by Shannon West
The next few hours were hell, as they were manhandled into a tent, interrogated by some officer whose breath smelled of strong liquor, then raged at by a general who refused to speak anything except Athelonian. Poor General Hage had lost consciousness and Janos had pleaded for medical treatment for him, but the officer simply sneered at both of them and turned his back.
Janos recognized him, of course, as Farish, a prince of Athelon and the brother of the Athelonian king. He was young and rash, and Janos sincerely hoped his forbidden use of cannons would come back to destroy him. They’d lost countless soldiers, including his beloved uncle to the carnage of the guns, and if Janos survived, he wouldn’t rest until he saw the man executed for war crimes. Of course, that was an excellent reason for Farish to kill him.
Janos knew Farish’s language, but pretended he didn’t, dodging his questions sullenly until the bastard had slapped him out of his chair and onto the floor of the tent. He’d been taken then, along with poor General Hage, to this tent and warned that he’d better be prepared to answer questions by morning on pain of death. He didn’t doubt it either—Farish was clearly out of control and looking for any excuse. Killing the Herkon king would no doubt be an achievement for him and give him some advantage in his country’s complicated and contentious political maneuverings.
The guards had taken off the ropes when they brought him back to the tent. They had started drinking soon after they put him inside and he had seen the way they looked at him and at his body when they threw him down. He was terrified of them coming back in and of what they might do then.
He’d tried to do what he could for poor General Hage. But he was bleeding out and Janos had no idea how to stop it. He’d tried applying pressure to his wounds, but they were far too extensive and too deep. After an hour or so, Janos knew his efforts were futile. The poor man died a few minutes later, and Janos had dropped down to the floor of the tent in exhaustion. It was only a few minutes later that he heard the scratching, ripping noise at the back.
“Who is it?” he whispered softly, and when the Tygerian’s bright head popped inside, he thought he might faint with shock and relief.
“Oh, gods!” he whispered softly, clutching his throat and crawling over to him quickly. “Bastion! But how? How are you here? Thank the gods for it, but how did you find me?”
Then as quickly as relief washed over him, sudden fear came in on its heels. “You can’t be here…they’ll kill you if they find you!”
“We’ll talk about everything later. But first I have to get you out of here!” He whispered hoarsely.
“But…”
“No buts,” Bastion said firmly in an imperious tone, and once again Janos wondered at the way he allowed this boy to speak to him. “I’ve come for you,” he said, brushing off his concern as he climbed inside the tent. “And I’ll get you out of here. The general, too, if he can travel.”
Janos glanced over at the general sadly. “I’m afraid he’s dead. About a half hour ago.”
The young Tygerian quickly crawled over to him and checked the pulse at his throat. He shook his head. “Yes, he’s gone. I’m sorry, Janos,” he said so softly he had to strain to hear him. “But we still have to get you out of here.”
“But how?” he pointed toward the tent flap. “Guards outside,” he whispered.
The handsome Tygerian grinned at him. “We’ll go out the same way I came in. Everything’s pretty quiet in the camp because most of them are drunk and passed out. You’ll have to move quietly though. There are a few sentries still around,” he cautioned.
Janos nodded and took the hand he held out. “Are the others outside waiting?”
Bastion grinned. “What others? There’s only me. Oh, and one slave boy from someplace called Brytal.”
“What?” Janos blinked at him, and Bastion grinned and pulled his arm.
“I’ll explain later. Let’s go. Follow me and try not to make a sound.”
Janos still pulled back, shaking his head. “But they’ll find I’m missing and follow us. Follow our trail—and when they find us, they’ll kill us.”
“They’re going to kill you anyway. I’m sorry, but that’s what I’d do if I were them. It would demoralize your army and all of Herkos by taking away their leader. The war would be over in days.” Of course, he was right—it was exactly what Janos had been thinking but this young man said it so matter-of-factly, as if his death wasn’t frightening and shocking. His resemblance to the Bloody Prince grew stronger all the time. He wondered how it wasn’t immediately apparent to everyone who met him.
“Besides, we’re going to create a diversion.”
“A what?”
“Never mind, you’ll see. Now we have to get moving.” He pulled Janos, who was no longer resisting, to the back of the tent and slipped through the slit at the back, turning to hold out a hand to him. Janos followed him with no more hesitation, and soon found himself outside in the cool night air. For a moment the darkness was so complete he immediately bumped into Bastion, who put a hand over his mouth to stop him from making any noise. He put his mouth up to Janos’s ear and whispered, causing an uncontrollable shudder to pass through Janos’s body. “Follow me. Hold onto my arm if you need to. Straight back through the tents till we reach the back. Then head left until I tell you to stop.”
Janos nodded, his heart thumping wildly in his chest. If this worked, it would be a miracle. He had so many questions, like what was Bastion doing out here all on his own, and where was his army? Bastion had said he was alone. Had they been defeated or merely made to retreat? And where would they go? Back to Wirlo? If they returned there, this general would follow them and smash through their defenses, unless they could call for help from the Farlians. The Athelonians’ use of cannons had literally blasted through the treaties and they’d had no time to prepare for such warfare. Even the idea of guns after so many centuries was almost unthinkable. Guns and cannons and other modern weapons of war were what had almost destroyed their planet in the past, and the weapons had been relegated to museums. Using them against each other went against everything the people of Laltana believed in.
