Puppy was strong, helped him pull himself up and adjust the peg leg. Puppy only stepped back when Kendras stood securely, then gave him a few good-hearted pats on the shoulder, like a horse.
Widow snorted. “I say break him now before he recovers.”
Steel’s lips tightened. He clearly bit back a harsh retort, and grimaced. “I didn’t ask you.”
Kendras put his weight on the leg again. The pain was sawing through the good bones in his foot, and drops of sweat ran down the sides of his face. “Is that all?” he asked. If Steel allowed him to leave, Widow wouldn’t dare kick him like that again.
“Go,” Steel said. “I’ll give you the herbs.”
“Yes, thank you.” Kendras limped back into the house, just wanting to get out of the sun and away from watchful eyes.
He managed to get back into his room. Steel left him on the way, but, since the man walked much faster than he did, got back to him before Kendras had made it to the bed.
He sat down heavily and unfastened the leather straps that held the wood to his knee, then straightened the leg, grimacing at the stiffness from the unfamiliar use.
Steel closed the door behind him and offered Kendras a drink with the herbs. The stuff was bitter and numbed the insides of his mouth, but Kendras knew everything would feel much better soon and lay back on the bed, stretching out, waiting for the pain to lessen.
“What now?” Steel asked.
“I don’t have anything to offer.” Kendras closed his eyes. Death would be easier. By far. Struggling until the very end, and then getting snuffed out. It didn’t seem like a bad idea. He’d just follow the others.
“I’m not here to take anything from you,” Steel said. “Gods below, Kendras. Why are you making this so hard?”
“Me?” Kendras laughed, a weak, sardonic sound. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“You keep saying that.” Steel sat down on the mattress, and Kendras opened his eyes again. Steel was too close. Any touch wasn’t welcome. None of it. Not for money, not for anything else. “Fetin? You want to go back and most likely get killed?”
“If killed or broken are my only options….”
“Widow is a bastard, yes. We’re all not sweet gentle maidens.” Steel reached for Kendras’s leathers. “I’ll help you undress.”
“Go fuck a slave. I’m not in the mood.”
“I was going to help you clean up.”
“Fuck that.” Kendras pushed his hands away and sat up. “I’m not your concubine, Steel. I’m not your lover. Leave me the fuck alone.”
The other man recoiled, and Kendras knew he’d struck blood. The gray eyes darkened with something akin to pain or humiliation. Good. More of that would make Steel back off.
“To me, you’re nothing. Not a friend, not a comrade. You’re some kind of swordsman who wants to use me for some kind of plan, and in the meantime wants nothing more than to fuck me because the others aren’t taking it up the ass, are they? Tired of little slave boys? Ah, I forgot, not your ‘taste’.”
Steel drew back toward the door, fists tight with anger.
“You’re not the man to claim me as his slave.” Kendras stared at him. “Surprised?”
“I don’t want you as my slave,” Steel said.
“But?”
Steel frowned, seemingly wrestling whatever impulse moved him. Kendras remembered how the man fought. Lure an attack, stand solid, then counterattack and destroy. He was ready to take the counterattack, expected anything from nothing to a physical attack. Dying while fighting was better than dying as a slave or cripple.
“You said I’m nothing to you.”
“Yes.”
Steel stared at him as if he couldn’t quite believe it, and Kendras wondered what the hell was going on with the other man. Paying him for sex—that hadn’t changed anything, had it? Did Steel really think he could buy any kind of bond with two silver?
“I thought we had an agreement,” Steel said. “You’ll heal, and… help me with what we have to do.”
“And I said I have to find that slave.”
“What’s so important about him?”
“He’s a Scorpion.”
“And?” Steel shook his head. “I don’t… I have no idea what you want, Kendras. To me it looks like you’re desperate to die.”
“Then let me die.” Kendras felt his throat tighten and realized with surprise that there were tears somewhere, and close. “Just let me go.”
Steel stared at him. “Fuck.”
