After dinner, while helping Lena clean up, Thrace was placing the washed bowls on a shelf and called out, “I remember this plate.” A smile appeared on her face as she spotted the only ceramic dish in the house. The pale white oval with delicate blue traceries lay carefully tucked in a back corner of the cupboard with all the other treasured family heirlooms. “I remember when I was little, Jessie Caswell and I—” She stopped and the house quieted. Even the children stopped fussing.
Lena stopped cleaning the dishes and put her arms around Thrace, pulling her close. Hadrian noticed lines on the woman’s face he had not seen previously. The two stood before the bucket of dirty water and silently cried together. “You shouldn’t have come back,” Lena whispered. “You should have stayed in that hotel with those people.”
“I can’t leave him.” Hadrian heard Thrace’s small voice muffled by Lena’s shoulder. “He’s all I have left.”
Thrace pulled back and Lena struggled to offer her a smile.
It was dark outside now. From his vantage point at the doorway, Hadrian could not see much of anything—a tiny patch of moonlight scattered here and there. Fireflies blinked, leaving trails of light. The rest was lost in the vast black of the forest.
Russell pulled over a stool to sit across from Royce and Hadrian. Lighting a long clay pipe with a thin sliver of wood, he commented, “So, you two are here to help Theron kill the monster?”
“We’ll do what we can,” Hadrian replied.
Russell puffed hard on his pipe to ensure it lit, and then crushed the burning tip of the wooden sliver into the dirt floor. “Theron is over fifty years old. He knows the sharp end of a pitchfork from the handle, but I don’t ’spect he’s ever held a sword. Now you two look to me like the kind of fellas that have seen a fight up close, and Hadrian here not only has a sword—he’s got three. A man carries three swords, he, like as not, knows how to use ’em. Seems to me a couple fellas like you could do more than just help an old man get himself killed.”
“Russell!” Lena reprimanded him. “They’re our guests. Why don’t you scald them with hot water while you’re at it?”
“I just don’t want to see that damn fool kill himself. If the margrave and his knights didn’t stand a chance, how well will Theron do out there? An old man with that scythe of his. What’s he trying to prove? How brave he is?”
“He’s not trying to prove anything,” Esrahaddon said suddenly, and his voice silenced the room like a plate dropping. “He’s trying to kill himself.”
“What?” Russell asked.
“He’s right,” Hadrian said, “I’ve seen it before. Soldiers—career soldiers—brave men just reach a point where it’s all too much. It can be anything that sets them off—one too many deaths, a friend dying, or even something as trivial as a change in the weather. I knew a man once who led charges in dozens of battles. It wasn’t until a dog he befriended was butchered for food that he gave up. Of course, a fighter like that can’t surrender, can’t just quit. He needs to go out swinging. So they rush in unguarded, picking a battle they can’t win.”
“Then I needn’t have wasted your time,” Thrace said. “If my father doesn’t want to live, whatever is in the tower can’t save him.”
Hadrian regretted speaking and added, “Every day your father is alive, there is the chance he can find hope again.”
“Your father will be fine, Thrace,” Lena told her. “That man is tough as granite. You’ll see.”
“Mom,” one of the kids from the loft called.
Lena ignored the child. “You shouldn’t listen to these people talking about your father that way. They don’t know him.”
“Mom.”
“Honestly, telling a poor girl something like that right after she’s lost her family.”
“Mom!”
“What on earth is it, Tad?” Lena nearly screamed at the child.
“The sheep. Look at the sheep.”
Everyone noticed it then. Crowded into the corner of the room, the sheep had been quiet through the meal. A content woolly pile that Hadrian had forgotten was there. Now they pushed each other, struggling against the wooden board Russell had put up. The little bell around Mammy’s neck rang as the goat shifted uneasily. One of the pigs bolted for the door and Thrace and Lena tackled it just in time.
“Kids. Get down here!” Lena shouted in a whisper.
The three children descended the ladder with precision movements, veterans of many drills. Their mother gathered them near her in the center of the house. Russell got off his stool and doused the fire with the wash water.
Darkness enveloped them. No one spoke. Outside, the crickets stopped chirping. The frogs fell silent an instant later. The animals continued to shift and stomp. Another pig bolted. Hadrian heard its little feet skitter across the dirt floor in the direction of the door. Beside him he felt Royce move; then there was silence.
“Here, someone take this,” Royce whispered. Tad crawled toward the sound and took the pig from him.
They waited.
The sound began faint and hollow. A puffing, thought Hadrian, like bellows stoking a furnace. It grew nearer, louder, less airy—deep and powerful. The sound rose overhead and Hadrian instinctively looked up, but found only the darkness of the ceiling. His hands moved to the pommels of his swords.