by DJ Molles
“No one should have to die alone,” Stuber repeated, looking sideways at his wife and finding her hand with a few of his fingers. Her palm was cold. Tight as it gripped him back. Her eyes strong, but the emotion behind them grievous. He had to look away from it. Had to explain himself better.
“I wouldn’t let my worst enemy die alone,” he murmured. “Used to go about the battlefield after the fight was over and give them The Mercy. Did it when I was on Boss Hauten’s crew too. There’s something wrong about leaving someone to die alone. I wouldn’t let an enemy die alone. How can I let a friend?”
“You’re all mad with emotion,” Mordicus growled. “This action will amount to nothing. You’re not going to change a damn thing. Only run the risk of getting killed yourselves.”
“No,” Whimsby said, shaking his head, sounding calm, though the look on his face was alight with a feverish sort of certainty. “You’re wrong about it amounting to nothing. There’s more to this than wins and losses. There’s something to prove. To myself. To Perry. To the Nine.”
“What?” Mordicus nearly shouted, whirling on the mech. “What do you think you’re going to prove?”
“To myself? That I can be a good human. To Perry? That he is not alone. And to the Nine? That no matter what they do, no matter how many of us they subjugate or kill, and no matter how cruel they are, their vengeance will never be complete. Because they can’t stop us from being human. They can beat us down and kill us, but they can never take away our ability to make a choice. That is the thing that makes us human, and that is the thing that they can never have. And because of that, they’ll never truly own us. They’ll never truly be our gods.” He smiled, as though he’d figured something out. “And it will turn all their actions, all their malevolent dreams, to dust in their mouths.”
Stuber nodded, feeling his heart beating inside of him in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the fight that he always craved. This time not a battle of strength, but one of willpower. Of defiance.
“Fuck ‘em,” Stuber grunted. He looked at Petra, squeezing her hand back. She didn’t seem to want to let him go. But maybe she saw the light in his eyes. Maybe she saw him coming back alive.
Subjugation was anathema to him. Its seeming inevitability had wounded something deep within him, so badly that he’d thought it was dead. Maybe she’d seen it, though she’d never commented on it. And maybe she saw it come back to life now. And she wanted him to have that.
Godsdammit, but she was a far better woman than he deserved.
Slowly, her grip on his hand let up. And then her fingers slipped out of his.
She gave him the tiniest of nods. Then looked away.
Stuber stepped forward to stand beside Whimsby. “I’m going with you. Just as much my friend out there as yours. And I won’t let him die alone. And I want those arrogant fucks to see me.” A savage grin spread across his face. “I want to spoil their victory.”
Whimsby positively beamed. Then, with some reticence. “It’s a long way off. We’ll never make it on foot before…” he didn’t state the obvious. He looked instead to Teran. “I know that you wanted to use the skiff to help evacuate, but—”
“Ah, fuck it,” Teran suddenly belted out. “I can’t do this. I can’t leave him. And skiff’s only got a handful of miles left on it anyways. Probably wouldn’t have even gotten us back to the caves.”
Lux shot forward. “I’ll go.” A glance back at Mala. “We’ll go. Won’t we?”
Mala grimaced, hands wringing the hell out of her longstaff. “Still don’t fancy being thought of as human. But Stuber’s right. Fuck ‘em. Let them see they can’t force us to our knees. I’ll stand.”
“You’ve all gotten carried away by a mech that fancies himself a man.” Mordicus sneered at them, shaking his head.
Stuber blew a rude raspberry. “Then kneel, if you wish, Legatus Mordicus. I seem to remember a pile of priests that you hung because you claimed not to have a god. But maybe your defiance only extends to a bunch of sad old men who couldn’t defend themselves.” And before Mordicus could respond, Stuber grabbed Whimsby’s shoulder in one hand, and Teran’s in the other, and moved them away from more bullshit arguments.
“Let’s go. I’d hate to not be there when Shortstack gets himself killed.”
***
Legatus Mordicus would never have admitted it, but he was shaken straight down to his core.