After what seemed like an eternity, they made it behind the back row of tents, when again Bastion stopped him and pointed to the left. Now that Janos’s eyes were adjusting to the dark night outside the tent, he could see him much more clearly, and Bastion seemed to be smeared all over with mud. No, that was blood! He became alarmed, but Bastion was moving with such confidence, he couldn’t be much wounded. He followed him unquestioningly again until they reached the last tent where a small, black-haired boy was darting around, looking a little desperate.
He saw them coming and stopped, looking at Bastion. “You’re back. We…uh…we have a small problem.”
Bastion gave a distinct growl. “What kind of problem?”
“I set some small kindling fires under the barrels, but so far nothing’s happening. I can’t get the barrels to burn. I thought if I just spilled some black powder on the fire under the barrels and got that to light, it would make the fires bigger and then the sparks would blow up the barrels—I thought I’d have a huge fire by now.”
“Damn it, boy, you told me you were an expert with black powder.”
“I did? I may have exaggerated just a touch. But just before you got here, the powder seemed to be catching up. It’s sparking anyway. Maybe we should get back a little way. When it starts really burning, it’s going to go up fast.” He leaned around Bastion and gave Janos a little wave. “Hello. I’m Taran.”
Janos was startled, but still lifted his hand to wave back at him, because the gesture had been a bit endearing. Bastion growled, though, and took Janos’s arm before he could answer the boy, hauling him back away from the cannons and into the woods. Shocked and angry at being manhandled, Janos started to pull away and demand to know what he thought he was doing, but then he looked back at the fire and saw the powder sparking higher, slowly growing into what looked like a glowing fairy ring
within the flame. It began to generate little flickers of flame that were actually bouncing maybe a half a meter or more high up in the air. In fact, right on time, the wind had begun to catch up and the more the wind blew, the hotter the fire seemed to get. They fizzed in the air as they flew by and all around the barrels.
Bastion kept pulling Janos up and backward into the woods, breathing excitedly, and Taran came to join them. Janos had expected a flare of bright flames from the fires, but nothing like what actually happened. Janos had just turned and begun to climb up the hill into the woods with Bastion to go to some stream he kept talking about, when suddenly there was a loud thump and a whoosh. A hot wind slammed into him and flung him into the ground face first. He raised up and turned in horror to see orange flames shooting meters high up into the sky and sparks flying everywhere up into the dark sky. Pieces of barrel and the gods knew what else began raining down on top of them. The next thing he knew, Bastion picked him up, threw him over his shoulder and began running up the hill with him. He stopped when Taran fell beside them, and he reached down and swooped him up too, tucking him under his arm despite his loud squawking.
From his vantage point over Bastion’s shoulder, he got a glimpse of the fire spreading, the heat so intense he could feel it on his face even from this distance. It lit up the other tents nearby, which in turn began to burn, and pieces of burning canvas flew through the air like manic birds, igniting everything they touched. Men began yelling wildly and streaming from their tents, running for their lives. Another loud explosion sounded behind them and then another and another, and even the woods began to catch on fire, the trees behind them began burning like torches.
They reached a small stream and Bastion put Janos on his feet, then pushed him down in the water and began dunking him down into it, getting him soaking wet. Janos was too amazed to say a word, before Bastion picked him up again and thrust him toward some vines on the side of the hill. He covered his face with one arm and cried out, thinking Bastion must have gone mad and meant to dash his head against the side of the mountain, but then the vines parted and Janos was thrust inside a small cave. An equally wet Taran was thrown inside next and then finally Bastion himself climbed in, also dripping wet, squeezing himself through the small opening of the cave and settling in next to them. He grabbed Janos by the shoulders and started looking him over and patting him down for any sign of burns or injuries.
“Stop,” Janos said, pushing his hands away. “I’m fine. But what about you? Are you burned? What was all that blood on you from earlier?”
“Oh, I got wounded during the battle—just hit in the back of the head. I woke up in a pile of corpses.”
“Oh, good gods!”
“Yes, but I’m all right. I just got a hit on my head from one of the cannon shells landing near me and blowing stuff up, I guess. It bled a lot and I think Luc and the others must have thought I was dead.”
“They left you there.”
“Yes, but I understand. They were retreating.”
“You would never have left any of them,” Janos cried indignantly.
Bastion looked down at him, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Maybe not. I would never have left you, for sure. I was trying to get to you when I got hit.”
“You were?”
“I hate to interrupt you two when you’re all lovey and everything, but I’d like to remind you that the woods are on fire! I think it’s too late for us to get out!”
