The column rode on in silence for a time, the only sounds the muffled rhythm of hooves on the damp trail and the occasional creak of leather as a rider shifted in his saddle. Ahead of them, the lead handlerâs tracking hound moved with a low, purposeful gait, nose hovering just above the carpet of sword fern that brushed against its flanks.
The dogâs path wandered slightly from side to side, crossing and recrossing its own path enough that its handler had to lengthen his stride to keep up without pulling the long leash taut.
The hound hadnât found anything yet, not truly, but something in its posture had changed since theyâd entered the deeper forest. Its ears were forward, and its tail had stiffened into a slow, deliberate wag that Erling recognized from years of watching his own dogs work the grasslands back home.
The animal was reading the forest the way Erling read a room full of lords, sifting through a thousand competing scents to find the one trail that mattered.
"Thereâs something else," Wes said eventually, keeping his voice quiet enough that the words barely carried over the soft clop of horse hooves on the trail. Heâd been watching the column ahead of them with the patient attentiveness of a man who was deciding how much to share, and how much to hold back, and it seemed like heâd finally reached a decision.
"My wife wrote to your mother last month," Wes continued, and the shift in topic was so abrupt that Erling turned to look at him with a raised brow. Theyâd been discussing the succession, and Loman, and the dangerous undercurrents flowing beneath the surface of Lothian City. Now they were talking about his motherâs correspondence?
It wasnât surprising that the two women were exchanging letters. Lady Sorcha hadnât received a warm reception from the ladies of the court when she married Wes, but Erlingâs mother had taken her under a wing as though she were an abandoned chick, and the two had remained close ever since.
So, while Erling wasnât surprised that his mother and Wesâs wife were writing to each other, he had no idea how the contents of their letters were relevant to the conversation he and the older baron had been having.
"About Charlotte Otker," Wes clarified, and Erlingâs raised brow lowered as his features tightened into a slight grimace.
"Ah," Erling said blandly. "That."
Erlingâs mother had been remarkably persistent on the subject. Lady Ragna Fayle was not a woman who raised a topic once and then let it rest. She raised it once, and then she raised it again at dinner, and then she brought it up over breakfast in case sleeping on it had changed Erlingâs mind, and then she found a way to mention it again while they were discussing entirely unrelated matters, like the repair of a leaking roof in the eastern wing of Fayle Keep.
To her credit, sheâd never made the mistake of presenting the match as a solution for their baronyâs struggling finances, even though that was precisely what it would be. Instead, sheâd focused on what she called the âstrategic geometryâ of the arrangement, using a phrase that Erling suspected sheâd borrowed from one of his old tutors.
"Your mother is worried about you," Wes said simply.
"My mother is always worried about me," Erling replied. "She was worried about me when I was twelve, and she was worried about me when I turned twenty. If I live to be ninety, sheâll still be worried about me, watching from the Heavenly Shores instead of taking the rest she earned for raising me alone."
Wes let out a quiet chuckle, but his eyes didnât look as amused as the sound that spilled past his lips.
"Sheâs not wrong to push this," Wes said, pushing the subject with a weight to his words that went beyond matchmaking. "You know I wonât pretend that marriage is some fairy tale where love conquers all and the minstrels sing your story at the next tournament," he said. "But this is getting serious."
"No one would pay a minstrel to sing about the Coward Baron of Fayle," Erling said dryly, using the nickname that had plagued him ever since he first rejected one of Owainâs âoffersâ to hunt demons on the Southern Steppe. "Theyâd have to pay the audience to listen."
"Erling," Wes said sharply.
The younger baron fell silent at the tone. Wes didnât use that tone with him very often. After all, while Wes was the older of the two, Erling had carried the weight of ruling a barony from a much younger age. Which of them played the âelder brotherâ in their friendship floated back and forth between them as each gave way to the otherâs respective seniority.
But at the moment, Wes didnât just sound like an older brother addressing his junior... He sounded like one with a scolding to deliver to a younger brother who had fallen short of the mark.
"The Otkers control the route through Otker Canyon," Wes said, shifting his reins to one hand as he spoke. "Right now, that route is profitable because itâs peaceful. But that peace may not last much longer if thereâs more to these demon raids than weâve been led to believe."
"If the Holy War goes as badly as I think it might," he said, glancing ahead to confirm that Owain was still deep in conversation with Sir Garrik. "The borders of Lothian March might shrink before they ever grow again. If that happens, then Otker Canyon becomes one of the only safe ways to move goods east of the frontier. Grain, livestock... people. Everything that needs to move will have to pass through the Otker toll."
"Youâre telling me to marry a road," Erling said, furrowing his brow at the older baron.
"Iâm telling you to marry options," Wes corrected. "When everything else falls apart, and it very well might, then the man who has the most options survives. Your barony has land and grain and half a dozen villages full of people who need a future. Charlotteâs family has plenty of gold and silver along with a trade route and connections to every barony downriver from Otker," Wes said bluntly.
"Together, thatâs more than either of you has alone," Wes pointed out. He knew full well that Erlingâs mother had likely already made these points, but he hoped that hearing them from a different voice would help them to finally penetrate the stubbornness that Lady Ragna had been utterly helpless against.