But men were men. Get enough of them, and they were no different from any other horde. They did not cease to be an army simply because the nobles ceased with orders.
A pity such a horde would do precisely as the nobles feared—they would burn and pillage and rape their own land into oblivion, until it was a desert every bit as wasted as heathen Zutam. For men of a crowd were men of emotion, and though they would fight for their land, and die for their general, bloodying themselves against the invisible shackles that had always been attached, killing, yes, for a dream, the hate and the rage and the sadness would well inside them until everyone and everything was noble, was resistant, and they would kill them all to drink that precious blood. They would lose themselves. It was the nature of war.
As he had lost himself.
Voren breathed heavy. He could not smell the throng any longer. Months had dulled the stench, such that the whole world was simply foul. His clothes, muddied, washed, and soiled anew, clung to him now in the same stench, and he knew he was ever one of these, and he hated all the more for it.
Water fell sharp and cold and bitter across the palms of his hands, washing the char away. It no longer stung at the juncture on his left hand where a pinky once lay, but the fireborn ash of his flesh burned deep into the muscle. He recoiled from it. He reveled in it. He was making himself clean again.
Everything was safe—his meager possessions, his meager flesh. Dozens lay bleeding in the muck and dozens more graced the air on wings of flame. Nothing purified quite so sweetly. But they were all men of the earth. The nobles had been denied even this good death, their heads hacked off and their bodies dumped in shallow pits. Blood always begot more blood.
The circle is broken. The covenant lost. We must reclaim what is the right of all.
There she had been! Before his eyes she had walked as an angel of vengeance, like a pagan goddess of old. The huntress. She pulled him from the flames. She lay him down in a ring of steel and bade him safely remain.
Essa. Ever the guardian.
He longed to be stronger for her, so she did not have to be. But he was what he was, and she was a broken thing, broken at the hands of a creature so much lower than them all. And the family was all the same! Was not his brother one of the traitors that would have doomed their general? Ever, ever, always and ever, it was a Matair at the heart of despair.
He stood at the well and tried not to drift. The army churned around him, tents stripped, food stored for march. What of it remained. Little enough had been left to them anyway, and the fire snipped a fair chunk of the rest. He was blamed, of course, as were all the kitchen staff. More attentive, Irdlin roared at them, his bulbous nostrils flared, hands raised in anger. How the fool crowed! They should have been more attentive—food was the life of an army. Without, they might as well be dead.
“Move along, baker. There’s more’n you what needs that pail.”
Voren handed off the empty bucket and stepped along into the sunken lanes of the camp. The question from there was one of where to go. He no longer had a home, for it too had gone to ashes. Then again, had he ever? A silly question. Of course he had. A nice, warm home in Verdan—four sturdy walls, clean, with enough space for a second room. Enough to make a man respectable, if not respected. A palace of the littlefolk.
Now? Nothing. He hadn’t even the canvas to sew another—supposing he knew how to sew. A luckier man might have turned to the camp’s followers with coin and tack to craft another, but that was no longer an option either. Not since Tessel had run the last of them off.
For the people! For the people! Not that a starving army could afford to feed the people.
Steadily, it all slipped away. A heavy sigh carried him through the motions, back across the familiar lines to the little swath of tents the Company called their own. Not home, perhaps, but a path all the same. He would not lie in the muck. No, not the dirty dirt, not that, never, no. Essa would give him room. Two miserable nights he had already spent in the holes of the storage. He would not do so again.
“Who goes?” an unfamiliar voice called out, in that barren waste between an army and civilization.
The Company had moved, but some among even the wildest of dogs, once caught up by a scent, could scarce leave it be until it lay but bleeding in the muck. Oh, he knew the sound’s weight. It lurked behind a dozen eyes, wherever Essa and the rest lay.
He stopped cold. Eyes were on him. Icicles dangled from such sight and drilled holes into his head. Always watching. Always waiting. Spears and swords, a band of Gorjes moved to bar him. Not peasants, them, no. Not peasants and not nobles—something lower, far lower.
