My Man Godric Read Online Free PDF Page B

men and horses could get, which was not much. But
there was a marked difference in their movements from how they had
been at the Keep months earlier with everyone brimming with
excitement. Heaviness was with them now, impatience and a hint of
worry.
    The air around them was crisp and the
sunlight pale. It would be warmer nearer the capital, but no one
was slowing in their work, and no one was frozen with fear.
    They were preparing to decamp, he realized
with sudden alarm, and he could not see Godric. But even as he
wondered what had happened last night to bring this about, he knew , and allowed himself one short, rare, frown of
displeasure. It was part of Godric’s duty to protect Bertie, but
Godric was to serve the country and his brother’s wishes first.
    Of course, after an hour of searching for
Godric and receiving stunned, perplexed stares from soldier after
soldier that always seemed to turn to irritating grins, he got
distracted by his group of survivors. They were doing well, or well
enough, considering many of their friends and loved ones were dead
or hiding in the mountains, and they would not see their homes
again until spring, and that only if all went well.
    Bertie found the widow and her children in
the company of Godric’s fierce Captain Torr, which was surprising
until Bertie remembered how the widow’s young sister had woven
flowers into Torr’s hair the morning the soldiers had departed with
the king.
    She had survived the raid on the Keep with
scars of her own but had stayed with the others in the mountains to
watch for any more raiders. The locals knew the mountains better
than any invaders, and they would not be taken unawares again.
    More surprising was how the angry captain
bowed low to Bertie at first sight of him and then offered another
nod when he had finally taken his leave. Considering that the
captain’s words to Bertie at finding them all near the ruins of the
Keep had been, “Thank the gods you are not hurt,” followed quickly
by, “So few of you left?” Bertie had assumed the man had blamed him
for the Keep’s destruction and thought that a warrior prince like
Aethir might have saved it.
    There had been no time to send a messenger
ahead to Godric to ask for help, and no one to spare in any case.
The decision had been made there, right there. The captain had
insisted that his orders were that Bertie could not remain and that
he had to get Bertie back to Godric, until Bertie had invoked his
position and insisted that the injured and helpless must come back
with him or he wasn’t going, Godric or no Godric.
    It had perhaps been the maddest thing Bertie
had ever said, and a surprise even to himself as he had said it.
The captain’s face had changed, something dawning in his expression
before he gone blank and offered Bertie another slow nod.
    The captain’s undoubtedly reluctant mission
of rescue had been turned into a grueling journey back. He and the
other men had barely spoken to Bertie in that time, only watching
the small group’s progress with obvious impatience. Torr had not
mentioned the widow’s sister, but dried flowers had hung from the
man’s saddle. Bertie should have made that connection before.
    Many of the men closest to Godric had come
to the Keep with him each harvest, and Torr had not been the only
one to ride from its courtyard two months ago with a late-blooming
flower in his hair and who now had a posy to remind him of a loved
one awaiting his return.
    Bertie would not blame them for their anger
if being ordered to protect Bertie was taking them farther from the
battles needed to end all this and bring them home.
    But what had seemed like anger on the road
did not seem it in the camp. By the time Bertie had temporarily
given up his search for Godric to see to his scattered people, he
had been saluted more than he had ever been in the capital. Even
stranger, he found that soldiers who came by to wish his people
well and ask about those left behind had offered