Loyalty and War

by Devon Vesper

  “Remove the tourniquet,” Valis ordered.

  He heard Shyvus unwind the cloth he’d used, and a moment later, Tavros’s leg felt just a touch warmer from the returned blood flow.

  A few minutes later, Valis pulled his hand away and sat back. “Hopefully that should do it.”

  “Do you think he’ll be able to ride?”

  Valis sighed. “I think so. Everything feels right. And I trust in your bone-setting.”

  Shyvus gave him a slow nod. “I made sure everything lined up, including the jagged edges. It should be solid.”

  “Now we just need to get him into pants and next to one of the fires. He’s much too cold.”

  “How did you knock him out?” Shyvus asked.

  “Spell around his mind.”

  Shyvus grimaced. “You should have put him in stasis. I’m sorry, lad. I didn’t think of it until now. It would have kept him warmer.”

  “It’s fine. Let’s just get him into pants. The healing was the most important part. But it may take a few days for his leg to be fully functional again.”

  “Should we wake him?”

  Valis looked down into Tavros’s face and shook his head. “No. He’d just suffer from the cold. We wait to wake him until he’s warm.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Tav?” Valis shook him awake. He should be warm enough now after sleeping through most of the day before and the early morning with Valis wrapped around him. Or, Valis hoped. He’d covered them with everything he could, including two extra horse blankets and their clothes. “Tav. Wake up, love.”

  Tavros groaned as the spell over his mind receded fully. “Cold.”

  “I know, my heart. You’ll warm up once you start moving around and get near a fire.”

  His husband blinked awake and hesitantly moved his left leg. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  Smiling, Valis stroked Tavros’s face and helped him sit up. “Shyvus and I fixed it. It was broken in three places and mangled pretty bad. But it’s healed now. It may take a few days for you to be able to fully use it again.”

  Tavros sat up a little taller and flexed his leg, moving it around with a small wince. “It should be fine to ride.”

  “Why don’t you walk around on it while the others cook breakfast before you make that decision?” Valis asked. Worry bubbled up in his gut, but ultimately, it was Tavros’s decision. He couldn’t injure it further, because there was nothing to re-injure. His leg was fully healed. It would just be stiff from the healing and lack of use. “And let’s get you warm. You ended up in a puddle of slush and it took us ages to get you dry and warm.”

  With a bone-deep shiver, Tavros nodded. “Yeah. A fire sounds great right about now. My bones ache like I haven’t been warm in years.”

  It took a few moments, but Valis helped him remove all the blankets, clothes, and cloaks from atop him and immediately regretted it when Tavros’s shivering increased. “Come on. Fire time.”

  Once Valis helped him up, Tavros shooed him off. “I’m fine, love. I promise.” But he hobbled with a deep limp toward the fire like an elderly man who misplaced his cane, his body shaking the whole way from the cold.

  Valis followed close behind, wanting to help, but not wanting to upset his husband. When Tavros stumbled, Valis caught him. This time when Tavros shooed his assistance away, Valis dug his heels in. “I’m not letting you fall into the fire. Get over it.”

  “But you’ll get me close to the fire, right?”

  Tavros sounded so hopeful that Valis kissed his cheek. “I promise. I’ll get you as close as safely possible.”

  Thankfully everyone had positioned the closest fire near Valis’s tent to help warm Tavros up and keep him warm throughout the night. Valis helped Tavros down onto a fallen log and adjusted his cloak with care before sitting beside him.

  As early as it was, the camp was already bustling with Aesriphos, Kalutakeni warriors, and mercenaries. Breakfast smells filled the cold air, sending steam up in gusts with the bitter wind. Valis wrapped his arm around Tavros’s shoulders and pulled him against his side to try and keep him warm while the others passed out breakfast.

  “You doing okay, man?” Jedai asked. “You’re kinda blue.”

  Tavros shuddered. “I’m fine. Just cold. It will be better once I have something hot in me.”

  Jedai snorted. “Best get back in your tent for that.”

