I can hear Hussain’s heavy breathing. “I’m not dying today, Miriam,” he huffs out, grabbing my ankle and dragging me back to him.
I’m not either.
I flip onto my back just as he lifts his sword over his head, and I kick a booted foot at the axe handle protruding from his belly.
Hussain lets loose a sound that is half angry half agonized, a sound I’ve heard so many times on the battlefield as men and women died. His sword slips from his hand, and I have to roll out of its way as it clatters to the ground.
The rider’s hold on me loosens, and I manage to tug my ankle from his grip. I pull myself to my feet, my gaze moving over Hussain.
A curtain of blood cascades from his wound. It’s a fatal blow, I can tell that right away.
I think he knows it too. He gives a little laugh, even as he braces an arm against a wall. “Can’t believe—you got me,” he gasps out.
Neither can I.
“He’s not coming back to life, you know,” he says. “We’ve made sure of it.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say. I can’t.
I stand there for a moment, dagger in hand. I could kill Hussain right now. I’m not sure if that would be the more merciful thing to do.
I remember War’s words from last night.
Every man, woman, and child on earth is just as capable of redemption as I am … who am I to cut them down before their true day of judgment?
At the memory, I holster my weapon.
The rider’s knees buckle then, and he slides down the wall.
I begin to walk away from Hussain, but then I pause, glancing over my shoulder at him one last time.
“War really was going to let you live, you know. He told me all men deserved a chance at redemption.”
Hussain doesn’t react to that.
“I don’t know how any of us are supposed to redeem ourselves,” I admit, “but you still have a little time left. For the sake of our friendship, try.”
I grab my bow and quiver and exit the building.
Outside, one of the two remaining phobos riders has attempted to ride away, but he must’ve slipped off his horse because I see him laying off to the side of the road, inert amongst all the other corpses that litter the ground.
The other rider has also fallen off his steed, but as I leave the building he’s limping towards the creature, who’s standing fifty meters away.
Using the bow and arrows I’ve reclaimed, I shoot him in the spine. His back arches, and then he staggers forward several steps before falling to his knees.
I grab another arrow and nock it as I approach him. The rider glances over his shoulder at me, his eyes full of anger.
The second arrow goes through his ribcage. He cries out, slumping to the ground.
“You bitch!” he chokes out as I step up to him.
“Where is War?” I demand, nocking another arrow and pointing it at him.
He lets out a pained laugh. “You’ll die if you try to save him.” He’s gasping for breath. “But go ahead and try.”
Deep foreboding slips down my spine.
The phobos rider coughs, then goes still. I nudge him with my boot, but it’s clear that whatever life he possessed, it’s gone.
I move from him to the other phobos riders, checking each one for signs of life before I collect what arrows I can.
I might need them for the remaining fifteen riders.
I return to the lookout building I’d left my horse inside.
By the time I enter, Hussain is dead, his eyes half open and staring blankly at something on the floor.
Something inside me aches at the sight of him. He undoubtedly committed many, many horrors. Death was no less than what he deserved. Still, he was kind to me when he had no reason to be. I hope that whatever lays beyond this life weighs his good along with his bad.
I grab my horse’s reins and lead the creature back outside. I can’t stay here and wait for more phobos riders to come to me. If there are others who are making their way back to camp, I’ll simply have to face them head-on.
It’s time to find my husband.
I ride down the road, following the trail of corpses like breadcrumbs. They litter the ground everywhere. By the looks of it, War called all the dead to him, every single one that he could reach.
At some point, the fallen bodies seem to steer away from the road, cutting west, into the desert. I veer off the road, heading towards what I assume is the site of the attack.
The farther I ride, the denser the corpses become. A hot breeze has kicked up, and a layer of sand sprinkles the bodies like garnish.
It’s not until I summit a shallow hill that I see the rest of the phobos riders.
I count nine of them amongst the rest of the corpses, their bodies torn from limb to limb, their throats ripped out. They became zombie food by the looks of it. Even more perverse, some of the phobos riders have bloody mouths themselves, as though the moment they died, they turned on their comrades.
I continue on, aware that half a dozen phobos riders are still MIA.
That all changes when, a short distance away, I see a section of earth bare of corpses. It forms a lopsided circle, and at the edges of that circle I see meaty bits of appendages—an arm here, a leg there, an indeterminate body part across the way.
My earlier nausea rises at the sight.
There’s no way to determine how many phobos riders died here, or what caused it, only that—based on the blood splatter—several of them did in fact meet their end here.
Only about ten meters away from that, the bodies become so dense they’re nearly lying on top of each other. They seem to come to a focal point, as though they were all closing in on someone at the time they fell inert.
Was it War? His attacker?
My horse refuses to wade through the dead, so I hop off and head over to the location on foot.
I pick my way through the bodies, and right at the center of them all, there are more dead phobos riders and lots of blood—but no War.
It takes a bit more searching to find any more clues to War’s location.
