Caelum Vance
I found Aldric at the creek just before dawn.
He was sitting on a rock at the water’s edge with his boots off and his feet in the cold water. He heard the hoofbeats and stood so fast he nearly went in. He looked at me like he had been dreading this moment for three days and had simultaneously been desperate for it to arrive.
I stopped my horse at the bank and looked down at him. Road-dirty, hollow-eyed, his boots in one hand. A long scratch along his jaw that had scabbed over badly. He had been walking for three days in unfamiliar forest and it showed in every line of him.
“My lord,” he said, with a deep bow.
I waited.
He told me what had happened with the economy of a man who had rehearsed the telling many times and had decided that brevity was his best available strate
