by Devin Madson
While I eased my tight muscles, I listened to the increasing pace of his breathing, to the rasp as it quickened, leaving him no air in his lungs. It sounded like it hurt, like he couldn’t long keep it up, and fighting against the angry belief he deserved it, I went to him.
“Here,” I said, gripping his shoulders. “Breathe with—hey!”
He pulled away, gasping as he scrambled across the rock floor.
“I’m trying to help you,” I snapped, shuffling forward. “Just come—”
Both hands to my chest, he thrust me back with more strength than I had thought he possessed. “Don’t. Want,” he said, each word a ragged gasp as he pressed his hands against his chest. “Don’t.”
“I don’t give a single horseshit what you want, you need to breathe.”
I moved forward only to be thrust back again with a strangled, desperate wail. He scrambled toward the rockfall like a frightened animal, chest jerking with every rapid emptying of his lungs. “Don’t. Want. You.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but none of your new friends are available so you’re stuck with me.”
Poor choice of words, but he rolled onto his knees and elbows and rasped, and hoping he had worn himself out, I shuffled closer. If I could hold him against me, encourage him to breathe, he might calm down, but at the first sound of movement he sat up. “Let. Me.” He crossed his arms over his stomach. “Let. Me. Go.”
“Gideon, please.” Moving fast, I gripped his face before he could pull away. “Gideon. It’s me. I’m here. I came for you. Now please, just breathe with me. You’re going to be all right.”
He yanked out of my hold and swung his fist at my head. A Gideon at full strength could have knocked me flat on my back, but he was weak and clumsy and I dodged. Only for his left to crunch into my cheek. I fell back, pain splitting through my ear again, and for a moment I was back in Mei’lian with Sett pounding my face. But Gideon didn’t hit me again. He drew back and lay on the rough stone floor, wheezing.
His panic seemed to be easing, his breaths taking longer to draw and release, so I lay where I was and hoped my own slow breaths might carry away the pain stabbing deep in my ear. It didn’t help.
Slowly, peace returned, the pair of us lying in the dirt, focussing on the rise and fall of our chests. I dared not move, as much out of fear it would set him off again as it would make my ear worse. This was not a good time. It was never a good time for debilitating pain, but if there could be a time that was even less a good time than usual, it was this fucking time. If I didn’t get up and dig, we were dead.
Gideon shifted, fabric catching on the rough stone. Something moved at my hip and I opened my eyes as he drew my knife from its scabbard. Panic launched me from the ground, but it wasn’t my throat he sought. He pressed it to his own, a strangled cry all I could achieve as I gripped his arm and his hand. Blood rose beneath the knife edge, running down the blade to the hilt and onto our fingers. He roared, trying to wrench away, and with nothing but fear filling my body to bursting, I slammed my boot into his shin.
The shock loosened his grip, and caring nothing for the sharp edge of the blade I yanked it from his hand. He lunged after it with a hoarse, heartbreaking wail only to lose his footing and fall. Upon hands and knees he gasped, blood dripping from his neck.
“Shit, Gideon!” I dropped beside him as he tried to rise, but his knees gave way and he stumbled into me, still grabbing for the blade in my hand. I slid it clattering away across the ground. “Stop, please!” I begged, trying to see how much damage he’d done, but he wouldn’t be still. He sprang after the knife, and with my ear screeching its pain, I leapt after him. We crashed onto the rock-strewn floor in a tangle of thrashing limbs and blood and I might have been his worst enemy by how hard he fought.
Instinct and desperation were all I had as I gritted my teeth and pinned him down, grateful for his weakened state. Knee in his back, I held his arms and waited for him to stop thrashing. Eventually he stopped, the movement of his back rising and falling with his breath the only sign he was still alive. I dared not let go yet, afraid he would go for the knife again, but if I didn’t look at the wound in his neck soon, it wouldn’t matter.
“Just let me die, Rah,” he said, cheek pressed to the stone floor, his eyes closed. “Just let me go.”
