Chapter 5: The Armory

The Bog Warden came to Ravenmoor on the third morning with sixty men and a wagon of empty sacks.

He stopped in front of the gate and looked up at the wall.

"The keep has a new master," he called. "I hear he's a boy with a hound."

Wes stood on the gatehouse with the seal around his neck and Gravel at his heel.

The Warden was a huge man in a coat of black reed-mail, with a scarred face and a mace across his shoulders.

"I will take the keep and the seal by midday," he said.

"Then you'll feed the garrison too," Wes said.

The Warden laughed.

"Boy, I'll burn the garrison. The keep belongs to whoever holds it at the end of the nine days, and I don't intend to wait."

Brigid spoke quietly at Wes's shoulder.

"Single combat is the old law. Name your champion, and the loser's men go home."

"You want me to fight him?"

"I want you to say it before the soldiers do."

Wes looked down the wall at the faces.

Every one of them was looking back at him, and every one was afraid.

He had not been afraid for himself in a long time. He had been afraid of an invoice.

"I'll fight him," he said. "In the square. Now."

The Warden's men formed a ring in the keep square with the soldiers on the other side.

The Warden stepped into the middle with his mace.

Wes walked in with a glaive on his back, a man in a leather coat.

"Where's the lady?" the Warden asked. "I'd heard the lady was the one to beat."

"She'll be along."

The first swing took the Warden's mace across the square, and Wes barely got under it.

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