Kendras turned away, unable to show Steel more than he deserved to see. The medic, who was happy to listen to such things, gone. Selvan, who, in his own ways, dealt with the shadows on another man’s soul. The officer, who’d touch him on the shoulder and drawn him into a rough hug, as he’d done when one of the Scorpions lost his close comrade in a battle. One loss. Even that of the man who’d slept close for so many nights. But all of them? He needed to know for sure.
Steel was suddenly close again and pulled him toward him. You’re not the officer, Kendras wanted to say and push him away. You’re nothing. Instead, Kendras found himself pressing the other man close. Right now Steel seemed the only thing Kendras could touch, the only, last man alive.
Chapter 5
KENDRAS left in the gray hours of dawn. He took one of the horses and bribed the guardsman at the gate with the rest of the silver coin. It was madness, and he knew it, riding with his fucked leg into the teeth of the enemy, just after a war. Still. He had to find the survivors if there were any. Whatever Steel thought he had on him, it didn’t mean anything when it came up against the Scorpions.
Going by horse made the most sense. Dalman would have most ships commissioned, and he didn’t want to answer questions about what he was doing in Fetin. Especially when he wasn’t supposed to be there. But the alternative was to leave any survivors to their fate and merely wait to heal to be able to take on and kill Widow.
The sun rose in pale yellow, driving back the night over the Shoulders of Golgat, as he headed inland toward Fetin. The old imperial road cut through the landscape, bending, curving, and twisting when it had to, but across valleys, it was straight as a knife blade, grooves worn into the yellow stone by thousands of wheels. Carts of traders, armies, traveling caravans of nomads, the homeless, and the restless had left their mark, albeit small.
Once he’d left the valley behind and joined the main road toward Fetin, other travelers claimed part of the road. Dalmanye traders and warriors, the first to make a profit, the others to guard the traders.
Kendras briefly examined every armed man. He couldn’t resist checking if there were any he recognized, or even a surviving Scorpion on the way back, as unlikely as it was. But when none of that slim hope was borne out, he pressed on. He didn’t want to enter any casual conversations. It would have been pointless anyway; with his injured leg, he couldn’t have gotten himself hired to protect any of the traders. But this way, he wasn’t slowed down by ox carts.
The only way to ride was to take off the peg leg and let the injured foot dangle free. Every movement of the horse seemed to grind the bones together, especially when he spurred it into a canter to get past the wagons.
He halted at the next tavern, paid a few coppers to have the horse looked after. He got hot water from the kitchen and prepared more of the herbs to make the pain bearable. It was madness to ride out in his state, and another shade of insanity to travel drugged when he needed his senses alert. But he simply couldn’t deal with the pain.
After he’d drunk the herbs, Kendras settled down on a bench under a wide tree and lifted his leg up, rubbing his knee and lower leg, hoping nobody would take an interest in him. Some meat and olives he’d taken from the kitchen provided a cold, but satisfying, meal while he waited for the herbs to work.
The shade melted away in the sun as it climbed into its zenith. All colors were now covered in stone dust; the only vigorous activity came from the bushes, where cicada songs pulsed like alien hearts.
After a while, a few Dalmanye riders came into the yard, and that meant the carts weren’t far behind. He finished an apple by handing the rest to the horse, then got back on the mount, feeling sore already from the first morning of riding. Would Steel let him simply go like this?
You’re nothing, Steel. Not a friend, not a comrade.
Steel wasn’t the type who would give up quite so easily. He’d encountered nothing but failure at Kendras’s hands, and if he had any pride left after so many years as a mercenary, he’d attempt to make him pay. At the very least punish him for the horse theft.
He’d worry about that when Steel or one of his men caught up with him.
The closer he got to Fetin, the less Kendras wanted to see other people. The sense of threat and unease made him hurry on, taking probably more of the herbs than he should, but it was the only way.
Since the weather was balmy and rainless, he slept outside, a little away from the road, with a brown blanket hiding him well on the sun-parched, brown-yellow ground. He woke a few times from night shades, dreaming of death and fire. War, and pain. A squirming scorpion held by a gloved hand.
