He found himself thinking of Val. That wasn’t so unusual in itself—after all, it seemed that all he’d done since she’d died was think about her, about the color of her hair, the way her eyebrow arched when he was being a fool, or the way she’d smelled. And the drinking he’d done since then—enough that he ought to have been getting paid for it—had largely been to blur those memories, memories that had been filled with sweetness, yes, but pain, too, that most of all.
Now, though, and possibly for the first time since her death, thinking of her did not bring pain, only pleasure. Only the memory of the feel of her hair beneath his fingers, the memory of the way she’d smiled at him, a small gesture but one that had made every terrible thing that had come before it somehow worth it, one that made all the aches and the pains, all the suffering he’d endured not just tolerable but something to be thankful for. After all, they had led him there, to that smile. To her.
“Everything okay, Butcher?”
Dannen glanced over and saw Fedder walking beside him, the man eyeing him carefully.
He offered the mage a smile. “I’m good.”
Fedder grunted. “Any idea what we’re going to do? At the capital, I mean?”
“No idea,” Dannen admitted, grinning. “But Val used to say I did my best thinking when I wasn’t thinking at all.”
The big man nodded slowly, running a hand through his long red beard. “She was a good woman, Val. The best.”
“Yes. Yes, she was.”
“That said…what in the name of the gods does that mean, doin’ your best thinkin’ without thinkin’?”
Dannen considered that for a moment. “I have no idea. I try not to think about it.”
Fedder stared at him for a moment, blinking, then he tilted his head back and roared with laughter. Dannen stared at him for several seconds then found himself bursting into laughter too. Soon, the two of them were barely able to walk as their entire bodies shook with mirth.
“What’s so funny?”
Mariana was walking beside them, staring at them as if they were both insane, which probably they were. Tesler stood next to her, Arabelle beside him, their expressions similar to Mariana’s.
“Aw, I wouldn’t worry about it, lass,” Fedder said, his voice strangled. “Matter of fact, I wouldn’t give it another thought.”
Dannen wasn’t going to laugh. Truly, he wasn’t. But Fedder roared with laughter again, and Dannen found that he didn’t have a choice. He found, also, that it felt good to laugh, felt good to feel something besides the creeping despair that had been settling on him for days, weeks, perhaps even years, ever since Val died.
Mariana’s face twisted and, for a moment, Dannen thought she was going to utter some scathing remark, maybe tell them they were fools—true—or that their laughter, considering they’d only just walked past a field full of the dead, was inappropriate—which might have been true. But Dannen didn’t think so. After all, Dannen thought that if the specter of death was enough to stop laughter, then the world would be a quiet, dark place. Or, well, a quieter, darker place anyway.
But it was more than that. It wasn’t just that Dannen believed the fact of death shouldn’t stop laughter, it was that he believed it, more than anything else, was a reason to laugh. Life, after all, was short, could be snuffed out any moment, as easily as a candle. And all the world’s somber priests with their somber faces singing their somber hymns had not slowed the march of death for a single moment.
People died—it was what they were best at, after all. No amount of misery or weeping changed it. Laughter, though, made it better, made it at least bearable.
In the end, Mariana did not curse or call them fools. Instead, she laughed. It seemed to escape her without her meaning for it to, and she opened her eyes in surprise. But one laugh was followed by another, then another. After a few moments, Tesler joined in, and then the woman Arabelle, and soon they were all laughing. And it was good between them. Not perfect, maybe, but that was fine—better than fine. After all, not being perfect was another thing at which mortals excelled.
Finally, the laughter ended—as all good things must—but Dannen was relieved to see that the grim countenances had lifted from his companions just as he felt that his own had lifted from him. Probably they’d still die, but that was alright—everyone did, after all. “Come on,” he said, wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes with a finger. “We should probably make camp.”
It didn’t take long. They sat in the fading light as darkness slowly settled over the face of the world, and ate a quiet, but not unpleasant, meal of dried rations. They did not start a fire, for this close, in the darkness, such a blaze could shine like a beacon to any man—or skeleton—who might be nearby.
Eventually, the others lay down in their bedrolls, but Dannen had to piss, so he rose and walked a short way into the forest. He could see little in the pale moonlight, everything shades of black and blacker with some little bits of gray. Not much, maybe, but enough that he didn’t stumble as much as he might have.
Finally, he found a likely spot, far enough away from the others that they wouldn’t hear the splashing but not so far that he would get lost on his way back, wandering around like…well, like a ghoul, until morning came. He pulled down his trousers and started to piss. Which wasn’t exactly accurate. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and one of the sad truths of old age—there were many—was that a man didn’t just start to piss. Oh, there were times, so the old timers had told him—giving him something to look forward to, maybe—when a man of a certain age couldn’t hold his piss, when his body, independent of his own thoughts on the matter, chose the moment for him instead of allowing him to do it himself.
That was the conclusion Dannen had come to about old age over the years, about what it meant. It meant that a man’s body decided that he’d had it for too long already—forty, fifty years, maybe more, maybe less—and that he’d done fuck-all with it and, knowing that, chose to give it a go itself. Aging, then, was a man slowly losing a grip on the reins, the horses—which had been obedient enough up to that point—deciding they were done being led, deciding it was high time they did the leading.
