Finally he spoke in a rasp, “Get them the maps, and get them out of my sight.”
The interior of the carriage was primarily silent on the ride back to the estate perimeter, as the three companions each sat lost in their own thoughts. Amric held tight to the leather satchel containing the merchant’s maps and papers, his mind already racing ahead over the necessary preparations for the coming journey.
There was but one interlude of conversation.
“Amric?” Halthak whispered.
“Yes?”
“Was it true, what you said about Valkarr?”
“No, I am slightly faster.”
“I meant about him being in the manor house, ready to act.”
“Ah, yes, that part was true.”
Morland sat in the high-backed chair, tapping the heavy ring on his finger against the base of his goblet. Each tap was accompanied by an audible clink that echoed through the great hall. He did not move otherwise, but his gaze sifted through the corner shadows as he waited. Remembering Amric’s words, he quelled a spark of unease that the warrior’s Sil’ath friend might have stayed behind after all, might have evaded all the searching patrols and come here for him. He had sent all his guards from the room, as his next guests were peculiar, and the common soldiers found them unnerving. They always made his flesh crawl, despite their devotion to him, but now he felt too vulnerable alone and just found himself hoping they would arrive before some faceless intruder found him instead.
When they appeared, it was from the opposite direction he was facing. It always was, he thought, irritated; but then, that’s what made them so good at what they did. He spun around at the low sound of their laughter. Twin shocks of white hair above pale, mocking faces seemed to hang disembodied in the air, and then dark leather-clad forms formed beneath them. Nyar and Nylien, the twin Elvaren assassins, stepped from the shadows.
“I do not like to be kept waiting,” Morland snapped.
The Elvaren said nothing, and Morland felt a chill. He relied on their speech patterns to know when their ever volatile natures were turning against a target, and he did not want to inadvertently become one. He tried a different tact.
“You heard everything, I trust?” he said.
“We did, lord,” one replied. Nyar or Nylien, he could never tell them apart. “You were very tolerant of its boorish behavior.”
“Then you heard our arrangement as well. They are to complete a task for me, and then they will be yours once more. They must live for now.”
“We understand, lord.” There was a petulant quality to his voice.
“You need not worry, my boys,” Morland soothed. “I will find targets for you until they return.”
“As you command, lord,” one of the Elvaren said, mollified. They turned, faded back into the shadows and were gone.
Morland began to sift through the papers on the table, paused at a thought, and spoke into the air. “The guard who was struck down tonight and failed me, I have no further use for his service.”
The reply was a whisper, directionless. “Thank you, lord.”
Morland sipped from the goblet and resumed reading.
CHAPTER 4
Gormin wiped the sweat from his brow, surveying his crops in the failing light. He was down to just two of his largest fields, all he could manage alone, but they were thriving and he felt a fierce exultation. He had finished harvesting the oats today, and could start on the barley with the morrow. It would take several days by himself, but then he could load his wagon and commence bringing loads to the city, and both vindication and profit would be his. Then his gaze slid over his other fields, all lying fallow, and his mood soured.
He beat the day’s dust from his wide-brimmed hat and cast a look back at the barn he had just finished locking up for the night. It was difficult to recognize as a barn any longer, with all the fortifications he had added: boarded windows, reinforced doors, buttressed walls and a ring of outward facing stakes. His early years in the Marovian infantry had served him well, though he had never expected his experience defending military camps and forts to be used later on his own farm.
From inside the barn came a coughing grunt and the protesting creak of wood. Gormin paused to listen, but it was not repeated. The graffas, short-tempered beasts at the best of times, had been worked hard today and should be quick to slumber this night. Great, bullish draft animals, they were more costly than oxen but Gormin had never regretted the expense; their prodigious strength and constitution more than compensated for the additional cost and their irascible natures.
He turned and trudged toward his house. It bore many of the same defenses as the barn, and just past the edge of its roof he could just see the gleaming walls and towers of Keldrin’s Landing in the distance. The sun was setting behind the city and a blood-red hue seeped across the intervening land. His was one of the farms nearest the city, and, as far as he knew, the last remaining. The rest of the smallholders in the surrounding lands had abandoned their lands and fled. Between the drop in production and the severe overcrowding in the city, food prices had risen dramatically. As the only grower still tending crops, Gormin knew he was sitting on a fortune.
The financial prospects would have been even better, he thought with a frown, had his family and his hired help not retreated to the city. If they could have cultivated all the fields, what an opportunity! They had borrowed heavily to buy this much land, and in one stroke they could have shaved years from that debt. He swallowed a lump of bitter disappointment. He would not run to Keldrin’s Landing with tail tucked to become a penniless beggar on the streets, would not abandon his holding to some infestation of wild pests. There was nothing for it now but to prove them all wrong, and he would do that by riding into town with a mountainous harvest yield.
As he neared the front porch of the house, a large shape rose to its feet in the shadows by the eastern wall. Gormin bit back an oath, his hand going to his hip for a sword he no longer wore before he realized it was just the dog. Other than the two graffas in the barn, the dog was the only animal remaining on the farm. Shaggy and long-limbed, its head reaching nearly to his chest, the beast was far too large for his wife and children to feed and board in the tight quarters of the city, and so they had been forced to leave it behind. What had they named it? Vulf, or Wulf, or something like that? Gormin could not recall. It had a voracious appetite and did no work on the farm, and so to him it was just another mouth to feed. But his family had loved the ugly brute, and so he made no overt efforts to drive it away, though it could also be said that he made no especial efforts to prevent it from leaving, either. He sneered at the dog, and it gave a low growl in return.
Gormin stomped up the steps to the porch and into the house, with the dog several wary steps behind. Once they were both inside, the farmer dropped a heavy bar into place behind the door, lit a lamp, and fell into a broad chair. A few moments of rest, and then he would prepare a meal for himself. And the mutt as well, he thought with some reluctance. He felt the aches and pains of the day fade somewhat as he relaxed, and his gaze settled, as it always did, on the picture tacked over the fireplace. It was a charcoal rendering of the children, done by his wife, Tiri. She had a real talent, he had always thought; she had captured their small faces and impish smiles with a gentle hand. He felt a rising tide of bitter loneliness threaten to engulf him, and he shoved it away, squeezing his eyes shut.
Soon enough he would show them all how they were overreacting. Soon enough, they could be together again…
A steady, rumbling growl woke him some time later, and he sat forward in the chair, blinking away the fog from his senses. The dog was in the middle of the room, hackles raised, staring at the door. Gormin rose to his feet, hushing the dog. He crossed to the door and pressed his ear to it. Faint through the thick wood, he heard a clamor from the barn. The graffas were going berserk, bellowing and throwing their bulks against the stalls. Gormin cursed. The barn was well fortified, but if the scent of some wandering predator drove the graffas to injure themselves, he would be unable to harvest, or to bring his loads to the city afterward.