Fear moved through the crowd, too. Not of him, of the shape of the predator now being revealed. The understanding that a man had been operating inside their walls and their waters for weeks, hidden, patient, and deliberate.
Henry felt it.
The faces around him were the faces of people who had been living with the threat and were only now seeing it named. That was the thing you couldn't stage. Henry was smart enough to know it.
Torvald was presenting the first vellum document to the observers when the crash came.
It erupted from the east side. The lower passage near the grain stores, a hard, deliberate impact designed to carry across the yard. Shouting followed immediately, spreading through the crowd like fire through dry grass.
One voice, then three, then a dozen, and then the crowd was moving, a frantic, contracting mass pushing away from the east wall. Ivar was already turning.
Two men near the food tables threw off their dark cloaks. Steel caught the amber lantern light with a wicked gleam. A third lunged from the direction of the inner gate.
"Torvald." One word, one look.
His friend was already pivoting, shielding the document case with his massive frame, putting himself between the evidence and the chaos.
Good.
Ivar drew his sword, the ring of steel clear and sharp, and put himself between Matilda and the advancing men.
The two from the tables came fast, hired speed, all aggression and no skill.
Ivar stepped aside, the first man's blade whistling through the air where his chest had been a second before. The mercenary stumbled, his own weight dragging him off-balance into the dirt. Ivar didn't wait for him to rise. He pivoted, driving his hilt into the second man’s temple with a sickening crack, then followed with a short, heavy thrust that sent the man crumpling to the stones.
The crowd was fracturing into panic. Screams rose from the east side, followed by the acrid, heavy scent of oil smoke. Deliberate, thick, and black.
He turned.
The storage room beyond the east passage was bleeding orange light. Smoke was already clawing its way into the yard through the ventilation gaps in the stone.
His men were responding exactly as drilled, moving to the wall intervals. The royal observers had been pulled back by Torvald's men, the documents still clutched in their hands.
Good. That is good.
He turned to tell Matilda to stay close, and the space beside him was empty.
The crowd had surged in the chaos. A blind, mechanical physics of bodies retreating from the fire and the blades. In the movement, she'd been pushed sideways, swept toward the warehouse passage.
He saw her for a fleeting second at its entrance, being pressed further into the maw of the corridor by the retreating weight of the crowd.
Then the smoke swallowed her whole.
Ivar was moving before the thought could finish. A mercenary lunged from his left. A big man, aiming for the laird. Ivar killed him without slowing, one clean, savage movement, already past the falling body and driving toward the passage with a tunnel-narrow focus.
"Ivar!"
Torvald's voice barked from behind. He didn't stop.
"Handle it!" he roared back, not caring what Torvald was pointing to.
He plunged into the smoke.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The passage closed around her with terrifying speed.
The crowd had pushed her in. Not out of malice, but by simple, frantic mechanics of fear. By the time Matilda found her footing, the entrance was a blur of grey behind her and the smoke was a wall ahead. The stone was cold and very close on both sides.