Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [38]
Dismayed, he gripped his cloak around him and instantly felt frozen through. He couldn’t linger out in these conditions long. Squinting against the snow pelting his face, he ran around the house and across the courtyard, floundering at times in the drifts, hoping he didn’t lose his sense of direction.
The arms room was really the second larder, a small stone chamber built partially in the ground. It was usually crammed with barrels of salted meat, ice packed in straw for summer use, baskets of earthy potatoes, plaits of onions hanging from the rafters. On one wall hung rows of rusty swords, a rack of javelins, and a few longbows with broken strings and rotting quivers of arrows. The whole lot was spun over with cobwebs and dust, neglected and falling to pieces. Every time he was allowed inside, he begged Old Farns to let him polish the weapons and replace the rotted leather. But Farns always refused.
Now, however, he flung himself under the narrow overhang and tugged at the lock. It didn’t budge. With the wind howling at his back, he pulled out the remaining chisel and mallet and pried up the door’s hinge pins.
Pulling open the door, he ducked inside and paused a moment to get his bearings. The air smelled of onions, very dank and not exactly pleasant.
From his pocket he drew out a tinderstrike and lit the lantern hanging on a peg by the door. The light spread out around him, driving back the shadows.
The room was empty.
Caelan’s mouth fell open, and he stared in shock, lifting the lantern higher as though that would change the sight of a bare room swept clean from rafters to floor. Barrels and baskets were gone. The pegs that had once held the old weapons jutted forth in empty rows.
“Why?” he whispered, feeling slightly sick. “Oh, Father, why?”
Where had everything gone? Why had it been cleaned out?
Puzzled and astonished, Caelan turned around in a small circle, unable to believe it. No wonder Old Farns hadn’t wanted to give him the key.
A host of questions filled Caelan’s mind, but he didn’t have to speculate long to guess that the room had been emptied by his father’s order. Beva disapproved of weapons. He believed utterly in pacificism, as though by keeping oneself calm and detached all the world’s problems would go away. Caelan snorted to himself. Did that make his father shortsighted or simply naive?
Scorn swept through Caelan. Angrily he blew out the lantern and hung it back on its peg. He pushed his way outside into the raging elements, gasping from the cold that took his very breath, and replaced the hinge pins. For the first time in his life he considered his father a fool. Beva’s beliefs were placing everyone in the hold in jeopardy. Even if the threat of Thyzarene raiders seemed to be over, other hazards would come along in the future. To render the hold indefensible was so unwise Caelan could not believe it. Surely his father had only had the weapons moved to some other location. Surely he hadn’t thrown them out like rubbish.
Caelan’s anger grew with every step as he struggled against the wind. He floundered, found himself blown back, then bent low and forced his way forward again.
Barely able to see, he blundered straight into a bundled figure swathed in a hood and cloak. The figure gripped him by the arms, even as he flinched back.
“Boy!” shouted the figure. “Are you mad?”
Caelan squinted at the man’s face. “Farns?”
The grip on his arms tightened. “Aye, and who’s the bigger fool to be out here, me or you? Come on back, you crazy boy!”
It was impossible to ask his questions out here in this raging blizzard. Caelan jammed his shoulder against Farns’s, and together they struggled back toward the house.
The wind was brutal, shrieking and raging around them. Within its roar, Caelan thought he heard a moaning cry. Instinctive fear crawled up his arms, but he shook it off, concentrating instead on getting to shelter before he froze.
Another shriek came, and this time he could not call it his imagination. Farns stumbled