A memory popped into his head of Brutus biting him. What if it’s not my fault? As they approached the bridge, Harper took slow, calm breaths—not wanting to wake his energy up fully with the strength of his fear—and forcibly pushed an energy string into the mind of Pandral’s horse. The result was instantaneous. With an ear-splitting shriek, the animal reared up, and it was only Pandral’s skilful horsemanship that kept him in the saddle. In abject terror the horse pawed at the air, dropped back onto four hooves and took off at a mad dash across the bridge, Pandral fighting the poor beast the whole way. Kicking his horse hard in the flanks, Harper pushed it to follow. It built up speed quickly and hit the bridge at a full gallop, stretching itself, obeying its natural instinct to catch up with the fleeing horse in front.
As they crossed the bridge, everything disappeared for Harper—all of his concentration went into holding down his energy strings. It was like trying to wrestle an octopus into a sack—a very desperate octopus, one that outweighed him. At last Harper felt the strings retreat again as his horse began to slow. Awareness of his surroundings filtered through to him; Pandral, still struggling with his horse, had managed to slow it down to a restless trot. Harper squeezed his thighs, urging his animal to catch up. They had travelled a long way from the bridge into open countryside.
“Are you all right?” Harper asked, coming up alongside Pandral. “What happened?”
“I have no idea,” Pandral said, looking back at the bridge with confusion. “Something must have frightened the stupid creature.”
Pandral looked like he was about to say more when Harper interrupted by pointing into the distance. There was a barn-like building set far back off the road, a small cottage next to it.
“Is that it? Did we find it?” Pandral asked.
“Yes,” Harper said. The images of it flickered through his mind, along with his anger and revulsion.
“Now we know where it is we need to go and get assistance,” Pandral said, turning his horse around. “The Protectors in the town that we just travelled through should suffice.”
Not the water again! Harper had no intention of crossing the bridge more than was absolutely necessary.
“You go and get the Protectors. I will check out the farm, so we know what we are getting ourselves into.”
Pandral frowned. “Very well. But be careful.”
Harper gave a grin and urged his horse to a trot. He moved down the track and then along a path that led to the farm.
Not knowing who might be watching, Harper tied his horse in a patch of woodland halfway down the path and continued on foot, sticking to the trees where possible. As a precaution, he made a wide circle, moving stealthily beyond the farm so as to come at it from behind. He moved noiselessly through overripe cornfields at the back of the property as he crept up on the barn.
The place looked deserted and lifeless, except for a dog barking from somewhere in the farm’s outbuildings. Without the option of heavy machinery, farms in Mydren needed labour, and lots of it, so the silence rang alarm bells—on top of those already triggered by the long-overdue corn harvest. This is the place. Seeing no perimeter guards, Harper slunk closer.
He pressed his back against the wood of the barn’s back wall and listened. There were no sounds of movement. Sticking his head around the corner, he spotted a side door. Inside, the barn was cool, still and dark. But beyond the wholesome smell of hay and animals was another odour, one more at place in the Central Tower dungeons. Moving to the back of the building, Harper found empty, wooden cages that would have been cramped even for a child.
“Nevlin? Daxis? Get out here!”
The voice was loud and harsh. The dog’s barking became more frenzied. Startled, Harper moved towards the double doors at the front of the barn, pressed his eye up to the crack where they met and watched as six Protectors, two of them armed with bows, walked into the muddy space between the barn and the farmhouse. Pandral followed them, his face tightly controlled anger as he glared balefully at the Protector stood out in front. The door of the cottage opened and a man emerged, ducking his balding head so as not to hit it on the lintel. His muscled bulk moved towards the Protectors with a grace that identified him as a fighter.
“What do you want, Odeny?” he asked.
“I am Protector Odeny to you, Nevlin,” Odeny said, his body language showing an indignant bluster that Harper could see right through. The Protector was afraid of the man stood in front of him.
“Odeny, you will always be the snivelling brat who used to cry at the first punch of a fight,” Nevlin sneered. “Now tell me what you want or get off my farm.”