“Well that’s a baker it is.” One of the other men grinned. Wolfish—it was a hard trait to master when one had but a single tooth to bare. Eddie, he’d heard the others name him. Some islander waif. Certainly not Idasian.
“And what’s a baker doing here?”
“Bringing bread, if he knows what’s good for ‘em.”
“Stale bread. No. He’s here for tarts. Always is.” A third man—the man Essa called Marvelle—jabbed him with the butt of his spear. He stumbled. “Right, baker? Here for the owl’s scraps, right?”
She’s not scraps. She’s a woman. She’s a strong woman. A proud woman. A woman greater than you could ever—
“Answer me, runt.”
Panic settled in him in such moments. It brought a stutter to his answer. “N-no. Not sc-scraps. I’m—that is to say—this is…”
The lot of them pelted him with laughter. “Get on with it, boy. And just be glad you weren’t a little closer to them Matairs.”
“C-closer?”
The man grinned a wicked little grin, and yanked his thumb promptly across his throat. Trailing from his skin, he used that same thumb to gesture behind. Makeshift gallows stuck out from beyond the folding canvas, complete with dead men swaying in the breeze. They had been stripped, and beaten, and he doubted any of it had come at the Bastard’s orders, but the real horror came from the fact that Voren recognized one of the faces. The armor was gone, but these dead men were soldiers of Verdan—soldiers Ivon had left behind, in his cowardly flight.
Mercy, Assal, I beg you mercy. Knows the world no end to Matair treachery?
“Hid the lord’s flight they did. Rather big up on the no-no pile.” Marvelle ground the butt of his spear in the muck, and leered. “Bastard says there’s no more place for them noble types here, and it’s not like they had the coin to do much convincing to the contrares.”
Animals. Voren wished little more than to turn and flee, but the little man’s hand caught him by the shoulder. Images of daggers and swords and all manner of things that could cut his delicate flesh danced to mind, but the sellsword sufficed to lean a little closer.
“Now you ask that girl o’yours—little miss frost bitch—if we might render her any services now that both her bear and her title are heels to wind, yeah?” Laughter poured from the others’ mouths as Marvelle propelled him forward with a shove to the back. He scrambled for safety, the laughter swelling at his back.
This is salvation? Men like this? Cutthroats and thieves, liars and rapists all—an army of the bottom rung, a new society of the meek. Would that he could damn them all with fetid curse alone. He should bare his breast and cut deep, so deep, and shout to all the hounds of Hell to damn the lot. Yet, I am better, and you will know, as all shall know, the follies of a man pushed far and farther yond his bearing, and he bore it deep, as he did all things. Hoarding it.
He stumbled into the ring of the Company’s camp, only to be promptly caught by the other shoulder. When he looked up, however, it was no grimy Gorjes hand, but the massive, wrinkled paw of a kuree. From beneath coarse beard, the one called Alviss glowered down at him—or stared, simply, for he could never tell which with the barbarian—but let him go as soon as he had righted himself. Brushing at his shoulder, Voren mumbled a half-hearted thank you, but the kuree only grunted.
“Gorjes hospitality I see!
” The high voice beckoned him across the spent fire, to the colorful figure of Essa’s cousin. “Ever since the stabbing—and the running of the bulls, as I like to call it—they’ve been mighty on edge.” He grinned at the sound of his own voice and wiggled the point of his rapier at them. “Edge, get it?”
Voren paused. He was never quite certain what to make of the duelist. A good man, no doubt, but a strange one. Too colorful. Too…elegant. He tried far too hard to be what he was not. Yet he genuinely cared for Essa. Genuinely protected her. Even though that that meant he was perpetually on the hunt.
For men like him. Men like the man he had been before he had poured every last drop of the arasyl into the bowels of the frozen earth.
He shook his head. “They had a message for Essa.”
Rowan turned aside. “I’m sure they did. It’s why we don’t leave home without our pointy bits, neither.”
