Faithful

by Michelle Hauck

  Dedication

  For everyone who finds they have a hero hiding inside.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Michelle Hauck

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Ramiro held the reins loosely in his left hand and combed through Sancha’s mane with his right. There hadn’t been time to give his horse a proper grooming since the walls fell at Colina Hermosa two days ago, and guilt for neglecting the mare added to the burdens on his shoulders. Sancha would forgive him.

  He was not so sure others would.

  A patrol through the desert, looking for lost evacuees in the middle of the afternoon, was pure duty. No one would do so for fun. Yet, the missing people had to be found, and his brother, Salvador, had beat the precepts into his head: Always see first to Colina Hermosa and its citizens, then fellow pelotón members, other military brothers, and last self. Ramiro had always tried to do his brother proud.

  Now that he was gone, Ramiro worked even harder to prove himself to Salvador.

  Hot sunshine beat down on the back of his breastplate, turning the metal into an oven, and making sweat run freely. Heat waves shimmered off the packed sand of the hill ahead, and the air smelled of salty sweat, summer, and distant smoke. As he rode, his naked sword lay ready across his lap—the balancing act natural after years of practice. Not all the Northerners had thrown down their weapons or leapt to their death on the orders of an illusion of their god. It paid to be vigilant.

  But no matter how hot or unpleasant, he’d much rather be on patrol, broiling in full armor and saving lives, than lugging corpses from the bottom of the quarry to the burn pile. And it was a thousand times better than sitting around with too much time to think.

  It’s way too hot to think . . .

  Sancha’s ears twitched, and Ramiro darted sharp glances to the men riding spread out on either side. A search-and-rescue party worked better with distance between them to cover more ground, but that meant most of his patrol was out of eyesight. He relied more on Sancha’s senses than his own. Yet after hours of riding, even the nearest men rode on without a word, discovering nothing.

  A pang of what could only be termed homesickness washed over Ramiro and a knot formed in his throat. Riding a patrol without his friends Alvito and Gomez created a hole in his gut. Orders given to him from a captain other than his brother stung, a painful reminder.

  It had been over a week, but he felt their loss more keenly in the silence out here, only broken by the desert wind and calls of cactus wrens.

  He unclenched his fist from Sancha’s mane and forced himself to resume freeing an embedded sandbur from her hair. The new captain of the pelotón, Muño, was a good man. Ramiro had known him forever, and he’d been a loyal and capable lieutenant for years. The sergeant from the gate guards they’d brought in to replace Gomez seemed competent, too. But nothing was the same. Not the fact that he could never see his brother, Salvador, again, or that he could never return home to a city burnt by the Northern army.

  He didn’t even have Claire for company, having left the witch girl behind with his mother at the camp outside Colina Hermosa’s shell as he attended to duty. His mother might not be a warrior—or approve of Claire—but she would do the best she could for his sake to guard the girl from the harassment sure to befall a witch. He just wished he felt right about leaving Claire with anyone. He also wished he could understand why he thought of her at all, considering he hadn’t always worried for her safety.

  “Hi-ya!” came distantly from his left.

  Ramiro dropped the burr and scrambled to don his helmet and pick up his sword. To his relief the men closest to him did the same, proving just as unready. That call could mean anything from a party of aggressive Northerners, to a group of lost refugees, or simply a break to eat. Sancha picked up her feet and pranced as Ramiro used his knees to guide her toward the call.

  “Steady, girl, steady,” he told her. No matter what it was, there was time enough to assess the situation. He was no longer the naïve bisoño, striving to earn his beard and be considered a man. Those days of eagerly throwing himself forward were, like his brother and friends, also gone.

  Ever watchful, his eyes tracked a bit of bright yellow peeking above an outcropping of rock. He dismissed it as a prickly pear flower, not important compared to the call, before his eyes jerked him back. The yellow was too large and too flat to be a flower. Considering the Northerners wore black-and-yellow uniforms, the color alone demanded he investigate as he passed. Ramiro edged Sancha in that direction and saw a piece of bright shirt. Cornering around the rock revealed a plump woman clutching two children to her breast, all three crouched small against the stone. They had the same brown hair and brown skin as himself, proclaiming they could not be the pale Northerners.

  Eyes clenched shut, one boy had his hands clamped over his ears. The other boy had burrowed his face into the woman, as if her presence alone could save him. They trembled and shook in the grip of great terror, though all around them was calm.

  A shiver ran up Ramiro’s back. He glanced hastily around, but saw only sunshine, rocks, and cacti. What had happened here to instill so much fear?

  “San Andrés protect us,” the woman was chanting in a dry whisper. “Santiago shield us. San Andrés protect us. Santiago shield us. San Andrés . . .” When she lifted her head, eyes squeezed shut, he was shocked.

  He knew her.

  “Hi-ya!” Ramiro called out before sheathing his sword and swinging down from Sancha. “Over here! Survivors!” He stepped forward and grasped the woman’s shoulder. “Lupaa, you’re safe now.” Even without the woman’s apron, he recognized the motherly face of the citadel’s head cook. The woman always ready to sneak him bread slathered in her special honey. What were the odds that of all the people of Colina Hermosa he should rescue someone he knew?