  “You ass.” Tavros laughed and swatted Jedai’s leg. “I meant food.”

  Jedai grinned and squeezed Tavros’s shoulder then looked at Valis. “Maph and I already ate and broke down our tent, so we’ll break yours down while you eat. You sure you’re up for riding, Tav?”

  Tavros nodded and accepted a bowl of breakfast from one of the Kalutakeni women. “Thanks.” He tucked the bowl of stew to his chest and glanced up at Jedai. “I’ll need help into and out of the saddle because of how stiff my leg is, but I can ride.”

  Jedai frowned and glanced at Valis, but Valis only shrugged. “We don’t have time for much else, Jedai. We need to get to the Braywar estate before the anchor team is defeated. I don’t know how much time we have, so we need to get there as soon as possible. If Tav says he’s fine, I believe him, but we’ll keep an eye on him regardless.”

  Tavros nodded. “I’ll agree to that. I don’t want to slow anyone down by becoming even more of a liability.”

  Jedai sighed but grabbed the bowl of stew Maphias handed him and both men sat next to Valis. “I don’t like it,” Jedai muttered, “but I’ll go along with it.”

  “I don’t like it either, but we have no choice,” Valis said. He reached over and squeezed his friend’s shoulder before tucking into his stew.

  They ate in silence, only broken by the howling wind. The snow drifts were higher this morning. Apparently, the blizzard was either delayed, or they hadn’t seen the worst of it yet. Valis hoped that Venabi was wrong about it altogether, but knew she wasn’t. He trusted her in her craft, even if she did say she wasn’t as good at weather casting as Vodis. But still. He hoped.

  By the time they were done eating, the Aesriphos, Kalutakeni, and mercenaries had the camp broken down except for the fire that kept Tavros warm, or at least as warm as they could make him. They each washed out their bowls and utensils with fresh snow and returned them to the sacks that held their dining supplies.

  It took four people and six attempts to get Tavros in his saddle. His left knee was the one he had injured, and that was the leg he had to put in the stirrup to get up. It kept giving out on him, but they eventually managed to haul his ass into the saddle. Once he was up, he sat tall and smiled down at Valis. “I’m good. Sitting in the saddle actually feels better on my knee. It’s stretching some of the stiffness out.”

  Valis nodded even though he was still dubious. But his anxiety to get moving spurred him to get in his own saddle and start melting snow. Six reliquary guards—three on either side of Valis and Tavros—helped them melt as they made their way south, deeper into Aspar and toward the border of Ges. And once they hit their stride, Valis signaled for them to head off at a gallop.

  Turns out they had made their way onto a lake. That was the ice Tavros had slipped on. They had made their camp on the shore. Now that Valis knew the area had lakes, he and the others were more careful about melting the snow, leaving about a foot of drift snow down for traction instead of melting all the way to the ground. They couldn’t afford any more accidents.

  About four hours into the ride, Tavros’s cough startled Valis enough that he almost aborted his pyre spell. “You okay, Tav?”

  Tavros coughed again, hacking until it sounded like a dog’s bark. When he finally caught his breath, he nodded. “Fine,” he croaked. “Spit just went down the wrong pipe.” He reached for his water skin and drank deeply of the magically warmed water and hung it back on his saddle. “Hopefully that doesn’t happen again. Hurt like a bitch.”

  With great reluctance, Valis put his focus back on the pyre spell. It was mind-numbing work
with no conversation to break it up. Valis adjusted the shirt he had wound about his face and covered his nose a bit better. The barren landscape didn’t help, as there was nothing interesting to look at on their way. It was all the same. White snow, fat flakes, a few skeletons of trees that slumbered in the cold. Tall drifts—the only difference being in their height.

  The gray skies did as much as the landscape. Thick clouds hung low, belching snow in increasingly large amounts. The flakes became fatter and the wind whipped them into thick blankets that made visibility so poor that Valis could barely see the riders next to him. Each time he lost sight of Tavros, his heart fell into his stomach until the wind slowed down enough that he could make out his husband’s silhouette in the gloom.