Something was driving him, driving him to death or glory, or even both, and Kendras wasn’t sure himself if it was the sense of obligation to the officer and his comrades or the fact that they’d lost so many, and it seemed the only way to preserve what the Scorpions meant.
Preserve all that he stood for, everything that was etched and inked into his skin. Was he just a dangerous, wounded animal that would very soon return to its normal life? If not, what else could he do? Strike out on his own?
He might never again be fighting fit. What to do then? And with this haste and the mad dash across the mountains to Fetin, he might be ruining any chance to heal fully. But he had no alternative. He’d already wasted enough time getting well enough to travel at all. If some of the Scorpions were still alive, wounded, taken prisoner, they might not have enough time to wait for him until he was fully healed. And if the gods meant for him to live his days out as a cripple, at least he could fulfill his duty as a last service to them.
Anxiety clenched his throat when he reached Fetin Ridge. The fortress below, straddling the golden, red-streaked rock, looked like a beautiful woman that had been hit in the face by a jealous lover.
Smoke stained the walls, which were pockmarked from stones hurled by catapults. Inside, the beams of burnt buildings looked like ribcages. The devastation would look worse when he was actually riding through the streets.
The Southern gate was where the siege had finally broken through. Kendras clenched his teeth. From up here, it seemed less forbidding, but he remembered only too well. The king had expected the counterattack from there. The hill was steep, unprotected, a good place for a charge downhill. But nobody had expected to see the Flames—every single one of them—to rush out in an irresistible wave of desperate fury.
Still, a week later, bodies were piled high here. The gate had been half torn down, half battered down by siege engines, one of which had ruined his foot, and the wall had a gaping hole further down, which Fetin’s craftspeople were working to close.
The stench of war was still in the air. In that heat, the bodies must be bloated and discolored. Workers—most likely slaves—were digging graves; further downhill, bodies were burned, a plume of acrid smoke rising up from below.
Somewhere down there were the Scorpions—or what was left of them.
Chapter 6
KENDRAS carefully rode down the rock-strewn hill. The pine trees gave off a strong smell that lessened the stench from the battlefield. He wondered if that was why the officer had chosen the location of their camp. They’d pitched their tents further up the hill and apart from the main body of the Dalmanye king’s army. Now it seemed like luck, but the officer might just have mistrusted the rest of the army.
I don’t trust a man I haven’t trained, he’d say.
Kendras wiped his face with his free hand. Approaching the camp from here was confusing. There was nothing that could show him the way. He rode down the hill. This group of rocks? The steep incline? He turned around, trying to remember.
It took a good while, but finally Kendras found the small brook and followed it, then, at a group of three dead trees, turned to the left and headed straight on, heart beating painfully in his chest. The tents were still standing. Well, two of them.
Kendras inhaled and closed the distance.
The stench of death overpowered the smell of the forest. The view before him broke his heart.
The Scorpions, one after the other, side by side, stretched out on the ground. The medic, dead, hands around the sword placed on his chest, in armor, gloves showing the scorpions.
Ertas, his head nothing but a horrible, shattered mess.
The last betrothed they’d received into their midst, another Dalmanye. Kendras hadn’t had time to get to know him properly.
Every one of them. He kept staring at the bodies, then realized they were arranged in a distinctive way—those that had been inseparable during life had been arranged together, lying shoulder to shoulder. Above all, the smell of putrefying blood and flesh.
Kendras shook his head and stared at his comrades. Five men were missing. Fifteen were here. Were they among the piled bodies? Were they survivors? Had they been captured, sold?
He struggled off the horse, impatiently put the peg leg on. Who had arranged them like this? Wrapped them like this in their cloaks, washed the blood off, or at least attempted to clean them up?
He tore his eyes away from the display, then almost jumped when one of the dead touched his ankle. He jumped, staggered and nearly fell over a body but caught himself just in time.