  “What happened here?” he asked. “Lupaa!” He shook her.

  Only then did her eyes open, slowly as if doing so pained her after clenching them too tight. But instead of greeting him, her gaze darted in all directions, passing over him.

  One of the boys moaned and actually folded himself smaller, pressing into the rock. The new sergeant, Jorge, and a second soldier arrived and dismounted from their caballos de guerra. The horses had the same dapple-gray coloring as Sancha, and every pelotón member had their own bond with one of these intelligent animals.

  “Report,” Sergeant Jorge said. Everything about the sergeant spoke of precision and exactness to detail, from the crease in his uniform, to the careful placement of his equipment on his saddle. His beard, simple and cut close, reminded Ramiro painfully o
f his brother’s.

  No time for that now. Ramiro drew himself up. “Refugees, sir. This one is Lupaa from the citadel kitchen. One of my mother’s cooks.”

  “It’s not every bisoño who has his own chef,” the other soldier teased. Gray tinted Arias’s hair and spread liberally through his thick beard. The man had been a member of the pelotón for longer than Ramiro had been alive, but he remained lean and fit.

  Ramiro bristled, but bit back a sharp retort lest he look childish in front of Sergeant Jorge. “I’m a rookie no longer.”

  Arias held out his hands. “Old habits. No offense meant.”

  Sergeant Jorge cleared his throat. “The matter at hand, caballeros.”

  Ramiro bent over Lupaa and met the woman’s brown eyes, but found no recognition in them. “Lupaa.” He snapped his fingers close to her face. “Lupaa.”

  “Santiago shield us. San Andrés . . .” She started and recognition flooded back. “Ramiro? Thank the saints! Is it over? Tell me it’s over.”

  “Over? What happened here? Why . . . this?” He waved a hand at her and the boys. “How did you get here?”

  “I . . . we assembled at the Santa Teresa section of the city. Ran with the other evacuees when Colina Hermosa’s wall fell to let us out. I couldn’t keep up.” She gave the boys a squeeze, and one lifted his head. “My grandsons stayed with me. We ended up with a smaller group, going in what we hoped was the right direction.”

  “You are south of the swamp,” Ramiro said. The evacuees from the city had been meant to head west for the swamp of the witches to hide, or to Crueses, the closest safe city. It was his father’s plan to save the people of the city from the Northern army, and it had worked well . . . for the most part. But many of the people were too slow to stay with the soldiers guarding them, too old or weak, and had been left behind. “Off course. And then? Why this hiding?”

  “Northerners found us. We took what shelter we could and prayed.”

  “Then the screaming started,” the boy added.

  Ramiro looked around again. There was no sign of Northerners or of other evacuees from his city. He turned to Sergeant Jorge and shrugged. Perhaps fear had caused Lupaa to imagine things. Maybe she mistook the normal sounds of the desert for the enemy.

  “I told my grandsons not to look, never to look, and we prayed,” Lupaa said. She struggled to set her legs under her, and Ramiro took her arms, levering her to her feet. “We prayed so hard.” The taller boy, probably twelve winters old, stood under his own power. The smaller child still clung to his grandmother.

  Sergeant Jorge waved Arias to go on ahead toward where the first call had originated. “You’re safe now, ma’am. In our custody. Soldier, bring her and catch up with us.” The sergeant followed after Arias, pulling his caballo de guerra after him.

  “Hi-ya,” Ramiro acknowledged, though the man had already forgotten about him. It shouldn’t sting that the sergeant didn’t remember his name. The man had barely time to learn all the officers, let alone every ordinary soldier under his command—though maybe he pretended not to remember in order to avoid showing favoritism toward the Alcalde’s son.

  Sancha sidled up against him, and Ramiro plucked a water skin from his saddle, offering it to Lupaa. “Drink.” By the time they had all taken a turn, color was coming back to their faces and the younger child had his eyes open.

  “You hid from the Northerners,” Ramiro said. “How many were there? When did this happen?”

  “Many,” Lupaa said. “I could not count them all. They seemed to be everywhere, and we were few. Unarmed. We had just finished a noon meal. I ducked against the rock with my boys and prayed for the evil to stop. Thank you. Thank you a thousand times for saving us. My kitchen is always open to you. We owe you our lives.”

  “You are most welcome, but the danger was long gone.” Ramiro glanced at the sun. If her story was true, they’d been against the outcropping for at least three hours. No wonder they looked to be in shock. But he couldn’t quite figure out something: Why had they stayed like that once the Northerners passed them by? Something she had said bothered him. “You said screaming?”

  The youngest put his hands back over his ears, eyes wide. “Horrible,” the older said. “For hours.” He shook, and Lupaa drew them close again.

  Something didn’t add up. The Northerners would have done their killing and moved on. Unless they’d spent time on some elaborate torture. That sounded like the enemy’s way, but it made no sense. Claire had routed them, her magic sending them running like devils were in pursuit. Most believed the Northerners would not stop until they reached their distant homeland. Indeed, none of the patrols over the last day had met with sizable resistance, if any at all.

