SSS Awakening: I Become The Strongest Breeding Knight

Chapter 66: 66. I’m Not Saving the Walls, Just Whoever Happens to Live Behind Them

Further back... near the rear of the wagon, I could see Sharon and Laura riding side by side, leaning close together as they spoke.

Sharon’s expression was that of a woman trying to describe the weather in a language she didn’t speak. I caught only snatches of it as the wind carried them to me.

”...doesn’t know whether to be proud of her,” Sharon was muttering, ”or hide her somewhere until this is over.”

”Both are reasonable...” said Laura flatly.

”You think?”

”I think they’re the same instinct... You want to protect something very good and very fragile, and you can’t decide whether to hold it or put it behind glass.”

”That’s depressingly accurate...”

”I’ve been that way about someone for a long time,” said Laura, and her eyes slid, deliberately, in my direction.

I pretended I hadn’t heard that private thing... I’m fairly sure I didn’t succeed.

Around midday, Sergeant Holt rode up beside me.

He didn’t say anything at first, which wasn’t unusual. He was the sort of man who preferred to let a silence do the work.

After a while, he cleared his throat.

”No scouts,” he said.

”Sorry...?”

”Today... I’ve been watching the ridge lines since sunrise.”

”For two days... there was something at the edge of my sight, a rider on the hills, and a glint of metal... always the same distance.”

”And this morning... nothing.” He rubbed his gray beard. ”I don’t like it.”

My stomach sank. ”They’re... gone?”

”They’ve stopped following... Which means they’ve made their report.”

”Or they’ve finished.”

”Aye.”

I looked at the dark cliffs, and I thought about what a scout does when he has nothing more to learn.

He goes home. He tells his master that the prey is walking, unsuspecting, into the net, and that everything is going precisely as expected.

”Thank you, Sergeant,” I said. ”Keep your eyes open.”

”I always do, sir.”

He fell back, and I rode on in silence, and the knot in my gut pulled a little tighter.

We reached the ridge in the late afternoon, and it was every bit as unpleasant as I’d remembered from the map.

It was a rough, round hill of broken rock and scrubby thorn bushes, rising about a hundred feet above the road.

One side was a sheer wall of crumbled limestone. Another dropped away steeply to the river.

The only reasonable approach was a winding goat track that zigzagged up the western slope, so narrow that the wagon had to be unhitched and hauled up by hand. It took the better part of two hours.

Pike did most of the lifting, with a grunt for every ten feet, and I’m fairly sure he enjoyed it.

At the top, a flat shelf of stone made a natural fort, about sixty paces across, with a low lip of boulders around the edge.

From it, you could see for miles in every direction. The river glittered below us, wide and sullen.

The road curled along its bank like a dropped ribbon. And a few miles to the east, I could just make out the pale smudge of the ford, a long, shallow crossing between two flat banks, with a cluster of tiny buildings huddled on the far shore.

Greywater Ford.

The depot.

Bram, with his half of a tally stick.

”Four miles,” said Laura, lowering her glass. ”We could be there before noon tomorrow.”

”If we’re allowed to be.”

”And there it is again.”

”What?”

”Your face... You do it every time you say something that you think is clever and depressing.” She almost smiled. ”It’s very consistent.”

...

I set about helping to make camp.

I carried the second food box up the track, mostly because Pike wouldn’t let me carry the first. I helped Wynn stack boulders into a rough breastwork on the open side.

I held the end of the rope while Dessa tied the tarp, and I even peeled potatoes with Oswin, who spent the whole time asking me about the battle with Garrick and who looked faintly disappointed every time I told him I’d mostly been terrified.

When the sun began to sink, I carried two bowls of stew to the wagon.

The prisoner cart had been parked in the center of the shelf, with its wheels chocked, and the iron bars glowed faintly red in the dying light. I climbed up on the tailgate and handed the larger bowl through the gap.

Garrick took it with both hands. The cuffs still bound his wrists, and the heavy chain rattled softly against the wooden floor.

He looked thinner than he had in the cell... and his gray hair had grown shaggy, but there was a little more color in his face, and his eyes were clearer.