I scour the area, sure that his body must be around here somewhere.
After wandering for a small eternity, I catch sight of a bare patch of earth. I hustle closer. It’s another circular clearing ringed with gore and mutilated bodies.
This time, I notice the scorch marks against the earth, and I remember the dull booms I heard back at camp.
It all comes together then.
These idiots were handling explosives.
I shouldn’t be so surprised; War’s army came across some back in Egypt, so I know they still exist. But anyone with a lick of common sense knows that most explosives stopped working long ago. And obviously, the ones that do still work are touchy and unpredictable.
But it would be an effective way to destroy the horseman.
My hands begin to tremble as I move towards the clearing, my eyes trained on the body parts. Am I going to have to pick through the debris to know what became of War?
Just as I begin to scour the edges of the blast site, I notice that there’s another, smaller clearing a short distance away. Next to it is a coffin-sized hole in the earth.
I swallow.
Watching my step, I pick my way between the dead, heading over to it.
Don’t want to look.
I take a deep breath and step up to the pit.
I have to look.
I peer over the edge.
“No.” The word slips out like a sob.
Lying at the bottom of the pit is War.
Chapter 58
I sit on the corpse-littered ground, my fist pressed to my mouth, staring at War’s open grave. I can feel hot tears on my cheeks.
He was going to stop. All of the violence, all of the killing. He was going to stop. He told me as much last night.
At my back I hear the clomp of hooves. A minute later, I feel a horse snout nudge me in the back.
I turn arou
nd to see Deimos, his blood red coat marred by blood and several large gashes.
With a stuttering breath, I press my face against his. “What did they do to you and War?”
He nickers against me, the sound oddly pained; it’s the closest thing I’ve heard to an animal crying.
I hold the steed’s head, petting his cheek. And then I begin to sob. I sob for this man that everyone fears. I sob for the man that everyone wants dead. I sob for the man I love. The man who I never admitted this to.
He doesn’t know.
I’ve said and done so many ugly things to him, but I haven’t told him that he’s the best part of my day. I haven’t told him that he became a better man, and I didn’t mean to, but I fell in love with him. That all I want is him, and he’s gone.
He said he couldn’t stay dead. He all but promised it to me.
And I never pegged him for a liar.
I collect myself and take a deep breath, letting Deimos go as I stand up.
I approach the grave once more.
I step up to it, and it’s just as hard to stare down at War’s body now as it was the first time I peered over the edge. Only this time, I force myself to stop and actually look at him.
The first thing I recognize are the tattoos on his hands. Not even death has diminished their glow. That’s how I first knew it was him.
His hands are folded over the hilt of his sword, which lays over his armored chest.
If it weren’t for his missing … missing head, he’d look like some savage, sleeping knight. It’s an oddly noble position for the phobos riders to place him in, considering how gruesomely they slaughtered him.
Eventually my eyes make their way up to War’s head—or where his head should have been anyway. I have to bite back a sob.
The horseman’s lower jaw is still attached to his body, and the skin of it and his upper neck look pristine. It’s his chest and shoulders that are doused with blood. Lots and lots of blood. The sight doesn’t look quite right, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why …
Before I get a chance to puzzle it out, my attention snags on a dark, egg-shaped device nestled next to War’s thigh. There’s another on the other side of his body. But now that I’m noticing those, my eyes take in the longer, cylindrical objects that rest around him like grave goods.
A chill courses through me. Those craters I passed on my way here, the mangled bodies scattered along their edges …
You’ll die if you try to save him, the phobos rider had told me.
I’ve never seen a grenade or an IED with my own eyes, but that must be what these are. Explosives.
I had assumed the phobos riders were using them to kill War. I hadn’t realized they were using the explosives to keep the horseman in his grave—just in case he really could survive decapitation.
I sit back down on my butt, hard, and breathe through my mouth.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. You can’t fall apart, not yet. All isn’t lost.
My gaze returns to the explosives. I swallow down a low moan.
But it is, though, isn’t it?
War has no head and his body is packed with explosives.
I bite my lower lip hard enough to bleed and press my palms into my eye sockets. Now a cry does slip out, and it’s an ugly, broken sound.
I was never supposed to fall in love with him. It wasn’t just about the fact that he represented everything I was fighting against. It was also my deep certainty that everything you care for, you’ll lose.
I drop my hands, my palms wet with tears, and I stare down into that crudely made pit again.
I can’t lose you too, War.
What am I supposed to do?
The answer comes in the horseman’s own words.
Have faith.
The trouble is, I’m not sure that I have faith in anything anymore, except maybe for him.
“Can you?” I ask.
“Die?” War clarifies. “Of course I can. I just have a tendency to not stay dead.”
Have faith. I take a deep breath. Have faith.
My eyes go back to his body, and I stare at the blood that rings his lower neck and chest. I stare and stare at it.
