Read The Heirs of Hammerfell for Free Online Page B

were handsome and healthy children, and grew like puppies; and when they were only half a year old, were taking unsteady steps about the house and courtyard, sometimes clinging to the great dog Jewel who was their constant companion and guard.
    Alastair was a few days quicker to walk, but was still only crying and cooing when Conn first babbled a sound that could have been his mother's name. As their midwife had predicted, their downy toddler's hair was the color of living flame.
    No one but their mother could ever tell them apart; even their father sometimes mistook Conn for Alastair, but their mother never made a mistake.
    They had rounded a full year, and several moons beyond when, on a dark cloudy
    afternoon, toward evening, Duke Rascard burst into his wife's sitting room, where she sat with her ladies, the twins playing with wooden horses on the floor. She looked up at him in surprise.
    \
    "What's the matter?"
    The duke said, "Try not to be too alarmed, my dear; but there are armed raiders approaching the castle. I have rung the bell for folk on the outlying farms to come inside the keep; I have ordered the drawbridge to be raised. We are secure here even if they try and hold us under siege for a whole season. But we must be prepared for anything."
    "The men of Storn?" she asked, her face betraying no fear or dread; but Conn, evidently sensing something in her voice, dropped his wooden horse and began to wail.
    "I fear so," Rascard said, and Erminie went pale.
    "The children!"
    "Yes," he said, and kissed her quickly. "Take them, and go as we planned. God keep you, my dear, until we are reunited."
    She snatched up a twin under each arm and retreated into her own room, where she
    quickly packed a few necessities for each child; she sent one of her women to the kitchen for a basket of food, and went swiftly down to a back entrance; the plan had been made that if anyone actually broke into the fortress, she would leave at once with the babies, and try to make her way through the woods to the nearest village where they would be safe. Now it struck her that perhaps it would be the greatest folly to leave the shelter of the castle for the woods and wilds; whatever came, she should remain in safety here; even under siege she would at least be with her husband.
    But she had promised Rascard to follow the plans they had made. If she did not, he might not be able to find her afterward and they might never be together again. Her heart seemed to stop inside her breast; might that hasty kiss have been her last farewell to her children's father? Conn was wailing in-consolably; she knew he must be picking up her fears, so Erminie tried to summon up courage not only for
    herself but for her frightened children. She wrapped them in their warmest cloaks and set them down beside her, the basket on her arm and a hand to each.
    "Now come quickly, little ones," she whispered to them, and hurried down the long twisting stairs toward the back gate of the castle, the twins stumbling on unsteady little feet.
    She pushed open the long-disused entrance, which nonetheless was kept oiled and in order for just such an eventuality as this; she looked back toward the main "court and saw the sky darkened with flights of arrows, and somewhere, flames rising. She wanted to run back, screaming her husband's name, but she had promised.
    By no means return, whatever happens, but await me in the village till I come to you. If I do not meet you there at sunrise, you will know I have perished; then you must leave Hammerfell and take refuge in Thendara with your Hastur cousins, and appeal to them for justice and revenge. She hurried along, but her pace was too much for the children.
    First Alastair tripped and sprawled shrieking on the cobblestones, then Conn stumbled; she picked them both up in her arms and hurried on. Something big and soft bumped her in the darkness; she put out. a hand and almost burst into tears.
    "Jewel! There, good dog, good dog," she