Page 133 of Keeper of the Word

Anger was almost a comforting emotion to him. It told him he was in the right most often. It told him that some injustice occurred. It told him that his actions were true.

The only person Tolvar was angry with at present was himself.

Aye, he could not pretend he did not desire to addmanymen to his kill tally, but ’twas as if he’d learned nothing over the past year.

So much for redemption.Tolvar had naught to show for hisheroics but a festering wound, a broken knight’s vow, and the pungent smell of his own priggish ideas about serving justice.

Was Ashwin safe? Did it still stand? Had the StarSeers been able to See the attack on their city in time? And what of Elanna? How did she fare? Turas had alluded to the same idea that Bernwald had said: there was a traitor in Castle Sidra. The very notion that someone close to the sovereign could be disloyal sent Tolvar’s already throbbing head spinning anew. ’Twas impossible. The sovereign’s council, steward, chancellor, and commanding knights had been in his court for decades.

I must escape.

At one point, Tolvar had worked one of his bindings loose, but a servant entered the tent hours later and, upon noticing, simply tied it again.

Tolvar hung his head.

Out from thetroubled and uncomfortable sleep he’d drifted into, Tolvar’s knight’s senses suddenly came to life in the darkness.

“Wolf.”

Tolvar cocked his head. Surely, the sound of his name had been his imagination. A vapid wish on the edge of his own dried-out tongue.

But it came again. “Wolf.”

“Aye?” Tolvar whispered back.

Moments went by. Tolvar held his breath. Nothing.

A dream.

Then, a figure silently slipped through the flap of the tent entrance. Tolvar squinted to make out who it was. Not one of the servants. A figure with broad shoulders. The silhouette of a sword hung at his side. He held a knife.

A poor end. Not one worthy of the stars. Or Sloane.

He took a deep breath, readying himself as the figure quietly approached.

“Gus?” Tolvar could barely hear his own voice through his shock. “Is that you?”

His knight lifted a finger to his lips. “Shhh. There are eight guards outside,” Gus whispered. The din of nightly camp noises rumbled in the distance.

Gus made good use of his knife and cut through Tolvar’s bindings. Tolvar twisted his wrists back and forth, then gingerly ran his fingers over the rope burns notched across them. Gus helped him stand. The white-hot pain in his thigh almost made him lose consciousness. But Gus propped him up while Tolvar cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and stretched his back.

“You have twenty more counts, and then we must leave,” Gus whispered.

“Twenty counts? What does that mean?”

“I’ll explain later.”

Tolvar then noticed that what was held in Gus’s sword belt wasn’t a sword but a long stick. A walking staff of sorts.

“How are you here?”

“I shall explain later. Time to move, m’lord.”

Tolvar, supporting himself on the staff so he could walk with his wound, exited the tent behind Gus. Tolvar braced himself to be met by guards. But no one was there. Tolvar stifled a groan at the pain in his thigh.

Instead of Gus leading them away from the camp, he motioned for Tolvar to follow him to the outside of a tent toward the center of Greenwood’s camp.

Tolvar lifted his eyebrow in question. Gus silently beckoned him to follow.