“Something went wrong in this part of the world,” I lamented as I watched him. “Butchers for kings, freaks for subjects. I won’t miss this place at all.”
Wrestler stopped stretching and made his stance, bending his knees to pounce. “She said her name was Lisea,” he taunted. “Have you ever been with so young a girl?”
Why, I wondered, had she told him that? Had she remembered her name when he was raping her? But there was nothing he could say to goad me. “She was better than this world,” I replied. “She’s in a better place. Not where you’re going, by the way.”
I saw no remorse in him at all. “You loved her.”
“I loved her,” I admitted. “But with humanity. You’re an animal, Wrestler.”
We’d both crawled out of slums, I realized. Wrestler became a beast. I became. . whatever I was. I didn’t move, waiting for him to come. When he did he came flying. His big body left the ground, his arms out and reaching, spanning the yards between us like a stallion. His speed shocked me, and though I spun to avoid him he hooked me somehow with his fingers, grabbing my ankle as he crashed to the ground and twisted me off my feet. My face hit the rocks; I felt a sudden pain as he wrenched my leg upward. Just as he’d done in Arad, he wrapped himself around me like tentacles, forcing me into his hold.
I barely resisted.
His legs wrapped around my chest and squeezed. The air seeped from my lungs. I closed my eyes and summoned the strength of Malator, concentrating only on my pinned right arm. Wrestler put all his might into crushing me. I felt my bones constrict under his assault. I could smell his sweat as it dripped on me. Slowly, bit by bit, I tugged my arm out of his hold. He cursed as he felt me slipping away, tried to flip me onto my back. That one fatal move loosened his grip. Out came my arm, my fingers like arrows shooting into his skull, bursting one of his eyes. Wrestler screamed, letting go of me and spinning away, but now I was the hunter. I snaked my arm around his neck, used my other arm for leverage, and dragged him backward. He fell against me, choking, gurgling, his legs flailing and his eye socket sluicing blood.
“Wait, wait,” I whispered in his ear. “Don’t die yet.”
His iron fingers worked to wedge themselves under my hold. I tightened just enough to threaten him. Saliva dripped from his mouth, but his screams were nearly silent, more like a screech.
“Now you know what it’s like to be helpless,” I said, wrenching him back each time he struggled. “Now you know what it’s like to be a little girl, afraid, with no one around to help you!”
He cursed and kicked but couldn’t free himself. I delighted in his antics. Like a cruel child I wanted to torture him, to make him suffer as Cricket had suffered, but I knew there was no bringing her back. There was only this brutal kind of justice.
“Good-bye, Wrestler,” I sneered. “Let’s see how you do with a broken neck.”
I jerked back, flexed my arm, and snapped him like a toy, twisting his head around as the last breath gurgled from his lips. He died instantly, falling against me, then into the river. I leaned back and watched the water wash through his ruined eye, and I remembered how much losing an eye had hurt. It was so much worse than when my neck broke. I was glad Wrestler had experienced both.
His horse nibbled at the grass by the riverbank. The horses of the three dead legionnaires wandered aimlessly around their corpses. I stood up in the river, and when I did Venger came to me, splashing through the water to reach me. It took a moment for me to realize it was over. I rubbed Venger’s eager nose, my mind strangely blank. With the legionnaires dead, surely Isowon was safe now. There was almost no reason for me to return there.
Almost no reason. There was still the matter of friendship.
38
The next afternoon, I returned to Sklar Valley.
I rode like a savage onto the bloodied sands, half-naked, my ruined shirt left behind at the tombs. I had even left my bronze armor there. I supposed it could have been repaired again, but I didn’t feel like the “Bronze Knight” any longer. I wasn’t sure who I was now. Without a soul I wasn’t really human. Humans weren’t immortal. Gods were, I supposed, but I certainly wasn’t one of those. Mostly I felt lost, and very, very anxious to go home to Jador.
Finding the valley was simple enough. I merely followed the cloud of buzzards. The roar of battle had fled, but people still moved among the dead in the field. Mostly these were folk from Isowon, men and women who’d come out from the city to look for survivors and start burying the countless dead. A stench had already started rising from the corpses. Buzzards and other beasties pulled at fallen flesh. I rode Venger into the heart of the field, going mostly unnoticed by the soldiers and civilians. At once I saw the bodies of legionnaires scattered in the human wreckage. Like their brothers at the tomb they had collapsed when Diriel left. It was a mystery even Malator couldn’t quite explain-something about his being the one who called them. I reined in Venger over one of the figures, looking into his white face. He’d already been dead, long before yesterday.
“Are you with Diriel in Gahoreth now?” I wondered out loud.
“Lukien!”
I turned at the sound of my name, seeing Kiryk striding up to me through the carnage. He had a huge gash down his face, still unbandaged, and had not even cleaned off his blood-soaked uniform. He looked exhausted, too, barely recognizable. Worse than that, he was all alone. My head swiveled to scan the field, and I did see a handful of Drinmen, but none of the proud trio that always accompanied the young king. Kiryk stopped just in front of my horse, looking up at me in shock, immediately asking the question I knew he would.
“Why’d you leave us?”
I tossed my leg over Venger’s back, dropping down to face him. “I had to. It was the only way. Diriel’s gone, Kiryk.”
“You could have killed him on the battlefield. You could have done it easily.”
“I had other business.” I kicked at the dead legionnaire with my boot. “They fell like dolls. All I had to do was cut the strings.” I glanced around the grim scene. “Lenhart?”
“Dead,” said Kiryk.
“Jaracz?”
“Dead. Sulimer too.”
I hesitated. “Sariyah?”
Kiryk’s face caved with sadness. “He found his son. They’re both dead, Lukien.”
“How?” I asked softly.
Kiryk unbuttoned the top of his uniform and sighed. “Asadel wasn’t a conscript. He’d been given the powder, Lukien. He was one of Diriel’s. When the rest of them fell, so did he. They just kind of dropped where they were standing. And then. .” He shrugged. “Then it was over. It was just over.” He looked around, still trying to make sense of the horror. “Over.”
We stood like that for awhile, together and alive in a sea of heads and body parts. A good many mercenaries were among the fallen. Zurans, too. I thought of Chuluun, my friend for so brief a time, and how anxious he’d been to fight with me. I still wore the hahlag he’d given me around my neck, only now it was splattered with blood. Where was he in this slaughter, I wondered?
“We buried Sariyah with his son,” said Kiryk. He pointed to the very sand dune where Cern had waited with Venger the day before. Now it was covered with men with shovels, burying the dead who’d been dragged to the berm.
“Not exactly a hero’s grave,” I sighed.
“My men are there too. Better than being food for vermin.”
I nodded at that. So far, I’d been too afraid to ask my final question. “Kiryk,” I said. “I see a whole lot of dead mercenaries.”
“Yes.”
“Did Marilius make it?”