Chapter 238: Under the authority of the Crown (1) [BONUS]

"They’re not moving, my lord," Captain Hale said.

Sir Aldous watched the crowd from his saddle. "Then give them a reason to. People tend to reconsider when a line of horses is coming toward them."

The knights began lowering their lances. They did it slowly, one after another, until the entire front rank stood with their weapons pointed at the people blocking the road.

Tobin watched the line of steel take shape.

The crowd remained where it was.

He had expected them to step aside. In Merrowford, people always moved when the Order of the Silver Crane rode through the market. Shopkeepers pulled their carts out of the way, children were dragged back by their parents, and anyone foolish enough to remain in the street quickly learned to regret it.

That was what the lances were for. People saw them and understood what would happen if they refused to move.

But these people seemed to have no such concerns.

They looked at the armed knights without shouting or making threats. Some watched the lowered weapons, while others barely seemed to notice them. Their faces held no particular challenge, only the tired patience of people who had already endured more than they cared to remember.

For some reason, that unsettled Tobin more than anger would have.

He remembered the words of the dusty rider at Merrowford once again.

’look at the men’

He looked at the people in front of him.

Properly.

An old woman stood at the very front of the crowd. She had no shoes, and strips of old sacking were wrapped around her feet to protect them from the road. Beside her stood a soldier who had lost his left hand. The stump was covered with a piece of cloth that had been washed so many times it had turned grey.

A girl of perhaps thirteen held a ledger tightly against her chest. Ink stained her fingers, and despite the crowd pressing around her, she stood with her back straight and her chin raised.

A large man stood a little farther behind her. His left arm was wrapped in a sling, and the skin visible above it was badly burned. A greatsword rested across his back. The people around him had left a small space, not because he had asked them to, but because they seemed to know better than to crowd him.

Then Tobin noticed a boy standing near the middle of the road.

He looked only a year or two younger than Tobin himself. He held an unlit lamp made of blue glass against his chest, gripping it carefully with both hands. A faint white-gold light flickered around his knuckles, disappearing and returning as though it were responding to something Tobin could not see.

Tobin looked from one face to another.

Some of these people were wounded. Others looked as though they had not slept properly in weeks. Their clothes were patched, their armour mismatched, and many carried the marks of a long and difficult journey.

Yet none of them appeared afraid of the knights.

At first, Tobin could not understand it.

Then he remembered what the rumors had said about the Wall.

These people had stood on its battlements while forty thousand Roamers emerged from the forest. They had fought to hold the northern frontier, knowing that if the Wall fell, there would be nothing between the enemy and the lands beyond it.

They had crossed a bridge while the sky burned above them. They had watched their comrades die and left thousands of their own behind.

Two hundred and ninety knights in polished armour might have frightened the people of Merrowford.

To these people, they were probably just another problem to deal with.

"Advance," Captain Hale ordered. "At a walk. Keep your formation."

The front rank urged their horses forward.

The animals took a single step.

The crowd did not move.

The horses stopped again, their ears twitching and their hooves shifting against the muddy road. The knights held their lances steady, but nobody gave the order to advance a second time.

For a few moments, the two sides simply stared at each other.

Then a new sound rose from the right.

? ? ?

It began with the steady beat of hooves against the hillside.

Tobin turned toward the sound and saw riders approaching along the slope above the road. They came in a long, orderly formation, their horses moving at an even pace. Beneath the hoofbeats came the familiar clinking of chainmail and armour, the sound of hundreds of soldiers travelling together.

They were not trying to hide their arrival.

A large banner rose above them, its white griffin crowned in gold, wings spread and claws extended.

Tobin recognised it immediately from his military lessons.

The Third Legion of House Gannon.

They rode down the slope until they reached a position above the Order of the Silver Crane. Their commander was a broad-shouldered knight with a thick grey beard and a stern face that seemed permanently set against the world.

The riders stopped.

Not a single lance was lowered. No swords were drawn. They simply took their positions on the hillside, looking down at Sir Aldous and his men.

Another company appeared from the opposite direction.

There were perhaps four hundred of them, dressed in blue, with a banner showing a griffin in flight. The design was picked out in enamel, catching what little light filtered through the clouds.

A woman with a long, dark braid rode at their head.

She did not spare the Order a glance. Instead, her eyes moved across the crowd below, pausing first on the girl holding the ledger and then on the boy with the blue-glass lamp.

She seemed to be checking that they were both there.

Sir Aldous had gone completely still.

Tobin glanced at him, wondering whether the commander had recognised the banners. He certainly seemed to understand that the situation had changed, though he made no attempt to show it.

Then something else happened.

The crowd began to part.

There was no order, no shouting, and no sudden movement. The people simply stepped aside, opening a narrow path through the middle of the road.

A woman walked through the gap.

She was tall and lean, dressed in a plain black coat marked by old, dark stains. Her clothes were practical rather than elegant, and a sword hung at her hip. She carried no shield, and she made no effort to reach for her weapon as she approached the knights.

She walked until she stood directly in front of Sir Aldous’s horse.

Then she stopped and looked up at him.

She said nothing.

Sir Aldous’s horse took a step backward.

Tobin felt a strange pressure in the air. It was not the chill of the morning, nor the discomfort of standing in the rain for too long. It felt as though the space around the woman had become heavier, pressing against everyone nearby.

The sensation was faint, but Tobin could not ignore it. It reminded him of the moment before a blade touched skin, when the body recognised the danger before the mind had time to understand it.

The woman continued to stare at Sir Aldous.

The commander did not speak.

Before anyone could break the silence, a creaking sound came from farther up the ridge road.

A cart was making its way down the slope.

Two soldiers pushed it carefully along the uneven ground. It was an ordinary wooden cart, the kind used for carrying grain or supplies, but someone had piled several sacks into the back to make a makeshift seat.

An old man sat among them, wrapped in three thick blankets. He was so small that the blankets seemed to swallow him entirely. A walking stick lay across his knees, and his thin hands rested on top of it.

He looked at the knights with the expression of a man who had been inconvenienced by their existence for far too long.

When the cart reached the road, he leaned forward slightly.

"Fenwright? Is that you?"

? ? ?