Would that we all had…pointy bits, to that end. A rustle at his back brought the hairs on his neck end-to-end. He turned cautiously, and nearly leapt. For the second time in such few days, the Zuti simply materialized from the tents, spear in hand. No emotion marked his face. It was unnecessary, he thought, and should only detract. For a man so obvious, so out of place, to so handily vanish in plain sight—well, it spoke volumes. This one watched the watchers.
“No danger would befall you, bacher,” Alviss said. “Chigenda made you from the cross. They would not act.”
“Cessful,” the southerner concluded.
Voren spared a glance between them, shored up a breath, and turned to the fire pit. Behind Rowan, another shape—a slender shape—tore at the foundations of civilization. The tent crumbled with a whoosh of dust, and Essa, her long hair wild and slick against her face, was revealed to the light.
Even broken, there was no force on all Lecura so wild.
“As you can see, the lady’s in,” Rowan chimed.
As if hearing them for the first time, Essa glanced up. Softly panting, she wiped her hands against her leggings and hopped around the mess toward them. “Finish up,” she said to Rowan, with a pointed kick to his shin. The grown man groaned like a sullen child, but he twisted up and away before she could fix him with a scowl. Swiping the stray strands from her eyes, she went to them, choosing Alviss over him as the old man extended an arm.
Essa did not like to appear weak to others, but the old man had a certain way about him. She folded against him like a girl-child, letting his arm enwrap her. His other leaned their frames against the pike-like heft of his bardiche axe. Frightening relics, both, of a people best left to dark and tundra. The lands, some claimed, where men had birthed; where other folk had sensibly dared not walk.
Neither the axe, nor Alviss, appeared the least bit unsteady. And they, all eyes upon his tiny frame, reminded him all too clearly that Alviss, at the least, had always been firmly in Rurik’s court. His stomach churned at the thought.
“Do you need help packing, Voren?” Essa asked.
He shook his head. “No, Es. I actually came to inquire—”
“Your hands. Have you made use of the Keltis root?” Alviss interrupted, with a nod in his direction.
He looked down to the ashes of his hands. The cuts still tingled where the breeze touched them. Irdlin wouldn’t have him at the stores because of it. But it was not as bad as it could have been. The Kuree had been there, and Essa too, and they had taken him by the arms and squeezed herbs into the wounds, bandaging him so infections would not take hold.
Bandages he had since removed. Why? He dared not voice it. Could not voice the venom that swam for him, and so many others. Sometimes scorn bubbled up like a hot spring from the depths of his heart.
“I have. It numbs it. But—”
Essa’s pretty face scrunched into a glower. “What happened to your bandages?”
“I—”
“Scars fit.” Chigenda leaned over his shoulder, the concept of personal boundaries apparently foreign to him. “Is good. Brave ting did.”
“Not a baker,” Essa scolded. “He needs his soft hands.”
He was not sure whether to sing or scowl at that. She knew his hands—knew the downy texture—but at the same time, no one would let him speak. Another breath to steady himself. Then: “Irdlin cast me out of the stores.”
Essa leaned away from Alviss. “He did what?”
“Probably all that thievery!” Rowan chimed from the remains of their tent.
“Cast me out. And without the Brickheart or-or Ivon here I’ve—that is to say, nothing binds me there.”
“You mean to leave?” Surprise laid the girl’s mouth open wide.
“No! I means to ask if I might…stay here. I would be no burden.”
That shut her mouth again as quick. An eyebrow rose, then her eyes turned from one friend to the other, making a circle of the camp. They only stared back. When she settled again on Voren, her hands smoothed against her tunic. Then she stepped forward and took him by the arm, turning him about with the intent of departure.
She leaned close as she guided him a few steps away. “Surely they can get you another tent, no?” His heart sank even as the whisper left her. After everything…“I mean, that’s not to say no, but—”
“You do not want me?” He blurted. Someone snickered—Rowan, perhaps, or the Gorjes beyond. Gallows trees still set a creaking tune in the shallow distance, and they seemed too apt a symbol for him now.