Odeny straightened his shoulders, trying to maintain his dignity. Looking back, he pointed at Pandral.
“This is Protector Jonas,” Odney said. “He has come from Hemtark to speak with you.”
Nevlin’s gaze swung to Jonas, sizing him up. As he did, the cottage door opened again and three more men emerged, all of them large, all of them suspicious.
“Do you need help, Nev?” one of them asked.
Nevlin ignored the question, but the three men moved closer, fanning out behind him.
“Speak, Protector Jonas,” Nevlin ordered.
Jonas stepped forward, stopping just out of the reach of Nevlin’s fists.
“I know what you have done,” Jonas said, menace in the Dwarfish. “We have your son, and Daxis has told us everything. I would be willing to ask the Enforcer who hears your case to allow you and your son to live, if you tell me to whom you sold the children.”
It was an ill-advised speech on a lot of levels. Does he have a plan?
Rage in his eyes, Nevlin gave a bellow and launched himself at Jonas. As the man punched, Jonas ducked and slapped the arm round, pushing Nevlin off balance so that he staggered in the opposite direction. Jonas quickly followed this movement with a hard, perfectly timed rabbit punch to the back of his attacker’s neck, dropping the big man to the ground, where he lay with an ominous stillness. Nevlin’s three accomplices looked at each other in shock.
“Nevlin is dead,” Jonas told them with flat finality. “Your lives are likewise over, unless you tell me where I can find the children.”
There were sharp cries of pain followed by thuds, and Jonas glanced behind him.
“About time you started earning your pay!” one of Nevlin’s thugs yelled, before running at Jonas and tackling him to the ground.
The protector with the bow had turned on his companions, putting arrows through two of them in quick succession. But before a third arrow could be notched, the nearest Protector still standing dragged the treacherous bowman to the ground, kicking and punching him, yelling obscenities. The bowman, however, won the fight when he thrust a short knife up under the Protector’s chin and left him lying on his side, gurgling, blood spurting in a rhythmic fountain.
The bowman pulled himself up and notched an arrow, swinging it towards where Jonas and one of Nevlin’s men traded blows, wrestling in the dirt. With no possible clear shot, the bowman swung his weapon round.
The last two remaining Protectors, Odney and the man stood next to him, surveyed the scene with confused fear as the bowman’s aim turned towards them. Pulling his knife from his boot, Harper pushed open the barn door, took aim and released his blade. It thudded into the bowman’s heart, the handle quivering slightly in his chest. Gasping, Harper clutched at his throwing hand; the bones had not set properly, and he was suddenly worried about what help he would be in a fight.
Glancing at each other, Odney and the Protector turned and ran, heading, legs pumping, to the relative safety of the cornfield. Harper gave them no further thought, but ran to help Jonas, who was fighting a violent battle with the man who had tackled him. Harper got to them just before Nevlin’s other two men did, and he kicked the man off Jonas, aiming for the thug’s head with cold calculation. The man he had kicked lay still, insensate. Harper pulled the Lord to his feet.
Now it was two against two, and suddenly the thugs
did not look so confident. His hand throbbing miserably, Harper realised that punching was not going to be an option. He grabbed the nightstick on his belt with his left hand and waited. The two men rushed them together, and again Jonas was carried to the ground with the force of the charging man who hit him. But Harper stepped neatly out of the way of his attacker and struck him a glancing blow to his head as he moved past. The man staggered but kept his feet, turning back and pouncing on Harper.
Harper used his feet to strike and his arms to deflect the punches—and clobbered the man with his cudgel where he could—and soon found that not only was he holding his own, he was winning. Eventually, he found himself back to back with Jonas, the three thugs lying in the mud around them. Jonas turned to him. There was blood dribbled down his face from a cut above his eye and a bruise was growing along his cheekbone.
“I think… ” he said, panting. “That in retrospect… we might have managed this better… without the ‘help’ of the local Protectors.”
