Rythe Falls Read Free Page B

again.
                  Reih took three silver coins for the horses. She might have sold short, but blustering for more would've stood out - as would rolling over and taking less. So she haggled a little, but only to show willing. She was happy enough with three silver.
                  Maybe Iron Hill had soldiers, once. But like so many other places they'd passed along the road, the fort atop the hill looking down on the settlement was bereft of soldiers. Once, she knew, the Protectorate's armsmen would have patrolled these dirt streets. Maybe taken people in the night, maybe a killing here or there...to keep people in line.
                  But no more.
                  The Protectorate were busy. An idiot could see it. They'd gone...gone from the land. Tidy, clean, leaving little but lingering nightmares in the night.
                  Like their fort, empty, presiding over Iron Hill. Occasionally, Reih would see a settler glance up at the wooden palisade, at the tower. Wondering, perhaps, if it was some cruel joke. If the Protectorate would just come back on some moonless night and wipe them out on a whim.
                  Fear lives on, even when the evil has passed. It echoes.
                  Reih understood those looked. She had her own fears. Her own echoes.
                  But the looks the settlers gave that dark fort were mirrored across the land. All the way from the capital she'd fled, right down to here, in the southern reaches of her land...the Protectorate were gone.
                  Utterly gone. 
                  Arram must be busting at the seams by now, thought Reih.
                  Reih nodded to Perr, and the travellers ducked into a wide, low, wooden store. Once again, Reih doing the talking, they bought fresh supplies for the journey. Reih had never travelled a swamp, didn't know what they'd need. A guide, most likely, but they couldn't risk interaction. People talk. They were prone to it. They couldn't help it.
                  Like the storekeeper. A garrulous man who she could have asked for help, for a guide, had she wanted the entire town, and the next few down the road, to know her business.
                  Fewer the better, though. Just the two of them, they couldn't be betrayed, could they?
                  All through the dirt streets, in each store they tried, there was little in the way of supplies. There was a small market, barely three travelling merchants and a couple of farmers selling from the backs of carts. Ready to head off, back to farms, neighbouring villages and hamlets, homesteads.
                  Everyone was hot and dusted and tired and miserable and thirsty and poor.
                  It's as though...the place is winding down.
                  No, she thought, a moment later. Not that. Like the whole country was winding down. Had the feel of the woods outside her capital before a heavy rain. Things fell still. The wind, the birds and the beasts and the insects, too.
                  Felt like that to her. Not just Iron Hill...but everywhere.
     
    *
     

Chapter Three
     
    Reih didn't look back. They left Iron Hill, dead fort and dying town both, in the dust at their back. The suns were still high when they rode on south.
                  When they rode, it was with plenty of food, water, weapons, and more coin probably, than the entire village.
                  No one remarked on Perr's armour. He would have said nothing, Reih imagined, just glowered them down through his slit-visor. A few people looked at Reih's face, thought they sharply looked away. They didn't remark on her countenance, either, she noted.
                  Didn't matter to her. She'd been fine enough to look at, once, she imagined.
                  Did it matter