The Robber Knight's Love

35. Secret in the Dark

Reuben stepped out of the keep door into the sunlight and came face to face with Captain Linhart. The soldier was standing at the bottom of the steps, staring up at him with a searching gaze in his eyes.

“Ah, Captain.” Reuben nodded.

“Where is Lady Ayla?” the Captain asked, somewhat belligerently.

“She’s taking a moment to be alone with Sir Isenbard, Captain.”

“Is she, now?”

“Yes. I had to leave her. There is something important I have to check. But before I go—tell me what the patrols on the wall say.”

Reuben's tone of voice left no doubt that this was a command. He studied Linhart carefully—the man who commanded Ayla's troops now. The man who still did not and could never know who he, Reuben, really was. Would this man bow to his authority, or would he have to make him?

The Captain hesitated for a long moment. Then he said: “All reports are negative. There were no further attempts to storm the castle last night. No breaches of the wall anywhere.”

Reuben's muscles relaxed. Slowly, his hand, which had been drifting toward the hilt of his sword, started to move the other way again.

Listening, he turned his head from side to side.

“And the clanking and moaning has stopped, too.”

“Apparently.” Linhart hesitated once again. “Do you know why they stopped?” he inquired. “If they tried this again, they could probably wear us down completely and storm the castle.”

Again with a grim smile on his face, Reuben nodded. “Yes. But you see, the point is not whether they could, the point is whether their commander can convince his men of that fact. He tried his plan, and it failed, and men died in the attempt. It takes a very good soldier to attempt a second time a plan which has failed once already. And these are not good soldiers. These are hired cutthroats. They will look for something else to try. But make no mistake—whatever it is, they will find a way.”

The Captain nodded.

“I see. It seems you know what you are talking about.”

Reuben knew it was as much a question as a statement.

“No,” he said. “I do not only know what I'm talking about. I know what I'm doing.”

“And what will you do next?”

Reuben considered for a moment whether to punch the man for his nosy, interfering questions, or simply stab him in the gut. But then... he did seem a capable Captain. Such men were not to be wasted.

“Now,” he said, the threat unmistakable in his voice, “I'm going somewhere to check on something I've been wondering about for a couple of days. That's all you need to know.”

In a second he was down the stairs and past Linhart.

“That wouldn't have anything to do with a certain change in the patrol duties of the guards, would it?” Linhart called after him. “A change that said from now on three guards had always to patrol together. For some strange reason, nobody was willing to tell me who had given that particular order.”

Reuben stopped in his tracks.

“Go to the wall, Captain of the Guard, and guard it,” he said. “Asking too many questions can be hazardous to your health.”

Then he strode away.

His path took him around the keep, to the back of the stone fortress. There, a separate entrance led to the castle dungeons. Reuben nodded in appreciation of the cleverness behind the outlay of the castle. This way, if the prisoners escaped, they could not seize control of the keep and its inhabitants immediately. They would be stuck in the open, between the keep and the outer wall, with no defenses against attacks from both sides.