The girl gazed on him with tear-filled eyes. She was younger than he had first thought, and though no words passed between them, she pleaded for his help. In that instant, they were enemies no longer, but kindred fighting against a common foe. Calling out to his brothers, Noor dropped between her legs, tugging himself to arousal.
Thudding stones seemed to pound against Rathe’s head. He gasped a breath. The breath burned … and so too did the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword resting against his palm. His movements were unwieldy, obvious, but the girl’s nudity held Noor’s attention. In turn, the attention of all the other soldiers was on Noor.
“Disobedience will earn death,” Rathe croaked, getting to his feet. As he had defied the king’s orders just moments before, the black irony of his ruling was not lost on him.
The Prythian jerked his head toward Rathe, who tottered forward on wobbly legs. Noor opened his mouth to say something, but like the deadly creature that was his namesake, Rathe’s strike was a blur. His sword cleaved flesh, crunched into the bones of Noor’s neck, and stuck fast. Noor’s mouth gaped around a breathless gasp. Blood pumped from the grievous wound in time with the beat of his heart, poured over his torso and onto the girl, covering her in a spreading scarlet gown.
The legionnaires holding the girl shouted and dove aside. Pellos dragged them both up by the scruff of their necks and ran clear. The girl might have screamed, she must have, but Rathe heard only the grating screech of steel, as he ripped the sword loose from Noor’s neck. The Prythian pawed at him, clumsy on his knees. Rathe’s next stroke shattered the top of Noor’s skull like an eggshell, hewing off a bloody swath of his scalp. Noor fell and lay twitching.
Rathe stabbed the tip of his sword into the grass. His men had become as statues, anger mingling with disbelief on their faces. To the girl, he said, “Go to your family.” Silent and dripping blood, she ran to her people.
“By all the gods,” Rathe heard someone mutter. It had sounded like Girod, but it could have been any of the Ghosts. Soldiers rapidly gathered, as if instinct had warned them of impending trouble.
Rathe waited. The voice that had urged him to put an end to the barbarity had gone silent, abandoning him to whatever might come.
When the bulk of his company had gathered, he raised his eyes from the corpse at his feet. He spoke calmly. “Noor died for assaulting a superior. Had he ravished this girl against my orders, his death would have been the same. Obey my orders as if they were the king’s, or I will cut any or all of you down without pause or mercy.”
He looked from one set of eyes to another, knowing in his heart that he had made a terrible mistake in giving an order that directly countermanded the king’s own decree to wreak merciless destruction on the enemies of Cerrikoth. When he finally rested his gaze on his old friend, Thushar shook his head in dismay.
Men began to stir, muttering. In a moment, Rathe knew, they would come for him. The first few would die, for the Scorpion had never failed to defeat a foe in close combat. After the first, more would come, and then more, until they overwhelmed him. So be it, he thought, a placid smile stretching his lips.
“Hawk!” someone called from the edge of the green, instantly stilling the rising babble of fury. “A message comes!”
For the barest moment, Rathe feared that King Tazzim had already learned of his transgression. But that was impossible. Tazzim sat his throne a hundred leagues to the east.
The company’s scribe drew a slender bone-whistle from a belt pouch and blew a shrill note, calling the hawk to his gauntleted hand. After hooding the hawk, he untied the knot securing a tiny ivory scroll case to the raptor’s leg, and brought it to Rathe.
Rathe nodded thanks, but the man had already scurried away. With a regretful sigh, he drew the rolled bit of parchment from the case. It was from Commander Rhonaag, second in command of the Fists of Rydev Legion, of which the Ghosts of Ahnok were the most revered company.
“What does it say?” Thushar asked, having joined Rathe’s side.
Rathe read the message again, dismay furrowing his brow. A day sooner, and none of this would have happened!
He crumpled the parchment in an angry fist, closed his eyes and rubbed the lids with bloody fingers. “We are called home.”
“Good,” Thushar said. “That is best. For you … for all of us … that is best.”
“As well, King Tazzim is dead.”
Thushar cursed softly, and word of the king’s demise spread.
Chapter 4
Rathe paced the tiled floor of Commander Rhonaag’s stifling anteroom. Unlike the grasslands west of the Mountains of Arakas, the Kingdom of Cerrikoth was higher, drier, and hotter, nearly a desert in the summer months. But it was home, and Rathe held that dear. He had been away far too long.
Not an hour after he had passed through the gates of Onareth, a runner had brought word that Rhonaag required his immediate attendance. He feared the meeting would end with him in chains, but he had made his decision to put an end to dishonorable conduct in that last village. If so, then so be it. A girl lived and Noor had died, but Rathe’s conscience was clear for the first time in many years.
Three hours had passed since his arrival to his commander’s quarters, and still he had not been granted leave to enter. He took a seat on a dusty bench, rested his head against the rough brick wall, and closed his eyes. It felt good to sit on something other than a saddle.
He had driven the Ghosts hard across the hilly grasslands of eastern Qairennor, through the mountains, into Cerrikoth, and finally to the city of Onareth. Their halts had measured in short hours. Remembering his men huddled around the nightly cookfires, studying him with narrowed eyes, Rathe had no doubt that they would have turned on him, if not so exhausted from the grueling pace. That, he supposed, and the troubling word of King Tazzim’s death, were the only two things that had kept him alive after killing Noor for a crime that, in the strictest sense, had been no crime at all.
The journey had given Rathe plenty of time to think on his own heart, and he concluded that he was like a scarred pit dog. Where does such a dog go when freed, he had wondered, when the very fibers of its being have been seeded with brutality? Can there be any redemption for such a beast? More troubling was the idea that such a creature could never receive absolution, but instead would remain as it was … a hunter and a killer. The only difference was that he meant to choose his battles from now on. Of course, that was easier thought than done. He had never chosen any battle, rather the battles had chosen him. Like a strange curse, troubles sought him out.
The door at the end of the anteroom opened and a young, ginger-haired legionnaire said, “Commander Rhonaag will see you.”
Rathe stood, straightened his scaled tabard, and strode into the chambers. Just inside the doorway, he bowed his head and pressed a fist to his heart in salute. “I have come at your request, commander.”
Rhonaag, squat and stern as a timeworn boulder with the dark coloring of a southern Cerrikothian, sat unspeaking behind a bloodwood desk. To one side of him, double-doors let out on a broad balcony overlooking the barrack’s training yards. Polished armor and assorted weaponry stood in every corner of the room. Campaign maps hung on each wall, marked in symbols representing victories and defeats. Save the fine desk heaped with piles of parchment, it was a lifelong soldier’s quarters.
“Leave us, Idursu,” Rhonaag ordered. The aide shot a troubled look at Rathe, then hastily bowed his way out of the room. Rhonaag went back to reading from the sheaf of parchments before him.
Rathe was accustomed to this game of waiting for a commander to acknowledge a subordinate. He had played it himself. Still, he was sure he stood at attention longer than was normal before Rhonaag’s stare found him again.