“No. I did not come all the way back here for you to give up.”
“I deserve it.”
I’d condemned Sett for less, but I had already mourned Gideon once. I refused to do it again. “No.”
“Please. You could do it. It’s the fate a horse whisperer would give me.”
I dropped my forehead between his shoulder blades. “No. If they knew everything they wouldn’t. And I won’t. I’m too selfish.”
A sob shook his body, but it was a weak thing, quiet and broken. “This isn’t going to get any better,” he whispered.
I had thought the same after leaving Whisperer Jinnit. The shame had been so heavy that I’d almost walked alone out into the wild plains to let the gods punish me. But every day the weight had grown more bearable. Never gone, never forgotten, but I had grown the strength to carry it with me and still move.
“That’s not true,” I said, still resting my head upon his back. “It will. It will, and I’m not going anywhere. Sorry, Idi, you’re stuck with me.”
His tears ran onto the stones. “It’s been a long time since you called me that.”
“I guess we haven’t been close for a long time, you know, even before all this shit. But you’re not getting rid of me so easily. Can I look at that wound now without being punched in the face?”
“It’s fine.”
“Let me see it.”
“Can’t while you’re sitting on me.”
“All right, I’m going to let you go, but if you fucking fight me again, I’m going to… make rope out of fucking dirt or something, I don’t know, just don’t do it. I’m tired.”
I let his arms go and eased myself off his back. With a groan of effort, Gideon rolled over, having the audacity to look anxiously at me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, absolutely fucking grand,” I said, lowering the hand I’d pressed to my ear. “Stuck under the ground and probably going to starve to death, but never been better.”
“You’re shit at this.”
“Having to stop you trying to kill yourself was not part of my training.”
He looked away. “Then your teacher had poor foresight.”
“Most of the time you were my teacher.”
“Yes. I know. That was the joke.”
“Ha ha. Now lift your chin and stay still.”
Thankfully he seemed to have given up and tilted his head back, exposing the cut in his neck. Blood smeared his skin down to his collarbone and the cut had a ragged edge, but it wasn’t deep enough to have done real damage. I let out a long breath. “Thank the gods,” I said. “It’s not too deep. I’ll bind it up as best I can, but I’m no—” I almost said Yitti’s name. “Tep,” I finished instead, hoping he wouldn’t notice the slight pause or the sudden speeding of my heartbeat. “It won’t be anywhere near as good.”
I stretched over to grab the crimson sash Gideon had dropped with his surcoat. Silk probably wasn’t the best material for this, but it wasn’t like we had a lot of options. I held it out, waiting for him to lift his head. He did so with a pained hiss and let me slide the sash beneath his neck. It was a long piece of material, but all it needed to do was put pressure on the cut, so I tied a simple knot. “You’re tying a red bow around my neck?”
“Damn right I am,” I said, not slowing my task. “If you didn’t want a red bow you shouldn’t have cut yourself.”
He rolled his head and shot me a weary look. “Right. I’ll remember for next time.”
“Good.” I tugged the knot tight enough to maintain pressure, checking he had enough breathing room with two fingers slid beneath the fabric. “And in the meantime, you look very pretty.”
With the make
shift bandage tied, I rolled onto my back beside him and waited while the initial throb of pain in my ear died to what had become its interminable sharp presence. Thankfully, he didn’t take the opportunity to jump up in search of my discarded blade. We might have been stuck under the ground with no way of getting out, but at least for the next few minutes I didn’t have to move.
Gideon rolled his head to look at me. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Keeping my head turned to look at him made my pain worse, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away when I could grit my teeth and be there for him. “I get it. I mean, I don’t get it, but I get it.”
“Did I already tell you you’re shit at this?” A tired smile twitched his lips. I couldn’t help but smile back.
“You did, but by all means tell me again.”
I looked back up at the shadows dancing on the stone above us, and as I breathed through the stab of pain that came with moving my head now, wondered distantly how much longer the lantern would stay lit.