Janos glanced over at Taran in alarm, but Bastion shook his head at him. “I know, Taran, so just calm down. I never planned on getting out, because we can’t outrun this. We should be all right in here. It might get pretty smoky and hard to breathe for a while, so let’s soak some cloth in water in case we need to put it over our mouths and noses.” He turned back to Janos. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Janos nodded solemnly. He believed the solemn promise, or at least he knew that Bastion would die himself before he let anything harm him. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did, and it warmed him inside. He’d avoided him for these past weeks since those kisses they’d shared, and now he wondered why. What had he been so afraid of? Bastion would never hurt him. He wasn’t sure how he knew that but he did.
It was getting a bit smokier inside their little den, but he tried to stay calm because panicking certainly wouldn’t help, and if he had to die, it was much better to die here than by torture at the Athelonians’ hands. He watched quietly then as Bastion tore off some of his teruga and ripped that part up into strips. He leaned out and caught some of the water as it fell off the hill in the little waterfall over their hideout, getting the pieces thoroughly soaked.
“It won’t be long now,” he said, crawling back toward Janos and handing him a strip of cloth. “If it gets bad, try breathing through this. The fire can’t reach us in here. Come on, Taran. Let’s get as far back in this cave as we can. This may get a lot worse before it gets any better.”
****
Larz woke up coughing, feeling disoriented and dry-mouthed. Remembering where he was and what had happened, he leaned up on one elbow and surveyed the interior of the small cave. The fire they had inadvertently started in the woods had been intense, but luckily hadn’t come as close to their cave as Larz had feared it would, taking a more westerly direction and not advancing too far up the hill. Maybe because of the rocky terrain between the camp and where they were or because of the wind, which had been blowing in the opposite direction, the area east of the camp had been spared. Larz had gone out in the middle of the night to reconnoiter and had heard the distant shouts coming from the Athelonian camp and had seen the roiling smoke, blacker than the night sky and lit up by flames that were traveling back toward the road to Athelon. At any rate, they’d been lucky, and there had been no one coming up the hill searching for them as yet, though first light might change that. Larz had gone back up the hill and found their cave again, crawling back in to try to get a few hours of sleep, at least. He had no idea what they might have to face later.
Taran was stretched at the back of the cave, after way too much argument over the fact that he was very young, not a warrior and the most in need of protection. Larz had finally settled the argument by tossing him to the back and stretching out across the entrance to the cave.
The boy was lying on his back now, his lips parted, and his snoring loud enough that Larz knew what must have awakened him so early. Beside Taran and to his Larz’s left was Janos, lying on his side, with a hand tucked under his cheek. One of his braids had fallen across his face, but when Larz reached out to smooth it off his forehead, his eyes flew open.
“Oh,” Larz said, a little startled. “I thought you were asleep.”
“No,” Janos replied with a slow smile. “Hard to sleep with the sounds of the cannons so close by. I was dreaming about the battle and then I woke up and discovered why.”
“The cannons? Oh, you mean Taran’s snoring.” He grinned over at him. “He is pretty loud for such a little thing. Maybe he swallowed a ‘lightning bug.’”
“A what?”
Larz chuckled. “It’s a silly story my omak told me and my brothers when we were very small. On Earth, where he used to live, they have these small flying insects with little lights on their tails. Most people on Earth call them fireflies, but in the place where he was from, some people called them ‘lightning bugs.’ He explained to us that fireflies or ‘lightning bugs’ produce a chemical reaction inside their bodies that allow them to light up. He called it biolum…something. Anyway, we didn’t have those insects on Tygeria, but my omak told us that he thought he might have seen something like them outside at night—a total fabrication, of course—and that if we stayed outside playing too long in the evenings, then one might fly in our mouths and we’d swallow it. Then it would thunder and lightning in our stomachs. Our father stayed late at his Games or his training back then and mostly he let us stay with him. We played in the arena with our woo
den swords, and ran wild, though my father was supposed to be looking after us. My omak was always worried that something bad might happen to one of us when we played outside too late, so he was trying to scare us into staying home with him.”
“And did it work?”
Larz shrugged and smiled. “Not really. But after all, he was right, wasn’t he? Something bad did happen, eventually, and I was stolen away from my home. Sometimes…sometimes, I wonder if I’ll ever see my family and my omak again.”
At the look on Janos’s face, Larz reached over and patted his arm, smiling.
“You miss him,” Janos said softly, looking pale and stricken. “You want to go home.”
“I do…mostly because I know he and my family must be grieving for me. But then again, another part of me doesn’t want to leave. I’ve been…content here. More than content in some ways. And I’ve been totally on my own—something I never could have been at home. I’m a soldier—Herkon gave me that chance, and it’s what I always wanted. I don’t know if I could have accomplished that at home either—the chance to fight in battles and prove myself. It was different than I thought it would be—much worse, actually, but I’m glad I had the experience. It’s taught me not to glorify war anymore and I think that’s a lesson I probably needed to learn.”
The king was staring at him with wide eyes and Larz smiled. “I know—I sound like an old man. And don’t get me wrong, I do want to keep on learning and training, but not for any kind of childish glory. That was another thing my omak tried to teach me, but I wouldn’t listen.”