Shaken, straight through his limbs, so that he had to ball his fists and clench his jaw to keep it from being evident. Part of it was an old commander’s indignation at being spoken to so flippantly. You go so long without anyone talking back to you, when someone like that asshole Stuber comes along and mouths off at you, not giving one sloppy shit for your rank and experience, it detonates a tiny little charge of self-righteous anger in your brain.
But one thing that Mordicus had that other commanders—like that cock Gaius—had totally lost, was a recollection that, despite how their men might view them, they were not, in fact, minor deities.
Mordicus was a good commander. That wasn’t just pride. That was fact. He cared for his men. He looked out for them. Partly because that was what he knew a good commander did. And partly because he genuinely loved them. That’s why they called him Daddy Mordicus.
And you can’t be that way and still be a complete narcissist.
You have to be willing to listen, even when the words strike hard and sharp. You have to be willing to self-evaluate. You have to maintain some sense of introspection, or you’ll go off the deep end and start really believing what your men think about you: That you’re infallible.
Mordicus knew he wasn’t infallible. And that tiny bit of him that he’d preserved—with great effort, mind you—was what stilled his anger from lashing out at Stuber as he swooped his little pack of friends up and marched them off to their probable demise.
That’s why Stuber’s words actually lodged themselves in Mordicus’s brain like little slivers of shrapnel. Like a stone caught in your boot that won’t stop jabbing at your heel.
But…
You can’t be a good commander without a tiny bit of narcissism. You do, after all, have to believe in yourself, right up to the line of what others might call hubris.
So, while he possessed enough introspection to let the words get past his barricades of self-assuredness, they also poked at him hard enough to rile up a bit of spite.
“You idiots want to die for some fantasy, I won’t stop you!” he shouted at their backs. Not that he could stop them.
They didn’t respond. Just kept walking away.
His eyes jagged to the doctor named Petra. She was giving him a strange, pitying look that he didn’t at all care for.
You’re blustering. Good commanders don’t bluster.
But he’d never been so flagrantly defied. It was putting him off-balance.
He huffed and grumbled, trying to find the proper footing for this strange and never-before encountered situation.
Petra turned and began to walk away.
Mordicus really couldn’t help himself. “Abandoned by your husband again, huh?” he shot at her back.
Why? He couldn’t even really explain it. Maybe he wanted her to fall into his arms and weep about it so he could rebuild some semblance of self-sanctity. So he could feel right about the whole damn debacle.
She stopped. Her shoulders drew up. And for a flash, Mordicus was ashamed of himself, and yet hopeful all the same, that the tightening of those shoulders was the beginning of a sob.
She turned. Eyes dry. Expression calm. No sobs forthcoming.
“Abandoned?” She asked, with a quirk of the brow. “Is it abandonment when your duties simply lead in separate directions?” She stepped towards him, waving a hand behind her. “There are still many wounded. My duty is to them. My husband has other duties.”
She stopped, right in front of Mordicus, somehow making him feel small, the way her cool blue eyes took a pitiless measurement of him. A
downturn of her mouth at finding him somewhat lacking.
“He may be brash and violent,” she said, tilting her chin up. “He may drink too much and be too quick to fight. But he does not turn his back on those that need him, and for that I am proud.”
She leaned in close to Mordicus. Close enough that he could smell her. She lowered her voice, as though she did not want anyone else to hear. As though she was cutting him down, but didn’t want to undermine him in front of the pack of legionnaires that hovered a few yards behind them.
“At least he knows how to be a human. I had feared that the legions had beaten that out of him long ago.” That pitying smile again. She laid a gentle hand upon his armored spaulder. “But I suppose you’ve been in the legions far longer.”
Pat-pat went her gentle hand. Dismissive as a mother to a child wailing about their skinned knee. Then she turned away from him again.
Got about two paces away before Mordicus vomited more bitter words at her back.
“And what about you? Don’t you need him? Didn’t he turn his back on you?”
