Deliver (The Blades of Acktar Book 4)

by Tricia Mingerink

  After squirming a few minutes, she jumped back to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”

  Leith leaned his head against the boulder and listened to the ebb and flow of the night sounds, memorizing the cadence so he’d notice if it changed. Sitting next to the boulder, he had a clear line of sight up the trail, though he and Brandi would be almost invisible in the boulder’s shadow.

  Brandi returned a moment later with both of their saddle blankets. “Let’s sit on these and use your blanket for a back rest.”

  After they made the adjustments, Leith settled back against the boulder. “Standing watch isn’t normally this comfortable.”

  Brandi pulled the blanket up to her chin. “But with two of us, we don’t have to worry about falling asleep.”

  “Not with your chatter.” Leith bumped her with his elbow.

  Her grin flashed in the dark, but it faded after a moment. She plucked at the blanket.

  Leith waited. Whatever Brandi had on her mind, she’d tell him eventually. She couldn’t stand to remain silent for long.

  “Does it ever go away?” She pulled up her knees and hugged them underneath the blanket. “The nightmares? The memories?”

  Leith leaned his head against the boulder, his heart aching in time with his muscles. “It fades somewhat. With time.”

  “But it never goes away completely, does it?”

  If only he had something better to tell her. “Maybe it does, eventually.” He rubbed his right shoulder as if he could feel the rows of scars marching down his arm. “Some are worse than others. Some are just a blur, and others I can still smell the blood and see…”

  “And see them dying in front of you.” Brandi rested her chin on her arms.

  Leith clenched his fists. Bad enough that he had to fight memories of blood and death and the feel of his knife plunging through guts and muscle. But Brandi? She shouldn’t have those kinds of memories. She should be carefree and innocent, as she had been when he’d met her over eight months ago.

  But the war had taken its toll on her, and he couldn’t hope to undo it.

  He wiggled his arm from under the blanket and wrapped it around Brandi’s shoulders. “I know it isn’t easy to deal with. But if you ever need to talk or you can’t sleep with bad dreams, I’m here for you, all right? You can wake me up any time. I don’t mind.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Thanks, Leith.”

  “Of course.” He squeezed her shoulder. The night’s chilled breath brushed his cheek and shivered along his nose.

  She quieted again, and Leith braced himself for whatever else she had to ask. What other ghost of the war still clung to her?

  “When you and Renna get married, where am I going to live? I mean, I know you’re going to be starting your own house, and it’d probably be weird to have Renna’s little sister hanging around and all that and…” She trailed off and stared at the darkness as if trying to see into the future.

  That’s what was bothering her? He cleared his throat, trying to get his brain to function after the when you and Renna get married part. Not that he was opposed to that at all. Just nervous. Scared he wouldn’t be enough. Staggered that both of them were still alive. “You’re our family, Brandi. We aren’t just going to kick you out. Wherever we end up living, I’ll build on your own room—a whole wing if I have to.”

  “Can it be a loft? I’ve always wanted a loft.”

  “A loft it is then.”

  Brandi grinned and pumped her fist. “Yes!”

  “You do know I have no idea how to use a hammer, much less how to build anything. It’s liable to collapse.”

  “Hit your fingers enough times, and you’ll learn quick enough.”

  As he shared a grin with Brandi, he caught sight of her red-blond hair and oval face. He glanced over his shoulder. The eastern sky behind them veined pink and blue.

  “Do you think—”

  Blizzard’s head shot up. His ears pricked, pointing up the trail they’d come down the night before.

  Leith held up his hand. “Sssh.”

  Brandi froze. Leith held his breath.

  A hoof clacked against stone. A distant voice murmured somewhere above them.

  Leith eased the blanket off his legs. Brandi did the same and reached for the short sword buckled at her side. Leith laid a hand on her arm.

  She nodded, gripped her sword, but didn’t draw it. Leith touched the hilts of his knives but also left them in their sheaths.

  Pebbles danced down the path. A horse stomped on the cliff above. Voices rose and fell but didn’t carry well enough for Leith to pick out words.

