“Elara!”
“They are soldiers, Preceptor. They are used to sleeping on the ground. Now then, I have two stacks of paperwork to go through. Why don’t you go and punch that heavy bag some more? Take the edge off.”
That was it. He needed to take his people and go. “I’m done,” he told her.
“Excellent. Please go. And while you are out there venting your rage, if you’re so interested in what the bulldozer team is doing, why don’t you ask them yourself and stop wasting my time?”
Hugh walked off. A haze of fury floated around him. He walked into the bailey. The sunlight burned his eyes. He strode to the gate, flicking his fingers at a group of the nearest Iron Dogs. They fell in behind him. He marched outside the walls, turned, and headed north.
It was simple. He would remove the bulldozer crew, confiscate the bulldozers, and put his own people on them.
The heavy machinery sat unmoving on the north side of the hill. The crew, a woman and three men including Jay Lewis, the foreman, sat on the grassy slope, drinking from thermoses and eating sandwiches. At Hugh’s approach Lewis scrambled to his feet. He was about fifty, a shade under six feet tall, with a ruddy face that came from having northern European genes and spending too much time outdoors in the hot sun.
Hugh nodded, and the Iron Dogs formed a line between the crew and the four bulldozers. He fixed Lewis with his stare.
The foreman swallowed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Um, the thing is, sir, I’m not supposed to tell you.”
Hugh sank menace into his words. “Are you afraid of me, Lewis?”
The foreman nodded several times.
“Do you see my wife anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s right. She isn’t here, but I am. Do we understand each other?”
Lewis nodded again.
“Tell me why you’re here.”
Lewis opened his mouth, hesitated, and gave up. “The septic.”
“Explain.”
“We’ve doubled the personnel for the castle and the septic was never meant to handle that much volume. We had a bit of a problem, but it’s all fixed now, you see?” Lewis waved his hand at a patch of freshly turned over dirt. “It will be great. You’ll love it.”
The septic did take priority. They didn’t want to drown in sewage. She could’ve told him that. But no, the harpy took a chance to stab. He would remember that.
“Finish your lunch,” he told Lewis. “Once you’re done, I expect you back in the moat.”
“Yes, sir.”
A walk back to the gates took another five minutes. The Iron Dogs trailing him walked in silence.
Hugh walked through the gates and halted. The sea of tents had collapsed. The Iron Dogs crowded by the doors of the left wing. His gaze snagged on the pale spot of blue in the mass of black. Elara waved at him. She was holding giant scissors.
There was a blue ribbon strung across the doors of the left wing. It had a giant bow on it.
He’d been had.
“Will you do the honors, Preceptor?” Elara held the scissors out to him.
He would kill that woman.
He marched over, took the scissors from her, and cut the ribbon. The door swung open under the pressure of his hand revealing a front hall with a desk to the side. To the left and right, hallways shot out, their walls peppered with doors. In the middle of each hallway signs marked the stairways. In front of him double doors stood open, showing rows and rows of tables. She’d made them a mess hall.
“Since you’re here for the long haul,” Elara said behind him, “we felt dormitory style would be better than a single room with cots. There are twenty-eight dormitory rooms on the second floor, each containing four beds. There are two large communal bathrooms on each end of the second floor. On the first floor, you have ten more four-bed rooms downstairs and four pairs of single bed suits for officers. Each pair of suits shares a bathroom. You also have two large rooms to be used as you see fit.”
Above the mess hall doors, a black wrought iron crest hung, shaped like the head of a snarling dog.
The Iron Dogs streamed into the barracks.
Hugh stood still and stared at the crest. Elara halted next to him.
He didn’t say anything.
She leaned forward to get a look at his face. A smug smile curved her lips. It touched off something inside him, something new he couldn’t quite grapple with.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“I’m picturing cutting your head off with these scissors.”
Elara laughed and walked out of the barracks.
Hugh raised his head from the purchasing agreement for the volcanic ash.
A teenage girl hovered in the doorway of his bedroom. He’d seen her before. Where was it? The stables.
“Let me guess. Bucky’s gotten out again.”
She nodded wordlessly.
“Did you chain the stall the way I told you?”
She nodded again.
“What happened?”
“The chain was on the ground.”
Hugh sighed. “Fine. Wait for me downstairs.”
He put away the paperwork. He’s spent most of yesterday getting everyone into the new barracks, then went back to the moat, and when he’d finally gotten to bed, it was past midnight. He’d woken up early and went straight back to the purchasing agreements. It was close to nine am now. His stomach growled. After he caught that damn horse, he would have to get something to eat.
No matter how hard they tried to restrain Bucky, the stallion took off during the night. If he was corralled, he jumped the fence. If he was locked up in the stables, in the morning, the stall would be open, and Bucky would be gone. He always went to the same place.
Hugh made it downstairs. The teenage girl had fetched a length of rope from the stables and was waiting by the wall.
“Let’s go,” he told her.
They walked out of the gates and curved to the left, down the path toward the nearest patch of woods. The sun shone bright. The sky was a painful blue. It would be another hot, sunny fall day. He noticed days now that he knew his were numbered. Immortality had its perks, but with Roland gone, it was out of his reach.
He cut off those thoughts before they led him into the void.
The path brought them to the edge of the woods and dove under the canopy of hemlocks. They followed it a few dozen yards to a glen. Here and there, the sun managed to punch through the leaves, dappling the forest floor in golden light. The air was clean and smelled like life.
Hugh whistled. The shrill sound cut the air. The stable girl jumped.
They waited.
A streak of blinding white appeared between the trees and accelerated toward them.
Idiot horse.
The stallion was running at a near gallop. Any normal horse would’ve broken its legs by now, but for some odd reason Bucky dashed through the woods with the agility of a deer 1 /10th his size. He never tripped, he never put his feet wrong, he never ran into the branches. And he galloped around the woods at night, in near pitch-black darkness.
The stallion tore through the woods towards them, slid to a dramatic halt in the glen, and reared, pawing the air.
“Did you have fun?” Hugh asked.
Bucky trotted over and nudged him with his big head. Hugh slid a carrot into the stallion’s mouth, took the rope, and looped it over Bucky’s head.
“Let’s go.”
Bucky followed him, docile. The picture of obedience.
“There are dire wolves in the woods,” the stable girl said.
“He doesn’t care.”
“You could get a different horse,” she said. “The Lady would give you whatever horse you wanted.”
“Is that so?”
The stable girl nodded. “Yes. Any horse. She told us to give you whatever you need because you’re protecting us.”
He filed that bit of information away for further reference.
“So, you could trade him for a different horse.”
“No. He’s my horse. That’s that.”
She sniffed and squinted at him. “Is it true that you can ride standing up in the saddle?”
“I don’t need a saddle.”
She squinted harder. “Prove it.”