The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 77 What the Road Could Take

Heth cut the empty sack down its side.

Rye dust scattered over the road. Rovan stood beside his mule with both hands visible, saying something Daren could not hear from the gate.

Ysra heard it without needing the words.

“They'll search Reedbank.”

Daren asked Osric for the count.

“Three riders. Two spears. Heth has a sword. No one farther up that I can see.”

The cart stood within bowshot of the gate, but the mule and driver crowded the line. Osric kept his bow lowered.

Daren sent Iven to bring the children inside. Brida barred the gate after opening the narrow side passage. The damaged ward remained covered. No one would discover its weakness by trusting it in a fight.

Selka took the speaking position behind the wall.

“Heth. State your claim.”

The sergeant looked up.

“Inspection of undeclared grain.”

“An empty sack isn't a shipment.”

“It tells me there was one.”

Daren crossed the small space outside the passage with his splinted stick and stopped behind a broad fallen block. His knee made each step deliberate. He had chosen the block because it would hold his weight and interrupt a horse's charge.

“Rovan delivered grain here,” he called. “His carrying account is closed.”

Ysra made a sharp sound behind him.

Heth smiled.

“From whom?”

“Someone entitled to trade it.”

“Give me the seller.”

“No.”

The smile vanished.

Heth turned to Rovan. “Then you can answer at the station.”

One rider leaned down for the carter's collar.

Rovan's mule shied at the movement. The cart shaft swung, striking the rider's shin. He cursed and raised his spear butt toward the animal's head.

“Leave it,” Daren said.

The rider struck anyway.

The mule jerked backward. A wheel climbed the road's loose edge, tipping the cart toward the ditch. Rovan grabbed the bridle and was dragged against the shaft.

Everything narrowed to the position of his throat beneath the wood.

Daren shoved his stick into a gap between the block and the road, braced against it, and hooked the nearest rein with his free hand as the rider wheeled toward him.

He pulled downward, using the stone for leverage rather than asking his knee to bear the force.

The horse's head turned. The rider's second blow missed Rovan and struck the cart rail.

“Back!” Daren shouted.

Brida and Berrit came through the passage with a long lifting pole. They jammed it beneath the rising wheel. Rovan ducked under the shaft as they checked the cart's fall.

Heth drew his sword.

An arrow struck the road in front of his horse.

Osric had found a clear line at last. He already held another arrow against the string.

“The next line is clear too,” he called.

Daren released the rein before the horse could tear his shoulder open. Pain burned across his old strain. He stayed behind the block, breathing through it.

Heth looked from the archer to the two residents holding the cart. He could hurt someone. He could not be certain whom he would lose while doing it.

“You shelter thieves.”

“I shelter people you haven't proved stole anything.”

“I'll bring the authority to prove it.”

“Bring witnesses who can hear an answer.”

For a moment Daren thought the sergeant would charge simply because retreat would be visible from the mountain.

Then Rusk stepped onto the wall with his works badge in his hand.

“I saw you strike the animal while its driver was trapped.”

Heth stared at him.

“You should have gone uphill.”

“I know.”

The sergeant sheathed his sword. His men withdrew with him, leaving the split sack in the road.

The rider with the bruised shin kept looking back. Daren remembered doing the same after a retreat, searching for a final insult that might justify turning around. He told the people on the wall to lower their hands and let the road fall silent. Winning these few yards was enough.

Nobody cheered.

Brida eased the cart back onto level ground. Rovan's neck was scraped, and the mule trembled when Pella approached. Neither had a broken bone that she could find. Daren's shoulder throbbed angrily, and his repaired stick had worked loose at the splint.

Osric recovered his arrow from the dirt. The head was bent. He put it aside for repair rather than returning it to his usable bundle.

Inside, Ysra confronted Daren beside the water barrels.

“You told him.”

“I told him what he already knew from the sack.”

“You made us visible.”

“He stopped a cart on the road. We were visible before I spoke.”

She struck the barrel with her palm.

“My people survive by being overlooked.”

“Then I have made your life harder,” he said. “I won't pretend otherwise.”

That stopped her more effectively than an argument.

He showed her the torn sack, retrieved from the road. Its underside carried a faded mill mark. Someone patient could follow it without his help.

Ysra sank onto the bench.

“What happens when they come with more?”

“We need a plan that doesn't depend on three men losing their nerve.”

Daren looked at the blocked ward frame, the shortened gate, the unfinished waterworks. He had refused to sell another settlement for a quiet afternoon. Refusal had not strengthened a single wall.

That evening, Ysra sent one watcher home with a warning to move the hidden household lists away from the shrine store.

She kept the other beside the shaft.

“Finish the return,” she told Daren. “If we're going to stand out, let us have something worth standing for.”