  Would they notice their tracks? Or would they move on? Leith tensed. If the men started down the path, Leith would get into position and send Brandi to wake the others.

  The hoofbeats continued along the cliff, headed south toward Stetterly.

  As soon as the hoofbeats faded, Leith eased to his feet. “Wake the others. We need to pack our things and move out quietly.”

  With a nod, Brandi slid to her feet, her footsteps grinding on the stone. The bustle of noise increased behind Leith, but he kept his eyes and ears fixed on the cliff. Would the Rovers realize they’d missed their prey and circle back? Once full daylight came, the track down here would be too easy for them to spot.

  Someone tapped Leith’s shoulder. He turned, and Ranson handed him Valor’s reins. Behind the horse, the others each lined up by their horses. Leith met Renna’s gaze. Though her eyes were wide, her mouth was set.

  Leith led the way down the trail. His muscles had stiffened during his watch, but they warmed with his movement. He gritted his teeth and ignored the ache flaring through his leg and chest. He couldn’t slip now. If he fell, he’d cause too much noise and call their pursuers straight to them.

  After a final bend around a tall pine tree, Leith reached the tufts of grass poking through the sandy wash at the bottom of the canyon. When the others gained the bottom, he gave himself a minute to lean against Valor and rest his leg.

  A soft hand touched his arm. “Are you all right?”

  He turned to Renna. Her blue eyes searched his face. Leith touched the pucker between her eyebrows. “I’m healing.”

  “I know.” The pucker didn’t go away.

  He leaned his head against hers. “It’s long and slow, but I’ll heal. Now we need to get moving.”

  She straightened and her jaw tightened. A steel, hard as his knives, flashed in her eyes. She wasn’t the quaking, spooked Renna she’d been when he’d met her. This Renna, while still scared, could handle the danger.

  He motioned Jamie to take the lead. Jamie led his horse past Leith and set out along the cliff side, hugging the cliff face to stay out of sight.

  Leith kept an eye on the cliff overhead but couldn’t spot any sign of pursuit. Would the Rovers give up? Or would they continue to pursue them all the way to Stetterly?

  And if Leith managed to guide them safely to Stetterly, how safe would they be there? From what Leith had heard, Stetterly had few men left to defend the remnants of the town.

  Perhaps Leith was just leading this band of Rovers straight to Renna’s home.

  8

  Martyn pointed Wanderer’s nose northwest, deeper and deeper into the Sheered Rock Hills. Perhaps if they traveled far enough into the Hills, he could lose his past somewhere in the ragged cliffs and towering pines.

  Would he ever be able to go far enough to outrun the guilt? Even now, away from Leith, Renna, and all reminders of what he’d done, Martyn still couldn’t shake the weight of it. He flexed his fingers around the reins, reins that felt too much like the whip handle he’d once lifted to scourge his best friend’s back.

  His own back twinged with remembered pain. He’d given Leith no more pain than Leith had knowingly inflicted on him. Leith might not have held the whip himself, but he’d known the punishment Martyn would suffer the moment he’d taken Brandi from Nalgar Castle.

  Should Martyn have gone with him? H
elped him rescue Renna and joined the Resistance?

  But wasn’t Leith the one who had given up too easily? Given up on Martyn, on friendship, on the Blades, even on King Respen? Leith had tossed it all away without a second glance. Martyn had clung to loyalty. He hadn’t given up.

  Before him, the mountains dipped into a small valley, a lake pooling at one end. Since his horse seemed eager to head in that direction, he loosened the reins and let him pick the trail. When he stopped next to the lake, Martyn slipped from his back and dropped the reins to the ground. “Guess it’s time to take a break.”

  Wanderer blew dust from his nose and extended his neck toward the water. Martyn loosened the saddle’s girth and opened one of the saddlebags. After pulling out a wad of dried meat, his fingers hovered over the Bible Leith had given him.

  Better keep at reading it. If he ever saw Leith again, he should at least be able to say he did that much.

