Chapter Twelve
Unlike Sir Garet’s beauteous castle, Odred’s keep was situated on a slight rise in the midst of a low dry plain. The plain gave way to sticky mud and flood wash-outs when wet. Now it was all sharp gullies, brambles, bleached animal bones, and the sad hacked stumps of trees. Though I’d been born hardly more than a half-day’s ride from here, never had I the courage to approach it. The stories I had heard were too frightening.
Old Jeb had warned me that the only creatures who ever repaired from Odred’s keep were vultures.
“Vultures, black ravens; that,” Jeb declared in his hoarse voice. As a lad with no horse to ride, it made not a dolt’s sense to attempt a journey to the Baron’s walls. Besides he sent his own villains, like Mars, enough times to inspire fear in us—so why bo