She stopped once again, turning bemused eyes on Mordicus that made him feel small and shallow. “I love my husband, Legatus Mordicus. But I’ve learned to function perfectly fine without him, thank you very much. If I’m being honest about it, I am a healer, and my husband is a killer. I’ve recently learned it’s best if he stays away from my patients.”
And then she really did leave him, and Mordicus couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He grumbled and growled and turned brusquely away to face the gaggle of centurions watching him. He didn’t care for the way they were looking at him either.
Primus help me, I’ve revealed my petulant side.
And he didn’t feel particularly proud about it.
“What?” he demanded, raising his arms. “What am I to do about this? Run off and make a terrible strategic error, just to prove a fucking point? There’s no point to prove!”
The centurions, his underlings, the men that commanded his cohorts, they let their eyes slip away from Mordicus. Traded a bunch of cautious glances amongst them. Clearly they disagreed, but they didn’t want to outright say it.
Mordicus strode towards them, eating up the space between in a couple of stomps. “You have something to say, then say it. No point in holding back now.” He put his hands on his hips and glared at them in a most unwelcome manner, every ounce of his body language contradicting the words he was saying. “Speak freely.”
One of the centurions shuffled a bit. Scratched at his neck. Sent a glance at Mordicus that ricocheted off. “Well, sir…seems the paladins abandoned us when the Nine got loose.”
A murmur of assent from the others.
“Seems we cuts off our sagums,” he continued, cautiously. “To prove a point. Seems we called ourselves The Faithless. To prove a point. Seems we hung a lot of flamens, also to prove a point. Seems we did a lot of things to prove a point about how we weren’t gonna kneel to gods no more.”
One of the others nodded along. A stocky beast of a man a bit too old to be a centurion, but he’d refused promotions, as Mordicus recalled. “It’s true. If I’m speaking freely, Legatus Mordicus, I felt a little bad about making all them flamens dangle. But then I liked not submitting to some bullshit gods that didn’t care about us. I liked defying them, after all the boys I’ve sent to die on their behalf. Be a shame to kneel to them now.”
The first centurion nodded along with the second. “Seems we made a stand, legatus.” His eyes flicking up again, apologetic. “A good stand, mind you. A strong decision on your part.”
A chorus of affirmation, everyone trying to ease the pain of the fact that they were completely opposed to their commander.
“You’ve never led us wrong,” the first centurion continued. “And I think it was the right thing to do, making a stand and all that. It meant something fierce to me. Can’t speak for every man, but I think by and large, it meant something to them as well.”
Another murmur of assent from the others.
“Tricky thing about making stands, though,” the second centurion put in, eyeing Mordicus from under his iron-gray brows. “It smacks of bullshit if you don’t see it through. Makes all the dead priests seem a waste. All the cutting off of our sagums, which we earned with our blood and sweat. You’re gonna make a stand like that, you gotta never back down from it.”
“It’s true,” a third, more junior centurion said, perhaps a little emboldened by his peers. Perhaps a little emboldened by Mordicus’s silence. “You back down from a stand like that, you make it feel like the people that you took the stand against won. And you know legionnaires—we don’t like to lose.”
“True,” said the first. “No one likes to have their bluff called. Makes ‘em look weak. That’s why you gotta keep pushing all your chips in and take it to the end. You wind up losing, well, at least you don’t look like a fucking pussy.”
“Was it?” the junior centurion asked, looking at Mordicus, painfully plaintive. “Was it just a bluff?”
The older centurion rounded on his peer, casting deathly glares at him and jabbing a knife-hand into his chest. “Daddy Mordicus don’t make bluffs! Now, I’ve seen him bet big on small chances, but I never once seen him bluff!” He turned to Mordicus, still with his hand spearing the younger centurion’s chest. “Ain’t that right, legatus?”
Well then.
Hard to argue with the loyalty of men like these. Men that looked up to him the way that they did. Men that saw him as infallible. Sure, he knew he wasn’t. Every man is fallible, no matter how many self-important ribbons he pins on his chestplate.