  About an hour later, Venabi rode next to him and shouted above the wind. “The blizzard is building. We should be careful.”

  Valis thought they should make camp, but they didn’t have that luxury. He nodded and shouted back. “Noted. Thank you.”

  He signaled for the army to advance at a gallop again. They had gone at a slow canter for too long. Valis wanted to travel as far as they could before the blizzard forced them to stop. But even still, he kept a close eye on his lover, because Tavros coughed again, and this time it sounded agonizingly painful.

  It didn’t help that now that the blizzard was upon them, no matter how many layers they wore, no one could get truly warm. Valis shivered in his saddle and knew that everyone suffered the same. There was no way they didn’t. The biting wind blew through even the thickest of their winter layers, and their cloaks didn’t close around them all that well. Valis had taken to using both of his cloak pins. One to pin it closed about his throat, and one lower down, keeping it closed about his chest. It was the best he could do. Others had taken to adopting his practice, but not everyone had a second cloak pin and suffered for it.

  Thankfully, Tavros was one of those who had a second cloak pin. Valis took little comfort from that, but it was better than not having the second one at all. Still, Tavros worried him. Every so often, he would cough, and each time, it sounded worse than the last.

  It was driving Valis crazy. He wanted to help Tavros, but he didn’t know how. Magic could only heal injuries. So, if Tavros was getting sick, he’d have to weather it in the cold, as there were no cities or towns for leagues in each direction. Or none that Valis knew about, at least.

  And then there was the fact that Tavros might be telling the truth and the coughs were from water going down the wrong pipe. Valis knew that when he’d had it happen to him, he would have residual coughs throughout the rest of the day while his lungs tried to expel the excess moisture.

  Still, it worried him.

  He had other things to worry about, though. With the oncoming blizzard, the snow drifts that had been knee-high on their horses were now at chest-height. Valis and those at the front of the lines had to cast their pyre spells farther out so they could keep up their pace, or they would end up slowed down to almost nothing.

  After another hour, he had to have three more reliquary guards on rotation to melt middle-distance because the clouds belched out so much snow that by the time the army advanced to where they melted the snow in the distance, the clouds belching snow had already built the drifts back up to almost knee-height.

  The worst part was when Venabi came up beside him. Valis turned to her, wary, and squinted to see her in the blanket of snow that kept falling endlessly from the sky. “What?”

  Venabi’s chuckle sounded ghostly in the wind. “You shit. Came to tell you that we’re in for worse. This is just the beginning.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yes.”

  Sighing, Valis adjusted his shirt-mask and tried not to sag in the saddle. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “No. I do not joke about things of such importance.”

  And Valis knew that was true, so he did sag in the saddle. “Fuck.”

  “Yes.”

  Her stoic word made Valis laugh and he shook his head. “We’ll keep riding until the worst hits us. Thank you, Venabi.”

  “At your side, brother.”

  She fell back and Valis turned his attention forward again. The last thing he needed was for anything else to go wrong on this trip. He glanced over at Tavros, trying to see him through the falling snow. He hadn’t heard him cough in hours, so that was good, at least.

  According to the pull of Avristin, they were still heading in the right direction. Feeling it tug on his soul, begging him to return home brought Valis some much-needed comfort. He chuckled at himself, remembering that it used to cause such anxiety that Tavros had to trick him into what amounted to a play date to get him used to it. Now, he took it for what it was. Cadoras was his home, and that tug was to remind him and guide him back where he belonged.

  With that thought came another, and Valis’s heart ached. How did the tug feel to Darolen?

  Oh, Valis, Roba murmured. You have such a tender heart. How did you ever come from me? I cannot understand it. Your mother was tender in her own way, but even she had designs of her own that I used against her. You, however, have such a pure and tender heart that I’m surprised you survived my tyranny.

  Valis smiled to himself. I survived because of Sovras. He was my first and only friend—if only in my dreams—when I had none in the waking world. He gave me hope and still does today.

  I must thank him when I meet him, Roba said. Thank him for saving my boy from the monster I had become.