Harper nodded, too breathless to speak. His body ached, and exhaustion made his limbs feel heavy.
Finding rope in the barn, Harper tied up the three men who still breathed while Jonas retrieved their horses. Their captives came around to their predicament shortly after the Lord returned, and Harper pulled them to their knees. Stalking over to them, Jonas shoved a picture of Rodin in their faces.
“Where is this boy?” he demanded. The men exchanged glances but said nothing. Jonas glared at them, a threatening undertone to the Dwarfish when he spoke. “Nevlin is dead. Daxis is dead. And your decision to pick a fight with us is something you are going to regret. Tell me what I want to know, or I will turn you over to the Central Tower dungeons to get the information.”
“Edmus. Edmus the Baker bought him,” the man on the left said, his face pale.
Jonas’s black eyes glittered with ire. “Where can we find Edmus the Baker?” he asked.
The man dropped his head. “He is in the next town over. Storlidge.”
Jonas nodded. Turning, he walked back to his horse. “Harper, kill them,” he ordered over his shoulder as he put Rodin’s picture back in his saddlebag.
Harper’s mind was suddenly filled with the memory of the casual order that brought Kip’s death; the grief was instantly raw and fresh once more. Harper shuddered.
“No,” he said.
Pandral turned to look at him, and it was Pandral, his expression that of a Lord denied.
“My orders are not open to discussion, Harper,” he snarled.
Harper moved to Pandral’s side, pitching his voice so they would not be overheard.
“You told me you did not want a grovelling servant, my Lord. So I am telling you now that I have no intention of killing three men in cold blood.”
“Giving me my title does not make what you just said any less likely to earn you another flogging,” Pandral said.
“If hurting me makes this easier for you, you need only command it,” Harper said, not feeling half as brave as his words made him sound. “These men are guilty of some serious crimes, attacking a Lord of Mydren being one of them—so let them face an Enforcer, let the town present a case, and let the law work.”
“What a waste of time,” Pandral snapped. “They will be condemned and hanged by the Enforcer anyway.”
Harper nodded. “Perhaps, but they will not have been killed by you or I in the heat of the moment. Time will have been spent considering their crimes. The townspeople will know that they were monsters who perpetrated evil deeds, not a bunch of innocent farmers murdered by the Protectors, as this mess might currently suggest. You said ‘the innocent should be protected’; well, the best way to do that is with strong law. Believe in your vision, my Lord: do not choose the easy, convenient path.”
Pandral stared at him, and when he spoke his voice was hard and proud. “Today a Lord of Mydren bows to your wisdom, Harper of Twyness. This is no insignificant thing—do not expect it often. Choose carefully which of my orders you refuse, or I may soon grow tired of your presumption.”
“You do me a great honour, my Lord,” Harper replied.
“You have no idea,” Pandral muttered. His voice was louder as he added, “Tie them up well, Harper, and we will send Protectors for them later.”
It was market day in the village of Storlidge, and they were forced to leave their horses in stabling just inside the village stockade and continue on foot. The market, while busy, was understocked, and what was available was not in good condition. The people seemed listless and their eyes blank, and they shuffled about their business with heads down, taking pains not to look too much at each other.
Seemingly unconcerned with the depression moving around him, Pandral moved through the village, quickly identifying the baker by the smell. They entered the small shop, a little bell tingling over the door reminding Harper of happier times. Resisting the urge to remember, he concentrated on what was around him, surprised to find the single-room shop clean and bright, with white walls and fresh-looking pale blue counters and stands showing different types of loaves. Harper’s stomach rumbled at the glorious baked-bread smell, and Pandral rolled his eyes.
Alerted by the noise of the bell, a corpulent, middle-aged man came into the shop from a room at the back. Ruddy-faced and narrow-eyed, he looked the two Protectors up and down.
“You are not from here,” the man said.
“No, we are Protectors Jonas and Harper,” Jonas said. “We were sent here from the Central Tower… to help keep the peace, after the deaths…” Harper had no idea what Jonas was talking about, but the baker evidently did. His eyes became haunted, and he nodded.