“You’re hurt. Did I—?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
I could feel him looking at me.
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“You’re also a shit liar.”
“Fine, I’m in pain but it’s not your fault and there’s nothing you can do, so can we just not talk about it?”
His hair scraped the stone as he turned away. “Sure. Let’s talk about the weather. It’s quite cold in here for this time of year. I wonder if it will rain.”
“My ear hurts, all right? Yes, it sounds stupid, but that’s what it is.”
He turned back. “It doesn’t sound stupid. Which ear?”
I pointed at my right. “It’s like someone is sticking a knife in there. This isn’t the first time, but I’ve got no idea what starts it or what I can do to get rid of it. Nothing seems to help except putting up with it or sleeping it off.”
It was so easy to fall back into the old habit of talking to him like we were friends, like nothing had changed. But we weren’t, and it had.
“Can I help?”
“No,” I said. “It’s fine. I’ll just lie here until it fades off a bit, then we should keep digging.”
“Do you really think there’s any point?”
I looked around at our stone prison, a spike of panic thrust aside the moment it appeared. “I don’t know, but I’m going to try anyway.”
We lay for a while without speaking, the silence of our stone tomb seeming to press in upon us. Overhead the tiny hole leading to the outside world still owned the bright light of day.
“When did the pain start?” After the long silence it was almost strange to hear his voice again, disembodied in the small space.
“This time or the first time?”
“Either. Both.”
“After the rocks came down. And I don’t know.” That was a lie, but “after your brother pummelled my face into the road” wasn’t the wisest response right now. Everything was fine while our conversation held to a thin crust of friendly topics, everything beneath it too raw to risk.
He made a little sound I knew well, like a small click of his tongue and a hmpf of air. He knew I was lying, but he didn’t ask again.
Breathing deeply in and out, the pain slowly became a more manageable ache, and I gingerly sat up. “I wish I knew what the fuck it was,” I muttered, every part of me exhausted just looking at the mountain of rock we still needed to move.
Gideon shifted beside me and the water skin appeared before my face. “Some water might help.”
He hadn’t gone for the blade, but he was pale and looked exhausted, and the hand holding the water skin shook. I took it and, pulling the stopper, wet my lips while he looked in the satchel.
“Perhaps something to eat too.” He pulled out a thick patty of browned rice. “Here.”
I took it, watching him. At a quick glance I would have said he was unchanged from the man I had last seen sitting on the throne in Mei’lian, but although he stood as tall and as broad, there was something fragile in his stance, something unsure and curled in. He watched me in return, eyes bright though they sat in deep pits.
“I’ll eat this if you eat one too,” I said, nodding at the rice patty. “Otherwise I can wait.”
He knew me well enough not to doubt my stubbornness, or that I would use his care of me against him if I had to. “All right,” he said, taking another rice patty out of the bag and holding it up in salute. “May the gods watch over us.”
It seemed unlikely so far from home, but I watched him take a bite rather than say so. The rice had a sweet tang, but every mouthful was an effort for my jaw, leaving me eating as slowly as he did. But it filled my stomach, and when we had finished, we each took a sip of water and lay down on the slope of dirt. I wanted to keep digging, but Gideon looked like he would collapse if he didn’t rest.
“Do you remember that time you dropped a whole handful of pepper nuts into the stew pot?” I said, trying to keep his mind on good memories. We’d been tracking a herd of deer one winter, a group of assorted Swords under the command of Ekka, the old tracker of the First Swords. It had been as much hunt as training exercise for the new saddleboys and girls. Gideon had been there to help, and had been put in charge of cooking the first night.
Beside me, Gideon chuckled softly. “Good, cleansing food.”
“Cleansing! Yes, my nose was dripping for hours. And Lamh cried.”
“Very cleansing.”
A laugh bubbled up through all the fear and grief and shook my body intensely. Once I’d started it was hard to stop. “You laugh,” Gideon said. “But Ekka said it was a very remarkable dish, remember?”
