But Gareth was already walking away. He didn’t have time for Bertram’s fussing, well-meaning as it was. There were raiders to hunt. People to protect. A debt to repay—not to Lord Ashworth, who was merely an adequate neighbor, but to the common folk who depended on their lords to keep them safe.
He would not fail the people under his protection. Even if those people feared him.
He saw it in the servants who pressed themselves against walls when he passed. In the guards, who snapped to attention with something like terror in their eyes. In the cook who’d dropped an entire pot of stew the first time Gareth had entered the kitchens, certain the Silent Reaper had come to kill her.
He didn’t blame them. He’d cultivated this reputation deliberately. Fear was a weapon, and Gareth wielded it as skillfully as his sword. Let them whisper about the lord who never spoke, who never smiled, who dealt death without warning or remorse. Let them tell stories about the scar on his throat and the ghosts in his eyes.
The stables were warm and smelled of horse and hay, a relief from the bite of the February wind that had followed him across the courtyard. Gareth’s breath had misted before him on the short walk, and his destrier, a massive black beast named Shadow, stamped in greeting as he approached, sending plumes of vapor from flared nostrils.
“My lord.” Sir Miles Weddington, captain of the guard, looked up from checking his saddle. “Bertram said we ride?”
Gareth nodded. Held up five fingers.
“Five men. Benwick village?”
Another nod.
Miles grinned—the expression looked strange on his scarred, bearded face. “Good. The lads are getting restless. A bit of action will do them well.”
Gareth appreciated Miles. The man had served with him before, had been wounded in a prior battle, survived by sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, and said he’d never forgive himself for being confined to the healer’s cottage and not being in the forest that night. He was one of the few people who treated Gareth like a man instead of a monster.
“We’ll be ready within the hour,” Miles said. “Unless you want to leave sooner?”
Gareth shook his head.An hour is fine.He couldn’t say it, but Miles had learned to read his gestures well enough.
He spent the time checking his weapons. Sword—sharp and balanced, the weight as familiar as his own heartbeat. Dagger—hidden in his boot, a last resort he’d never needed but always carried. Shield—plain, unadorned, bearing no sigil. He’d removed the de Clare arms after returning from that forest clearing. His family’s honor felt like another thing that had died in the frost and blood and silence.
When the hour had passed, five men waited in the courtyard, their breath clouding in the cold air. Good men. Loyal men. Men who would follow Gareth into hell if he asked it.
He wouldn’t ask. He’d never ask anyone to die for him again.
Go, he gestured.Ride.
They rode.
The raiders were long gone by the time Gareth reached Benwick village. He’d expected as much—these weren’t common bandits but organized men, quick to strike and quicker to vanish. The attacks had been increasing over the past months, always targeting villages under Greywatch’s protection.
Someone unafraid of his reputation was testing him.
Gareth walked through the burned farms while his men helped the villagers salvage what they could. The destruction was deliberate, calculated—enough to hurt but not enough to kill. Whoever was behind this wanted to send a message, not start a war.
Not yet, Gareth thought.But war was coming.He could feel it in his bones, the way old men claimed to feel storms approaching.
An old woman clutched at his sleeve as he passed. Her eyes were red from weeping, her face smudged with soot.
“Please, my lord,” she said. “My grandson, he was wounded, the healer says he might not?—”
Gareth gently removed her hand. Nodded toward one of his men.
The woman was taken away, still crying. Gareth watched her go. His hands stayed at his sides, deliberately still, deliberately controlled.
They tracked the raiders for hours, following hoofprints and dropped supplies into the forest. But the men knew the land better than Gareth did, and by nightfall, the trail had gone cold.
“We could press on,” Miles offered. “Try to pick it up in the morning.”
Gareth shook his head. Pointed back toward Greywatch.
“Aye.” Miles didn’t argue. “They’ll be back.”
