The fourth mile house gave the all clear.
And the fifth.
The time they spent huddled over the braziers increased with each mile house, finding it more and more difficult to drive the ice out of their bones. Alymere could no longer feel his hands or feet, and his face felt as though it belonged to someone else, a mask crusted over his own. He was looking forward to a few minutes thawing in front of the brazier.
The sixth mile house was different.
It was dark as they approached. It took him a moment to realise the implications of that.
There was no welcome fire burning in the brazier.
Sir Lowick stamped the snow off his boots as he entered the room. It was cold; an old cold, deep-rooted in the stones. The fire had been dead for some considerable time; days, maybe. It was also empty. There should have been two wardens. There were plenty of signs of habitation: bed rolls, blankets, cooking pots hard-crusted with food, tallow candles burned down to the nub, and more. So the wardens had been here, but they were long gone. That made no sense. They wouldn't abandon their posts. Not willingly. The thought sent a shiver down Alymere's back, independent of any chill.
He rushed over to the fire grate. The wooden logs had burned down to curls of grey-white charcoal, and ash had gathered beneath them. By the looks of things, the fire had been left untended to burn out. Alymere reached into the grate hesitantly to confirm what he already knew: there was no lingering warmth.
Behind him, Lowick grunted. 'This isn't like Markem. He wouldn't just wander off. What are you thinking, lad? Talk to me. What does the room say to you?'
Alymere straightened and stood. He rubbed the last residual traces of charcoal between his fingertips, dusting them white. He looked around the room, at the unwashed pots and at the unmade bedding, and then back at his fingers, trying to think it through. The evidence was all there, waiting for him to interpret it. 'They left in a hurry, this morning or yesterday morning.'
'Good. Talk me through your reasoning?'
'The bedrolls have been slept in. It could just be slovenly housekeeping, but the mile house is small, so it's likely that the wardens would tidy their rolls away for the day when they were done with them.'
Lowick nodded. 'But why have you discounted them being drawn away in the middle of the night?'
'Two reasons. One: the fire. They would have banked it to preserve the wood. There are only a dozen logs left in the woodpile and they wouldn't want to have to go foraging, plus anything they did find would have to be dried out if it was going to burn. And two: the pots.'
'Go on?'
He picked up one of the pots to demonstrate his reasoning, and ran his fingers around the inside of the rim. 'There's a crust of food dried into the pans, meaning they ate but didn't have time to clean them. It's like the bedrolls. They'd clean them after they used them, simply because they'd need them again the next time they were hungry. Not cleaning them is more than just slovenly habits. It's an indication that they were disturbed.'
'Good.'
'There's no food left in their bowls though,' Alymere followed his reasoning through to its logical conclusion, 'so they had time to finish their meal. By the looks of what's left,' he flaked it off with his fingers, 'it's oats, or porridge, so definitely morning.'
'Well done, lad. That kind of keen eye will serve you well, as will your analytical mind. The world talks to us all of the time — all we have to do is listen. What else can you tell me?'
Alymere scanned the small room, looking for some tell-tale sign that he'd missed, some small irrelevancy that was anything but. 'There's no sign of a struggle,' he said eventually, 'so they went willingly.'
'That's the one. Two men, veterans who've been guarding the wall between them for the best part of fifty years willingly abandoned their post in the middle of the storm of the century. What does that tell you?'
He thought about it for a moment. There was only one logical conclusion he could make. 'They knew whoever it was.'
'More than that, they trusted them,' Sir Lowick finished. 'That's the only thing that makes any sense. Last night or the night before someone came here begging for their help. They knew them, and more, they trusted them, because obviously they didn't think twice about helping them.'
'And they didn't return,' Alymere said.
'And they didn't return,' the knight echoed.
Six
'Where did they go?' Alymere wondered aloud as he stepped back out into the snow storm. The wind swept away his words.
He studied the ground.
Any footprints that might have been there even a few hours ago had been masked by the latest fall of snow. He knelt, hoping to see any slight difference in the lie of the snow as though it might still give away the ghost of footprints long since buried. It was hopeless. There was nothing to indicate anyone other than he and his uncle had come or gone from the mile house. He rose again. The chill he felt this time had very little to do with the elements. It was as though the two wardens had simply ceased to be, spirited away by demons under the cover of the snow without a trace.
'We've got to make some assumptions now, lad. Whoever came out here had to have walked, meaning they couldn't have come from far away. The nearest settlement is a good two miles or more due south — '
'But that doesn't make sense, because anyone in trouble there would turn to their neighbours first, and the manor is closer than the mile house, anyway.'
'Exactly. So if not the settlement, where?'
'The next mile house along the wall?'
The knight shook his head. It was a reasonable suggestion, but there were protocols in place for sending messages down the line from mile house to mile house along the wall. Signal fires were much more efficient — he stopped mid-thought and ran around to the side of the mile house, floundering in the snow that had drifted up against the walls. He waded toward the iron brazier. It was still covered. He pried the iron lid up. What he saw confirmed his suspicions. The logs were still banked up. It hadn't been lit. Had there been trouble at the next mile house Markem would have lit the fire to pass the warning down the chain. Markem was a decent soldier; if they were under threat he would have lit that fire. He hadn't. It was as simple as that. So what else could have lured the men away from the mile house?
By the time Alymere joined him at the brazier they had both arrived at the same conclusion: the wardens hadn't been summoned east because they hadn't lit their beacon. Whatever had drawn them away from their post wasn't a threat — at least not to the wall itself. It was something they believed they could handle alone.
'The threat wasn't martial,' Alymere said. He had a quick mind, and was a step further along in his thinking than his uncle. 'In point of fact, I don't think there was a threat at all.'
'Now you've got my attention, lad. Explain it to an old man who's not quite as clever as you. Why would two experienced soldiers desert their post?'
'There's no sign of a struggle inside, and they haven't lit the warning fires outside. The absence of both of which suggests strongly that they were lured out with honey rather than driven out with a stick. Admittedly they could have been dragged off by an army and we wouldn't be able to tell in this snow, but I don't think so. I think they went out to help a traveller in distress. It's the only thing that makes sense. The conditions make travel almost impossible.' He started to run with the idea, extrapolating a story that would explain precisely why the two men had left the mile house untended. 'A woman turns up at the mile house begging for help, because her cart has overturned and her father's trapped beneath, with a broken leg and freezing to death. It has to have overturned because that would explain both men leaving the mile house. It would take both of them to right it. It's an easy enough scenario to imagine.'
The knight nodded thoughtfully. 'Bait the trap with honey,' Lowick agreed. 'But who in their right mind would be on the road in weather like this?'