“And with such a straight face.”
“He was crying too.”
Tears had leaked silently from his eyes as he chewed a mouthful. Tears sprang from mine now as I laughed, knowing there was a deep sadness beneath the joy for all we had lost. Gideon’s laughter was a quiet, exhausted thing, all breath.
“He wouldn’t let me near the spice pouch again,” he said. “He gave it to one of the saddleboys to look after.”
Still I laughed, unable to stop now I had started, but I thought of Juta and Iya and Fessel, cooking for us because Swords did not cook for themselves. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to talk about. There had been a time when we had shared deep conversations about tenets and gods and herd plans, but nothing was safe now. Memories were all we had.
“I remember thinking how horrified the cooks would have been,” I said. “But Ekka told them the food had been delightful. Tihum snorted, do you remember? I don’t know how you managed to look so innocent.”
Gideon didn’t answer, and I turned my head in the dirt to look at him. His eyes were closed, but he opened heavy lids and quirked a sleepy half smile. If I ignored the blood-soaked sash around his neck, his pale, drawn face, and the deep rings around his eyes, he could have been my old Gideon, the pair of us having stayed up late to lie beneath the stars and talk about everything and nothing. Perhaps if I kept talking, he would fall asleep.
“I laugh, but I tried it again once when I had a blocked nose,” I said. “I don’t think I ever told you. We’d… grown apart a bit by then, or whatever happened. Either way, I snuck a full pinch into a bowl of soup and can confidently say it cleaned me out for a few hours. I only did it once though. I don’t know if you’ve ever had pepper nut on your hands and rubbed your eyes, but it’s… not good.”
He gave no sign of hearing me, but I kept talking. “I had to use half my day’s water ration to clean it out, and it still burned for hours. Captain Tallus said it looked like I’d been stung by wasps.”
Gideon’s eyes remained closed, and his chest rose and fell gently. I heaved a sigh. Exhaustion lived in my bones these days, but though I could have slept, what purpose was there in being well rested, only to soon be dead? At least with Gideon asleep I could dig without worrying about him. Much.
&nb
sp; I waited a few long minutes, watching the rise and fall of his chest and the flicker and twitch of his eyelids until I was sure moving would not wake him. No fresh blood had escaped beneath his makeshift bandage, and thrusting aside fears he had already lost too much, I rolled away and got to my feet.
My knees protested against more kneeling on stone, but I settled in front of the rockfall and dug. Stones, handfuls of dirt, large rocks I needed both hands to shift—I moved them all, only for more to replace them in a never-ending face of earth. But like I had often found at times when many heads needed to be cut, there was peace in mindless activity. I dug, barely thinking at all, just seeing the next stones and moving them like I was a physical force more than a flesh-and-blood man.
When my forearms and fingers began to ache, I stopped to stretch them and check on Gideon. He had rolled onto his side but was still asleep, his brows contracted into a troubled frown. I wondered what he was dreaming about and how he would be when he woke. I wasn’t sure I had the physical strength left to fight him again.
I kept digging. Time meant nothing. There were just rocks and dirt and aching hands and stinging knees and the smell of damp earth stuck so far up my nose it might never come out.
The lantern began to splutter. It had possessed enough oil for hours, but it seemed those hours were almost up. I ought to have been more afraid. Overhead, the hole in the ceiling had grown dark.
I dug until the lantern’s sputters became frequent. Stretching, I got up to check on Gideon once more, to remind myself he was there, that he was all right, that I had come back for him like I’d said I would. Whatever dream he’d been having seemed to have passed, his breathing so shallow now I had to bend close to be sure he breathed at all. But whatever the ravages apparent on his face, he was still warm and vital, his breath a soft dance of life across my fingers.
I had just returned to the rockfall when the lantern died. Darkness swallowed me, its silence seeming deeper as though the light had roared. I reached out, comforted by the feel of the rocks, by the knowledge that nothing had ceased to exist because I couldn’t see it.