A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,142

a shirt of mail, Drem, my lad,” Cullen said.

Why does he insist on calling me his lad when I am older than him? Not for the first time, Drem resisted his usual urge to correct.

“I’ll help you, lad,” Keld said, a reassuring hand on Drem’s back. “Now, lift your arms straight up, and jump up and down. Let gravity do the work for you.”

Drem did, and after a few moments of worry, and a helping hand from Keld, the mail shirt slithered down over his head and torso.

It was heavy, rubbing on his shoulders, a weight on his arms when he tried to lift them, like he was wading through water.

“I don’t like it,” Drem said. “How can I fight in this?”

“A chainmail shirt is a pain, and no denying,” Keld said. “Takes some getting used to. But this will turn a blow that would slice through your leather jerkin like butter. Better to put up with the sore shoulders and be a bit slower than be dead.”

“But will being slower make me just as dead?” Drem worried.

Keld shrugged. “Move faster.”

That’s helpful.

“This’ll help,” Keld said, slipping a thin leather belt around Drem’s waist and buckling it tight.

Keld was right, though, as soon as the belt was on, it took some of the mail shirt’s weight off Drem’s shoulders.

Over half a moon had passed since the night he had entered the tunnels with Byrne. He could feel the scrape of the mail coat on the healing cut on his arm, little more than a dry scab now. He felt a sense of elation when he remembered that night, when he had sworn himself to Byrne. He did not regret it. Since then, each day, more warriors of the Order had arrived, answering Byrne’s summons to muster. And on each of those days Drem had trained almost from dawn until dusk. His left arm felt like it was going to fall off, muscles seized and stiff from shield work, something that Drem had been entirely unaccustomed to. Muscles throughout his whole body ached. Not because he was unfit. Living a trapper’s life in the Desolation had toned and honed Drem’s physicality far beyond what was normal, but these last fourteen nights Drem had used muscles in ways that they had never been used before.

He rolled his shoulders and ignored the aches and pains.

Keld and Cullen were already in shirts of mail, Cullen with a dark leather surcoat buckled over the top, Dun Seren’s four-pointed star emblazoned upon it. Keld wore his star in his cloak-brooch.

“Here you go, lad,” Cullen said, passing Drem his weapons- belt. Drem rolled his eyes at Cullen and took the belt. His sword and seax were already scabbarded on it, as well as two empty rings for hand-axes. There was also a pouch with Drem’s flint and striking iron, some tinder, and beside it one of the Order’s weighted nets, folded and ready for use. Drem had trained with it, managed to wrap himself in the net a dozen times before finally mastering the art of looping it over his head and releasing.

It had felt like a glorious moment. He liked to learn.

“Well, looks like you’re all dressed as fine as can be,” Keld said, looking Drem up and down.

A horn sounded from outside.

Drem felt a stone settle in his gut. They all knew what the horn was for, a weight hanging over them all, though none of them had spoken of it since Drem had opened his chamber door to the two warriors. It had all been light-hearted quips, purposely avoiding what they knew was coming.

They were leaving Dun Seren and marching back into the Desolation. Crow scouts had returned from the Desolation, telling of Gulla’s warband marching south from Kergard and destroying all in its path. Drem knew that Byrne had hoped to continue gathering her forces until Kol’s White-Wings had arrived, but this news from the north had forced her hand.

“We exist to protect the innocent from evil like the Kadoshim,” Byrne had said to Drem. “We will not sit idly by while innocents are being slaughtered. Not when I can do something to save them.”

So, they were marching to war.

The three of them shared a look.

“It’s time, then,” Cullen said.

Drem grabbed two short-axes from his desk where he’d been sharpening them and slipped them into the rings on his belt.

They turned and walked from Drem’s chambers, through corridors that grew busier with every footstep, and then they were striding through Dun Seren’s keep and