Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale - Colin McComb

no clue until the clouds lowered themselves down Eagle Rock. I drove my flock home as quick as
I could, praying that Toren had read the signs aright, and cursing with what was left of my breath
when I saw he hadn’t. Fifteen shivering minutes it took me to lock the sheep in the winter barn,
and the snow was falling heavy by the time I was done. It took another fifteen to hobble my way
to the fork. By the time I reached it, the snow was coming down thick and white as ewe’s wool,
there was a good inch of fresh snow on the ground, and the wind was starting to howl. It was the
worst storm I’d seen in years.
I met Toren at the fork, and he looked half wild.
“I’ve lost two!” he shouted at me over the wind, his teeth chattering his words short.
“Forget them!” I shouted back. “We’ll never find them in this weather!”
We drove the rest of the flock back to the barn, no conversation coming between us,
snatched away by the wind. When we reached the barn, Toren said, “You can’t afford to lose
those sheep, can you?” He knew the answer—I was barely scraping by. He said, “I’m going back
after them.”
“You idiot, those sheep are good as dead. You’ll be dead, too, if you go after them.”
“They’re my responsibility. I lost them, and I will bring them back.” He whistled up
Inger and was gone, out the door into the howling storm. I cursed him as he left, but I had to let
him go. I had to pen the sheep, and that took me a good five minutes. I followed him off as quick
as I could, but he had more than enough of a head start.
I snatched my lantern and my crook and shivered my way into the storm after him,
slogging through the bluster and the ice that drove into face and beard. The storm was thick
enough that I nearly lost my bearings a couple of times—me, who’d spent the last twenty years
on this land and knew every hillside like a brother—and had I the breath, I'd have heaved a sigh
of relief when I reached the boulder that marked the fork in the road. Snow was covering Toren’s
footsteps even then, but I followed them into the dark and into the west.
All the landmarks were strange to me then, with the scrawny trees hanging their boughs
under ice and a heavy load of snow. My only guides were the filling footsteps and, I hoped, the
knowledge of the land I’d lived on for two decades. Up I struggled, my breath coming hard in my
lungs and Crosh breasting the drifts by my side. The tracks I followed got shallower and
shallower… I was falling behind and couldn’t move any faster, and worse, if I recognized the trail
here aright, Toren and the sheep were heading toward the rocky ravines on Eagle Rock. They’d
be lucky to escape death this night. Hells, I’d be lucky to make it home to my bed, and I
wondered why I kept on. Wasn’t because he was the best friend I’d ever had, and he hadn’t been
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
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