Not this one…
And that was enough to save him.
Dart lowered next to him. She reached to his shoulder. “Did…did I do all right? I wasn’t sure…”
He touched her arm, swallowing hard. “You did fine, Dart…just fine.”
A KNIGHTING IN MIDSUMMER
Saddled high, Kathryn sweltered in a full cloak over rich finery. She wore polished boots to the knee. Her horse was tacked in silver, a match to her cape’s clasp and warden’s badge. As the retinue would be traveling through Chrismferry’s main streets, she had her hood up and masklin fixed in place.
Gerrod rode up beside her. “We’re just about ready to head out.” Even hidden behind his armor, he appeared ill at ease, shifting in his saddle, adjusting his reins. The castellan diadem shone brightly at his throat.
Such were their new positions: Warden and Castellan.
Of Tashijan in exile.
Kathryn glanced behind her. They had made much progress over the past two moonpasses. Had it truly just been sixty days? Tylar had granted them the Blight, an empty and ruined section of Chrismferry’s inner city, not all that far from his castillion, to house and rebuild Tashijan. It proved a good place to set down new roots, land that had lain fallow for a long time. Already the Blight was a jumble of rebuilding, tearing down, mucking out, and clearing. And some shape was taking form-a skeleton of rafters, stone walls, and trenched fields. Tashijan was rising again.
New land, new roots, a new foundation.
Argent had proposed the original knighting of the regent as a way to bring Chrismferry and Tashijan closer together, to unite the First Land. Now their houses were closer than ever, by both distance and determination.
A small blessing for all the blood spilled.
Beneath her, Stoneheart shuffled his hooves, restless to leave.
Kathryn patted the stallion’s neck to reassure him. Atop this same horse she had led the survivors out of the rubbled ruin of Tashijan. The journey was already being heralded in song. The Great Exodus. A trail of horses, folk on foot, and wagons that stretched thirty leagues. She could have taken a flippercraft, but she had wanted to be there, needed to be there, among them.
Kathryn also remembered that last morning. The storm had broken at dawn. As rocks still rattled, unsettled and loose, they had found they had survived. Tylar had snuffed out Lord Ulf’s font of Dark Grace, and with it went his storm and ice. But as they pushed open iron shutters and stepped out into that cold morning, all lay in ruins: toppled and gutted towers, broken-toothed walls. Even Stormwatch had been held together only by the last of Ulf’s ice, and the melt of the morning sun threatened that precarious hold.
Kathryn could still picture her last view of Tashijan, from atop the rise of a hill. The once-proud citadel lay in rubble and ruin. And as she watched, Stormwatch slowly gave way, its last alchemies fading, the morning sun melting crusts of ice, and down it came, rumbling like thunder, casting up a cloud of rock dust-then gone, crushing the Masterlevels under it. So she had turned her back, left Tashijan to the haunt of wraith and daemon. Someday they might rebuild, but for now they needed a new home.
A horn sounded up ahead.
“Are you ready?” Gerrod asked.
She nodded. “We should not be late to a knighting that is long overdue.”
She nudged the piebald stallion and walked Stoneheart down a lane lined by stacked planks and brick. Hammering and chiseling, shouts and laughter echoed all around.
Gerrod clopped his horse beside her. “Yet another parade of Tashijan in exile through the streets of Chrismferry.”
“Another parade?”
He nodded ahead. “What with all the woodwrights and stonemasons flowing in and out our temporary gates, it’s like a daily circus around here.”
She offered him a small smile, but it was hidden behind her masklin. He did not see how quickly it faded. As she led the bright retinue toward Chrismferry, she could not deny a cold worry that even the midday swelter could not melt.
“What’s wrong?” Gerrod asked, shying his mount closer, ever knowing her moods. He touched her knee with his bronze fingers.
She shook her head. It was too bright a day.
“Kathryn…”
She sighed, glanced to him, then away again. “Did we win?”
“What do you mean?”
She lifted an arm to indicate all the rebuilding. “Or did Lord Ulf? Back at the Blackhorse, he stated what he sought through all the death and destruction he’d wrought. ‘ The steel of a sword is made harder by fire and hammer. It is time for Tashijan to be forged anew .’ Is that not what happened?”
He motioned for her hand. She gave it. He squeezed her fingers.
“We will be stronger. That I don’t doubt. Already the other Myrillian gods unite more firmly against the Cabal, pull more strongly in support for Tylar. Did you not see the number of flippercraft in the skies over the past days? Hundreds. The knighting today is not the small affair of Argent’s original design, a few Hands from the closest gods. There are retinues here from every land, from as far away as Wyrmcroft in the Ninth Land. That is proof alone.”
He squeezed her hand even harder, almost painfully. “We will be stronger. Not because Ulf won, but because you did. He made an offer to you: to walk away, to escape with a few. But because you held fast, many more survived. And it is that victory that makes us stronger, not capitulation to the mad calculation of a cold god.”
She took a shuddering deep breath and felt some of the ice inside her break apart, but still the shards hurt.
“Even Lord Ulf knew he was defeated. Did he not leave his castillion and wander into the hinterlands to the far north?”
Kathryn had heard the story of the god’s last steps. Just as it was forbidden for a rogue to enter a realm, a god was equally forbidden the hinterlands. Lord Ulf’s form was seen blazing like a torch as he strode north across the frozen wastes to his doom. At the end, the lord of Ice Eyrie gave himself over to the flame.
Still, Gerrod was not done. “If we are going to forge Tashijan to a harder steel, then let it be in a fire born of our own hearts. And I know no heart burns brighter than yours.”
Gerrod seemed suddenly abashed at his last words. His fingers began to slip from hers. “All know this,” he mumbled. “Did not every stone cast for our new warden bear your color? Not a single stone against?”
Kathryn did not let his fingers slip so easily away. She gave them a firm squeeze. “You are kind. But the casting was so clean because Argent stepped aside.”
Gerrod finally freed his hand and took his reins. “How is he faring?”
“ Stubborn -that’s the word Delia used. She came by early this morning. Arrived with the dawn flippercraft from Five Forks. She says he mends well and is slowly adjusting to his new leg, but he is quick to wrath and not willing to listen to his healer’s warnings.”
“Little wonder there,” Gerrod mumbled. “One eye, one leg. The man is slowly being whittled away.”
Kathryn smiled, a rudeness perhaps, considering his maiming, but she suspected even Argent would respect it. Back in Tashijan, Argent had survived by will and alchemy-but mostly by a promise to a daughter. Not to leave. And as always, he stubbornly kept his word.
A commotion drew their attention to the side. A small figure ran toward her horse. “Warden Vail! Warden Vail!”
She glanced down and recognized the youth in mucked boots and muddied clothes. She reined her horse to a halt. “Mychall?”
The stableboy hurried to her stirrup. He held up a strip of black cloth. “I did it!” he shouted proudly and waved the strip. “I’ve been picked!”
She smiled down at him, knowing what he held, remembering when she had been chosen, given a bit of shadowcloak, picked to join the knighthood.
Mychall waved his bit of cloth and ran back down along her retinue. “I must tell my da!”