thud.
Siobhan took in a breath and looked around, but none of them were moving. She whipped around to look for Rune only to find him in the center of equally still opponents. He looked unfazed by their brief skirmish, and he had a thoughtful hand against his chin and an admiring look in his eye.
“Injuries?” she demanded of him, not sure if the darkness was hiding something.
Rune waved this away with a negligent flick of the fingers. “Fine. But ya know, Siobhan, ya led me ta believe yer not that good a fighter.”
She raised an eyebrow at him as she slid both swords home. “I’m not.”
He snorted. “Who ya compari’n yerself to? Wolf-dog? Tran? ‘Cause those two are monsters. Not many can face them. But I watched ya just now, and ya fought like a goddess of war. Sent chills up my spine, it did.”
“Rune,” she said patiently, “you finished off three opponents while I was still downing my second one, and you want to say I’m a good fighter?”
“I’m a monster too, ya know,” he responded with a wicked grin.
He rather had a point there. Well, perhaps she had understated her fighting abilities a little. Just a little. But she could argue the point later, right now there were more important things. “Did they attack below too? How’s Tran?”
“Fine,” he assured her. “Tran saw ‘em comi’n.”
“Go check on him,” she ordered. “I’m ringing the bell.”
Even though they were more vigilant after that pre-dawn attack, nothing happened that day or the next night. Siobhan wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or not. Now that the enemy knew they were prepared to fend them off, would they change tactics again? Or would they stick to this idea and simply send in more manpower?
The men they did capture weren’t at all helpful. They were from a dark guild of Quigg, something similar to Silent Order in Sateren, and the information they possessed was little indeed. They were hired by a foreign guild to stop anyone working on the bridge. That was all they knew and all they cared to know. Questioning them further proved to not only be futile, but frustrating.
In the end, they turned the whole lot of them over to the enforcing guild of Quigg—who was delighted to have known criminals in their custody—and returned to guarding the bridge.
Grae went back with Romohr to deliver reports and letters on a daily basis, coming back with teams of masons, stones, and mortar so that repairs could be started. Beirly explained to her that they had a very limited time to work on the bridge and get anything constructive done. The weather had to be warm enough for the mortar to set, and they were quickly losing the year’s heat. When winter set in, they would be forced to stop and wait for spring.
Perhaps because they were racing against time, both Jarnsmor and Darrens promised to send guards for the bridges by the end of the week. All Deepwoods had to do was keep the place safe for another four days.
Siobhan prayed they’d be able to manage that.
This silence and lack of enemy movement made her nervous. It had been proven to her several times over that if one plan failed, they wouldn’t give up, but simply switch to something else. She also realized that so far, they had never been able to predict what their enemy would do next. This uncertainty of what to expect made her stomach tie itself into knots. How could she possibly prepare for the unknown?
Siobhan retired that night uneasy, and even though her bed was inviting and warm, she kept tossing and turning on it. Four days. They had to hold out for four days and then it would be someone else’s problem to worry over. For what had started as a quick rescue mission, she certainly had become involved in a lot of the world’s problems.
Growling, she flopped over onto her other side with a squeak of bedsprings, punching her pillow a little to fluff it up, trying to get her nerves to settle. Sleep. She needed to sleep. She was on third watch this time and it would mean getting up in five hours. Siobhan was not the type to function well on only a few hours of sleep, so it was vital to get whatever rest she could.
Her eyes slowly closed. Deep breaths. Conli had taught her how to relax each main muscle, breathing deeply as she did so, in order