Stephen was a survivor.
THE SOUND OF HAMMERING filled the streets and houses of Front Royal, along with the steady sawing of wood.
Watching the work across the ville, Baron Nathan Cawdor stood on the third floor of the destroyed keep, the shattered brick walls rising only to his knees. At the base of the keep, workers picked through the rubble, salvaging individual bricks and cleaning them off to add to the growing pile.
A few blocks away, scaffolding rose around the ville castle like loving hands, holding the weakened walls in place until the sloping supports could be trusted to hold the awesome weight of the new granite blocks.
Day and night, the construction continued, repairing the tremendous damage done by the invaders. The bodies were gone from the streets, the damaged cobblestones in the main courtyard replaced with fresh ones. The new horse stable was only a wooden skeleton, the horses temporarily housed in the great hall of Castle Cawdor.
Nathan shivered slightly from a cold wind. His clothes were patched but spotlessly clean, the boots shiny with polish. Oiled blasters rode at each hip, and a monstrously huge .44-caliber Desert Eagle pistol rested in a position of honor in a shoulder holster. The weapon had been pried from the cold gray hand of Overton as he lay sprawled in the mud.
“Afternoon, my husband,” a lovely woman said, advancing with a cape folded over an arm. Her long hair was tied back off her plain face, and a knit scarf was wound about her throat, accenting her pale skin. She wore a long coat over a loose gown of royal brown, and heavy pants peeked out from below the pleated skirt. An Ingram M-10 submachine gun had been slung over her shoulder for easy access.
Lady Tabitha Cawdor walked toward her husband and offered him the garment. “It’s too cold for you to be standing here without a coat.”
“Do our sec men have coats?” Nathan replied wearily, watching the armed guards walk the palisades of the walled ville. Many had tied blankets around their bodies with lengths of rope as protection from the wind. Others wore less and shivered. “Do the workers below, do the old?”
Gently, Tabitha brushed a hand against the baron’s scarred cheek. Her fingernails were stubby and cracked, her hand covered with scabs, the wounds still healing from her many days of torture. “No, my love, they do not.”
“Then while I stay here in public sight, neither do I,” Nathan answered. “If I can’t make them warm, I can at least share the weather and make them feel less miserable.”
She glanced at the sky and drew her coat closed tighter. “Any sign of snow?”
“Thankfully, no. Every day gets us closer to repairing the wall and drawbridge. Once we’re behind stone again, I can turn our attention to fixing the homes and other buildings. How’s the laundry coming?”
Tabitha almost smiled. Laundry, such a nice way of referring to stripping the dead of their torn clothing. “The sewing is nearly done on the shirts,” she reported. “Next we dye the blue cloth brown, or rather purple, as quickly as we can. In a few days, everybody will have an extra shirt to wear. Then we start on the boots and pants. Come the full moon, even the old will be warm.”
“Good. And the food supply?”
“Adequate. With the hunters bringing in more meat daily, we should survive until spring.” She offered the coat again. “Please?”
“I can’t.”
Tabitha gestured at herself. “Yet I can?”
“You just gave birth,” he said tolerantly. “They understand.”
Pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks, a man wearing rags for boots paused to catch his breath in the street below and waved at the couple standing high above the ville. Nathan stood taller and nodded in reply. Flexing his hands to restore circulation, the worker returned to his task and pushed the bricks toward the construction crew at the barbican of the front gate.
“Is the baby healthy?” Nathan asked in sudden concern, taking his wife by the arm. “Is that why you’re really here?”
“Alexander is fine. Sleeping with his wet nurse, and a dozen sec men,” Tabitha added pointedly, patting his cold hand. She was too thin and sickly to breast-feed the infant. However, many woman in the ville had lost newborns in the terrible war, and it had been no problem to find one willing to suckle the next baron.