CHAPTER 45
Knights surrounded August near the watering trough, reveling in his performance, and August soaked it in. They acknowledged the king’s small role too, but it was August who had done all the magnificent running and leaping.
They praised the feat and patted August on his hindquarters. Rather undignified, he thought, but they were celebrating, and he could understand that—though he’d much prefer a good brushing down, or better yet, a juicy red apple. The reds were his favorites.
But then their attention was drawn away by six royal destriers just arriving at the Badbe stables, being delivered by Master Woodhouse.
One for each of the new arrivals. Now that they were officially knights, they would no longer be using borrowed horses but would have their own Royal Tuatha de horses.
Not quite as grand as August, but horses like himself only came along once in a lifetime.
Still, these destriers weren’t a shabby lot, and skilled in their own ways, but the new knights gushed over them like they were made of spring clover.
This was only an initial meeting, though.
Above all, the horses had to be pleased with the prospects first, as it should be.
Even though she wasn’t royalty, he would miss the one named Breeze, or was it Bri?
She appreciated him in ways most commoners didn’t.
He was about to join the newcomers, but it was then that August spotted the shadow lurking nearby.
An odd shadow, unanchored to any object, and he immediately knew it was trouble.
He reared on his back legs and charged. The shadow couldn’t get away from him.
August reared back, again and again, trampling it beneath his massive hooves, and the knights around him shouted, calling for August’s master, the king.
Tyghan was just putting his last boot back on when the shouts rang out.
He and Bristol rushed out of the supply hut, and his eyes first darted to the sky, but then he saw knights circled around something.
They ran to the group and saw a shadow at its center, barely rippling over the rough earth, slower to transform than other shadows he had encountered.
But the changes were proof it was dying.
Death was the only escape from the torturous limbo existence inflicted by hyagen claws.
“August trampled it,” Kasta said, but she had her sword drawn, in case the shadow made a run for it—or had to be put out of its misery.
Every knight held their breath, waiting. It was an anguish none of them would ever get used to, seeing the hapless victims used as spies. Would it be a knight one of them knew?
Slowly the edges of the shadow took form, a soft doeskin boot, a green tunic, until it wasn’t a knight lying there at all, but a boy gasping for breath, his freckled face dirty and taut with alarm.
“Who are you, boy?” Tyghan asked gently.
But the boy only coughed, blood trickling from his mouth, his eyes wildly glancing back and forth between the knights hovering over him. Bristol dropped to her knees and brushed a curly red lock from the boy’s eyes. “Samuel? Samuel of Rookswood?”
He nodded, tears trickling from his eyes. Between labored breaths he answered, “Yes, my lady. Where am I? What happened?”
Tyghan knelt beside him. “You’re at Badbe Garrison. I have to ask you, Samuel, are there more coming?”
“More what?” he gasped. “What’s happened to me? Am I in trouble?”
Tyghan had seen a lot of brutal deaths, but this—His eyes stung, then blurred.
Samuel was only a boy, snatched from a farmhouse roof, too young to even understand where he was or what he was supposed to be looking for.
The claws of the hyagen had stripped him of his humanity, just as his father had feared, throwing Samuel into the limbo existence of a shadow where he became the eyes of the enemy.
To see one of his fellow knights reduced to this was gutting, but to see a child—Tyghan swallowed, remembering the sobbing father’s plea in the throne room.
He’s a good boy. Ease his passage. He reached down and held the boy’s hand.
“No, Samuel, you’re not in trouble. In fact .
. . your father is very proud of you. He told me himself.
” But Tyghan also remembered the father’s request, Make his end quick.
The boy coughed and choked, but managed a weak smile. “My father?”
Tyghan nodded. “Yes. He told me how much he loved you. And even now, the gods are smiling upon you, ready to welcome you into Paradise. Your work here is finished. You can rest now. Is that what you want?”
The boy’s face clouded, his chin dimpling as he tried to be brave. “Yes, sir, please. I don’t want to go back to—” The boy couldn’t even finish, because he didn’t understand the dark world where he had been.
Yes, please. Tyghan struggled to smile at the small plea, not wanting Samuel’s last glimpse of this world to be one of tears. “You have brought your family honor. Go to your deserved peace, young Samuel of Rookswood.”
Quin gently slid a knife between Samuel’s ribs into his heart, and the boy took his last tortured breath, the glistening fear in his eyes finally gone.
There were coughs, heavy drawn breaths, seasoned knights struggling to hold back anger and grief for a boy they didn’t even know.
Tyghan’s throat ached as he scooped Samuel’s limp body into his arms. He carried him to an empty wagon and covered him with a blanket, then rested his hand on the boy’s chest to be certain he was dead.
His voice cracked more than once as he told the driver to take the body to the infirmary to be properly cleaned and wrapped before it was returned to the boy’s parents, and then he heard shuffling behind him. He cleared his throat and turned.
His officers were waiting for orders. He was glad for something to focus on, something he could control.
“Kasta, set a high alert. Quin, dispatch platoons to the border to watch the skies. The rest of you, search the immediate area. It’s not likely from his position that the boy saw anything more than the water trough, especially with wards in place, but we can’t be certain.
If they did see anything, they will be on their way.
Keats, you come with me. And your squad. We have coordinates to mark.”
Tyghan turned to August last, stroking his neck, words caught on his tongue again, but August understood his touch and softly whickered in reply.
The stretch of time that followed was grim.
