The Shadow at the Gate Read Online Free Page B

nineteen, and was rarely given the opportunity to command an entire watch. He would have never said it out loud, but he privately thought that he could command a troop just as well as someone like old Bordeall. He imagined Lord Gawinn riding in out of the night on his watch. A smile crossed his face as his men’s spears flashed inside his mind—a perfectly executed salute for the Lord Captain of the Guard, protector of Hearne and keeper of the regent’s word.
    “Bar the gate!” he said. “Secure the city for the night!”
    The older soldiers at the gate exchanged grins as they pushed the massive gate shut. The enormous weight of oak and iron groaned on its hinges as it swung around. The gate was easily the height of three tall men, and four horsemen could ride abreast through its stone arch. With a boom, the gate settled against its iron frame. The crossbeams were dropped into place. A couple of urchins watched, sheltering from the rain under the tower overhang.
    “Gate’s barred, sir,” said one of the soldiers.
    “Very good,” said the lieutenant, and he vanished up the tower steps.
    “Go on with you,” said the soldier, making a half-hearted run at the urchins. “Get on home to your mothers. This ain’t a night to be out in.” The children scattered, jeering, lazily evading him and then returning to settle in the dry comfort of their spot.
    The night grew deeper. Lightning flashed in the upper reaches of the Rennet valley. The rain fell so heavily that everything was reduced to an indistinguishable blur. The hard-edged shapes of the city—walls, roofs, towers, arches, spires—every corner and line and angle was reduced to impressions of darkness and depth. On the north side of Hearne, the city wall ended at a tower that stood on the heights of the cliffs plunging down to the sea below. A walk on top of the parapet from that tower to the tower beside the main gate at the eastern edge of the city took one hour. Proceeding along the parapet from the tower gate to the third wall tower standing at the southernmost edge of Hearne, looming over the sprawl of the Fishgate district and the outward curved arm of the bay, took another hour. That night, however, as a tribute to the miserable weather, the soldiers of the Guard walked each route in less than forty minutes, hurrying along, shoulders hunched against the rain and flinching at every lightning flash. They did not waste time to gaze out across the parapet’s edge. Even if they had bothered to look out across the valley toward the Rennet Gap, they would have seen nothing except darkness and rain.
    It happened at the third hour after midnight. The parapet door of the gate tower opened and light spilled out into the darkness. It gleamed on the falling rain and the wet stone. The lieutenant, young Lucan, emerged and looked out. He was looking the wrong way, however, for he gazed out across the rooftops of the city. Smoke curled from his mouth as he puffed contentedly on a pipe. The door closed again behind him. Several lengths down the wall, something stirred in the darkness. The air grew even colder than it already was. It was a dark night, but the thing creeping over the parapet’s edge was darker still. If Lucan had remained at the door, if he had turned to look in that direction, he would have been hard pressed to see much beyond a blur of shadow standing on top of the wall. But he had gone inside, content that the city was in his capable hands—content with all the self-assuredness of youth. He was blissfully unaware he had cheated death by several seconds.
    The thing on top of the wall stood motionless for a moment. It was the shape and size of a man, but no man could have climbed the outside wall, for it was forty feet in height and constructed of perfectly joined stones. Even the most accomplished thief in the Guild would have considered the city wall beyond his skill.
    In one fluid movement, the form jumped off the wall. It fell through the air