So. He didn’t start to piss. But he started to start to piss. Working himself up, as it were, negotiating with his body as he’d done plenty of times before—through quiet, whispered curses, mostly. And just when he achieved a dubious victory—one that had been very much in doubt—he noticed something lying in the grass, and the stream—which, of course, wasn’t a stream at all but a series of sporadic bursts—cut off.
The object glimmered in the moonlight, seeming to shine with an almost fey quality. Dannen thought he knew what it was, and he did not want to look, wanted to turn around and pretend he’d never seen it. He might not have, after all. But another one of Val’s sayings had been that he was a hound whose nose smelled trouble and that only, and she’d been right. Gods help him, too right.
So, without ever making the decision, Dannen stopped his attempt at having a piss, pulled his trousers up, and stalked forward. He knelt, letting out a heavy sigh. What lay in the grass before him was a sword. By itself, some might have thought it no cause for worry, but they would have been wrong. Swords, after all, nearly always came attached to warriors and this one, quite literally, was still attached to the hand—that and only that—of the man who’d wielded it.
The blood that had leaked from the severed wrist had stained the grass around it and looked almost black in the poor light. Dannen saw, now that he was looking for it, that there was more blood, a trail of it, in fact, leading into a thick, dense bush which blocked his view. He crouched there, frowning. He didn’t much want to go in, but just as much as he knew the truth of that, he knew also that he would. He had always operated under the belief that it was better to know, for in the life of an adventurer, ignorance was a luxury a man couldn’t afford, not if he wanted to keep on being an adventurer…or, well, being a man for that matter. At least a living one.
/> He heaved another sigh and pushed his way into the bush. On the other side, the forest gave way to a small clearing. The bodies of twelve men lay scattered about, their weapons still in their hands—except for the one whose hand he had already found, of course…though, in fact, it was still in the man’s hand, it was only that his hand wasn’t attached to the rest of his body. The remnants of four skeletons lay among the corpses, their boney bodies broken and shattered and marred with sword cuts.
It was the men, though, that drew his attention the most. Their bodies lay in a ragged circle, no doubt how they had fought against the overwhelming undead horde that had come upon them. And judging by the dozens of wounds each of them carried they had literally been hacked to death. Yet they had fought for as long as they could, standing against—
There was the unmistakable snap of a twig underfoot behind him, and Dannen gasped, spinning and expecting to find an undead soldier—or soldiers—bearing down on him.
But when the figure stepped into a small patch of moonlight, he saw that it was no undead soldier after all but the Firemaker. “Gods, Fedder,” he said, “you scared me half to death.”
The mage grunted, a sour expression on his face as he stared at the bodies. “Sorry about that. Rear guard, you thinkin’?”
Dannen turned to regard the bodies once more. “Seems like it.”
“They fought hard.”
“Yes,” Dannen said. That much was evident, not only in the number of wounds it had taken to bring them down but also by the way they all still held onto their swords, grim looks of determination etching their dead faces, as if even in death they meant to continue their guard. Dannen did not much believe in storybook heroes, men who were willing to sacrifice themselves at a whim to save complete strangers or, in the less credible tales, even wild animals. Still, if the dead men lying in the clearing weren’t heroes then they were as close to it as anybody Dannen had ever seen. After all, they had sacrificed their lives so that the rest of the army could escape.
He felt his hands knotting into fists at his sides as he stared at those brave men scattered in the small clearing. There would be others, of course, others scattered on the road, in the forest, who had given their lives to save their companions. Dannen felt a surge of anger rush through him. Another of Val’s sayings was that anger always led to trouble, and Dannen had been around long enough to know that was true, just as he knew that for him, anger was a particular danger. It was the reason, after all, why he had earned the name the Bloody Butcher in the first place, his anger getting away from him, getting him into trouble.
But since he was pretty well headed into trouble anyway, he decided to let his anger have its way. He turned to look at the mage. “Somethin’s got to be done, Fedder.”
“Aye, Butcher,” Fedder growled in a voice that showed he was just as angry as Dannen. “And we’ll be at the doin’ of it soon enough.”
Dannen shook his head slowly as he regarded the bodies. “Not soon enough,” he said quietly. “Best get some rest, Fedder, the both of us. There are long days ahead.”
“Look on the bright side, Butcher,” Fedder said. “We screw up, those days’ll be damned short.”
Dannen grunted. “Best not screw up then.”
Fedder stared at the bodies for one more moment, then gave a nod, disappearing through the bush once more.
Dannen followed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He woke to the sound of neighing and snuffles, the horses wondering what was going on. Tesler waited for a moment, expecting them to quiet, but then he heard other sounds, the sounds of shuffling feet and muttered curses. Human sounds. Frowning, he rose from his bedroll, pulling on his boots.
It was dark, the only illumination that of the pale moonlight which leaked through the tree canopy in silver slivers. He and the others had picketed the horses a short way behind them, lest their noises draw any unwanted attention, and so he could not see them—or the source of the cursing—from where he stood. Tesler hesitated, glancing back at the others, wondering if he would wake them. They were all still sleeping, their shadowed forms huddled in their bedrolls against the cool night air. He wondered if he should search for a weapon but dismissed the idea quickly, for he knew little of weapons and would have as likely harmed himself as the enemy any way.
