‘How fits shame, lieutenant?’
To that query she made no reply, but quickly dismounted, and then moved to crouch beside him. At last he could see her face.
She was studying him curiously. ‘We captured Lord Rend. My troop now delivers him to Hunn Raal. I will grant Ilgast this – he did not flee us, and looks to accept his fate as just punishment for failing on this day.’
‘Today,’ agreed Havaral, ‘marks a day of failures.’
‘Well, let me give you this. You’ll not scorn my pity, I hope. I see you at last. Old and useless, with every pleasure long behind you now. This hardly seems a fitting end, does it? Alone, with only me to caress your eyes. So, at the very least, I choose to offer you a gift. But first, I see you covered in blood and guts – where is your wound? Do you feel much pain, or has that faded?’
‘I feel nothing, lieutenant.’
‘That’s good then.’ She laughed. ‘Here I was going on and on, too unmindful by far.’
‘I’ll take the sharp point of your gift now, Sevegg, and deem it the sweetest kiss.’
Sevegg frowned briefly, as if struggling to understand the meaning of his invitation. Then she shook her head. ‘No, I cannot do that. I’ll let you bleed out instead.’
‘This is your first field of battle, isn’t it?’ he asked.
Her frown deepened. ‘Everyone has a first.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s true. I will concede your innocence here, then.’
The furrows of her brow beneath the helm’s rim faded, and, smiling, she said, ‘That’s generous of you. I think now we could have been friends. I could well have looked on you as a father.’
‘A father to you, Sevegg Issgin? Now you curse me in earnest.’
She bore that well and nodded, looking off to one side for a moment before returning her attention to him. ‘So there’s still some fire in you. Not a daughter, then. We’ll imagine the lover instead. More blessed then my gift.’ She reached down and grasped the wrist of his left hand, tugging off the gauntlet. ‘Here, old man, one last time, a soft pleasure.’ And she moved his hand up under her leather breastplate. ‘You can squeeze if you’ve the strength.’
He met her eyes, feeling the swell of her tit cupped by his calloused palm. And then he laughed.
Confusion clouded her face, and at that moment, as he brought up his other hand and drove the knife it held up under her rib cage, using all his strength to pierce the leather, and felt it slide home to take her heart – at that moment, he looked hard at her face, seeing no one but a stranger. And this pleased him even more than the surprise he saw in that visage.
‘I bear no wounds,’ he said to her. ‘A veteran would have checked, woman.’
The weapon sobbed as she slipped back from him and fell awkwardly on to her heels.
Someone shouted in dismay. There was hurried motion. A sword flashed in Havaral’s eyes, like a lick of blinding sunlight, and at the same instant something slammed into his forehead, delivering a new, unexpected surprise.
Peace.
* * *
Soldiers had brought camp-stools to the summit overlooking the valley of the slain, with one to take Hunn Raal, as he contended with the grief of his cousin’s treacherous murder. The captain sat with a jug of wine balanced on one thigh, the other leg flung out, the foot resting on its outer ankle. He was indifferent to the activity around him, and the wine in his gut felt heavy and sour, yet comforting all the same.
He had ill news to deliver to Serap, who had become the last survivor among his kin. There was greater need now in keeping her close by Urusander’s side, as a valued officer in the commander’s staff. On the day that Urusander took the throne beside Mother Dark’s, she would be well placed in the new court. But he was running out of pawns.
Some hurts were not worth looking at, and if his display here before his soldiers – that of a captain reduced to a man, and a man reduced to a grieving child in a family twice broken – if all that yielded pity he could use, well, he would.
Drunks were well known as master tacticians. Seductively familiar with strategies of all sorts. The hurting thirst of his habit had honed him well, and he would not refuse his own tempered nature. Drunks were dangerous, in every way imaginable. Especially in matters of faith, trust and loyalty.
Hunn Raal knew himself, down to the core – to that dark, gleeful place where he invented new rules for old games, and made small excuses kneel in servitude to their father and master, their mother and mistress, all of whom were one and the same. Where the me within me sits. My very own throne, my very own slippery seat of imagined power.
Urusander, you will take what we give you. What I give you, and what our new High Priestess gives you. I see now the fantasy of your elevation, your return to glory. But you will suffice, and I will empty the libraries of every scholar across Kurald Galain to keep you buried to your neck in mouldy scrolls, and so content in what little world you would live in. This is a
kindness beyond imagining, milord, beyond imagining.
He could weather any amount of berating from his commander, and anticipated a tirade to end this triumphant day. It would not sour Hunn Raal. Not for a moment. If anything, he would struggle to keep a smile from his face. Now was not yet the time for contempt.