For a little while there was a woman, though he was not certain she was the first. She pretended sympathy for him. She slept with him. She bragged about his skill. And when he sat next to her bleeding body, looking into her blank, staring eyes, he wondered why his capitulation to apathy refused to be whole. Apathy had no allowance for sorrow, and yet he ached. He wept.
“They call you the Dog?” someone asked weeks later.
“Yes.”
“Are you as good as they say?”
“Yes.”
There was a soft leather bag, heavy with coin. In exchange, he had to walk into the enemy camp and kill everyone. Nothing difficult. And if it was it didn’t matter, he’d just be dead. Death held a sweet promise always just out of his reach, no matter how many times or ways he tried to accomplish the journey, or was offered a free ride.
“Is he dead?” one of Them asked forever later.
“No, sir. He won’t die.”
“Then kill him again.”
Hanging from chained wrists, bare-skinned and whipped to bloody ribbons, They left the Dog to freeze to death. Or starve. Either would surely do the trick…
Only the Dog didn’t freeze. The snow beat against him as it fell in flurries from the sky, melting in runnels of red that slowly turned pink, then clear. Such cold hurt abominably, but it didn’t kill him. Now and then, between bouts of unconsciousness or perhaps sleep, he worked at pulling himself free of his bindings—an endeavor that required the removal of a considerable portion of his skin. He thought his limbs too numb to feel it, and so attributed the pain to his imagination. Either way, he did not immediately succeed.
“Bakjhaz?” Something poked his hip, setting him to twirling in lazy circles. “Open your eyes.”
He pried ice-crusted lids open and blinked. It was daylight. When had that happened? The next rotation showed a fur-wrapped person balancing a spear in mittened hands.
“Freysl.” The Dog’s voice sounded like a rusty hinge, and he wondered idly how long ago he’d last spoken. How long he’d hung in this miserable place. “What are you doing here?” he croaked.
“Looking for you.” Freysl, which was not the little man’s name any more than Bakjhaz or Djuati was the Dog’s, peered intently into the hanging man’s face. He looked from one eye to the other, ascertaining safety. If Bakhjaz’s eyes were black, Freysl was in imminent danger. If they were, on the other hand, the lovely green of new grass, all was well. At least for the moment. One could never rely on that gauge as it was subject to change without the least warning.
“Need some coin, do you?”
“How can you ask such a thing?! Here I risk my life slogging over hill and dale in the most horrific storm the world has seen in centuries so that I can rescue your unappreciative hide, and you accuse me of such selfishness?”
“Yes.”
“You are cruel.”
“You are a liar. That and your greed are the most reliable things about you.”
“Don’t forget my uncanny ability to make us rich.” Squinting up at the chain, Freysl knocked the snow off it, then pried at it with his spear. It rattled as the end swung free. “If the chain whacks you in the head and you go berserk, I shall have to kill you, you know.”
It meant nothing, and they both knew it.
“A man does what a man must do.”
Freysl had an extraordinary knack for finding jobs, avoiding the Dog when he was ‘berserk’ (as the little man liked to call the killing rage), and frequently disappearing without a trace. He was also an oasis in the wasteland of loneliness, so the Dog tolerated him, even liked him—which was a mistake. It was always a mistake to allow any sort of attachment to anyone.
“You know I will kill you one day,” the Dog reminded him, not for the first time. The very words Freysl had used, but much more believable from the Dog. Blood-stained hands on his thighs, he struggled to bring his breathing back under control. Struggled to banish the last of the darkness from his eyes and from his mind.
The remains of perhaps a score of soldiers lay strewn around him. Most of them wore the distinctive saffron sash of the opposition, but some were garbed in the brown tunics of Them. Because it helped him feel less the animal, the Dog tried to remember who They were this time, but neither the name nor the face of the princeling he and Freysl now served offered itself to his memory.
“Not me,” Freysl asserted from a perch high on a wall and well out of the Dog’s reach. “You would not do such a thing to your friend.”
“I am no friend to anyone,” he murmured. He shook his head, but still his vision didn’t clear, and the fading warmth of life lingered on a few of the bodies. Someone moved, only a twitch, but the Dog saw it and sought it out. Crimson-dyed fingers touched the wounded man’s throat. The pulse beat warmly through the fragile protection of skin.
“You’d best hurry,” Freysl advised.
The wounded man looked up and fear blossomed in his eyes. The Dog inhaled its sweet scent and felt his body respond, his pulse quicken. To nourish that fear was an easy thing, and the result would be such pleasure, such gratification... For a little while he could know relief from the perpetual, terrible hunger that plagued him.
