Chapter 47
Chapter forty-seven
Aldric
The bite of the morning wind stung Aldric’s cheeks, waking him far more effectively than a splash of water after a restless night’s sleep on hard earth ever could. His legs ached—now unaccustomed to riding a full day in the saddle.
But he didn’t mind it.
He had spent too long at court, growing soft, playing politics, dealing with his…feelings.
Mere physical pain was far more familiar and welcome. Normal. Like slipping back into an old skin.
The army moved in steady formation behind him, boots thudding against the frozen ground. Horses snorted clouds of white into the brisk air. Armor clinked. Men muttered. It was the song of war—one he had lived with for so long that he no longer needed to think to move in time with it.
Riding at the front with Sir Easome and his Sons, Aldric let the familiar weight of his old life settle onto him again: steel, leather, purpose. He focused on the road, on the horizon, on the stench of men and horse—anything but the memory of Sera’s lips crushing against his own.
War was simpler. Cleaner.
At least out here, he knew from which direction the blade would come.
A sharp screech jerked his attention upward, to where Soot winged in tight circles, swooping up, down, and all around. Like some sort of demented buzzard.
The usuru had been acting strange all morning.
Leif clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. In Kunishi, he muttered, “Bird-snake upset. Bad omen.”
Aldric snorted. “Snake-bird,” he corrected his Son’s poor translation for usuru. “And you are being superstitious and paranoid.”
Leif squinted and switched back to the common tongue. “I didn’t catch that last bit, but it sure sounded like an insult.”
Aldric shook his head, turning his attention away from the older man. His gaze locked on Sir Easome instead. “When will we reach the front?”
The Lord Constable pursed his lips. “A week? Less, if we push hard.”
The road angled gradually southward, cutting through withered fields and rolling hills before disappearing into dense woodland.
Just up ahead, though, the earth rose into a gentle ridge.
From the crest of it, Goldreach peeked out on the horizon—a scattering of rooftops and spires now softened by distance, glinting faintly beneath the pale sun.
They had only been marching a single day, and yet the city already looked so far away.
Aldric dragged his gaze away from the shrinking silhouette of his kirei’s capital, only for something else to catch his eye.
Movement.
Out where the Straight met the harbor mouth, the water churned. A wall of white sails billowed into view, gliding across the glittering expanse. Not one ship. Not two.
A fleet.
Dozens of vessels cut through the icy waters, their banners snapping in the wind. Banners he couldn’t make out from that distance.
Sir Easome saw it the same moment he did. “By the Lord…what is that?”
“Calix,” Aldric barked. “Spyglass.”
The moment his second-in-command shoved the Lothmeeran contraption into his hand, he urged Mourn toward the ridge, extended the spyglass, and lifted it to his eye. The ships crystallized into sharper focus—sharp enough for him to see that their banners were blue. Not de la Croix blue. Lighter.
They didn’t bear the symbol of his wife’s stag either.
“Easome,” he growled out of the corner of his mouth, “who flies a heron?”
The Lord Constable huffed, sounding relieved. “The Baron of Crestley. That must be the ships from the Beaumont Trading Company. Her Majesty will be relieved.”
Tiberius’s ships.
A thought nagged at the back of his mind as he watched the ships sliding into the harbor. Some detail seemed out of place. Wrong.
His blood ran cold when he finally realized what it was.
The baron’s ships were sailing into Goldreach from the wrong direction—from the north rather than the south, as his kirei had expected.
But what did that mean?
“Something wrong, boss?” Rakon rumbled, nudging his horse closer.
He passed the spyglass off to the large man and whistled once: Be on your guard.
Attention shifting back to Easome, Aldric asked, “Why would someone risk sailing around the northern tip of Elmoria rather than the south?”
The Lord Constable barked out a laugh, already wheeling his horse around. “They wouldn’t. Sailing around Varoa at this time of year would be too dangerous. Too many ice floes.”
His jaw tightened. His pulse ticked faster. “But what if they did? Why would they?”
Easome paused, frowning. “Well…I suppose they might take the risk if they wanted to avoid being spotted by Mistress Olivia’s informants along the southern coast. It’s impossible to keep watchers in the north, in the mountains.” The older man’s expression darkened. “They always go missing.”
Hoofbeats thundered along the column of soldiers, coming in fast. A rider in yellow—one of Wellane’s captains. Byron. “Why have we stopped?” he called, reining in his horse at the bottom of the ridge.