  You’re not that monster now, Dad.

  No. Roba sighed in Valis’s mind. No, I’m not. Because you, my son, saved me.

  Valis had never wanted to hug his birth father so badly than he did now. But instead of dwelling on that, he focused ahead. When the dark of night descended upon them several hours later, Valis called for a halt. “Make camp!”

  Valis and Tavros made quick work of their tent. With magic, Valis melted a circle large enough for the camp, dried the area with the pyre spell, and set the shield in place. By now, he had the dimensions needed for the camp memorized and was able to set it so that anyone with gold magic could enter and exit at will to bring in the horses and those of the Kalutakeni and mercenaries who had no magic.

  Tavros limped to him like an old man without a cane. “Sorry, I’m not much help.”

  Valis shook his head. “I told you it would take a few days for it to be fully usable again. Walk around camp to get the stiffness out and try to stop limping. It’s probably making it worse.”

  Nodding, Tavros forced his spine straight and hobbled away to do a lap around camp. The moment he was out of sight behind rising tents, Shyvus came up to him. “Are you certain we’re going the right way, lad? The snow is blinding.”

  “I’m using Cadoras’s pull to guide me.” Shyvus’s eyes widened, and Valis went on. “I memorized the map before handing it off to you to check over my routes. I’m keeping us on target based on Cadoras’s tug on my soul. So, I’m as certain as anyone can be.”

  “Very clever.” Sighing, Shyvus pulled his shirt-mask down and scratched at the beard that had grown in during their travels. “You keep surprising me, boy. Never stop.”

  Valis grinned and clapped him on the arm. “Promise.”

  Shyvus glanced toward where Tavros had left and scratched his beard again. “We’ll set a fire close to your tent again. His color seems off.”

  “I agree.” Valis had tried not to think about that, but hearing someone else remark on it made Valis feel less crazy. “Thank you. I’d also like extra blankets from the horses if possible. I want him warm.”

  “It will be as you say.” He glanced around and noted the few trees. “At least you keep stopping near firewood.”

  Valis laughed as he headed into his tent. “I do what I can.”

  After bringing his and Tavros’s packs, bedrolls, and saddlebags into the tent, Valis fished out his pocket watch from the folds of his many layers of clothing and settled onto his bedroll, keeping the bedding tightl
y rolled to use as a short stool. He flipped the cover, cleared his mind, and cast mage lights to illuminate the tent.

  “Valis.” Thyran’s face brought a wave of calm to Valis’s heart and mind. “You have a report for me.”

  “We’re in a pretty bad blizzard, but still making good time, considering.” Valis cleared his throat and shifted. “How is Papa?”

  “He has been wandering the halls, always with someone close at hand in case he becomes fatigued and needs help back to his room, as has happened on a few occasions.” Thyran smiled. “He asks incessant questions about you, and all that has happened to you since he and Darolen left on their mission. He is almost as inquisitive as you are.”

  Valis grinned. “Guess I get it honestly.”

  “Indeed. Now, if you really want to make his evening, abort this scry with me and contact Kerac, yourself. He is in his bedroom resting with a book.” His laughing blue eyes took on a devilish glint as he smirked. “I took the liberty of placing a polished brass disc on the nightstand next to his bed with the instructions not to place anything upon it.”

  “Of course, you did.”

  “I am nothing if not helpful.”

  “Thank you, Thyran. I appreciate it.”

  Thyran winked at him. “I figured you would. Be safe.”

  With that, Thyran’s face disappeared, and Valis focused on a two-way scry to Kerac’s room. “Papa?”

  Kerac looked around the room. “Valis! Valis, where are you?”

  “I’m in the brass disc on your nightstand,” Valis said. “I’m scrying. We’re somewhere in Aspar. I’m guessing we’re about halfway to the border of Ges.”

  His papa set his book down and picked up the brass disc. Valis’s heart eased when he saw that Kerac’s face was no longer as gaunt as it had been, that he had a healthy glow to him. “Oh, Valis. I miss you.”