By the Light of the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

another ship in the lakeside harbor that took the produce, the timber and the ore back into the capital.
    He knew what he had been searching for when he spied a solitary figure in the distance. It was a man; distinctly so from his build and walk, even from so far away. He was traveling on foot, fast and in no apparent hurry all the same.
    Brock’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward just a little bit. Strangers were rare in Rochmond, but this one was expected. A frown grew on the old man’s face as he watched the figure wind his way down the paths, coming closer with every step.
    • • •
    Owain had not owned a horse in quite a while. Horses displayed a natural fear of his kind. Smelling the wolf through the layers of apparent humanity with ease, they tended to neigh and rear up. It was torture to put the beast through this when he could simply walk. His legs were strong and fast; he was as fast as most horses anyway.
    The only horses Blaidyn could ride were those bred and broken in one of their camps and settlements and he hadn’t been back to such a place in many years. Owain was a wanderer these days, moving from employment to employment, from town to town. He did good work; he was quiet and efficient but not a man to seek approval from humans or his own kind, not a man to ingratiate himself for a better position. Instead, he found somewhere else. He was easy to recommend, a simple man it seemed, without ambition or greed.
    He could see the castle looming in the distance; an impressive stronghold. Even now, after a century and a half of peace, it still looked as defensible as it must have looked in wartime, in those bitter last decades when the fight had been contained in this region, battles raging on the very ground upon which he stood; blood-drenched earth. He thought he could smell it still, a copper note in the fertile soil.
    Owain knew the fief from the songs of his childhood, the stories murmured in his ear when it was time to sleep. Stories of war, of fighting the good fight, of subjugation and freedom. They had taught him pride in being Blaidyn, taught him to have belief in the good. He’d grown up since then, still proud but where his beliefs lay, he did not know. He recognized the landmarks, though. There was that mountain ridge that looked like a toothy castle in the sky, the deep forest at its feet. And growing closer and closer, the innocuously named Bramble Keep, Rochmond Castle, built on a rock overlooking the fief.
    It was a striking structure, hardly a straight wall to be seen; just circling towers and rounded battlements, sturdily built with no clear front to attack.
    As little as he knew about his appointment there, it had sounded like an easy job. A retirement job, he thought, not without a note of wounded pride in spite of the fact that he welcomed a change of pace. He had spent years on foreign battlefields, vicious and bloody fights over boundaries being drawn a few miles to north or the south, over a river or simply a nobleman’s pride. He had seen bodies hacked to pieces, women raped, towns going up in flames and earth salted. He had witnessed friends die as well as enemies and it was time for a break.
    This, at least, was what he told himself; that he deserved a quiet assignment, looking after a spoiled little girl for her overly worried father. He would be hired for his nose and his speed, not for his hands that could break a man’s neck without the slightest difficulty. His warrior pride was wounded, but the rest of his soul was aching for just such a reprieve.
    Owain did not see the man at a window in one of the towers as he started to climb the path that wound itself once around the entire rock; a street wide enough for supply carts to be driven up and down. It was hewn into the stone but centuries of use had ground it to an almost soft dirt path, slippery when wet.
    He took his time, enjoying the last hour as a free man. He could still turn away. Nobody would stop him; he could shift