Aldric ignored the man. His thoughts scrambled, trying to recall the map sprawled across his kirei’s desk, to remember all the territories north of Goldreach. The duchy of Varoa, of course. Smaller baronies and counties of little importance.
And then: the duchy of Coreto.
Everything stilled. The cold faded. The howl of the wind grew distant.
He was aware of his Sons fanned around him, tense, ready. “Trust no one.” Those were the parting words he had whispered to his wife. They pulsed through his thoughts now, in time to his heartbeat, as he shifted his attention between Sir Easome and Wellane’s man, Byron.
Easome with his confused frown.
Byron with that nervous tic in his jaw. “We should keep going,” the man claimed, gesturing south, toward the road and the dark forest beyond. “We can rest the horses further on, surely.”
Rakon hummed and slammed the spyglass shut. “Good place for an ambush, boss.”
Aldric grunted; he had just thought the same thing. His one good eye flicked toward his half-Kunishi Son, who looked deceptively relaxed atop his horse. “Calix?”
His second tensed immediately, unslinging his bow and drawing it taut, an arrow already nocked and leveled at Wellane’s captain.
Byron paled, hands tightening on his horse’s reins. The beast snorted and tossed its head. “What is the meaning of this?”
Sir Easome snarled and drove his horse between Calix and Byron. “Your Majesty, please. This is what the Enemy wants: to divide us, to make us suspicious of our own.”
Aldric narrowed his eye. “How can I not be suspicious, with the Count of Wellane’s ships sailing into Goldreach from the north as we speak?”
Easome stared at him as if he had gone mad.
Byron’s brow furrowed. “Those aren’t our ships. We’re a landlocked county. Those are Lord Beaumont’s—” He stopped, clearly realizing his mistake.
There was no way he could have seen the banners from where he sat. No way he could know the ships belonged to Tiberius Beaumont.
Not unless he had already known.
Byron’s hand shot toward his belt and ripped free the hunting horn strapped there. He managed to blast a single, strangled note.
Before Calix’s arrow tore through his throat.
Movement rippled through the soldiers. Some broke rank—both yellow tabards and blue. Confusion choked the air. Someone screamed. First, one body crumpled to the earth. Then two. Then three.
“On me!” Aldric roared, unharnessing his glaive.
Too late, he heard the telltale whistle of arrows flying through the air, coming in from his blind side. He gritted his teeth and wrenched Mourn around, just in time to see Sir Easome hunch over him, shield raised.
Projectiles smashed against steel.
“We’re too exposed,” the Lord Constable shouted.
He knew. Blast it, he knew. Open field meant death. But the only cover close at hand was the treeline in the distance, the treeline that was sure to conceal an ambush.
At the bottom of the ridge, chaos reigned. Blades scraped free. Steel crashed against steel. Shouts cut through the din—shouts of panic, of fear. There was no way to tell friend from foe.
No way to tell who was killing whom.
Arrowfire thickened, falling like rain. “Father!” one of his Sons shouted in warning before an arrow slammed home, silencing the man forever.
With a snarl, Aldric wheeled Mourn around. Toward the dark forest. The unknown. “Trees! Now!”
Kyn stared at him, clearly uncertain. But he refused to lose another man out here. He refused to let his Sons sit here and be slaughtered.
A choice between open massacre and an obvious trap?
The Lord help them.
“Go! Leif, get them out of here!” Aldric shouted, holding his horse on a tight rein as his men finally peeled away and rode hard for the trees, led by his eldest Son. Only Rakon and Calix hung back, guarding his right side.
Sir Easome hesitated. “We can’t abandon our troops to die.”
Our troops. Aldric grimaced. “Which ones are ours?”
He let the rhetorical question hang between them for but a moment.
A moment too long. Another precious second gone.
Easome’s jaw clenched. Uncertainty flashed in his eyes.
Aldric snapped, “I don’t want to leave you, but I will!”
The Lord Constable spurred his horse onward, flying down the ridge and toward the trees. Finally letting Mourn have his head, Aldric followed.
His warhorse surged, narrowly avoiding a dying man who staggered into their path. The smell of blood soaked the air. Calix’s bowstring twanged behind him in a rapid-fire volley.
Rakon shouted over the chaos, “What’s the plan, boss?”
“Break line of sight. Secure the treeline. Pick off incoming enemies. Survive,” Aldric commanded, the plan forming in his mind even as he spoke. The trees loomed closer—dark, unfamiliar. Already, most of his Sons were within.
Twisting his lips, he added, “And find my useless usuru so we can get a message to Goldreach,” before he plunged in after them.