent to learn honor from a man who had none.
But Gareth knew things about that fortress that Alaric didn’t.
His father had told him years ago, when Gareth was just a squire returning home for a brief visit.
The elder de Clare had helped design Dunharrow’s drainage systems decades ago, before Alaric’s family held the keep—back when it belonged to a different lord with different enemies.
“Every fortress bleeds somewhere,” his father had said, unrolling old parchments by candlelight. “Remember where this one bleeds. You never know when such knowledge might save your life.”
Gareth remembered. He remembered everything.
Soon, he thought. Soon.
Footsteps on the stairs made him turn. Bertram appeared, slightly out of breath from the climb, his cheeks reddened by the cold.
“My lord.” The steward bowed. “I wanted to speak with you about the May Day celebrations.”
Gareth stared at him.
“I know you’ve forbidden festivities in the past.” Bertram hurried on before Gareth could dismiss him. “But the people are afraid, my lord. The raids, the rumors—they need something to lift their spirits. Even a small celebration would—”
Gareth held up a hand.
Bertram stopped.
For a long moment, Gareth considered. May Day.
Dancing and feasting and laughter, all the things that had no place in Greywatch Castle.
All the things that had no place in his life.
Spring would come eventually—it always did, no matter how endless winter seemed—but he could not imagine welcoming it with ribbons and song.
He shook his head.
The steward’s face fell. “As you wish, my lord.”
He turned to go, then paused at the top of the stairs.
“There was a time,” he said quietly, “when you would have led the celebrations yourself. When you laughed and danced and made the serving girls blush with your pretty words.” He glanced back, something careful in his expression. “I miss that man.”
Gareth didn’t move. Didn’t respond. The wind cut across the battlements, sharp and bitter with the promise of frost, and he let it fill the silence between them.
Bertram sighed and began his descent. He’d made it three steps when he stopped again.
“I nearly forgot, my lord. A messenger arrived while you were gone—from the regency council in London.” He pulled a rolled parchment from his belt.
“They’re demanding updated tax records before the summer levy.
And there’s some matter of disputed grazing rights on the northern border.
Lord Ashworth claims his shepherds have been using that land for generations. ”
Gareth took the parchment. More problems. More demands. The work of lordship never ended, even for a lord who refused to speak.
“I’ve prepared the records as best I can,” Bertram continued, “but they’ll need your seal. And Lord Ashworth has requested a meeting to discuss the border matter. He suggests three days hence at the old stone marker.”
Gareth nodded. He’d deal with Ashworth. He’d deal with all of it. That was what he did now—dealt with problems, one after another, an endless parade of duties that kept him moving.
Bertram finally left. Gareth stood alone on the battlements, the parchment heavy in his hand, the weight of his responsibilities heavier still.
Below, in the courtyard, he listened to the sounds of his household settling in for the evening. Horses being led to their stalls. The clang of the smith’s hammer. A child’s laughter, quickly shushed.
Life went on at Greywatch, even if its lord had forgotten how to live it.
Gareth tucked the parchment into his belt and headed for the stairs. The tax records wouldn’t review themselves, and sleep was a luxury he rarely indulged anyway. He had hours yet before exhaustion would drag him under—hours to work, to plan, to prepare for whatever blow would strike next.
The cold wind followed him down from the battlements, and somewhere in the darkness beyond the walls, a wolf began to howl.