  Bible in one hand, meat in the other, Martyn found a spot against a tree, opened the book across his lap, and gnawed at the dried meat. The book fell open to one of the many little slips of paper marking sections of this book. Had Leith put those in there for his own benefit? Or had he already decided to give this book to Martyn and put them in for him?

  Martyn tried to concentrate. Words. Just the same, insubstantial words he’d read growing up. Nothing to explain why they’d make Leith turn his back on everything he and Martyn had ever known. He slammed the book shut.

  Martyn rested his elbows on his knees. “What’s wrong with me, Wanderer? Why can’t I see what Leith sees? Am I blind? Or is he delusional?”

  Wanderer kept munching on the thick grass bordering the lake. Maybe Martyn was the delusional one. He was talking to his horse, after all.

  “Guess it’s time to move on, fella.” Martyn pushed to his feet. His horse had wandered along the lake in its pursuit of grass. Dragging a hand through his hair, he trudged after the horse. “Wanderer, indeed.”

  As he reached for the reins trailing on the ground, he froze. There in the gravel lay a footprint. It wasn’t a clear print, more an indent in the stone. Martyn padded a few steps further until he found a patch of sand. The footprints were a few days old, the edges crumbled inward and rounded.

  Hoofprints layered with the footprints. Martyn ran his fingers over one, then another. From the shapes and sizes, about five horses. The footprints were too indistinct for him to count the number of people, but all the prints were large enough to be men.

  Five horses for five Blades? Had he stumbled on their trail?

  It could be anyone. These tracks didn’t have to belong to the five banished Blades.

  But any group of five men wandering through this part of the Sheered Rock Hills was bound to be trouble, even if they weren’t the Blades circling back into Acktar. That meant they were Martyn’s problem.

  He led his horse along the tracks. After watering their horses, the men had ridden around the lake and headed west.

  The town of Kilm lay to the west. Lord Norton had been an active supporter of King Respen. Or Surgis lay only a day south of Kilm. Lord Conree had also supported King Respen. Either of those could be a refuge for the five Blades.

  If he was following the banished Blades and not someone else.

  At least it was something. Better than drifting.

  9

  Renna braced herself as they climbed the trail out of the Spires Canyon, retracing the path she and Brandi had taken when they’d left Stetterly Manor all those months ago. Was she ready to see the destruction? Or return to a place that had once been home without Uncle Abel and Aunt Mara?

  As they crested the ridge, four chimneys peeked above the horizon. Renna caught her breath. It was as if nothing had changed. As if she’d crest that ridge and see Stetterly Manor standing whole in the valley below.

  But she couldn’t let herself hope. Stetterly Manor had burned.

  Leith led them across a stretch of prairie, into a small valley, then up another rise.

  Below them, the prairie flattened around what was left of Stetterly Manor. Renna gripped her saddlehorn. The jagged remnants of fire-blackened walls jutted from the prairie. Most of the walls had collapsed when the supporting girders inside burned away, leaving the four chimneys lonely pillars against the sky. Rubble piled in what had once been rooms.

  A swathe of black ground surrounded the manor ruins. On the other side of a small ridge, blackened ground marked what had once been the town. Of all the wooden buildings along the single, dirt street, only charred logs and stone foundations remained. A few people moved among the rubble.

  A horse stopped beside hers, so close their legs brushed. When she held out a hand, he clasped it but remained silent.

  She swallowed and dragged her gaze back to the ruins of Stetterly Manor. “It’s hard, seeing it like this. But perhaps it’s best. It was hard enough to make it feel like home after Mother and Father died. It’d be impossible after losing Uncle Abel and Aunt Mara too.”

  Seeing Stetterly Manor in ashes nailed their deaths home in a way even their grave hadn’t. Renna had pictured Stetterly Manor as she’d left it, Aunt Mara bustling around the kitchen, Uncle Abel at the table with his sermon notes. Even though she’d known they’d died, a small part of her still clung to that fantasy, as if she could somehow return to Stetterly Manor and everything would go back the way it had been.

  But it couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  In many ways, that wasn’t a bad thing. Just different.

  Brandi halted her horse on the other side of Renna. Below her short mop of hair, her face paled. Renna clasped her sister’s hand as well. “We’ll rebuild.”