Suddenly it hits me, what looks so odd about the blood splatter. Halfway up the column of his throat, the bloodstain abruptly stops. Not a single drop mars the skin beyond that point. It’s as though the wound happened at War’s neck, and then everything above it …
Grew back.
I shouldn’t dare to hope for something like that, but I can feel it in every shallow breath I take.
I touch my scar, tracing it as I gaze at War. According to him, I drowned in the Mediterranean, and I was reborn there as well. This might be the horseman’s own rebirth I’m witnessing.
I take in the various explosives around him—the grenades and the IEDs. What happens if he survives decapitation? If he’s rebuilt and whole once more? What happens if I leave him in that pit to regenerate and he wakes and moves and every single one of those bombs go off? What if he’s blown apart, his body incinerated? Can he come back from that?
My breath catches.
A more important question: Am I willing to wait and let him suffer that fate?
No. Not in a thousand years.
I love him and I won’t let him face death again, and it’s my turn to believe in something bigger than myself.
I do have faith—in him and myself and this moment. Maybe even in God Himself.
I step up to the edge of the grave. “I surrender.”
Chapter 59
I’ve lost my mind.
I’m sure of it when I lower myself into the grave. One misstep, and it’ll be my boat explosion, part two.
Be brave, be brave, be brave.
Just as my feet are about to touch the bottom, I notice a grenade nestled in a deep shadow.
Holy balls, I was about to step on it.
Swallowing my yelp, I reposition my feet and land softly in the grave.
For a moment, I wait for the inevitable explosion. When it doesn’t come, I release a shaky breath.
For better or worse, I’m in.
My eyes move over War.
Now, how to get him out?
First I grab his sword, prying it out of the horseman’s grip as gently as I can. If I pull too hard, one of his arms might slide off his chest and into an explosive.
I manage to dislodge the hilt from one hand before quickly repositioning that hand back on his chest. Then I manage to dislodge and resettle his other hand.
Already, sweat is beginning to bead along my brow. My hands shake from fear, and right now, I really, really need them steady.
Holding the sword in my grip, I lift it up.
Fuck, this thing is stupid heavy.
Why does he need to have the biggest sword of all? So dumb.
My arms tremble as I raise it up. The top of the grave is right above my head. If I can just get it up there …
I get the tip of it over the edge of the grave, and I shove the rest out as best I can. It takes several agonizing minutes, and by the end of it, I have sweat dripping down my chest and back, but finally, I get the weapon out of the grave.
My attention returns to War. Now that his sword is off him, all that’s left is getting this giant of a man out of this pit without blowing both of us up.
I bite back crazy laughter. It’s an impossible task. I don’t know why I thought I could do this …
Deep breath.
I push away my worries and focus on the task at hand. Removing the explosives from the grave is out of the question, which leaves only one other option: getting War and myself out of the pit unscathed.
Only, there’s no way I’m going to be able to lug the horseman out with my own two hands.
I’d need something stronger to get him out of this grave …
Something like a horse.
“Deimos!” I stage whisper, like raising my voice might set off one of these explosives … which it might. Y
ou never know.
Last I saw, War’s horse was lingering nearby, but for all I know, it’s wandered off again … probably to eat the bones of the long dead, or whatever immortal war horses do.
Nothing happens.
“Deimos!” I call a little louder.
Still nothing.
Freaking horses.
“Deimos!” I shout.
I don’t blow up. Praise the heavens.
The horse ambles over, peeking over the edge of the pit at me. His reins slide forward, into the grave, the thin leather strap bumping into the shaft wall. I wince as it causes a little dirt to dislodge and skitter down, some of it dusting a nearby IED.
When nothing else happens, I sigh out a breath. Sweat is beginning to drip down my temples.
My eyes catch on the leather sword holster that wraps around the horseman’s torso. If I can loop my own belt around War’s holster and Deimos’s reins, and if I can manage to buckle the reins to the holster, then Deimos could hoist War from his tomb. Hypothetically.
Even if that part of the plan works, there’s still the issue of somehow incentivizing a horse to actually drag his master up and out of the grave … and then, of course, there’s the issue of the explosives.
It’s disheartening to think that this is the best plan I have.
Damnit.
Be brave.
I remove my belt, tossing my weapons over the edge of the pit, and then I turn back to my horseman.
There’s a place near his neck that’s bare of any explosives. Carefully, I take a step forward, placing my foot on that open bit of earth.
Sweat drips from my brow and onto War’s armor as I lean over him and begin to thread my belt through his leather shoulder straps.
Once I’m finished, I reach for Deimos’s reins, which still hang into the grave shaft. I grab hold of them, winding my belt through them as well.
I lean my leg against War’s body as I begin to buckle my belt.
I think I’ve got this.
I nudge the horseman’s body a little more as I finish strapping it all together. In response, one of War’s arms begins to slide off his chest—
No-no-no-no-no.
I drop the belt and the reins and make a desperate grab for his arm, but I’m not fast enough.
War (The Four Horsemen Book 2) Page 40
