“…one with the yellow hair again.”
“Same as last night. I searched her when she came back, but she wasn’t carrying anything. She still out there?”
Reny had stopped to listen, his heart skipping at the mention of yellow hair. The two men were squinting out over the battlefield. His eyes followed their gaze. A thin sliver of moon lit a landscape that was far lumpier than it had appeared when the army had arrived a few days before. Figures moved about carrying lamps, bending and stooping over the dark mounds.
Reny had seen and watched this post-battle ritual many times before. Long after battle had ceased, the field remained a scene of activity. The wounded deemed to have a chance at recovery were carried from the field, but those considered unlikely to survive were given a quick and merciful death. Despite rules against the practice, whores also slipped out after darkness to take trinkets and small weapons from the bodies of the dead, though if they were spotted returning to the camp they risked losing the most part of their takings to the watchmen as bribes. Soldiers did not look favourably on those who stole from the dead—unless they benefited from it themselves.
Surely Kala was not partaking in this shameful trade? Reny had taken care of her as best he could, though admittedly hers was hardly a life of comfort and riches. Was she greedy for more? As Reny stared out into the darkness his eyes were drawn to a figure, familiar in the way it moved. Suddenly he did not want to know. But if it is her and the soldiers hear I’m keeping a scavenger in my tent…
Sighing, he set out onto the battlefield. As he approached the figure he felt his heart sink. It was Kala.
She hadn’t seen him yet. He stopped, suddenly reluctant to approach. Perhaps he could try to pretend he didn’t know what she had done. The thought of throwing her out and returning to an empty tent each night was surprisingly painful.
While he watched, she squatted beside one of the dark shapes. He heard a groan, and then a voice.
“Please. End it for me,” the voice begged. “I can’t… stand it anymore. Please.”
Kala reached out and touched the soldier’s face gently. “I will give you peace,” she said.
She moved her hand down and spread her fingers out over his chest. Reny could see that the man was shaking convulsively. The air between her hand and the soldier rippled, then her fingers slowly curled into a fist. The man gasped, let out a long breath and went limp.
Reny’s skin pricked with cold. He felt the world shift around him like a wheel on a carriage slipping into a rut. He knew nothing would be the same again.
Kala got to her feet. She looked down at the soldier, then sighed and shook her head. Stepping away, she began walking among the bodies with slow and unhurried steps.
She is no thief, Reny realised. She took nothing. But he knew that wasn’t true.
She had taken the man’s life. Something within him knew this. He considered the shimmering air he’d seen between her hand and the dying soldier. It would be so easy to dismiss it as a bit of air heated by a campfire behind her, shimmering around her arm as she made a gesture of sympathy toward the man. But there was no campfire nearby.
Clearly she was not just a whore.
He had seen Dael perform magic, both subtle and dazzling. To deny the possibility that she was a sorcerer would be foolish and dangerous.Kala was walking away from him now. She hadn’t noticed him standing there. He waited until she was too far away to hear or see him, then he made his way back to the camp. As he reached the watchmen, two soldiers overtook him, carrying a wounded man between them.
“We found him!” they called out to two other soldiers, who hurried to join them. “He’d been knocked out.” They set the wounded man they had rescued down beside a campfire. Reny paused to watch as the man sat up and groggily accepted some water.
“I’ve seen Lady Death,” the man said, his eyes wide. “And she’s beautiful.”
The four soldiers laughed.
“Must have been a good knock to the head.”
“Just like you to have visions of pretty women.”
“Well, if you’re going to have visions, why not ones of pretty women?”
“I saw her,” the wounded man said. “She saw me. But she let me live. She said I would live.”
They laughed again.
Reny shook his head and continued on to his tent. From such talk, superstitions and legends might spring. He hoped Kala knew what she was doing.
If she returned tonight, he wasn’t going to ask what it was.
IT MUST HAVE been torment enough to be dragged, defeated and in chains, to face one’s enemy. But to have been given the freedom to walk to meet his conqueror, and then waste that small gift of dignity by stumbling and falling onto his face in the mud, was too much humiliation for the prince. There were smothered sniggers among the audience of army captains, though not from the captive locals brought to witness the surrender of their leader. He struggled to rise, but could not get his legs under him on the steep embankment. A low sob escaped him, then two guards came forward, hauled him back to his feet and half-carried him forward, forcing him to his knees before Dael. He sagged, all pride and fight gone, his head bowed.
Reny was surprised to find that, after the countless defeated men and women he’d seen brought before the sorcerer King, he still felt a stirring of pity for this particular man. Even in the fading light he could see that the prince was young, barely old enough to claim the princedom from his father, who had been killed in this nation’s first battle against Dael.
“Your army is defeated, your cities have fallen,” Dael told him. “Do you surrender your land and people to me? Do you give your remaining army into my hands, to fight in the glorious Conquest to unite the lands?”
The prince remained silent. He was still so long that Reny began to worry that the youth would not respond. Then suddenly the prince straightened his body and lifted his head. He glared at Dael with intense hatred.
“I do not.”
Reny looked at Dael. The sorcerer’s eyebrows had risen slightly. There was a strange, avid light in his eyes.
“You know that the penalty for refusing is death, for you and everyone in your land?”
“Yes.” The hatred in the young man’s face vanished and was replaced by a blissful, wide-eyed stare as he tilted his head to the sky. “The Goddess of Death will take us. She will bring us peace.” His gaze dropped to Dael and his eyes narrowed again. “And she will avenge our deaths.”
The Goddess of Death? For a moment Reny could not breathe or move, then his heart began hammering in his chest and his knees felt weak. Was this a deity these people worshipped? Or was it, as he suddenly feared, the whore in his tent? The woman who had returned to his bed and fallen asleep at his side, then prepared his morning meal as if nothing had changed? In the morning light, it was too easy to dismiss what he’d seen last night as an illusion, or a dream. He forced himself to stand still and breathe normally, not wanting to give any hint of the shock that the prince’s declaration had given him.
Fortunately Dael was not looking at Reny. His gaze was fixed on the youth as he rose.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want it to be known that I didn’t offer you a choice.”
The young man’s eyes filled with fear as the sorcerer approached, but his voice was steady. “I am sure. As are my people.”
Dael paused. “How disappointing,” he said quietly. He nodded to the guards, who hauled the prince to his feet. Then he drew a long knife and plunged it into the young man’s chest.
As always, Reny made his eyes stay focused on the scene, but not his attention. He’d grown adept at not seeing in these moments, and thinking of something else. Usually the whore. But this time, something caught his eye. Something strange and yet familiar. Something he might not have noticed if he hadn’t slid down the ranks of Dael’s favour in recent weeks, and been standing further down the slope, rather than in his usual place nearer to the King.