As he stared off in the night, in the direction of that noise, Tesler wondered, not for the first time, why he was here, why he had come. They all had their uses—Dannen, the leader, wiser than he knew. Fedder, a mage of great power and, more than that, a calming, unflappable presence. Mariana, a great assassin. Even Arabelle was a bandit leader, confident and, he suspected, skilled with the sword she carried sheathed at her side.
He alone was without talent or martial prowess. He alone was a liability. Yet, what felt like a lifetime ago when Dannen had happened upon him in the dungeons of Tribune Histarial’s manse, Maela, the goddess, had told him that he must go with him, that his destiny lay with Dannen and these others. He had asked her for more, to help him to understand, had asked her then and many days since, yet the goddess offered nothing else, only that his place was with them. And so he had come.
Partly, that was because when a goddess told you something—even an ancient goddess, one forgotten by the people who had once worshipped her, people who no longer even existed—you listened. Mostly, though, it was because Tesler had never belonged anywhere, with anyone. He had lived his life alone—sometimes among people, when forced to scavenge or steal from the villages he passed to survive—but always apart, like a leper shuffling across the face of the world. And so when the goddess had told him that here was his destiny, here were his people, he had gone along without question. Or at least with few questions, for the part of him that was still the young boy abandoned by his father, the part who wanted only to be accepted, could do nothing else.
Now, however, as he listened to the stealthy sounds of someone—or something—in the darkness, Tesler was again reminded that he was useless, that he was a liability to those around him. He considered waking one of the others but dismissed the idea. They all needed their sleep, that was part of it, but the biggest part was that he wanted to prove that he wasn’t useless, if only to himself.
So he took a slow, deep breath, and slowly started down the trail. Careful not to make any noise, he crept around the bend, peering at the horses. A shadowed figure moved among them, and he frowned. He did not know much of the undead, counted it as one of the few benefits of living the life he had, but he did not think they moved in such a way, so purposeful. Neither, now that he thought of it, were the undead likely to curse, as the figure was doing now as it struggled at the knots tethering one of the horses to the tree.
Tesler stood there, hidden by the shadows of a tree, unsure of what to do, until the figure rose from its crouch and turned, the motion bringing its face into the moonlight. And its hair. Long, auburn hair. “Arabelle?” he asked, the word out of him before he could stop it.
The woman jerked, her eyes scanning the darkness as she drew her blade, the steel sliding smoothly out of the sheath with a metallic whisper. “Who’s there?” she demanded. “Come out, you bastard, and I’ll gut you like—”
She cut off as Tesler stepped out of the shadows, his hands raised. The woman let out a heavy sigh. “Oh,” she said, “Tesler.” They stood there awkwardly for a moment, each of them studying the other, then the bandit leader slid her sword back into its sheath. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” she said.
“We both are.”
It was hard to tell in the poor light, but he thought he saw her wince at that before she turned away, making sure her bedroll was secure on one of the horses. “Can’t remember the last time I got a full night’s sleep,” she said, her tone trying for casual, but he could hear the undercurrent of emotion in it. “Hazards of the life I chose, I suspect.”
“You’re leaving.”
She looked up from her task, an unmistakable expression of guilt crossing her
features, as if she were a criminal—or, he supposed, a bandit. “Yes, I’m leaving. I’m a bandit, for the gods’ sake, Tesler. Most of my days are spent robbing people. I’m not cut out for heroics.”
“Is anyone?” he asked.
Her expression turned hard at that. “Maybe not. Probably not. What about you, Tesler? You a hero?”
She was watching him closely, and he considered that for a minute, shaking his head. “I don’t…I don’t think so.”
“Well,” she said, “that’s something. Thing about heroes, Tesler, is they most always end up dead.” Her eyes widened, and she gave a soft grin. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“What?”
She shrugged. “You said it yourself, you’re no hero—oh, don’t look so hurt. There’s no shame in it. Most men think they’re heroes, probably, but I know for a fact that most men also just so happen to be full of shit. Come with me,” she said again, entreating. “Come with me and live. We could have good times together. Maybe great ones.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “And then what?”
She cocked her head, looking at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “I just mean…maybe we have some good times, maybe not but…what then?”
She grunted. “You talking family? Little mewling babies runnin’ around and all?”
Tesler shook his head, suddenly feeling very tired. “I don’t know…” he said. “I guess I don’t know what I mean.” He turned back, staring off into the night, thinking.
“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”
He could have lied then. Maybe he should have. But Tesler was no better at lying than he was heroics, so he only gave a nod. “Yes.”
He turned back to her, and she nodded with a sigh. “She likes you, you know.”
“If you say so.”
The woman snorted softly. “I know so. She’s a lot like me, that one. Hard on the outside, sure, because there’s no use walkin’ around made of glass when the world is just one big hammer looking to smash you. But on the inside? On the inside, Tesler, she’s soft.” She met his eyes. “We all are. You’re sure you won’t come?”
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