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“Smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” said the Barbarian. “I think I’ll join you.”

As ever Rena’s lush human beauty astonished Sardec. She looked lovely in the new green dress she had bought in the market. It had probably once belonged to some rich merchant’s wife. There were a lot of them selling clothing and jewellery to raise money for food on the black market. Times were hard all over.

She twirled around, raising the hem of the skirt slightly with her hands so that it swirled around with her. Her ankles were revealed, an effect which he found surprisingly erotic after all this time. He forced himself to clear such thoughts from his mind. This conversation was going to be hard enough as it was.

“What do you think?” she asked, a smile lighting her face.

“It looks fine, very nice.” Something in his tone must have told her something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We got our marching orders today,” said Sardec, making his voice as grave as he could. “The Imperials are over the border. We are going to meet them.”

Her smile vanished and she slumped down on the bed. Her hands clutched the quilt crumpling it. “How long till we go?”

“I do not want you to go,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“You do not want me?”

“It will be dangerous. There will be very little food. There is plague in the East, far worse than here.”

“I want to go with you. Don’t you want me to come?”

“Aren’t you listening, woman?” he said, exasperation and concern making his voice rougher than he would have wanted it to sound. “I said it will be dangerous.”

“I don’t care how dangerous it is.”

“I do. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“But you might be hurt, killed even.”

“I am a soldier of the Queen. It is my job.”

“And I am a whore. It is my job to follow the army.”

“You are not a whore to me,” he said, unable to say what she really was to him. If truth be told there was no future to their relationship. She was a human, he was a Terrarch. There could be no marriage. Even putting aside all the problems of birth and class, there was the fact that he might live a thousand years if he did not fall in battle. She would be lucky to live past forty, the way the world was now.

“I want to go with you,” she said.

“I can’t allow you to do that,” he said. “If anything happened to you…”

“What?” There was imperiousness to her tone that no human should ever use to a Terrarch. He ignored it, trapped by his inability to express how he really felt, to take the risk of saying what she meant to him, of putting himself in her power, of risking ridicule not from the world, but from this one particular human being.

“I just do not want anything to happen to you,” he said lamely. He forced business-like briskness into his tone. “There is gold in the purse on the dresser, and script that can be drawn on any bank.”

“So it does come down to money. I am to be paid off,” she said unreasonably.

“I just want to make sure you are all right,” he said. “That you can pay for safe passage back to Talorea when the passes are open, and that you will have enough to live on once you get there.”

“This is cruel,” she said. He looked at her, not quite sure what she meant.

“I do not mean to be.”

She stared at him, meeting his gaze in a way that none of the soldiers under his command ever could. “No, I can see that you do not,” she said softly. “You just do not understand at all.”

“Understand what?”

“What you mean to me. What has happened between us. What you’ve done to my life.”

He stepped back a little, not wanting to face what she was saying, not really understanding what she meant anyway. She was a human, after all. He was a Terrarch. What claim could she possibly feel she had on him? Even as that thought crossed his mind, he realised that she did have one, based on the simple fact that he did care about what happened to her, more than he did for anyone else in the world.

He wanted to tell her that, but that would lead to other things, to her insisting that she come with him, on a march there was every chance that none of them would come back from. The Queen’s army were outnumbered, ill-equipped and facing an enemy that had no scruples about using the darkest of sorcery. Since Kathea’s death, they lacked local allies and many of the locals would rally to Khaldarus’s cause and fight for the Dark Empire simply because he was the only local claimant for the throne. And he’d heard other rumours, that if they won they were to continue marching on into the East, to invade Sardea itself, which would be suicidal.

If he reached out to her now, he would be sentencing her to death, and he did not want to do that; more than anything else in the world, he wanted to avoid it. “You cannot come with me. I forbid it.”

“You do not own me. This is not the Dark Empire. Not yet. You cannot forbid me to do anything.”

The defiance in her tone fanned his own anger. He wrenched his feelings back under control. He was not going to argue with a human. He was not going to raise his voice to her. “Then I ask you not to do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” he shouted. “What is so bloody difficult about it.”

“I can’t go back, not to Redtower, not to Mama Horne’s, not after being here with you.”

“I will come back for you. I will find you.”

“I have heard that before.”

It was not the right thing for her to say. Sardec did not like to think about her other lovers, the human ones, the ones who paid. He did not like to think that she compared him to them.

“If I say a thing, I mean it.”

“I will not go. I will not take your money. I will follow the army.”

“No you will not.” Once again he was shouting, and the shameful realisation that other Terrarchs might hear him goaded him to fury.

“Yes I will.”

“I am leaving,” he said, stalking to the door, determined to regain his composure.

She was gone when he got back. His money was still there.

From the saddle of her stolen destrier, Tamara studied the road. An endless stream of people surged past her heading west.

Families of thin-faced peasants trudged along, all of their worldly possessions hanging in bundles from their sticks, lines of squalling children strung out behind their parents like so many ducklings following their mother to a pond. The richer ones rode on carts that in better days would have carried their produce to market.

Among the peasants were wounded soldiers, deserters, bandits. She had met their likes a few times along the road, but they had not seen through her disguise, and taken her for one of themselves. It had not stopped a few of them trying to rob her for her gear, and her horse. Those that had tried had died, quietly, wondering why breathing was suddenly so difficult and whose blood stained their chests and throats.

“Can ye spare a bit to eat, sir?” asked a ragged pimple-faced youth. A younger brother or friend leaned against him, and his tone was half-way between begging and menace. Her steed marked her out as one who might have money and the lad was simply trying his luck.

“I wish I could,” she said, pitching her voice low and keeping the accent rough. “But I’ve got nothing.”

“Ye’ve got a horse.”

“I ate horse once,” said his companion. He sounded feverish. “Tasted good as pork. As good but different.”

“You can’t eat my horse,” Tamara said. “I need it to carry me East.”

“No sense in goin’ that way, sir. There’s war in the East and Dark Empire soldiers and the Plague.”

“My families in Asterton and I got to get back to them,” she lied smoothly.

“No sense in going there, sir. It’s burned to the ground or so I heard. Soldiers did it. The place was crawling with the walking dead.”

It was not the first time she had heard tales of restless corpses while she was on the road. Every second person seemed to have one to tell, if you had the time to listen. Wicked sorcery had been used in the past few months and she suspected she knew by whom.