  That had been a day ago, though, and things during war could change fast. What if the Northerners managed to regroup? His own people were far from recovered. Still in smaller groups and spread over distances, they reeled from the loss of their city and from the death around them. The people of Colina Hermosa were not up to fighting an organized enemy.

  The feeling of unease along his spine grew, urging him forward to investigate. His mother’s stories of the Sight in his family came to mind again, but this felt more like a suggestion than an outright warning of danger. “Which direction did the screaming come from?”

  The boy pointed after the sergeant, and Ramiro gripped Lupaa’s hand. He fixed a relaxed smile on his face to reassure her. “Wait here for me. Then I’ll take you to the camps. Sancha, stay,” he ordered. The warhorse would keep them safe for the few minutes it would take to scout around and discover what had happened here.

  He pushed through a cluster of tall ocotillo, its thorny branches spreading out six feet in all directions. He could see that most of the fifteen members of his small patrol gathered in a spot ahead. The needles of a barrel cactus scraped against the steel of the greave below his knee. Too many flies filled the air. A rust-colored stain spotted the flat leaf of a prickly pear. He bent closer. Blood. Dried by the sun.

  He soon spotted another splotch on a rock, and then larger discolorations in the dirt. Puddles he would have walked right past if not for the tingling along his spine, something he attributed to his share of the family Sight and his heightened awareness after Lupaa’s strange behavior.

  The first clump of what could only be flesh showed a few steps later, a torn and unidentifiable bit the size of his thumb. It could be from an animal.

  He hoped it was from an animal.

  Ahead, one of the soldiers vomited into the sand. Ramiro stopped, heart racing.

  Saints.

  An arm hung from the crook of a tall saguaro cactus, the skin intact and too pale to be from one of his countrymen. It ended near the elbow in a jagged tear. The hand was missing.

  Ramiro’s stomach rolled, the hair at the back of his neck standing up. As Santiago had taught centuries ago, he touched mind, heart, liver, and spleen in quick succession to clear his body centers of negative emotion.

  It almost helped.

  That wasn’t done with a sword or ax, he thought. Nothing sharp. None of the vegetation nearby looked hacked or disturbed as if a battle had taken place. He quickly spotted more body parts and pieces of flesh. Here a torso missing its head and wearing the bright colors of an evacuee. There, under a pincushion cactus, an ear. A scrap of fabric in the black-and-yellow of a Northern uniform. An eyeball under a buzz of flies. Blood covered everything, as if thrown from buckets. Too much blood even from the number of bodies he could see. The smell, sharp and metallic, filled the air. Some of it in the shade still looked wet.

  He’d seen death many times in the last few days, but this wasn’t death. These people had been torn apart.

  This is savagery.

  He scrubbed his hands on his breastplate and forced himself to join his fellow soldiers.

  “A wildcat?” Arias was saying. “The Northerners didn’t do all of this. There are more of them dead than civilians.”

  Sergeant Jorge shook his hea
d. “Bears perhaps.” It was clear, though, he didn’t believe that either. Bears would kill for food, but this wasn’t hunting. This was a massacre.

  Ramiro remembered the white-robed priests of the Northerners and the rod they carried that could kill a man with one touch. His fellow soldiers hadn’t seen the fanatical light in their eyes or witnessed their depraved cruelty. They killed from more than necessity. They enjoyed it. This must be a new devilry of the Northern priests. He could picture the fanatics killing their own soldiers for running from Claire’s magic.

  Claire.

  Ramiro’s heart leaped, and his hand darted to his sword hilt. If the Northern priests sought revenge, she would be their prime target. Claire was alone, except for his mother. The girl might have magic, but she was immature in so many ways. He had to return to the camp. “Sergeant, I’ll escort the civilians we found back to safety.”

  Sergeant Jorge gave him an absent nod, waving off the flies. “Arias, go with him. The rest of you spread out and look for more survivors. Try and figure a count on the dead. See if anyone can find any signs of what happened here. Animal prints. Anything. Otherwise all we’ve got is a group of Northerners killed some refugees, then turned on each other. Insane devils.”

  The sergeant’s voice fell behind as Ramiro returned to Sancha, only to be brought up short. He’d ridden double on Sancha before with Claire, but the girl was small and he’d been without most of his armor when it was left behind and stolen by that blackguard Suero. Now he wore borrowed armor . . . and Lupaa was no slip of a girl.

  Arias arrived, and they traded glances, both aware of the difficulty. “I’ll take the boys and you the woman,” Arias said. “It’s going to be a long walk back.”

  Ramiro turned to help Lupaa mount. The prickle along his spine demanded he hurry. Ramiro closed his eyes for calm as he realized his volunteering had actually harmed his cause. Camp was only a few hours away, but leading Sancha while the civilians rode meant they’d be lucky to be back by nightfall. The rest of the patrol would beat them there.

  He just hoped his mistake didn’t cost Claire.