The Complete Darkwar Trilogy: Flight of the Night Hawks, Into a Dark Realm, Wrath of a Mad God

He looked at her in the failing afternoon light. ‘We’ll have a little time tonight, Marie, just the two of us.’

She smiled. ‘That is most certain.’

‘How have you been getting by?’ he asked, noticing that she had lost weight since he had last seen her.

‘As always: I sell what I grow, and buy what I need. I take on a little sewing now and again when someone needs help and I am planning to buy some chickens soon so that I can have eggs to eat and perhaps a few to sell.’ She hugged his arm. ‘I get by.’

He said nothing, but his heart almost broke as he realised what little thought he had given to her needs before he had taken her boys away. He slipped his arm around her slender waist and hugged her as they walked. After a moment of silence, he said, ‘Perhaps we can come up with something better than just getting by.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Later,’ he said as they reached the inn.

Dinner was almost festive. Even though it had only been six months, many of the local townspeople stopped the boys – after a second glance – to welcome them back and remark on how much they had changed. Several girls had also stopped them to let them know that they would be in the square after sundown should the boys happen by.

At supper Marie gently informed the boys that Ellie was due to have a baby in a few months’ time. But the pair simply exchanged looks, and burst out laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’ asked their mother.

The boys said nothing. Their feelings for the girl seemed distant now compared to the vivid memories of parting with the sisters. Over a three-day period all six girls had expressed individual regret at the boys’ departure in ways that until then, had been beyond either of their imaginations a year earlier.

They hurried through supper, anxious to visit their friends. After they left, Marie looked around the otherwise deserted tap room of the inn and asked, ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

Caleb rose and offered his hand. ‘We are staying here. I told the boys to sleep in their old beds tonight.’

Marie said, ‘I expect they’re old enough to know what’s going on.’

‘They’ve known for a long time, Marie. But let’s just say that now they have a much fuller understanding.’

‘Oh!’ she said, as he led her up the stairs to his room. ‘You mean—?’

‘Yes.’

‘They are becoming men, aren’t they?’

‘That’s more than any mother should know,’ said Caleb as he led her into his room.

The next morning, Caleb and Marie found Tad and Zane asleep in the small hut where they had been raised. Caleb roused them from the pallets with a couple of playful taps from his boot. ‘Get up, you two.’

The boys arose with pallid complexions, bloodshot eyes and groans of protest. ‘Someone found a bottle of something, it seems,’ said Caleb.

‘Matthew Conoher and his brother James,’ said Zane. ‘It was … brandy, he said. Tasted more like wood varnish.’

‘But you drank it anyway?’ said Marie.

‘That we did,’ said Tad. He stood, stretched and yawned, wearing only his trousers.

His mother looked at her son’s chest, stomach, shoulders and arms. ‘Where did you get all those scars?’ she asked, her voice revealing alarm and her eyes narrowing as she crossed the hut to trace a particularly nasty-looking scar on his right shoulder with her finger.

Tad flinched as her touch tickled him. ‘I was carrying a pretty big stone up the path from the beach and it just got away from me. If I’d have let it go, I would have had to walk all the way back down the path and pick it up again, so I tried to hang on to it and it ripped right though my shirt.’

She glanced at Caleb, then at her son. ‘I thought for a minute—’

Tad grinned. ‘What? That Caleb had been beating us?’

‘Only a little,’ said Caleb. ‘And only when they needed it.’

‘No,’ said Marie, her expression slightly petulant as she became annoyed by their teasing. ‘I thought that perhaps it was from a weapon.’

Tad brightened. ‘Not that one.’ He pointed to another faint scar along his rib cage. ‘Now, this one was from a sword!’

‘A sword!’ exclaimed his mother.

‘I’ve got one, too,’ Zane said, pointing to a long mark across his forearm. ‘Tad gave me that when I didn’t get my blade around fast enough on a parry.’

‘You two,’ she said firmly, pointing to the boys. ‘Get dressed.’ Turning she said, ‘Caleb, outside.’

She led him out of the hut and said, ‘What have you done to my boys?’

Caleb shook his head slightly and said, ‘Exactly what you thanked me for last night, Marie. I’m turning them into men. Things didn’t happen exactly the way I wanted …’ He paused for a moment. ‘Let me tell you about the ambush.’

Caleb told her about the ambush, without glossing over how injured he had been nor overstating how resourceful the boys had proved. He told it as calmly as he could. ‘So, when it became clear that my father thought they were my apprentices anyway … well, let’s say we were too far down a particular road for me to drop them at some fuller’s or baker’s door and say, ‘Turn these lads into journeymen, will you, please?’ They are now my responsibility and I’m going to take the best care of them that I can.’

‘But teaching them to fight, Caleb? Are they to be soldiers, then?’

‘No, but they will need to know how to take care of themselves. If they’re with me and working for my father, they will be in danger occasionally. I want to make sure that they are able to survive those dangers.’

Marie seemed unconvinced, but said nothing for a moment.

Tad stuck his head out of the door of the hut and said, ‘Can we come out now?’

Caleb waved the boys out and Marie said, ‘I’m their mother and they will always be my babies.’

‘This baby would like something to eat, now,’ said Tad.

Marie slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Then we must go to the market and get—’

‘We’ll eat again at the inn,’ interrupted Caleb, ‘but there is something I need to discuss with all of you first.’

They stood in the early morning chill, the boys still half-asleep and squinting against the glare of the low-hanging sun. Caleb said, ‘There are perhaps, better times and places for these things, but this is where I am, so now is the time.’

‘Caleb,’ asked Marie, ‘what are you talking about?’

‘Your boys have been cast by fate into my care, their lot decided by the unselfish act of returning to see to my welfare, and in so doing, saving my life.’

He looked at the boys and said, ‘You know I love your mother more than any other woman I know, and I have been true to her for years.’ He looked at Marie and said, ‘I can not promise to be here any more than I have in the past, so I want you to leave Stardock and come and live with my family.’

‘But this is the only home I’ve known,’ said Marie.