The Bloody North (The Fallen Crown) Read Online Free PDF

back to it."
    Tarl swallowed.
    "You've been good to me you have, Tarl. I won't ever forget it. But I've gotta move on. I've gotta try and find this Quayle. My wife . . . my son . . . and my daughter won't ever rest if I don't," he said, choking back the grief as it welled up again from inside. "I gotta go back to the sword. It's the only thing I have left."
    "You don't have to do this, Rowan. There's another way," Tarl said, taking a step back.
    "No," Rowan said. " There's not."
    "What will you do with your land?"
    He shrugged. "You have it. Do something good with it. Don't matter to me anymore. None of it. Everything I loved is turned to dirt now. Maybe you can do something with it, make something grow there."
    "I don’t know what to say," Tarl said, confused. His eyes kept drifting to the sword.
    "And that’s okay, my friend."
    * * *
    Rowan pressed gold coins into Ceeli's hand. She shook her head, tried to hand them back. "No! I won't accept them."
    He held them firm in her palm. "Take them. You'll need what you can get in the tough times ahead. This country's going to tear itself apart."
    Ceeli's eyes searched his. They widened when they found the hardness there. "All right."
    He turned to Tarl, shook his hand. "You've been good to me, Tarl. I won't forget it."
    "It's still not too late for you to change your mind," Tarl said. "Stay here and rebuild what you had."
    Rowan carefully, painfully got himself up into the saddle of a brown mare Larch had given him. "Some things can never be rebuilt."
    "I wish it weren't true," Tarl said.
    As do I, Rowan thought.
    "Take care of your family."
    "I will."
    "Goodbye to you, Rowan Black," Ceeli said as he turned to leave the village he'd called home for years. "And good luck."
    " Thank you both. I'll come back this way, when I can," Rowan called.
    He never did .

Part II
Three Years Later

Five
     
    Three summers, three winters . . . Rowan thought as he looked at the others. Look how we've changed.
    They gathered in a forest clearing south of a wide valley. Larch with his big arms folded in front of his chest as he spoke. Their horses tied up a ways from the huddled men, stamping their feet impatiently. At one time, to hear Larch's men ride into town was to bear witness to thunder breaking the earth. Instead, they found themselves diminished both in number and morale. Spending so long fighting a war that had already been lost – decided by those who'd pledged their allegiance with Wagstaff in the beginning – they had become little more than a posse.
    "The civil war is over," Larch declared. "The Royalist's have lost. The Breakers have managed to do everything they set out to do. Turn this country upside down. Try as we might to win it all back from 'em, it didn't work. They whipped us, so they did."
    "Ain't that right!" one of the others, a tall chap by the name of Fin, chimed in.
    "'Tis," Larch agreed. "And as much as it's not how I saw all this playing out, that's the lay of the land. We're the last rabble in these parts trying to keep it going, keep fighting the good fight, and for what? I think maybe it's worth rethinking it all. Considering where we stand in the grand scheme of things and seeing if we still can't come out of this with our heads."
    "What d'you mean?" Rowan asked, looking up at him from where he sat, whittling a bit of a wood with his small knife. "Give ourselves up?"
    "Nobody's saying anything about surrender. We wouldn't be prisoners. But I've heard talk, and I've seen evidence of it. They're promising amnesty to any who go join 'em. All we gotta do is ride on down to the valley yonder, mark a sheet of paper, and all's forgotten. We can move on. Just like the rest o' Starkgard."
    "Sounds an awful lot like surrender to me . . ." Rowan said.
    "Does a bit, Larch," one of the other men – Drury – agreed, his one good eye looking out over the rest of the crew. "We ain't stood down yet."
    "No shame in calling it a day, when the day is done," Larch