Kendras stared when Selvan blinked up at him. He’d been sleeping among the dead, curled up like a faithful hound, and Kendras felt a shudder race down his spine. Were they all going insane?
Selvan looked horrible, pale and thin, like death was already gnawing on him.
“You’re… you’re alive?” the slave asked, eyes wide, a fragile hope in them that bordered on madness.
“Yes.” Crippled and useless, but alive.
“Don’t leave me,” Selvan said and clung to his good leg, almost toppling him again. Kendras reached down to touch Selvan’s matted, blond hair.
“You did this?”
“I couldn’t… I couldn’t let them lie like this.”
“Why didn’t you bury them?”
“I couldn’t.” Selvan’s voice was wet with tears, and Kendras couldn’t imagine the anguish the slave must have felt. His own concerns were small against that. “Don’t leave me again.”
“No.” Kendras ran his hand down Selvan’s cheek, that old fondness choking him. If Selvan was the last Scorpion alive, at least there was one. “I’m not leaving. They rounded the surviving mercenaries up and put us on ships so we wouldn’t mutiny and demand our pay. I never wanted to leave you.”
“What is wrong with your leg?”
“I broke my foot. It’ll heal.”
“Do you need anything? I can find food….”
“No. Get up.”
Selvan stood, very nearly cringing in front of him. “I’m sorry, I….”
“Nothing to be sorry about.” Kendras touched his lips to the slave’s forehead. “You’ve been brave, Selvan. Now rest. I have need of you. We’ll bury the others.”
“I don’t want to….”
“No, me neither, but that’s what he’d order us to do, wouldn’t he?”
Mute, Selvan nodded, and dragged himself away to one of the tents. Thirteen dead men. Two survivors. Five men missing. Among them the officer.
Kendras didn’t dare hope, but hope was a resilient thing in his chest.
One had survived. Two. Five more. Gods below, give me five more. We can be one again. We can recruit new men, rebuild what we were, one man at a time. Find the old strength and fight.
Kendras wished he’d had prayers for them, or any kind of faith that they’d
be rewarded after death. But really the only thing he could do was bury them, and that he was incapable of. He’d have to find men to dig graves—no easy work in the stony earth. Burning them would hardly be less work. But with gravediggers he ran the risk that they’d dig up the dead to strip the corpses.
Kendras went to the first body, the medic’s. Remembering the man’s laughter over a leg of lamb, the way he sometimes sang to himself while mixing herbs. Invariably, the other Scorpions had fallen silent to listen. While unschooled, he’d had the clear, strong voice of a shepherd lad.
Sometimes he realized he was singing aloud and would begin to laugh and flush, especially if it had been one of the popular love songs. The banter was given and received in good spirits.
Don’t laugh at me, or I’ll treat your wounds with salt.
Tears stung Kendras’s eyes, and he managed to get down to one knee, almost losing his balance twice. He reached out and pressed the medic’s gloved hand, adjusted the sword hilt between his fingers. Remembering the same hand digging into his shoulder, and the man’s joy in bed. Here was one without one evil bone in his body. Selfless, and always fighting.
The officer should be here, holding the rites. He’d find good words for each of them. Kendras remembered the rites for the fallen, but they’d only ever lost one or two, never more than that. And often they died from their wounds because once they received the first wound, the rest of the unit covered them, the medic immediately at their side to staunch the bleeding and the fear.
He only hoped he’d died quickly and with as little pain as possible. For all the relief he’d brought, he deserved no less.
Kendras wiped his face, then wiped his hand on the medic’s leather glove.
“I release you to death,” he said, feeling his voice weak and hollow like old wood. It was wrong to say this, it wasn’t his place, but the man who should say those words wasn’t here.
He stood, struggling to straighten up, and felt the terrible weight on his shoulders. He’d have to give them the honors. Each one of them. He’d been betrothed to everyone but the new comrade, but in death, even the new one was a Scorpion. He’d fought and died with them, after all.