“A nasty business that… they confirmed it, you know… none of them were Avatars.”
“So I heard,” Jonas said gravely, giving the man a moment before he continued. “You are Edmus the Baker, are you not?”
“Yes,” Edmus agreed.
“We have reports that you have a boy. We wish to question him,” Jonas said.
His eyes granite hard and an expression of pugnacious anger on his face, Edmus roared. “BOY!”
With the soft pad of shoeless feet, a dirty, thin boy with unkempt black hair, his head curled into his hunched shoulders, crept hesitantly from the back room. Edmus, his furious gaze alighting on the boy, backhanded him. The child landed at Harper’s feet with a whimper.
“What have you done now, idiot?” Edmus demanded.
Jonas ignored the baker and addressed the child directly. “What is your name, boy?” he asked with a soft voice.
“There is no use asking him anything,” Edmus said, a smug look on his round face. “He does not have a tongue.”
Jonas gave Harper a sharp look. Getting down on his knees, Harper helped the boy to his feet. The child stood trembling, his eyes cast down and his arms wrapped defensively round his fragile body.
“Rodin,” Harper said. “Rodin, I know it is you. We are here to help you. Please, can I have a look in your mouth?”
The boy raised his head, tears wobbling on the edges of his lashes. His face carried several bruises in various stages of healing, but there was still an arresting similarity to his sister. Tentatively he opened his mouth, the movement obviously painful for him. Harper gave him a quick, gentle examination.
“Thank you, Rodin, you can close your mouth now. We are going to take you away from here,” Harper said. The boy attempted a smile, but his damaged jaw made it a rictus of suffering. He shuffled forward a little and Harper, recognising a child’s need for comfort, carefully lifted the boy to him as he stood, one arm around the boy’s shoulders and the other under his knees. Rodin wrapped his thin arms around Harper’s neck and rested his head heavily on the padded shoulder of his muddy Protector’s uniform.
“Well?” Jonas asked.
“The boy’s tongue was aggressively removed,” Harper told him, the detached clinical delivery of his report helping him to separate the injury from the child clinging to him. “He is lucky: it is onl
y the attempt that was made to cauterise the wound that stopped him bleeding to death. Although how he withstood the pain is beyond my comprehension.”
Jonas swung a merciless gaze towards Edmus.
“He was like that when I got him,” the man stammered. “He came to me through a man called Nevlin, who said he was a child without family. I have fed him, given him a roof over his head and an honest profession.”
“As what?” Harper snapped. “A punching bag?”
Giving Harper a glance, Jonas took a step towards Edmus, who cowered back.
“The boy will be leaving with us now,” Jonas growled.
The baker stared at him open-mouthed for several seconds before finding his voice again. “To go where? You cannot just take him! I paid good money, as a ‘donation’ to Nevlin’s work, to take the worthless brat! Nobody else wanted him—he was not strong enough or old enough to be much use for anything—and you should be thanking me for ensuring he did not end up in the hands of Nevlin’s son, Daxis!”
His body stiff with a barely controlled rage, Jonas stepped forward and punched the baker hard in the face. Harper winced at the crunch of the man’s nose, and felt Rodin tense in his arms at the sickening noise. Edmus gave a bellowing scream of pain before collapsing, his eyes rolling back in his head as he passed out.
Turning to leave, Jonas caught Harper’s expression and shrugged, his voice hard. “The man is still alive. I would count that as a plus if I were you, Harper.”
“Are we not going to arrest him?” Harper asked.
“For what?” Jonas asked, and Harper realised with horror that the baker had not, in fact, broken any of Mydren’s few laws. Taking a child in off the street was not a crime, and there were some who did it for the cheap labour, the Protectors most notably. The baker did not know who the child was, so a case against him for hurting a member of a Lord’s family would most likely fall apart too. Even treating the child badly was an accepted part of life to which few would object.
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