But if Mordicus had learned one thing in a lifetime of leading legionnaires, it was that faith is a delicate thing. Takes a lot of time to build. Doesn’t take much to topple it.
And really, what was he if he wasn’t Daddy Mordicus?
Just a bitter old man, angry with the world, angry with the gods, angry at the treatment of his men, the wastage of their lives for a war that never meant anything. He’d taken a stand against it. And yes. It had all been to prove a point.
Mordicus cleared his throat. Found it sticky and unpleasant. Hid it behind another ornery growl. “No, godsdammit. I don’t make bluffs.”
The older centurion beamed out a smile. Assured now in his faith. “Never doubted you, sir. Not for an instant. You’ve never led us wrong.”
“Enough of that bullshit,” Mordicus coughed out manfully. “If there’s a point to be made, no one makes it better than my men. Can’t let that gagglefuck of civilians and wannabe gods make the point for us.”
“That’s an excellent point, sir,” the first centurion concurred.
Mordicus held up a finger. “No man has to make a point that he don’t want to make. Am I clear on that? I won’t force any one of my boys to take this stand if he’s against it. I’ll make it my godsdamned self, if nothing else.”
“Oh, no, sir,” the older centurion said, chest swelling. “I intend to make a fucking point, too. The more points made, the pointier the points become.”
“We still got three working transports,” the junior centurion added.
Mordicus nodded. “Good. Get them moving. Let’s show these motherfuckers that we don’t back down for nothing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MADNESS AND CHAOS
There was no red left in the flow. Only green.
Perry was consumed by it. He’d drowned in it, and now it had permeated nearly every part of him. All but a tiny redoubt of sanity, clinging to the vestiges of his mind like a man might cling to a high rock while the floodwaters rise all around him.
This isn’t you! That remnant of himself cried out. This is THEM!
But it was difficult to care about such minor delineations. Difficult to see the truth anymore. Difficult to differentiate between friend and foe. In fact, he was possessed of a growing certainty that he had no friends—only enemies.
All the lies, all the dec
eit. The way the people he’d known had played him his entire life. Used him. Sneered down their noses at him. Shortstack, they’d called him. Runt. Halfbreed. Only calling him by his name when it suited them into manipulating him into doing what they wanted him to do.
He’d been born surrounded by enemies.
And there was a rush of dark satisfaction that they’d all underestimated him, hadn’t they? Oh yes, they had, but their time was coming to see the truth.
Seething, twitching, spitting through clenched teeth so the saliva slapped wetly against his lips and chin, he glared across the twice-scorched earth that he’d created—scorched once by the gods, and again by him. The dust of centuries now a cracked and frazzled mess of super-heated rock.
The Nine. All standing there watching him. More enemies, just like all the rest. Batu, in particular. Batu, the forebear of Mala and her pack of cronies. How had he ever trusted that cunt? Tricksters, the whole lot of them. Deserving of nothing but his scorn. Deserving nothing but annihilation.
But Batu was the one right in front of him now. And all that rage focused to a pinpoint on that tall figure.
“You!” Perry snarled, breaking into a run, and then finding that too slow, and launching himself head-first at Batu, streaking across the ground. No plan for what to do when he got there, only to smash into him, only to relieve this explosive pressure that was constantly building in him and did not seem to abate, no matter how much he unleashed it.
More. That was all Perry wanted. More release.
Batu shot skyward.
Perry slashed through the dirt like a dog scrabbling to stay on the tail of a rabbit. Sent a wave of it pouring into the other Nine. Then launched himself after Batu, heedless of the ones he was leaving behind. It didn’t matter anyways. None of it mattered. Only madness now.
Up. Up.
Batu’s figure, distant with altitude, tearing through the sky, ripping through the clouds and leaving holes in the vapor behind him. A shockwave slammed through Perry, both painful and harmless—he couldn’t be touched by physical things now. The rumble of thunder as both he and Batu broke the sound barrier, evaporating the clouds around them.
