Read Online The Pagan Night by Tim Akers - Free Book Online Page B

be alone. Many Tenerran knights make the journey to Greenhall. I believe a MaeHart won the lists last year.”
    “The Tenerrans who go are only spoiling for a fight. More blood is drawn in the streets than on the melee ground. Three years ago a brawl broke out during the evensong. The frair’s nose got broken.”
    “And Gabriel Halverdt got a new frair out of it. So everyone is happy,” Sorcha persisted.
    Malcolm laughed and shook his head. “Always the bright side with you,” he said. Sorcha shrugged but didn’t answer. After a few breaths, Malcolm’s countenance fell. “He knows what he’s doing. Halverdt breeds that kind of conflict. The Circle of Lords will only protect him as long as they believe the north is on the verge of rebellion. He baits us. He baits me.”
    “He does no such thing. You have to get that out of your head, that he does the things he does just to provoke you.” She took her hand away from his knee. “Gabriel Halverdt is not so unlike you, Malcolm. He is a lord of his land, plagued by problems that an average man could never hope to understand, and an average wife can only help him bear. His problems are not your problems, granted, but don’t try to make his solutions your worry.”
    “I sometimes think you practice these speeches,” Malcolm said quietly, “so smoothly do you employ them.”
    Sorcha smiled weakly. “The duke of Greenhall is often on your mind, husband. The things I say to you, I have said before. Sometimes I wonder if you’re really listening.”
    “I listen,” he said. “I hear. I consider, and sometimes you’re right. Sometimes, however, the trouble is deeper than your advice can provide for.”
    “I don’t know what else to say, love.”
    “Exactly. And so I can’t sleep. Because there’s nothing else to be said.”
    The two of them sat there quietly for a while as the oily smoke from the hound drifted around them. Finally, Malcolm stirred.
    “If I do not return from Greenhall…” he started. Sorcha swatted his hand.
    “Don’t talk like that. Don’t even think those thoughts. You go under the banner of the church, to bring peace to a troublesome lord. The high elector needs you—he will see you safely there and safely back.” She rubbed his temple lightly, brushing a smudge of soot away. “You needn’t give your wife further worry.”
    “If I don’t return,” Malcolm bulled on, “it will fall to you to defend the hallow. Nessie isn’t old enough, and Master Tavvish won’t know what to do.”
    “And Ian? You won’t trust the lordship to him?”
    Malcolm paused nervously. “He’s coming with me,” he said.
    “With you?” she said, suppressing a gasp. “Why ever would he need—”
    “Because he’s a boy no longer, yet still too much a child. Because he needs to see that sometimes a war can end with the stroke of a pen, rather than the glorious charge and the letting of blood.” Malcolm turned slightly away from her, gritting his jaw. “Because he dreams too much of honor, and not enough of the lives that his honor would cost.”
    Sorcha sighed but didn’t argue any further. There was no point in it. She stood and gathered her robe around her shoulders, shivering.
    “I never liked this room,” she said, “and that thing. I can’t believe the church lets you keep it.”
    “Tradition,” he said. “The church doesn’t mind a little tradition. It was the price we demanded for our allegiance to the first celestriarch. The trappings of the old way, and the faith of the new.”
    “It seems to me more like heresy,” Sorcha answered. “Then again, I’m not a priest.”
    “Thank the gods for that,” he said, then reached over and pulled her into his lap. Sorcha had the decency to shriek, but she rolled herself into Malcolm’s arms, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thanks again,” he said.
    “For?”
    “Making an honest hero of me. I could have become an insufferable bore after the war. Too full of myself. Of my