Iron and Magic (The Iron Covenant #1)(89)

The centurions had left. Hugh sat in his chair, putting on a new pair of boots. He was dressed in black from head to toe. She should’ve left, but she had stayed, and she had no idea why.

She turned to the desk where Hugh’s breastplate, solid black and reinforced with metal plates waited, and touched it. It felt hard like wood or plastic, not at all how she expected leather would feel.

“Cuir bouilli, reinforced with steel plates,” Hugh said.

“Will it stop a sword?”

“Depends on who is holding it.”

He got up, picked up the armor, and fitted it over himself, pushing his left arm through the opening between the chest and back piece.

“Since you’re here…”

She grimaced at him and buckled the leather belts on his right side, pulling the armor together. “Good?”

“Tighter.”

“Now?”

“Perfect.”

He buckled a sheath on his hip and thrust his sword into the scabbard. Hugh grabbed a length of black fabric from the chair and shook it open with a quick jerk of his hand. A cape edged with fur. He’d worn it when he first came to the castle.

He wrapped it around his shoulders. She took the leather tie away from him, reached for the other side of the cape and pressed it on the two metal studs there. Hugh picked up a helmet from the desk. It was a Roman style helmet with cheek pieces and a crest of black hair. A stylized dog snarled at her from the wide piece of the helmet that would be positioned just above Hugh’s brow. He put the helmet on his head. It didn’t hide that much of his face, but somehow altered it. Two blue eyes stared at her with a focused intensity.

She took a step back. Hugh was a big man, but the cape, the helmet, the armor, it made him look giant.

“You look like a villain in some fantasy pre-Shift movie,” she told him. “Some dread lord about to conquer.”

“Dread lord,” he said. “I like that.”

He would.

“Won’t the cape get in the way?”

“The cape and the helmet are for Aberdine. We don’t have time to play politics. Once I’ve got the town, I’ll take them off when the battle starts.”

Something had been nagging her since the strategy meeting. “What you told me about the ley point made sense at first. But the mrog soldiers don’t hold towns, Hugh. They wipe them out and disappear. Aberdine’s massacre wouldn’t affect our access to the ley point. Why are you really going there?”

“They broke into my castle. They attacked my wife. They attacked a child in our home. The point of having a castle isn’t hiding inside its walls; it’s being worthy of it. It’s being able to control everything around it. They’re growing bolder. They’re taking larger settlements. They’ve got my attention now. They will wish they didn’t.”

In her head she saw him let Raphael’s knife strike him again and again. He was riding into battle. Anything could happen in battle. All he would have to do is not try as hard. To not step out of the way of a sword. To let himself get shot.

She wanted him back.

“Preceptor?”

“Yes?”

Her voice was steady. The words rolled off her tongue. “You like making bargains. Here is one for you. Come back to me alive, and I will stay the night. The whole night.”

Outside the horns screamed and she almost jumped. There was something dark and primitive about the sound. A steady beat rose, thumping like a giant’s heart. The war drums grew louder and louder. She heard horses neighing, the clang of metal, the voices of fighters, all of it mixing with the drums into a terrifying marching hymn. Someone howled like a wolf, in tune with the horns.

She turned to Hugh. He had somehow grown darker, grimmer, scarier, as if he emanated some imperceptible magic. The darkness curled around him, like a willing pet with savage teeth.

“Done,” the Preceptor of the Iron Dogs said.





Hugh walked the line of Aberdine defenders. Men, women, some almost children, others well into retirement. Four hundred and seven people, who volunteered to defend their home. Behind him a line of the Iron Dogs waited and behind them Dugas and his druids chanted in low voices, brewing herbs and powders in their cauldrons. The air smelled of old ways and half-forgotten magic.

He’d sent Felix in first, keeping the rest of the Dogs hidden in the tree line. The scouts scaled the wall with no one the wiser, took the firehose, and rang the bell. The residents of Aberdine lived in a wood filled with magic. The firehouse bell meant running for the safety of the walls, which was exactly what they had done. Then, once they dropped everything and gathered on Main Street, Hugh had pushed the Iron Dogs into a canter.

The guard at the western gate was too focused on the bell. He didn’t see them until it was too late, which didn’t bode well for Aberdine’s chances in a real fight. They thundered inside the wall at a near gallop. Bucky reared in the market square, before an old Dollar General, pawing the ground and screaming. Hugh dropped a power word and the entire town went silent while he pulled a mrog’s head out of his bag and told them what was coming. He was there to defend their town. They had two options: leave or fight. The choice was theirs.

It took less than two hours to round up the die-hards holed up in their houses, but now finally everyone was on their way: two long caravans, one of horse-drawn wagons and enchanted water vehicles heading to the ley point and the other, mostly people on foot and horseback, to Baile Castle. They went armed.