besmirched wall to a place near the back of the courtyard, Malden saw why they’d come, and his stomach fell.
Six square towers stood along the back wall of the hill, each of them windowless and very tall, with a single thick door at the bottom. Each once possessed a steep conical lead-lined roof to keep snow and rain off, but the roofs had all melted in the fire.
“Not the granaries,” Malden moaned.
“Aye, yer lordship. Ever last one of ’em.” Velmont squatted on the battlements and then leapt over to the top of the nearest tower. Malden followed him down through the ruined top of the granary and they clambered down through scorched support beams to the level of the grain inside.
An entire harvest’s worth of wheat had gone into these towers before the barbarians came to Skrae. A winter’s worth of flour, once it was ground and sifted. Winter was always a lean time in Ness, a time of hunger when many of the poor died for lack of bread. The Burgrave kept these granaries full so that when the coldest months came, he would have something to distribute to his people, if only to keep them from rioting while he dined on succulent venison and rare sweetmeats in his palace.
This year there would be nothing to hand out. Malden knelt in the grain and picked up handfuls of it to study in the dim light. What wasn’t burnt outright was soaked through by exposure to the elements.
He dropped his hands and let the roasted grain fall from his fingers. It smelled wonderful, frankly. Its smell made his mouth water. In one way the fire had probably done them a favor. Malden had spoken with enough bakers and millers since his ascension to learn more than he ever cared to know about the proper storage and processing of wheat products. For instance, he knew that roasted grain was harder to mill into flour, but it didn’t spoil as quickly.
Which was one small saving grace on top of a very serious problem. Roasted grain might be better preserved, but only if it was kept dry. It had rained several times since the fire melted those leaden roofs, and Malden could feel the damp rising off the stored food. Mold was probably already spreading through the towers, and rats wouldn’t be far behind. He could repair the lead roofs of the granaries, but the damage was already done.
Malden had lived through enough famines in his brief life to understand that what he saw here, what Velmont had shown to him, could easily be the end of his career in politics.
He tried to think of what they could do. “We’ll need a small army up here to move the grain to better bins,” he said. “We’ll salvage what we can.”
“Won’t be near enough,” Velmont pointed out.
“You have a better idea?”
The Helstrovian shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe you and me don’t go home tonight. Maybe we light out for greener hills. Surely there’s a need for high-toned thieves like us in the Northern Kingdoms, or maybe the Old Empire. Bein’ Lord Mayor’s a plum job, certes, but-”
“But once people start starving, it won’t be mine for long.” Malden nodded unhappily. “How I wish I could do what you say. But no-the people of Ness are depending on me. I have to find an answer.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Dead bodies littered the forecourt of Easthull manor. Not a single one of them had been a soldier, but the Baron’s servants and those few peasants he’d kept to work the last of his fields. Croy saw no weapons in their cold hands, no sign they’d put up a struggle at all.
The roof of the manor had fallen in, and the entire south wing was rubble.
He’d come too late.
He’d ridden his horse until it died, and then he had walked. Through mud and fens up to his chest, he’d walked. He’d shed his armor as it became too heavy. Thrown away everything but Ghostcutter. He had not slept, nor eaten, since the berserkers took away his army.
He could barely stand. Yet he walked into the forecourt, sword in hand, just in case Morgain had left behind anyone to watch the place. Anyone to pick off stragglers foolish enough to return.
Inside the house, birds lifted from a sodden floor and dashed past his face. He waved them away. Found the hearth cold. All the food gone.
He would not have eaten, even if he could. Not until he knew for sure.
In the apartments of the Baron he found blood everywhere. The wooden door to the receiving chamber was scarred by axe blows, and the lock had been hacked out of its mounting. He pushed open the door, which squeaked noisily on its hinges. Inside something moved furtively.
Croy crouched low, Ghostcutter held before him. He stepped inside, into shadows. He saw the Baron’s desk. The maps were gone, as were all the reports Easthull had gathered. Whatever the Baron had known about the defense of Skrae was old news now to the barbarians.
A beam of yellow light came through a stained-glass window at the back of the room. It fell on a scrap of cloth stained dark with blood. Croy stepped closer and picked it up. Linen. It was wrapped around a severed finger. Croy guessed the signet ring had been hacked off the Baron’s hand.
Behind him something stirred. He swung around instantly, ready for a fight.
One of the Baron’s hounds came limping toward him. The animal was unkempt and mad with fear. It bared yellow teeth and snarled.
There was fresh blood on its muzzle.
Croy pushed past the dog. It whimpered and snapped at him, but he ignored it and headed back out toward the kennels at the rear of the house. He found the Baron there. Easthull had been butchered and fed to his own pack. The dogs had not finished with the head yet, or Croy would not have been able to identify the nobleman.
He could only imagine what the barbarians had done to the king. Or Bethane, the king’s daughter. Morgain had no love for princesses. Thinking about what Bethane might have gone through before she died, Croy began to weep.
Sharp iron touched the back of his neck.
Croy wheeled about, and Ghostcutter sliced through the wooden haft of a bill hook. The blade clattered to the ground. Croy started into a second stroke, one that would cut his attacker in half.
He barely managed to stop when he saw it was no barbarian who had accosted him, but an old woman in a russet tunic. A peasant. How had she even possessed the strength to lift the polearm?
He supposed that if the need was great enough, the strength could be found.
“Are you the one they call Croy?” the woman asked. She did not seem frightened, even though he had disarmed and almost killed her. “Answer me, lad, or it’ll go hard for ye.”
Croy almost laughed. But then he bowed his head. Sheathed his sword. “I am he.”
The old woman nodded and turned away from him. She started walking, and he followed, because this felt like a dream-or an enchantment-and there were rules about such things. When a guide presented itself, you had to follow. All the stories agreed.
Stories. Malden used to laugh at the old stories of gallant knights and noble crusades. The stories that had nourished Croy in his infancy, as surely as his nurse’s milk. He had always believed the stories held a deeper truth, a layer of reality beyond the gray banalities of the mundane world. He had always thought a man with a pure heart and a good cause really could prevail, no matter the odds.
Yet here he was. Doubly masterless, a knight errant without so much as an old story to lead him onward any longer.
Perhaps… perhaps the Lady would let him see Cythera again now. Perhaps he would see his beloved again before he died at the end of a barbarian’s blade.
The old woman led him into a copse of trees not quite deep enough to be called a forest. A wood lot, really, a place for the Baron’s men to collect firewood. Deep in the shadows of the naked branches lay a cottage, a sawyer’s hut. Croy had never seen such a crude dwelling. Its roof was moldering thatch, its walls made of wooden withes smeared with horse hair and dung to keep the wind out. It had no windows and its door was a simple plank that the old woman lifted free of its frame. She couldn’t even afford hinges.
Inside was a room that smelled of old fires and rotten vegetables. There was a fireplace Croy could not call a hearth. Most of the room was so thick with shadows he could see nothing. The old woman stepped inside and
