Martyr (9780316430791) by Ryan Anthony

Author:Ryan, Anthony [RYAN, ANTHONY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2022-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“There’s no bastard here!” Fletchman’s face was a picture of ordure-smeared misery as I reined Blackfoot to a halt beneath the tower’s half-ruined gate. Having lost the coin toss, the poacher had been my natural choice for this task, one he took to without complaint, although I had a sense he regretted that now. The tower sat at the end of a winding track snaking up from the floor of a constricted valley leading to Uhlpin’s Pass. Even viewed from afar it was an unimpressive structure, rising from a cluster of rubble with its walls two-thirds vanished to time and the elements.

“They’re not long gone,” Fletchman added, wiping something dark and sticky from his brow. “Embers are still warm and they left a good stock of supplies behind. Butchered horses too, lot of salted meat just left hanging. I’d hazard they didn’t ride out of here.”

Evadine and Wilhum halted alongside us as the Covenant Riders charged on foot into the tumbledown confines of the ancient fortress. I cast my gaze beyond the jagged stones of the tower at the rocky, snow-blanketed slopes rising to ominous majesty on either side of the narrow canyon that formed Uhlpin’s Pass. It was the obvious avenue of escape, but very few subjects of Albermaine had willingly traversed it in generations and those that had never returned.

“Even Roulgarth isn’t that mad,” Wilhum opined, sensing my thoughts. “If he struck out towards the east we would have caught him before reaching the tower.” He raised his eyes to the surrounding peaks, summits lost to the dark and low-hanging cloud that banished the moon. “Mayhap he knows a path across these mountains we do not.”

I turned and called over my shoulder to one of the dismounted kingsmen Ehlbert had sent to form the second rank of our attack. “Tell his lordship the Wolf has slipped his trap,” I told him. “And get that whiskered villain up here.”

“No Wolf, no gold,” I informed Chops a short while later, the outlaw whimpering as I pushed him hard against the inner wall of the tower. “Until his neck’s in a noose, you get nothing. Now, where the fuck is he?”

“How should I know?” he whined, hunching low in his sheepskin. “Not my fault he took himself off before you got here.”

“Perhaps not,” Wilhum observed, leaning in to add to the outlaw’s trepidation, “but it does make me wonder how he knew we were coming.”

“Scouts must’ve warned him,” Chops whimpered, eyes a-bulge above his scraggly whiskers. “I couldn’t have told him, could I?”

“Captains, please,” Evadine said, resting a hand on Wilhum’s shoulder and mine. “Give this poor man some pause to gather his thoughts.”

If she expected her intervention to calm the villain’s fears, she was quickly disappointed. Like many an Alundian, Chops evidently viewed the Anointed Lady not just as a heretic, but also some manner of arcane-infused witch. Throughout our miserable sojourn across this duchy the sight of Evadine produced a marked reaction wherever we went. Whereas us soldiers

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