Clearwater Dawn by Scott Fitzgerald Gray Page A

corner of the alcove. The fact that Ashlund slammed the door open with his hand and not his boot was testament only to whose chamber this was, he suspected. The lieutenant was a close-shaven veteran, taller than Chriani and thicker from nearly any angle. Behind him, three more guards pushed in, blades still drawn. Ashlund slowed to let them pass through the curtain to the main chamber, grabbed Chriani’s tunic in a fist the size and color of an uncured ham. If he noticed that Chriani held a shortsword an arm’s length away, he didn’t show it.
    “Explain,” he said, his voice a low growl.
    “The Princess Lauresa is resting within, lord. I was on guard outside the chamber when the alarm was raised. At her request and for her security, I took position within the alcove.”
    Lauresa’s lie, straight from memory. Chriani had seen what happened to tyros who misled the garrison command about things much more mundane. He watched Ashlund’s eyes, tried to slow down.
    “I resolved to stay here until…”
    “On guard by whose orders?” Ashlund interrupted.
    “By Sergeant Barien’s orders, lord.”
    “And the sergeant is where?”
    “I do not know, lord.”
    Chriani felt himself released, the hand that had held him pointing two massive fingers.
    “The next time you find yourself on the other side of a door that I ordered opened, it will open or you will go back in pieces to the gutter where Barien found you. Is that quite clear?”
    “I had not heard the stand-down, lord. Should I have opened the door without even…?”
    Ashlund cuffed him across the side of the head, Chriani only fast enough to roll with it. He felt the pulse of rage flare blood-red behind his eyes, fought unsuccessfully to lock his own hands at his side. As his sword wavered, he saw Ashlund smile. Waiting.
    “By Barien’s orders,” Chriani said with effort, “I was to guard the Princess Lauresa. Am I relieved of that duty, lord?”
    Ashlund’s hand came up a second time, then lowered slowly when one of his men appeared at the curtain. Chriani could hear Lauresa’s voice from within, speaking to the others in hushed tones. A word was whispered in Ashlund’s ear.
    “Go,” the lieutenant snarled. Chriani went.
    Ashlund hadn’t told him to return to quarters, but he sprinted in that direction anyway, past the doors of the younger heirs where silent guards were ranked two abreast, watching him as he passed. He had to slip around the corner, peering back while he waited until their attention was elsewhere, then he sprinted on straight instead of cutting east for the great hall. Down the children’s court and through the warden’s door, carefully locked behind him as he headed past the armories.
    He didn’t bother looking to Barien’s quarters, knew that the warrior would be in the thick of whatever had inspired the alarm. He was breathing hard, his head still reeling with the force of Ashlund’s blow that had at least erased the too-telltale marks Lauresa’s rings had made. He was nearly to the central court before he realized that his sword was still in his hands. Even with the alarm, he hadn’t heard the call to arms, he remembered. He sheathed it quickly.
    But when he arrived at the Bastion gate, its bars were drawn. The portcullis was dropped, as he’d never seen it dropped in the ten years he’d been there. Through the bars, the staging ground was empty, Chriani lingering for just a moment. Then he slipped carefully to the gatehouse stairs, heading up quietly to the outwall, hoping to find Barien before being ordered to duty by another officer in his stead. Because in the short run from the princess’s chambers, a thought had become firmly lodged in his mind, something he might have picked up on at the time if it hadn’t been for the pulsing memory of Ashlund’s hand leaving little room for thought in his head.
    Barien should have been one of the first at the great hall when the alarm was sounded, but Ashlund hadn’t known where