If both he and that young man survived the day, which was looking increasingly unlikely, Fidelias thought, he might be forced to kill him on general principles.

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 53

“Count Calderon,” Ehren said, “I know not everything is as it seems. But I would truly love to know why the fact that we’re about to get crushed by that pair of vordbulks is not as it seems. I mean, I thought it would have been obvious by now.”

“Crows,” Bernard breathed quietly. His face was tight with tension. “They must have missed the Queen.”

“What?” Ehren asked.

A seventy-pound boulder went whizzing past them, hurled by one of the hulking behemoths accompanying the vordbulks. It missed them by no more than a foot and smashed into the wall of the tower behind them, sending a webwork of cracks into the stone.

“Bloody crows!” Ehren cried.

“The High Lords and...” He swallowed, and seemed to ignore the near miss. “And my wife learned where the vord Queen was.”

“Oh,” Ehren said quietly. The obvious move would have been to attempt to end the war immediately—a decapitating strike. Had it happened, the vord would not now be operating with such focus and direction. It was, therefore, reasonable to assume that the strike had failed. Given how critical it was, Ehren judged it unlikely that the High Lords would have done anything but fight to the death. And Countess Amara, while a skilled windcrafter, had been by far the person least able to defend herself against a threat like the one the Queen represented.

“I see,” Ehren said quietly. A moment later, he added, “I think it’s more likely that the Queen escaped than that they were all killed, Your Excellency. I’m sure your wife is all right.”

Bernard shook his head. “Thanks for lying, son.”

Ehren grimaced.

“Well,” Bernard said. He turned to look at the damage the boulder had done to the tower. “If the High Lords haven’t done the job, we’ll just have to handle it ourselves, won’t we?”

He disappeared inside the tower and emerged a moment later with a great, black bow as long as he was tall, its staves thicker than Ehren’s forearms, and a war quiver packed with arrows. Count Calderon took a deep breath. Then he grunted and bent the great bow, leaning into it with the whole of his body. He strained with fury-born strength to bend the bow far enough to set its string—which was more like a cable as thick as Ehren’s smallest finger.

Calderon let up on the bow gingerly and let out a huge exhale. The veins on his neck were standing out, and his face was red with the exertion. Ehren looked around nervously as Count Calderon readied the weapon.