The Front

The southern border was a line on a map that meant nothing to the men who lived and died along it. The terrain was flat and dry and the trees were low and scrubby and provided no cover. The Darrow forces raided across the border in small groups. Fast. Violent. Gone before the garrison could respond. The strategy was not to take ground. It was to bleed. To attrit. To make the cost of holding the line higher than the crown was willing to pay.

Aldric arrived at the garrison at Verdin and reported to the commander. A man named Ser Geoffrey. Old. Tired. Grey. The kind of officer who had been passed over for promotion so many times that he had stopped caring and the not caring had made him competent. He had no politics. No ambition. He just held the line.

"Another body," Geoffrey said when he saw Aldric's orders. "From the household. Must have done something wrong."

"I was reassigned by royal order."

"That is what I said. Another body. Put your gear in the third tent. You are on the eastern watch. Dawn shift."

The garrison was three hundred men. The eastern watch was forty. They were spread thin across a mile of border that had no natural barriers and no strategic value. The only thing worth defending was the road that ran north to the capital and the Darrow raided the road constantly.

Aldric settled into the rhythm of the front. Dawn watch. Drill. Patrol. Afternoon watch. Drill. Patrol. Night watch if it was his rotation. Sleep when he could. Eat when he could. The days were long and hot and the nights were cold and the work was simple and the simplicity was a relief after the palace.

But the simplicity was also a cage. A different cage from Elara's. This one was made of duty and routine and the endless flat horizon and the absence of her. He thought about her constantly. In the morning when he dressed. On watch when the horizon was empty. At night when he lay in his tent and pressed his fingers to the scars on his chest and felt them there. Five lines. Her map. The only proof that what existed between them was real and not something he had imagined in a dark room.

He did not receive letters. She did not write. Or she wrote and they were intercepted. He did not know which and not knowing was its own kind of torture. He sent no letters because he had nothing to say that could survive being read by other eyes and so he said nothing and she said nothing and the silence between them was a country with no roads.

Three weeks passed. The Darrow came twice. Small raids. Fast. Aldric fought in the second one. A group of twenty Darrow riders hit the eastern watch at dawn and Aldric and ten men held a farmhouse that guarded the road. The fighting was close and ugly and familiar. Sword work. The kind of violence his body knew without thinking. He killed two men. Twenty five now. Two more stones in the river.

The raid was repelled. The garrison lost four men. Aldric took a cut across his arm that was shallow but bled freely. The garrison surgeon cleaned it and wrapped it and Aldric went back to duty.

In the fourth week a courier arrived from the capital. Official dispatches for the commander. Geoffrey read them and his face changed and he called Aldric to his tent.

"News from the capital," Geoffrey said. He did not sit behind his desk. He stood by the tent flap and he looked at Aldric with an expression that was uncomfortable. The expression of a man delivering news he does not want to deliver.

"What news."

"The princess Elara Aldermere has been arrested on the orders of King Aldous. The charge is conspiracy against the crown. She has been confined to the palace."

Aldric stood very still. The tent was warm and close and the air was thick and he could not breathe.

"Confined where," he said.

"The east wing. Under guard. No visitors. No correspondence." Geoffrey paused. "There is more."

"Tell me."

"The King has dissolved her household. Her servants have been dismissed. Her knight is to remain at his post until further notice."

Remain at his post. The King had known this was coming. He had sent Aldric to the front before moving against Elara. He had removed the only person who might have interfered. The only person who would have fought.

"Ser Aldric," Geoffrey said. "Your orders are to stay."

"My orders."

"From the King. Direct. You are to remain at the garrison at Verdin until released. You are not to return to the capital. You are not to communicate with the princess or her associates. If you attempt to leave you will be arrested."

Aldric looked at the old commander and the old commander looked back and there was sympathy in his face but there was also the chain of command and the chain of command was stronger than sympathy.

"I understand," Aldric said.

"Go. Get some rest."

He went to his tent. He sat on his bedroll and he pressed his hands to his face and the scars on his chest throbbed under his shirt and the cut on his arm ached and somewhere in the capital Elara was confined in the east wing of the palace and he was three hundred miles away and there was nothing he could do.

Nothing.

The word sat in him like a stone. He had never been nothing. He had always been something. A sword. A shield. A body that stood between her and harm. That was what he was. That was his purpose. And the King had taken that purpose from him and left him with nothing and the nothing was worse than any wound she had ever given him.

He pressed his fingers to the scars. One by one. Five lines. He traced each one and he thought about her face when she had made them. The hunger. The need. The pleasure. The sounds she had made. The way she had pressed against him. The way she had said his name in her sleep.

He thought about what the King might be doing to her. The east wing. Under guard. No visitors. The King who had been disgusted by what she had done to Aldric. The King who had called her sick. What would a man like that do to a woman he believed was sick. What would he do to a sister he believed was a monster.

The images came and he could not stop them. Her in a cell. Her alone. Her without her walls and her masks and her knives. Her without him. The one person who would have stood outside her door and let the world come and would not have moved.

He sat in his tent and the images came and he could not stop them and he could not leave and he could not help and the scars on his chest burned like brands and the oath he had sworn sat on him like a mountain and the mountain was crushing him and he could not breathe under it.

He sat in the dark for a long time. Then he stood. He put on his armor. He took his sword. He walked out of his tent and across the garrison and toward the horse lines.

Briwer was old and tired and he had said you are coming back. Thorne had said if you fail her I will not need to kill you. Elara had said come back.

And Renard had said she says your name in her sleep.

He saddled his horse. No one stopped him. It was the middle of the night and the garrison was quiet and the sentries were watching the border not the horse lines. He mounted and he rode north and he did not look back and the dark horizon stretched ahead of him and somewhere beyond it she was waiting.

He did not have a plan. He did not have a strategy. He had a sword and an oath and five scars on his chest and the memory of her name in his mouth and her name in her sleep and that was all he had and it was enough.

It had to be enough.

He rode north and the night was cold and the road was dark and the capital was three hundred miles away and every mile was a year and every year was a scar and he rode through all of them.