His eyes met mine, but there was no fear in his young face. Really just a boy, he called toward me. “You-who are you?”
His gathered soldiers turned to see me. I trotted out of the shadows. “My name is Lukien,” I declared. “I’m heading south.”
I didn’t expect anyone to know me, or my name. I certainly didn’t think to hear a familiar voice. So when I did, I started.
“Lukien?”
The voice was incredulous. I looked around, unable to place it until a figure pushed through the throng. And there was Marilius, aghast to see me, looking wholly out of place in mismatched garb. Marilius! He leaned forward, blinking in the torchlight. The boy soldier glanced between us.
“Marilius?” I called back. “Really?”
“Is that you, Lukien?” he asked. He took a few steps forward as I rode closer. “You look. . what happened to you?”
“This is Lukien?” asked the boy. Now he was incredulous too. “Truly?”
My luck astonished me. I dismounted Venger and led the horse toward Marilius. “Cricket’s dead,” I blurted. “They killed her at Sky Falls.”
Marilius turned the color of milk. “Who?” he gasped.
“Wrestler. Others too, I guess. It doesn’t matter. They called down the storm and now they’re going to face it.”
“Your eye.” Marilius inspected my face. “What happened? You look so young!”
“Malator did it,” I said. “So I could beat them.” I glanced around and discovered the soldiers staring at me. A few of the older ones, men of rank, encircled the boy. “Your Drinmen, I take it?”
“We are,” answered the boy.
“Then I need to speak to someone important.”
Marilius took my arm. “Lukien-this is a funeral.”
I looked at the boy, then at the raft, then came to my senses. I’d ridden so hard I’d forgotten myself. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just came from a funeral. Forgive a stupid man for being tired.”
“Lukien, this is Kiryk,” said Marilius, presenting me to the boy. “Son of King Lutobor.”
“Lutobor?” I remembered the name suddenly. I looked at the raft again and my heart sank. “The body on the raft-your father?”
“He died this morning,” answered Kiryk. Despite his grief he kept his head high. “Killed by raiders from Akyre. They were on their way south to war with you in Isowon.”
“So Marilius told you, then,” I nodded. “This village is Drin?”
“It’s called Jelah,” said Kiryk. “But this is borderland. Diriel’s men have been up and down this area for months.”
“Taking men, stealing food and supplies, anything they can get to use against Isowon,” Marilius explained. “Lutobor told me all about it.”
I had a thousand questions but knew they’d have to wait. “I’m sorry for your father,” I told Kiryk. “Let me stay and pay him homage with you. Then if you’ll listen, we can talk.”
Kiryk nodded with half interest, then turned back to his men. I led Venger up the riverbank, through the throngs of men, waiting for a chance to get some answers. That’s when I saw the other corpses. They were piled up at the edge of the village, waiting to be buried or burned. Most were Drinmen in their black uniforms, but others were unmistakably Diriel’s. Quickly I made an accounting of the bodies, putting the dead easily past a hundred. Marilius followed my gaze toward the village.
“That’s only part of it,” he sighed. “Lutobor’s men have been fighting off Diriel’s raids for weeks.”
“He told you that himself?”
“It took me time to find him. I rode for his castle in Prang first, then on to Akja where he was camped. They’d already been chewed to pieces by the Akyrens. Lutobor let me ride with him here to Jelah.”
That surprised me. “You fought with them?”
He nodded. “I did.”
“The legionnaires?”
Marilius turned away, but I knew that look. He gestured to the villagers. “See their faces?”
They were mute. Filled with fear. A girl grasping her mother’s hand stared straight back at me. I almost smiled, then noticed the fresh scar jutting down her cheek. The others looked the same-vacant, joyless, unable to speak. A handful of men stood with them, mostly old, sickly ones.
“Tell me what they were like,” I said to Marilius. “How were they in battle?”
A sharp hushing from one of Kiryk’s men silenced me. I nodded an apology, then watched as Lutobor’s son took a bow and a single arrow from the eldest of his soldiers. He turned to the raft bearing his dead father, then signaled to another nearby man.
“Cut him loose.”
The man pulled a dagger from his belt, trudged down to the ropes, and one by one sliced them, freeing the raft. The current took it slowly down river, and as it drifted away each soldier stood and waited silently. There were no prayers for the dead king, no wailing from the women on shore. A torch bearer stepped forward. Kiryk nocked his arrow, then bent the tip into the torch, setting it alight. He took his time, drawing a careful bead on the raft as it drifted into the darkness. He took so long I thought he’d miss the craft entirely. But he didn’t. He let the arrow fly and struck that raft dead-eyed perfect. It went up like an inferno, nearly exploding. Whatever they’d used to soak it brought daylight to the shore and a huge spiral of black smoke. I watched as Kiryk lowered the bow and moved his lips in a wordless goodbye. The raft burned and sputtered as it drifted down river. Then, as if the crazy gods of the Bitter Kingdoms had held off long enough, it began to rain.
* * *
We met in a house near the center of the village, sitting around a rickety table while thunder shook the window. It was nearly midnight, and we were all exhausted, but Kiryk had agreed to meet with me before retiring. Most of his soldiers had found beds for the night in the homes around the village, but three of them-all confidants of his dead father-sat beside him while Marilius and I made our plea. The house belonged to a woman named Ursilil, chosen for Kiryk because it could be easily guarded. Ursilil was newly widowed, the mother of the scarred child I’d seen at the funeral. As we settled in our chairs Ursilil brought us milk from the only cow in the village that had somehow escaped the Akyren raiders. I was beyond famished, and it was simply the most delicious milk I’d ever drunk.
After the funeral, I’d spent most of the night conferring with Marilius, listening to everything he knew about Lutobor and Drin and their war with Akyre. Kasse, it turned out, wasn’t the only Bitter Kingdom to fall to Diriel. Large swathes of Drin had been taken as well, the lands ravaged and their men conscripted into Diriel’s army. Lutobor’s own army had slowly been decimated, until now there were only a few hundred soldiers. Most of these belonged to the Silver Dragons, the personal guard of the dead king, of which the three men sitting across the table were members. Each wore the insignia of the order on their leather coats, an embroidered firedrake coiling up the left side collar.
Many things had happened in the short time that Marilius and I had been separated, and much of it I could barely talk about. I told him of my battle with Crezil and how the monster had let me live, but I didn’t tell him about my lost soul. That was still too great a burden for me to confess to anyone. Marilius had his own theories about why the beast had spared me but they were all nonsense. I knew the truth-because I was soulless. I just couldn’t confess it.
And of course I told him about Cricket. Under a jutting roof with the rain falling around us I told him how she’d gone to Sky Falls without me, how Wrestler had tracked her there in hopes of finding me, and how he’d killed her. I described it all; it gushed out of me. He listened stoically to the tale of her rape, but I could tell his guts were turning to stone. Revenge began boiling in his eyes, and it remained there as we sat with Kiryk, drinking milk around the table.
I remained quiet while Kiryk conferred with his men. Their names were Sulimer, Jaracz, and Lenhart, and all of them looked like they’d been at war a very long time. They had the grizzled faces of men who’d spent their lives in the sun, training soldiers and leading them into battle, and Kiryk seemed out of place among them. But there was no smugness from the three, only desire to help the boy through an impossible task. Finally, Kiryk turned to the woman Ursilil, who’d been buzzing around the table filling our glasses.