They Gave the Doomed Duke the Wrong Bride novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: On the Ice

We ran up the crag path in the snow.

The sentry was already ringing the bell.

By the time we reached the yard, half of Frostmere was in it with torches, and the commander was on the wall with his one arm braced on the stone.

"How many?" Everard said, taking the steps two at a time.

The commander looked at him sharply. At a driver giving orders.

"Two hundred," he said. "Maybe more. The same clans that took the Pass. They winter on the far shore and come over the ice when it's thick enough to hold horses."

"When did they last come?"

"Last year. They burned the old village. That's why it's dead." His jaw worked. "We had sixty men then. We've forty now, and half are greybeards."

Everard looked out across the lake.

The fires were moving. Not toward us yet. Gathering.

"Dawn," he said. "They'll come at dawn, with the light behind them. What have you got?"

"Forty men. Twenty swords. One crossbow that doesn't work."

Everard turned and looked at me.

"Bryony," he said.

That was all.

I went down into the armory under the gatehouse. It had a good oak door and nothing behind it but rust.

I shut the door with the key in my fist and thought of the Draycott armory, every last bolt of it.

When I opened it, the commander was standing behind me with a torch.

The torchlight fell on racks of crossbows. Spears. Mail shirts. Shields painted with a black tower.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

"That's the Draycott tower," he said finally.

"I know."

"I carried that shield. Twenty years ago. Under the old Duke."

He looked at me, and then up the stairs toward the yard, where my driver was giving orders to his men.

"Who is he?" he said quietly.

"Ask him yourself," I said. "After."

Everard didn't sleep.

He walked the wall all night. He put the garrison on the gate and the broken stretch of the curtain wall. He put the widows' sons, boys of fifteen and sixteen with spears, behind the garrison.

He put the women with crossbows on the walls, under the cook.

"Again?" the cook said, picking one up.

"You were very good last time," he said.

"I was, wasn't I."

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