“If you are given an order, you will obey it,” said my aunt’s voice coldly. “Ward, you know better than to explain your orders.” She looked at Soren and the defiant men, and sighed pointedly. “And if you have to explain your orders, make certain you do so clearly. Gentlemen, Oreg will accompany the Hurogmeten at a distance and retrieve him if it looks as though the king intends to harm him. In this way Ward is safe and Hurog won’t suffer under an attack we cannot win. So go now before you endanger him further.”

Her clear voice carried to the tops of the wall and the man who was there scrambled down the ladder and started for the guards’ quarters without a word. His action inspired the rest, and Soren jumped to his feet and retreated with them, leaving me standing with my aunt.

“What’d you do, tell them you were going to let the king’s men take you in order to save everyone here?” she said dryly after they’d gone.

I flushed and she shook her head. Then she leaned forward and pulled my ears until I bent down and she could kiss me. Without another word, she followed the path the men had taken and I was alone in the darkening bailey.

I walked to the gates, but before I could touch the bar to open them, something hit them with a reverberating crack and they bounced and flexed against the bar. The king’s men were using a battering ram before parlaying with the guards that should have been on the walls. It made me even more sure what they were here for: They didn’t parlay, because no man would give himself up to be taken to the Asylum unless he was truly crazy. For a second a humorless grin twisted my lips.

They hit the gates again. I wondered a minute where they’d found a timber to use as a ram, then remembered the rubbish pile just outside the wall. There might have been a broken timber or two large enough put to use.

The cups had bent around the bar until only a crowbar could have released it. Not having one handy, I moved out of the way and waited for them to open it from their side.

When the doors fell, the king’s men swarmed over and I was glad I had decided not to fight. There must have been two hundred men.Flattering, I thought sourly.

With no one to offer them a fight, they stopped, casting alert gazes at the arrow slits in the third floor of the keep and the guard towers along the walls. I was standing next to the doors behind the men and they didn’t notice me at first.