Free The Bloody North (The Fallen Crown) by Tony Healey Page A

name?"
    She nodded.
    "Black," he said, the suggestion of a grin on his face. "Rowan Black."
    "Good day, Rowan Black," Patti said and led her horse off in the opposite direction. Rowan watched h er for a moment, the sway of Patti's hips in the saddle, then he too went on his way. Northward, as he'd told her.
    Into the cold.
    * * *
    The first scattered snowflakes fell later that day, seemingly from nowhere. The first true snows. The sky was a clear blue with but a few thick white clouds spread across the horizon. They fell fat and lazy, see-sawing toward the ground in a timeless ballet. Their presence did not surprise him – it was cold enough after all.
    Rowan found a burned -out old farmhouse a couple of miles off the main road and checked to see no one else had had the same idea as him. The blackened frame stood open to the elements. Only the barn was still partially standing, with half the roof still intact.
    Oh well, he thought. Beats sleeping under a tree.
    He fed the horse some of the apples he'd taken from the merchant – well past their best, though his ride didn't seem to mind. Rowan made a small fire, just enough to keep the cold at bay. He chewed some cured meat, st aring thoughtfully into the flames, replaying the events at the store. While the girl had been preoccupied outside, Rowan found several bottles of cheap whiskey and a substantial stash of fresh tobacco. There'd been no more boxes of money. To his mind, it was a fair enough deal. She took the money, he took the booze and smokes. He had no need for money – Bonnet and Black had made enough of that in their day, to last a lifetime – but a strong drink could be a scarce commodity.
    Rowan drank from one of the bottles, the liquor warming his insides as it hit his stomach. Between the blanket on the floor, the warmth of the fire, and the soothing whiskey, he was asleep before long. On the other side of the barn, the snow fell and gathered on the floor.
    By morning, the whole countryside was covered white.
     

Twelve
     
    To eyes that had only ever gazed upon the sprawling development of civilisation in the populated southern towns and cities, it would have been hard to believe the North could be so sparse.
    H e'd seen few people in his days on the road. Fewer still since the snow had fallen without end since that night in the barn. Between the many villages and townships spread across the North, under the watchful peaks of the Great Mountains in the far distance the roads were not readily travelled by common folk. The wagons and carts he passed were driven by merchants and traders who neither made eye contact nor showed any sign they'd even seen him.
    The best way to be, out on the open road coming across someone like him. Long sword at his side, face scarred and weathered by war. Sara had once told him he had cold eyes, and he'd reckoned she was right. They'd always been a piercing, bright blue. Perhaps they merely reflected the ice inside.
    For a time , he'd tried to leave all of that coldness in the past. Tried to move on, build a family, a business farming the land. He'd made it, too.
    Or thought he had  . . .
    Now all that was gone and he was back to being the man he'd been when he turned his back on Muriel Bonnet and chose his own path. Like the girl he'd helped days before, he too had chosen a new direction at the crossroads. Had rode on, begun a new life for himself. A life that was torn away from him, burned to the ground, best parts of it buried in the rock-hard dirt.
    Now he was Rowan Black again. On e half of one of the deadliest mercenary partnerships Starkgard had ever seen. A cold-eyed killer on a journey North, in the name of his family. A quest for vengeance.
    And it got colder e very day. Colder and colder.
    Fitting, he thought. So, too, do I.
    * * *
    The fire spat and crackled as he fed it kindling. The snow lay in thick piles at the feet of the trees. Rowan had found a long slab of granite in amongst them and he bedded down on it,