Abruptly, she came to the intersection with the main road up to the Keep. Magda was terrified that they might have already passed by. She feared being too late.

As she stood in the center of the intersection gulping air and catching her breath, trying in vain to see in the darkness, she heard voices in the distance. They were deep voices interspersed with fragments of laughter. She was relieved that they were coming from down lower on the road, in the direction of the city.

Magda rushed up the road, toward the Keep, around a sharp bend to a spot were the road narrowed. She wanted a place that wasn’t open to the sides so that the men couldn’t spread out and easily get around her. The voices were getting closer.

She found a place that looked about as good a spot for her purpose as she was liable to find on short order. Besides, she didn’t have any time to spare. She set the lantern down in the center of the road, placing it so that the closed door aimed in the direction of the approaching men.

Magda didn’t want to consider the wisdom of her hasty plan too carefully because it was the only plan she had. She could think of no other idea, and besides, there simply was no time left. She had no choice but to try.

If it didn’t work, she would likely die. If she didn’t try, they were all going to die anyway.

She crouched behind the lantern, waiting. Her hammering heart was making her rock on the balls of her feet.

She briefly thought that she must be crazy to think it would work. She had no choice. Either it worked, or they were all dead anyway.

She could hear the sound of gravel crunching under the boots of the men coming her way as they rounded the bend a short distance down the hill. They weren’t talking any longer. She couldn’t see them. Only the sound of their boots told her where they were.

When she judged that the group of men was as close as she dared let them get to her, she threw open the door of the lantern. Light fell across about a dozen startled faces. They blinked in the sudden light. They weren’t the Home Guard. They wore the green tunics of Lothain’s private army, as she had expected.

Magda stood and backed a few steps behind the lantern so that she would be in darkness and the men wouldn’t be able to see her.

In the lantern light, when a couple of the big men spread out defensively, she spotted Merritt in their midst.