“Please,” the man said, though the terror swiftly faded to resignation. Looking at him, the Dog remembered that there were other ways to live. But there was no one that understood what he was and no one to show him the way back. Not this man, who was dead already, and certainly not Freysl, who profited so well from the Dog’s madness.
Closing his eyes, he tightened his grip. Unhealthy, warped magic stole the soldier’s life energy and warmed the Dog’s body, fed his battered spirit. It was wrong. It was hideous and yet... and yet...
He shuddered with the swift, too-brief euphoria, then tossed the corpse aside. He loped down the alley while Freysl made his way along the high wall until it ended at the intersection of two streets.
“Bakjhaz,” he called out. “Look at me.”
Obediently, the Dog came to a halt and lifted his face.
“Ah, there’s my pretty fellow.” Freysl smiled after a moment’s intense examination. “Catch me,” he said, and jumped.
“I warned you the prince wouldn’t forgive you for killing his men, even if you did kill more of the others.”
“I told them to stay back.” The Dog was preoccupied with trying to figure a way out of the predicament in which he and Freysl currently found themselves. Behind them came what appeared to be the prince’s entire army. They had broken into groups to block escape with numbers. While he might attack one, reinforcements would arrive before he cut his way through. They were familiar with the city and They had efficiently funneled the fugitives to a gate in the outer wall. The city held no inhabitants; it was merely part of the battle-ground in a long and unhappy war.
“There is no accounting for the lack of good sense in otherwise seasoned veterans. Come, Bakjhaz, they will soon be upon us and the odds are lamentably in their favor.”
The Dog looked out the gate at the expanse of cleared ground between the wall and the first trees marking the forest beyond. “It’s a trap,” he said, not doubting for an instant. “I would like to die, but you wouldn’t.”
“But you can’t, and I won’t. Do we have any other choice?” Freysl asked sharply.
Already the black forms of the soldiers roiled down the streets toward them in a beautiful, terrible flood. The sun glinted off their weapons and armor, shouts filled the air.
“Run.”
Flying might have saved them. Running might prolong their lives, but that depended on crossing the open ground—ground that was every bit the trap the Dog had suspected. First came the hollow pounding of their steps. Then came the cracks and shudders as cleverly balanced wood gave way beneath them. The Dog put on a burst of speed and grabbed Freysl up by the collar, hurling him toward the side of the disguised pit. Dust blinded them, space consumed them, a roar deafened them, and then there was nothing at all.
“Bakjh
az?” came a fragile query.
The Dog eased back on his haunches. He could see nothing, but his hands were bloody again. Steady digging through the rubble had seen to that. Progress upwards, shifting dirt and rocks behind them, was steady but slow. He had to be oh-so-careful to guard the arrangement of earth that still allowed them to breathe. Freysl was too broken to help at all.
“Are we lost?”
“No.”
“Can you see light?”
“Soon.”
“Are you hungry?”
The questions came and went, and the silence between them grew ever longer. Then came a whisper: “I wish to give and ask a gift.”
“What gift?”
“Life.”
Terror. “No.”
“Bakjhaz, I am dying, and you weaken more with every passing hour. Please take this fear and pain from me. Live.”
“No.”
“Yes. Do not make my death meaningless.”
It was a long time before the Dog could finally bring himself to take Freysl into his arms. Fingers just so at the man’s neck pressed down on nerves, brought a startled gasp of relief.
“There’s my pretty fellow. Look at you. Not the heartless creature after all. I always knew it, you know.”
“How?” The Dog’s voice was rough.
“If you had no heart you wouldn’t care, and you always care.” Freysl was a perpetual liar, but he didn’t lie now and it hurt. “I hope you find a way to freedom, my friend. I am ready now. Make it quick.”
No pleasure could be found in the passage of this life. He made it quick. Painless for Freysl, overwhelming for himself.
The Dog turned tear-blind eyes toward a sky he couldn’t yet see, but he would. He knew he would. “Don’t ask this of me any more,” he said to the gods he no longer believed in. “Not again. Not me...”
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~Robin Lythgoe
Blood and Shadow
Be sure to pick up a copy of Blood and Shadow—
“In a world crafted with such attention to detail that it is realistic in both beauty and grit, brilliance and darkness, Robin Lythgoe yet again creates a complicated main character worth adoring.” ~Kristie Kiessling, Amazon reader
Sherakai wants to break with the warrior tradition of his family. When he’s singled out for his magical gift, he must learn a new way to fight in order to escape a future he doesn’t believe in.
Also by Robin Lythgoe
Novels
As the Crow Flies
Blood and Shadow
Flesh and Bone (coming soon!)
Short Stories
Dragonlace
In the Mirror
The High Roads
Obscurely Obvious Page 5