The gray blanket was wrapped around his shoulders. A corner of paper stuck out from the collar of his shirt... a bit of red crayon showing.

”Thank you,” he said.

”It’s not very good.”

”At least it’s better than the prison.”

I sat down on the tailgate and ate my own stew, and neither of us said anything for a while.

I could see the sun slipped lower. The sky turned a deep, bruised orange, with long streaks of cloud like torn paper.

Below us, the river changed from pewter to copper.

”May I ask you something?” said Garrick, finally... let him be the one to talk this one first.

”Sure.”

”Do you really believe... it’s worth saving?”

I turned. ”What...?”

”Elarion.” He didn’t look at me.

He was watching the water. ”That kingdom and even you can call a city... The high district, the towers, and the people who sit in their warm houses and draw maps of where the monsters can be allowed to go.”

”After everything you’ve heard... After Harrowmere... and even after seeing what the Council is.”

”Do you honestly think it deserves to be... defended?”

I thought about it. It was a fair question, and I didn’t want to answer it with a slogan.

”I don’t think I’m saving a city or a kingdom,” I said.

”You told Hallis you’d defend it.”

”I told him I’d defend the people in it.” I put down my bowl. ”I’m not sure I know what a city is, really... It’s walls and streets and a flag.”

”But the people in it are real... There’s an old man with a shovel who tried to stop a wolf.”

”There’s a woman with a basket of bread who wanted to say thank you. And there’s a man whose shop I broke by flying through it.”

Garrick’s mouth twitched.

”I’m not saving the walls,” I said. ”I’m saving whoever lives behind them...”

”The walls just happen to be where they are.”

He was silent for a long time.

”Then who saves the cities and the kingdoms...?” he asked.

”Excuse me...?”

”If the Council fails... If the nobles take the crystals and the border dies and the people in power don’t care.” Garrick said with that serious look. ”If saving individuals isn’t enough, and the whole thing rots from the top.”

His voice was low and hoarse. ”Who saves the city and the kingdom... if the people you’re saving are only a few at a time?”

I didn’t have a good answer to that, and I didn’t pretend to.

”I think it’s the people who live there,” I said, slowly. ”The ones in the middle...”

”The old man, the baker, and the girl with the crayons... If someone in the crowd is stubborn enough to start, to say ’this isn’t right’ and do something about it, then someone else joins.”

”And then another.” I shrugged. ”I don’t think anyone saves a city or a kingdom from outside.”

”I think a city saves itself... once enough of its people decide to.”

”That’s a very naive thing to say.”

”Probably.”

”It’s also... I’m sorry to say, a little bit true.”

”That’s the problem with being naive... Sometimes you get lucky.”

He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and for a moment his shoulders shook. Then he went still, and a long, slow shudder ran through him.

I looked at him and saw that his eyes were wet.

”Don’t tell anyone that I cried,” he said gruffly.

”Heh... I wouldn’t dream of it.”

”I have a reputation.”

”You do. It’s very fearsome.”

He wiped his face on the blanket, and I pretended to study my stew.

After a minute, he spoke again, in a quieter voice.

”I want to tell you something... and I want you to listen.” Garrick said something that honestly caught my full attention now. ”Not as a favor to me, but take it as a warning.”

”I’m all ears...”

”The man who gave me the crystal... The Quartermaster...”

”Corvane, if that’s his name.” Garrick’s eyes were hard again and very sharp. ”I’ve known a lot of killers...”

”Soldiers, assassins, and officers who sent boys to die, but he’s... a different kind.” Garrick gritted his teeth. ”He never shot from the road.”

”What do you mean by that?”

”I mean that he’s patient... He’s never where you’re looking.”

”When you search the front... he’s at your back.”

”When you watch the trees... he’s on the water.”

”He picks the one place where you’ve stopped paying attention... because you’ve decided it’s safe, and he waits there until you turn your head. ” He met my gaze. ”If he’s coming for me, and I think he is... he won’t come the way you expected.”

”He’ll shoot from wherever you weren’t looking.”