  “I know.” Brandi lifted her chin.

  Renna turned to Leith and squeezed his hand. “Are you ready for this?”

  It couldn’t be easy for him. Stepping into this new life. Pretending to be less than what he was in a place where reminders of his past haunted the gravestones behind the remains of the manor.

  “Yes.”

  She let herself be convinced and tugged her hands free. With a nudge, she sent her horse down the slope in the lead. She’d left this place as Renna, the daughter too scared to step into her role. Now, she returned as Lady Faythe. She could take charge. She had to.

  At their approach, the people stopped what they were doing. Many reached for makeshift weapons stashed near them. A hammer. A plank of wood. A knife.

  Renna halted her horse in what had once been the center of town beside the well. Long, hollow-eyed faces above forms clad in tattered homespun drifted into a circle around her, Leith, Brandi, Jamie, and Ranson.

  A man stepped forward. Lines trenched across his face underneath a head of brown hair sprinkled with gray. “Lady Faythe.”

  Only his voice remained as Renna remembered. “Sheriff Allen. I’m glad to see you survived. Is your daughter all right?”

  “Yes.” He waved at the crowd gathered around them. “There’s about three hundred of us, counting children, that have returned.”

  “I see.” Renna swept her gaze across the town. At the far side, a few women tended cook fires. Behind them, a few tents flapped in the light breeze. Several ramshackle shelters leaned against wooden supports, closed on three sides but open to the elements on the fourth. It looked like most of the salvageable lumber had been used to build those huts.

  Sheriff Allen stiffened and glared past Renna. She didn’t have to turn around to know he was glaring at Leith. She couldn’t let him speak or take out his hostility on Leith here. No time like the present to start acting like Lady Faythe.

  “Sheriff Allen.” She drew herself up straight and forced herself to wait until he turned his gaze back to her. “I’d like to discuss the state of the town and the efforts for rebuilding. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  He pointed toward the far end of town. “Over there will work.”

  Renna slid from her horse. “Jamie and Brandi, will you please see to the horses? Ranson, you can see abo
ut shelter for tonight. Daniel, if you’d come with us?”

  She strode toward the far end of town and took several deep breaths to ease the knot in her stomach. This was actually going pretty well. She’d done a decent impression of Lady Lorraine’s no-nonsense tone. Hopefully Renna could keep it up.

  Near what had once been the blacksmith’s shop, the anvil buried in a pile of charred boards, Renna halted and turned. Sheriff Allen scuffed to a stop in front of her. As Leith limped up to them, Sheriff Allen crossed his arms and scowled. “What’s he doing here? I heard all the Blades were banished.”

  “Only the ones who ended the war on Respen’s side.” Renna spread her fingers flat along her skirts. She couldn’t back down. If Leith was going to start a new life at Stetterly, Sheriff Allen had to drop his anger. “Leith, and several other Blades, were pardoned for helping the Resistance.”

  Sheriff Allen’s eyes drifted toward Ranson. His jaw tightened. “And you expect us to put up with Blades living here after what we’ve lived through? A Blade killed my wife. He might even be the Blade that did it.”

  Leith rested a hand on Renna’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to prevent it that night. But I’m not the Blade who killed her. First Blade Harrison Vane took his anger out on the town when he couldn’t find Renna and Brandi.”

  Renna clenched her fists. Because she hadn’t died that night, someone else had.

  Stepping away from Leith, she laid a hand on Sheriff Allen’s arm. “Harrison Vane is dead. Shadrach Alistair killed him.”

  Sheriff Allen drew in a long breath. “There is some comfort in that.” His eyes narrowed again. “That still doesn’t take away the fact that this man is a Blade. He should be dancing on the end of a rope, not strutting around here like he owns the place.”

  Renna smoothed her skirts to hide her trembling fingers. Why did her trembling have to come back now? She was stronger than this. “Leith fought and nearly died for the Resistance, and King Keevan granted him a pardon. He has the same rights as any citizen of Acktar. As Lady Faythe, Stetterly is my town. He stays.”