“No!” She blanched. “No. Voren. You’ve been a wonder. For everything. Truly. I…I couldn’t ask for a better friend.” Her fingers slipped from the crook of his elbow to the fragile palm, the rough skin touching his own tenderly. “It’s just since—”
He clasped her hand in both of his. “Essa—I would never let him hurt you.”
And that was what hurt the most. He could see it in the darkening lines of her face. Rurik had stolen what, at one time, she might have freely given. He stole something precious to her—something she could never take back. Lungs clouded with the frosted air, Essa coughed it out, and used it as an excuse to twist away. Innocence. When she looked him in the eye, he still saw it in his reflection. There was still some doubt, some isolated hope.
There came then a single coarse laugh, like a wolf’s yowling note—the Zuti, looming at their backs. “Wit bread and bone?” the man asked, as Voren rounded on him. “De fire good, little backer, but de kindle could use work.”
Before he could say a word in reply, a great shout went up as one of the larger tents crumbled. Men swarmed over the remnants like buzzards, picking clean the supports and fabric pooled in the aftermath. A priest’s chants rose higher still; somewhere, men were kneeling to the words of Tessel’s new devoted. Farrens—the word of the people, Tessel called it.
“Alviss?” Essa said.
“If you wish this, little bird, I am no lord to deny you.”
She nodded, awkwardly, then pulled him along to the south, where the Gorjes’ strides were thinnest. They broke that barrier swiftly, sparing not a glance for man or beast. Out of the corner of his eye, however, Voren caught the Kuric nodding—not to Essa, certainly, but to the Zuti. Even as his eyes curved that way, he saw the Zuti was already gone. A shadow in the day. One he could only guess was trailing them.
Even knowing, he pried only flickers of the demon, tense as a bow string, and for the barest of moments, Voren had the irrational fear that they were being hunted.
In that moment, he knew pity for the killer’s victims.
Essa spun on him suddenly, seizing both his arms to steady him. “We’re on the move, Voren. Alviss watches me like a hawk, and for good reason—the Gorjes do, too. I come and go and oft-times I’ve nary a word for any about me. I’m not exactly good company.”
He thought of kisses in the night. Of darkness. Of drinks shared and laughter with them—two boys, worlds and tables apart, all eyes for a girl deeply drowned. The headaches, she cried, they lasted two octaves after all was said and done.
Blood had stain
ed the sheets.
“Rurik isn’t exactly the height of my troubles, Voren.”
But Rurik was the height of his. Even still, in the dark places of the world, he could see his face. Waiting. “Then why do you tell me the rest?”
“So you understand. Living with us? ‘Specially now? Honestly I would not blame you if you fled. This whole venture is mad.”
“Then why do you remain?”
She stared at him for a long moment, with a face curdled like sour fish. “Some people have nothing else.” But there was hesitation. Doubt. He watched her eyes, defiant though they were, and he knew a certainty. There was something she held back.
“As long as you stay, Essa, I would be a coward to flee.”
“You would be a fool.”
“Seven years you were gone. Seven years. And that was for a drunk. If I left you to a war?” His own demand animated him, a surging anger heating his words to the quick. “How long should it be?”
“Voren—”
“Friends are rare in this life, Essa. Rare and rarer. This,” he said, waggling the missing pinky of his left hand for her, “is proof enough of mortality. And I want to—to protect you. You always protected me. It’s—it’s only right. But you can’t keep closing up, you can’t—I means to say…”
To hell with it.
She was close. It was not so hard to close the gap, to put lips to lips and take her breath away. Salty was the flesh—sweat and mud and mulled wine. He closed his eyes, to let the moment sink. It’s her—it’s her—it’s her. Footsteps in the grass. Long shadows. He tasted her and felt his palms sweat. Her skin! It was under his hands and on his lips and they were one.
As it should be.
When his eyes took in the light again, she stood, still as she ever had, and quiet—so quiet. Her eyes were dark, unreadable, but her lips hung slightly. There were no words. Shock or bliss, he could not say. A woman’s heart was her own, as a man’s mind should be. He swallowed, leaned back. Their arms fell away.
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