Page 12 of The Taking of House Westwood

Isaac nodded, stroking a hand along his close cropped gray beard. “There is talk of a levy. The last time we had one of those…”

Clayton remembered all right. The countryside had emptied of able-bodied males between the ages of 14 and 45, all flooding toward the Frontier. It had been the oddest sensation to ride along the Border road, and meet so many of the men he’d grown up with.

Few of them had survived through the next year.

“You know something, don’t you?”

“As I said, just talk, my friend.” Isaac’s horse snorted as he had the animal pick its way through a patch of exposed rock along the ridge.

“Complacence and decadence are even worse enemies than the nocturne; they’ve always known when we’re rife with it.” Clayton had foolishly allowed some hope to steal into his heart. Crops were plentiful, the population was booming —and that wasn’t even counting the steady trickle of Others that were being encountered with increasing regularity. There hadn’t been an Incursion in more than twenty years; most of the soldiers on the line at the Frontier had no memory of the enemy.

He did though — and so did Isaac. They had enough memory for ten lifetimes.

“You’ve got fine strong oxen down there,” Isaac said, nodding toward the toiling draft animals in the field below. He sat high in his saddle, his straight back and keen gaze belying his nearly fifty years.

“That they are, my friend. Rory picked them up from the Tilders’ stead for a song. The old woman had no use for them once her husband passed, and her sons decided to sell the land.”

He remembered long ago on a visit to Westwood Manor what he’d seen pulling plows in their fields. It hadn’t been oxen. The thought made him shiver, knowing that his daughter was held captive at that very same manor.

Clayton leaned an elbow on the pommel of his saddle. “You didn’t come here to talk about the Frontier or my draft animals, did you?”

Isaac chuckled, the epaulets on his broad shoulders gleaming in the morning light. “Alas, no. I’ve something to propose, actually.”

“Go on.” Clayton had wondered why his friend had decided to slum with the yokels in the hinterland. Wyndhaven, with its intrigues and opportunities, was the proper place for a trader like Isaac Galt. Still, a part of Clayton was glad to see his old friend, if for no other reason than to distract him from his failure to protect his own flesh and blood.

Isaac lowered his voice. “Before I do, I need your solemn word that this will remain between us and the wind.”

Clayton sighed. “I should have known. This is farm country, Isaac. We don’t piss around out here about things. Let’s just hear it.”

“What are you prepared to do about this? You know it cannot stand.”

Clayton shot his friend a sharp look. “Dictating to me how to run my affairs now? What do you know of it?”

“I’ve heard enough. It pays to be privy to information in my line of work.”

“My options are bad and worse, Isaac. I’m at her mercy, and she knows it.”

“So take Sophie back. I know you can. I’ve seen what you’re capable of doing.”

Clayton tried to ignore the searing memories. The blood, the rush of the kill, the pain. His heart was suddenly racing, his pulse loud in his ears. His mind wanted to forget those memories; his body could not.

Isaac sat forward in his saddle pointing at his friend. “You’ve got no choice.”

He shook his head. “Choice is the one thing I do have. The problem is that I can’t bear to make it.”

Isaac shook the reins of his steed, the white horse accelerating to a trot. “Be honest with yourself, you old fool. You must act, else you’ll never see her again.”

Clayton, shaking his own horse’s reins to keep up, looked at his friend. “She has me, Isaac. I’ve nothing to fight her with. But I’ll be damned if I give in to her demands — noble right or not.”

“So what then? Appeal to the Council?”

Clayton cursed under his breath. “A waste of time. They only care about the damned Frontier. They’re shitting in their drawers from tales of bogeymen and the whispers of old women. They’d never move against a noble. It would be lip service only — then nothing. Meanwhile, Sophie would suffer for it.”

“She’s suffering already, Clayton.” Isaac’s voice was grave.

“Aye, I know it — and it’s tearing me apart.”

Isaac pulled his horse to a stop and looked at his friend. Galt’s gaze was hard. “We’ll help you.”

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