Page 86 of Traitor Son

The wide, heavy gates swung shut.

Thirty-one men were dead. Thirty-one. It was nothing compared to the blood Remin had spilled over the previous seven years, but he still had to back off and breathe, containing it behind the hard mask of his face. Should he have anticipated this? Should he have moved men to the villages sooner? He had planned to set up local militias this year, but there hadn’t seemed any urgency; the folk of the Andelin knew how to cope with the devils as well as anyone did.

“We can’t go,” said Huber, coming to stand beside him. His bronzed face was bloody and his eyes socketed with weariness. “We only made it twenty miles before we had to turn back. The stranglers kept going for our torches. Anyone you send is going to die.”

“I gave them my word,” Remin replied, low and anguished. He couldn’t stop picturing a silent Ferrede, with all the shutters and doors torn open, and the acres of wheat blowing in the wind, untended. Elder Brodrim. All those frightened people who had renewed their oath to him.

“I know.” Huber glanced at him, an ocean of understanding passing between them. Since they were boys, Huber had been the one to watch the most and say the least. After Victorin’s death, he had had little to say at all. But in this case, his silence was simply because there was nothing that could be said. There were no words of comfort he could offer in the face of abandoning hundreds of innocent people to the devils. There should not be any words that would justify such a thing.

“Are you all right?” The princess asked when he returned to take her to supper, looking up at him with solemn eyes.

“Fine.”

He was still trying to think of a way to save them later that night, as he stood guard in the lines before the masons’ camp. It boasted the same defenses as the lines on the west side of town, with break walls and torch towers and archers. All the defenses the rest of his villages lacked.

Maybe he should try to lead a group of men himself. Didn’t he owe it to them totry?To risk his own safety, when his common folk had no one to protect them? Perhaps if he took only knights in armor, and they built shelters for the horses…

But what if something happened to Tresingale? What if the town’s defenses fell? He had already weakened them with this first experiment. He could not spare the men to guard when he also needed them to build, and it would be a bitter irony if he went out to save his stricken villages, only to find that Tresingale had been devoured behind him.

No one could make this decision for him. And it wasn’t the first time he had faced such a terrible choice, but every time was as bad as the first. Where was his duty? Whose lives should he sacrifice? He could not save everyone.

He was too far away to see it when a wolf got through the gap in the north wall.

He heard it, though. Alarms rolled backward in quick succession, and in the quiet air of the summer night he could hear distant shouts. Torches lit in a line, following the trail of the creature. The instructions for defenders were to hold their ground, sound the alarm, but do not pursue. That would only open a gap in the defenses that other devils would slip through. The alarms and cries rampaged southward, down the cobblestones of the only road in Tresingale.

Toward the cottages.

He had taken three steps forward before he even realized it. The wolf demon wouldn’t reach them. He knew it wouldn’t. And he knew there had been excellent reasons why he was here rather than guarding the cottages by the cookhouse, but at that moment, he couldn’t remember what they were.

Who was in charge of the defenses over there? Darri. Cat-eyed Darri, the subtle blade, who had carried out any number of complicated and dangerous assignments. He could trust Darri. He knew that. But the princess was there, with no better defense than mud and sticks, and the sound of a wolf demon howling at close quarters was like standing inside a war horn.

Soft fingers wrapped around his throat, and Remin whipped his head around and slammed it into the grinning face of the strangler.

It was already too late to yell. He had been stupid, walking out of the circle of torchlight. He smacked his sword and shield together as a warning signal and then threw both on the ground; there was no room to swing his sword, the strangler was already wrapping its skinny, squishylimbs around him like the coils of a snake. Yanking his knife out of its sheath, he slammed it into the devil’s attenuated body and jerked it upward, snarling into its huge pale eyes.

It gave a rasping scream and Remin grabbed its hands andtore.Muscles popped in his wrists and forearms as he ripped that strangling grip loose and smashed the creature onto the ground, crushing its skull under his heavy boot. He was furious with himself. He could hear the other guards behind him signaling warnings to each other, adjusting their positions while he dealt with the creature, and only when he smashed his boot down a second time did it finally die, twitching.

Remin sucked in a huge breath, kicking the body aside. He wanted to cough. His sides were jerking with the need to cough, but it was a matter of pride that he clenched his jaw, buttoned it in, and straightened, picking up his sword and shield.

Even then he couldn’t help turning to look as the extra torches by the stables winked out, signaling that the wolf demon was dead. The princess was safe. He had known she would be.

He had never in his life felt so clearly that he was not where he should be.

But it could not be helped tonight. He was on guardhere.He was responsible for the lives ofthesemen. Tomorrow night it would be different, but right now his duty was to the men sleeping behind him.

And just like that, the decision was made. He could not save his villages. All he could do was abandon and endanger the people at his back. There was nothing to be done but endure together. Endure the heat, endure the work, endure the devils and the endless nights. The wallswouldbe built, if he had to lay every stone himself. There would be a city, and they would find a way to deal with the devils once and for all.

If anyone survived in his villages, he would see that they never wanted for anything as long as they lived. But he could not save everyone. If he had learned nothing else in all the harsh years of his life, it was that people died, and he could not stop it.

But his gaze lingered on a distant cottage, and in his mind’s eye he saw a small woman with a solemn face, who made him feel more uncertain than ever.

* **

Ophele had just endured another of those long and dusty days.

Sitting on the steps at the foot of the wall, every muscle in her body was voicing the usual complaints, from the blazing burn in her legs to the ache in her feet to the stabbing pains in her arms, as if someone had driven a dagger directly into each bicep. It was a pain she could never have imagined back in Aldeburke, but it was the familiar conclusion of her days now, along with the unsettling feeling that her arms were only loosely attached to her shoulders.

Master Eugene nosed her, and she stroked his velvety muzzle.

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