Lowick nodded. "But why have you discounted them being drawn away in the middle of the night?"
"Two reasons. One: the fire. They would have banked it to preserve the wood. There are only a dozen logs left in the woodpile and they wouldn't want to have to go foraging, plus anything they did find would have to be dried out if it was going to burn. And two: the pots."
"Go on?"
He picked up one of the pots to demonstrate his reasoning, and ran his fingers around the inside of the rim. "There's a crust of food dried into the pans, meaning they ate but didn't have time to clean them. It's like the bedrolls. They'd clean them after they used them, simply because they'd need them again the next time they were hungry. Not cleaning them is more than just slovenly habits. It's an indication that they were disturbed."
"Good."
"There's no food left in their bowls though," Alymere followed his reasoning through to its logical conclusion, "so they had time to finish their meal. By the looks of what's left," he flaked it off with his fingers, "it's oats, or porridge, so definitely morning."
"Well done, lad. That kind of keen eye will serve you well, as will your analytical mind. The world talks to us all of the time — all we have to do is listen. What else can you tell me?"
Alymere scanned the small room, looking for some tell-tale sign that he'd missed, some small irrelevancy that was anything but. "There's no sign of a struggle," he said eventually, "so they went willingly."
"That's the one. Two men, veterans who've been guarding the wall between them for the best part of fifty years willingly abandoned their post in the middle of the storm of the century. What does that tell you?"
He thought about it for a moment. There was only one logical conclusion he could make. "They knew whoever it was."
"More than that, they trusted them," Sir Lowick finished. "That's the only thing that makes any sense. Last night or the night before someone came here begging for their help. They knew them, and more, they trusted them, because obviously they didn't think twice about helping them."
"And they didn't return," Alymere said.
"And they didn't return," the knight echoed.
Six
"Where did they go?" Alymere wondered aloud as he stepped back out into the snow storm. The wind swept away his words.
He studied the ground.
Any footprints that might have been there even a few hours ago had been masked by the latest fall of snow. He knelt, hoping to see any slight difference in the lie of the snow as though it might still give away the ghost of footprints long since buried. It was hopeless. There was nothing to indicate anyone other than he and his uncle had come or gone from the mile house. He rose again. The chill he felt this time had very little to do with the elements. It was as though the two wardens had simply ceased to be, spirited away by demons under the cover of the snow without a trace.
"We've got to make some assumptions now, lad. Whoever came out here had to have walked, meaning they couldn't have come from far away. The nearest settlement is a good two miles or more due south — "
"But that doesn't make sense, because anyone in trouble there would turn to their neighbours first, and the manor is closer than the mile house, anyway."
"Exactly. So if not the settlement, where?"
"The next mile house along the wall?"
The knight shook his head. It was a reasonable suggestion, but there were protocols in place for sending messages down the line from mile house to mile house along the wall. Signal fires were much more efficient — he stopped mid-thought and ran around to the side of the mile house, floundering in the snow that had drifted up against the walls. He waded toward the iron brazier. It was still covered. He pried the iron lid up. What he saw confirmed his suspicions. The logs were still banked up. It hadn't been lit. Had there been trouble at the next mile house Markem would have lit the fire to pass the warning down the chain. Markem was a decent soldier; if they were under threat he would have lit that fire. He hadn't. It was as simple as that. So what else could have lured the men away from the mile house?
By the time Alymere joined him at the brazier they had both arrived at the same conclusion: the wardens hadn't been summoned east because they hadn't lit their beacon. Whatever had drawn them away from their post wasn't a threat — at least not to the wall itself. It was something they believed they could handle alone.
"The threat wasn't martial," Alymere said. He had a quick mind, and was a step further along in his thinking than his uncle. "In point of fact, I don't think there was a threat at all."
"Now you've got my attention, lad. Explain it to an old man who's not quite as clever as you. Why would two experienced soldiers desert their post?"
"There's no sign of a struggle inside, and they haven't lit the warning fires outside. The absence of both of which suggests strongly that they were lured out with honey rather than driven out with a stick. Admittedly they could have been dragged off by an army and we wouldn't be able to tell in this snow, but I don't think so. I think they went out to help a traveller in distress. It's the only thing that makes sense. The conditions make travel almost impossible." He started to run with the idea, extrapolating a story that would explain precisely why the two men had left the mile house untended. "A woman turns up at the mile house begging for help, because her cart has overturned and her father's trapped beneath, with a broken leg and freezing to death. It has to have overturned because that would explain both men leaving the mile house. It would take both of them to right it. It's an easy enough scenario to imagine."
The knight nodded thoughtfully. "Bait the trap with honey," Lowick agreed. "But who in their right mind would be on the road in weather like this?"
"Someone who had to be somewhere."
"Or," the knight said, "or there's no cart at all. Think about it. There doesn't have to be one, does there? You can't see the road from here. The message, along with the damsel in distress, serves the exact same purpose as an actual overturned cart. It gets them out of the mile house. But to what purpose? What would anyone stand to gain from having this place empty for a day?"
"It would give them time to rob it."
"That it would, but there's nothing here worth stealing," the knight said, shaking his head. Something didn't sit right about this whole thing, but he wasn't sure what. Not yet, but he would work it out. For now he would trust his gut instinct. Doing so had kept him alive thus far. "And, think about it, they haven't robbed the place, have they? Whatever they wanted it for has to have happened by now. But there's no sign anyone has been in there since Markem left."
"True. Could their intention have been to pose as wardens for real travellers heading this way?"
"That would make more sense," the knight reasoned, "but that is assuming it was the mile house they wanted and not the wardens themselves. One thing's for certain, we're not going to find out standing around here freezing our backsides off. If we're right, the answer is out there on the road waiting for us."
"And if we're wrong?"
"I don't want to think about that," Sir Lowick said, trudging through the snow toward his horse.
Seven
Alymere rode blindly into the blizzard.
The road took them into the fringe of the forest, the trees providing some small respite from the harsh weather, if not the extreme cold. He found himself thinking how easy it would be to become disorientated and lost, and from that, how easy it would be to stumble, turn an ankle, and fall, and end up freezing in the snow. How long would you last? In a matter of minutes the shivering would become uncontrollable, in an hour the cold would creep into your bones; in two, or three, you'd slip into a drowsy torpor, and you'd never wake up. It would be an almost pleasant way to go, he thought, then shook off the thought. It was an all too seductive idea and once it had a foothold in the back of the mind it would keep whispering away all the while as the world grew colder.