“This fool,” Petir shouted, “claims to have bedded my wife! He tries to sabotage my reputation, shame my family name, and spread filthy lies about my wife.”
The speech shut most of the crowd up. Both kings were shocked, not knowing what to make of what they had just heard. Ciana sunk her face into her hands, while Jodie’s eyes glazed over, her lips trembling.
Onlookers muttered to themselves. Some booed, some shouted.
Jodie could only close her eyes, realising that Wesley had told Petir the truth, despite her husband not seeming to believe it. Jodie’s face went red, as if every eye in the tourney ground was on her.
Petir pointed at his opponent, still struggling to rise from the dirt. “This is what happens to anyone who tries to harm me or my family. Let it be remembered!”
The Seynards were gobsmacked. King Emery was completely humiliated by his son’s attempts at slandering them.
But the crowd seemed to relish the theatrics. They chanted and clapped, eager for more heart-pumping action. They found humour in their disgrace.
Petir waved his sword around, circling his defeated opponent like a wolf would a bleeding hare.
“I am Petir Blacktree. My House is strong, and my name will always be remembered.”
King Emery rubbed his forehead in frustration at his son’s boasting, praying for the moment to end.
Petir continued. “I am Petir Blacktree, and I will always win!”
Wesley gritted his teeth, almost at boiling point.
Petir raised his sword-wielding hand in the air once more to soak in as much glory as he could. His dirty armour seemed to glisten in the afternoon sunlight. He savoured his victory with a smirk across his dusty face.
“I will always win!”
A woosh through the air came from Petir’s right.
A steel sword came swinging out of nowhere. There was a slice, a thud, and a splash of crimson blood, spilling and soaking into the dry, dusty sand.
The crowd went deafeningly silent.
Petir stood frozen for a moment, confused, perplexed.
He lowered his outstretched arm. His pauldron was bloody, and he felt a sudden, overwhelming ache that grew worse by the second. His face became drenched in sweat, his eyes went wide, and the shouting started at the unbearable, dull, malicious pain emanating from just below his shoulder.
Petir only mumbled. He staggered forward, like his body had a mind of its own. He looked to the crowd for answers, but they were in shock.
Jodie cried out from the stands.
King Emery ran for the arena in a panic.
“What? What is it?” Petir mumbled, half-screaming, half-speaking.
He stumbled over something beneath him in the sand. It was an arm. His arm.
Severed beneath the shoulder, thick blood pooling around it.
Petir’s wide eyes looked back to his shoulder as his face grew pale, unable to comprehend.
His arm was gone, cut just between the gap in his armour. Arterial blood squirted from the fleshy stump and the white of his snapped bone stuck out like jagged glass.
The pain intensified like a raging inferno as Petir screamed out in horror once again. He fell to his knees and emptied his stomach.
Behind where Petir stood was Wesley, his hands blood-spattered and shaking. Gripped tightly between his fingers was the sword he had used to sever Petir’s arm.
Wesley’s face was completely expressionless as he looked down at what he had just done.
He released his grip from the sword. It crashed into the bloodied dust.
Chapter 19 - Winterglade
The air was painfully frigid from the coastal winds blowing across the land. A cloud of mist exited Tomas’s mouth with each breath he took. Winterglade had been buried under a blanket of white snow as Tomas, Rilan and Landry rode into town, together with their company of soldiers. Gharland was in the lead with his close cohorts, as usual. Ref and Styna stuck to the back, far away from the boys.
Despite Landry’s threat against them, Tomas was filled with inexplicable fear, knowing now what sort of beasts they were. They truly were dangerous men.
Rilan had barely muttered a word since that night in Gleamrot. He kept his head tucked beneath the hood of his cloak most of the time, his eyes pointed down, arms folded across his chest with the reins gripped tightly like a lover in his hands.
Tomas could feel Ref and Styna’s piercing eyes digging deep into the back of his head. He dared not turn around, though.
Winterglade was larger than most other villages and hamlets in the kingdom. The timber dwellings and stone-brick buildings sat in neat rows with mud tracks running between them. Hundreds of rooftop chimneys sent smoke into the sky.
On the outskirts of town sat dozens of granaries, farms, and livestock pens, as well as areas of temporary shanty towns filled to the brim with refugees.
“Refugees, fleeing the war,” Landry whispered to Tomas as they rode through the morning crowds.
Many of the refugees, despite the cold, had little to wear. Some barely had tatters of cloth hanging from their thin bodies. Their eyes were hollow from exhaustion, sunken into their face.
Tomas knew the expression on their face. Hopelessness.
“They’ve probably lost their homes, their livelihoods,” Tomas realised.
The refugees had fled the invasion across the kingdom, leaving everything they once were behind. Winterglade was one of the larger settlements in the area and a good distance from the coast; it was as good a place to go as any Tomas could think of.
Tomas pitied them as they rode past, but there was little he could do for them. He wanted to help, to offer his warm clothing, gift some bread.
Tomas knew he could not, and that was the hardest thing about seeing them.
But they had a job to do as well.
Most of the folk living in Winterglade were rugged up in thick hide coats, leather gloves, cloaks,
