The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way by Harry Connolly Page A

the soldiers shifted their grips on their weapons. “In the holdfast,” Redegg said mildly. “Nearby.”  
    “How are they? Big, strapping young men?”  
    “Oh, they’re quite vigorous,” the merchant said, “for a five- and a three-year-old.”
    “Fire take the man,” Tejohn said, glancing at the corpse by the balcony. “He was a sack of wrinkles. Doesn’t he have any sons older than that?”  
    “He had, my tyr,” Redegg replied, “but he did not trust them. Eventually, he gave each of them a berth in the airiest room in the west.”  
    Silence. There was no oath strong enough for this. Tejohn stepped away from the soldier. “Stand up, and do it quickly.” His anger hadn’t faded and he was speaking in his commander voice again. When the man had gained his feet, Tejohn glared at him. “You, soldier, what’s your name?”  
    “Ulo Winterfall. My tyr.”  
    “Well, Ulo Winterfall, I’m giving you the second most important task of the day. You are going to take three spears and you are going to collect the Twofin heirs. You’re going to take them to a safe place, where no one can find them. Not me. Not Redegg here. And certainly not their uncle, the hollowed-out scholar. For the next fifteen years, Great Way willing, a steward will run his holdfast. When the eldest boy comes of age, a Twofin will rule these lands again. You’re a Twofin yourself?”  
    The soldier looked dumbfounded. “A distant cousin.”  
    “Well, listen closely. You will be guarding those children with your life . You and your men will not stand idly by while they are killed, and you will not strike out in their defense after it is already too late. You will fight and die to protect them.”  
    “I will,” he said defiantly, as though Tejohn was promising to find him and kill him later. He called for three of his companions and left by a side door.  
    “My tyr,” Redegg said quietly, “or…should I call you ‘steward’?”
    “You should not. Ellifer Italga himself named me a tyr; that title is mine. I won’t be staying long enough to be steward of this place. You don’t seem terribly upset about what I did to Tyr Twofin.”  
    “No,” the old man said. He turned to look at the dead man on the floor. The top of Iskol’s skull had been crushed and his right eye bulged slightly from the socket. “No, I suspect very few of us are. My own mother married a lowlander and lives down there with him even now.”
    His mother? She must have been the oldest woman on Kal-Maddum. Before Tejohn could say anything further, the bureaucrat said, “And my sister, too, along with her little children.”  
    “And my daughter.” Another merchant stepped forward. He was about Tejohn’s age and looked as fit as a life-long campaigner, no matter how fine the cloth of this robes. “She’ll be giving me a grandchild in the fall, if the Little Spinner wills it. My first.”  
    The grunts will take them all, Tejohn almost said, but Redegg spoke before he could think of a diplomatic response.  
    “You won’t be staying? Forgive me, but I assumed you struck down Iskol Twofin for his chair.”  
    “There are only two things Iskol Twofin had that I want,” Tejohn said. “I need provisions and a replacement for the scholar the tyr executed. After that, I’ll be on my way.” Tejohn looked the two merchants up and down. “It will be up to you lot to protect your loved ones here and in the lowlands. Your mother? Your daughter? They’ll be dead if no one stops those mining scholars. Who can call them back into the holdfast without a fight? We must stop them before their guards hear about the death of the tyr. Otherwise, they might want draw steel over it.”
    “Young Findwater could manage it,” Redegg said, gesturing toward the bureaucrat.
    “How many guards will they have?”  
    Findwater bowed slightly. “Only two at the mouth of the tunnel.”  
    “Go then, and quickly,” Tejohn said. “Have the scholars