Knight's Shadow Read Free

a fight, don’t you think?’
    I would have killed both of them, were it not for the fact that I was fairly sure someone else was about to do it for me.

Chapter Two
     
    The Nightmist
     
    I stumbled out of the cottage, barely able to keep a grip on my swords. The sunlight irritated my eyes and turned the row of mud-brick cottages into a red-brown haze the colour of dried blood.
    ‘What’s going on, Falcio?’ Kest asked.
    ‘The children,’ I said, almost coherently.
    ‘They’re not here, didn’t you hear?’ Brasti said.
    ‘That’s the point – the villagers left their children in the mountain. Why would they do that unless they knew something was coming? We’re about to get hit.’
    I stepped on a small rock and lost my balance, but Kest’s hand on my shoulder kept me from falling over. ‘You should go back inside, Falcio, let Brasti and m—’
    To my left a villager was puttering about in one of the small front gardens. ‘Where’s the Tailor?’ I asked. My mouth was still largely numb from the paralysis and I probably sounded like something between a simpleton and a madman.
    The man looked confused and frightened until Kest translated, ‘He’s asking you where the Tailor is.’
    The villager rose and pointed to another cottage about fifty yards away, his hand trembling just a bit. ‘She’s in there. Been there the last day and night with the girl and a couple of them other Greatcoats.’
    ‘Get your folk,’ I said. ‘Get them out of here.’
    ‘You all should have left by now,’ he said, his voice a mixture of indignation and anxiety that would have struck me as odd had I had the time to consider it. ‘Ain’t good for us to be seen sheltering Greatcoats.’
    ‘Where are your children?’ I asked.
    ‘Safe,’ he said.
    I pushed the man out of the way and started running towards the house. I managed about three steps before I fell flat on my face. Kest and Brasti knelt down to help me, but I screamed, ‘Bloody hells, leave me and get to Aline!’
    They took me literally, dropping me to the ground and pounding along the path to the other house. As I pushed myself back up to my feet I looked around again, expecting to find enemies on all sides, but all I saw were the same villagers I’d seen before, and here and there, some of the Tailor’s Greatcoats. Could there be enemies hiding amongst them? Most of the men were doing no more than tending to their gardens, as they’d done every time they returned from the mountains.
    I hobbled awkwardly after Kest and Brasti and arrived just in time to see the Tailor storm out of the cottage, her steel-grey hair flying in the wind and her craggy features displaying her foul temper. She looked nothing like the mother of a King – I suppose that’s how she’d kept it secret for so long, even after Paelis had died. ‘What in the name of Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers are you about, Falcio? We’re trying to make battle plans here.’
    I felt a momentary annoyance that she had chosen to exclude us from her strategy sessions, but set that aside, for now at least. ‘The children,’ I panted, ‘the villagers didn’t bring their children . . .’
    ‘So? Perhaps they got tired of Brasti teaching them to swear.’
    ‘Your scouts,’ I said, pointing to two Greatcoats who stood nearby. ‘You told me they couldn’t find any of Trin’s forces anywhere for fifty miles.’
    The Tailor gave a nasty grin. ‘That little bitch may fancy herself a wolf, but she knows better than to attack us here. We’ve bitten her heels at every encounter. They’ll not try to engage us again unless they want to see more of their men litter the ground.’
    ‘Saints! Don’t you get it? That’s the point: it’s something else. The villagers have betrayed us!’
    The Tailor’s expression soured. ‘Watch yer tongue, boy. I’ve known the people of Phan for more than twenty years. They’re on our side.’
    ‘And in all those years have you ever known them to leave their