Tyghan paced silently like a hungry wolf, eyeing the hills, the sky, and then stopping abruptly to drill the squad at length that Bristol was never to be left alone.
Ever. If he wasn’t with her, at least two of them would be.
At all times. It was a reprimand where none was needed. Rose cried into her hands.
Tears never moved Tyghan in drills, but today he backed off, raking his hand through his hair, and headed into the hills without a word.
“I think he needs a moment,” Avery said softly.
Bristol agreed. She knew he didn’t walk off because of Rose’s tears, any more than her tears were because of his orders. No one could get over what they had just witnessed in only a few minutes. Not even the Knight Commander, who had encountered countless deaths in battle.
Bristol settled herself on a bench that overlooked a distant paddock and after ten minutes said, “You all go back. I’ll wait here for him.”
Julia shook her head. “You heard our orders. We can’t leave you alone.”
“Those weren’t orders. That was pure frustration.
” Bristol scanned the garrison grounds bustling with activity with over a dozen knights at any time within earshot.
“Besides, do I look alone to you? I’ll wait here for him.
He might be a while, and you all have plenty to do—like find out which horse is going to be yours. ”
“You two are a perfect match, you know?” Hollis said. “Whenever one of you is down, the other is there to hold them up.”
Bristol wasn’t sure she was doing anything at all except waiting. Maybe that was all she had to offer—being there for him when he returned. Believing in him even when he struggled to believe in himself. Samuel’s death weighed on him. Every death weighed on him.
Rose pursed her lips, still looking weepy, and nodded. “You’re strong together. It’s what we all need right now. Especially after this.”
She hugged Bristol, and the squad left.
Bristol stared in the direction Tyghan had set off. He was no longer in her sights, heading into the hills in his effort to quash his feelings. She understood his frustration—and guilt. It gnawed at her now.
When they encountered the dying Samuel, instead of focusing only on him, her mind had jumped to her sisters—more innocents.
Earlier that day, as she opened and shut portals with ease, she’d had a smug and dangerous thought.
Why not open a portal to Bowskeep? One that went straight to her front yard?
She wasn’t sure she could even do it—a portal that went all the way from one world to another.
But she imagined it anyway, going through the portal, walking up the porch steps, and knocking on the door, and then seeing Cat’s and Harper’s surprise when they flung it open.
She would spend time with them, just an hour or two, to reassure them and make sure they were well, and then she’d go back through the portal to Danu, filled with the joy of seeing them.
It would hold her over until she got home.
She had almost made up her mind to retrieve her timemark to try to do it, but on seeing Samuel, the risk instantly crystalized.
Samuel was a complete innocent, snatched from the safety of his own home and plunged into a netherworld by monsters.
The fear in his eyes had gutted her. It was impossible not to think of Harper and Cat.
The distance between this world and theirs now seemed like a treasured safety zone.
A sacred distance. Yet she could have led someone directly to their front door and put them at risk, only to satisfy her own wants.
There was no lock and key she could put on a portal—anyone could pass through it, even monsters.
The infinite power she had been feeling instantly vanished.
Waiting a couple more weeks to see her sisters now seemed like nothing.
The sun was setting, a glowing ball settling between the crook of two hills, when Bristol and Tyghan finished marking the fourth coordinate.
Each designated spot had distinct surroundings that Bristol memorized, plus an added rock with a symbol to differentiate it for the troops who would pass through the portals: a sun, a star, a crescent moon, and this last one, a needle—the eye of Danu that was the symbol of power granted to the daughters of Brigid. The power that Bristol now possessed.
She watched Tyghan staring at the rock bearing the needle, wondering what he was thinking.
They had hardly talked since his return—he only wanted to get down to work.
Now he was swathed, like everything else, in the pink glow of the sunset, like Lugh, the sun god himself, was trying to heal him with his magical light.
“Another coordinate?” she asked.
“That’s enough,” he answered quietly. He looked up at her and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have walked off—” He sighed, still wrestling with his words.
“You don’t have to explain, Tyghan. We’re all struggling. Especially with the death of a child.”
His voice changed then, thick with despair.
“I am king and Knight Commander, and I can’t even protect innocents, much less all the troops under my command.
While I was gone, I was thinking about what you asked me once—if I was a demigod.
I am nothing. I am less than nothing if I can’t protect a child like Samuel. ”
“All of us are given powers, Tyghan, from small to great. I’ve read your histories.
Every great god from Dagda to Lugh had their failures and losses.
You’re doing everything in your power. There is only so much one person—or demigod—can control.
You can’t carry guilt about this. Take time to breathe and then get angry as fuck and move forward. ”
He offered a grim smile. “You sound more like the Knight Commander than I do.”
“You can’t be Knight Commander twenty-four hours a day. You have to let your guard down sometimes. It’s okay to let others see you hurting.”
He shook his head. “That’s not a lesson I was taught.”
“But it’s never too late to learn.”
He pulled her into his arms, his face tucked in her hair. He smelled of meadow grass, sweat, and endless sorrow.
She stroked his back. “We’ll get through this.”
He nodded and held her tighter.
They walked back to where August waited for them, and Bristol reminded him, “Tomorrow is the wedding. Something positive. Maybe that’s the reset we all need.”
Tyghan’s head dropped, like another weight had hit him. The wedding.
He started to groan but then remembered his words to Kasta. Sometimes we have to remember what we’re living for.
And Melizan’s wedding was one of those things.
Kormick would not beat the life from them before the battle even began.