‘This time, don’t get up,’ was all Laurent said.
Laurent rose to his feet, calling out something to the leader of the clansmen.
It was a mad, reckless gambit, but there was no time. Akielos was moving troops along the border. The Regent’s messenger was riding southward to Ravenel. They were now almost two days ride from these events, at the mercy of these clansmen, while the workings of the border spun further out of control.
The clan leader didn’t want Laurent on his feet, and strode forward, snapping an order.
Laurent didn’t comply. Laurent answered him back in Vaskian, but—for once in his life—Laurent got only two words out before the man simply did what most people wanted to do when speaking with Laurent: he hit him.
It was the sort of blow that had sent Aimeric sprawling against a wall and then to the floor. Laurent staggered back a step, paused, then returned his glittering gaze to the man and said something deliberately and liltingly clear in impenetrable Vaskian dialect that caused several of the onlookers to double over with laughter, clutching each other’s shoulders, while the man who had hit Laurent rounded on them, and started shouting.
It almost worked. The other men stopped laughing. They started shouting back. Attention shifted. Bows lowered.
Not all the bows: Damen had no doubt that, given a day or two, Laurent could have these men at each other’s throats. But they didn’t have a day or two.
Damen felt the moment when the tension threatened to burst into violence, felt that it did not have quite enough energy to push it over.
They didn’t have time for missed opportunities. Damen’s questing gaze found Laurent’s. If this was to be their only chance, they were going to have to make the attempt now, despite the unworkable odds, but Laurent, judging the odds and returning a different conclusion, minutely shook his head.
Damen felt frustration twist in his stomach, but by that time it was already too late. The clan leader had stopped, and swung all his attention back to Laurent, who stood alone and vulnerable, his pale hair marking him out despite the lack of light here in the dark space near the horses, away from the main gathering of the camp and its central fire.
It was not going to be a single blow this time. Damen knew that, from the way that the clan leader approached. Laurent was about to get the beating of his life.
A sharp order, and Laurent was restrained by two men, one at each shoulder, their arms interlocking around his arms, which remained tied behind his back. Laurent did not try to tear his shoulders from the grip of the men, or wrench himself from their hands. He just waited for what was coming, his body taut in a hard grip.
The clan leader stepped in close, too close to hit Laurent—close enough that he was breathing all over Laurent when he slid his hand slowly down over Laurent’s body.
Damen moved before he realised it, heard the sounds of impact and resistance, felt the burn in his veins. His faculties were obliterated by anger. He was not thinking about tactics. That man had laid hands on Laurent, and Damen was going to kill him.
When he came back to himself, more than one man was holding him down. His hands were still tied behind his back, but around him, there was chaos and physical disruption, and two of the men were dead. One had been driven onto the point of another’s blade. One had hit the ground and then had Damen’s foot applied to his throat.
No one was paying any attention to Laurent now.
But it hadn’t been enough—his hands were tied, and there were too many men. He could feel the iron grip of his captors on him now, and, against the strain of his arms and shoulders, the resistance of the rope that bound his wrists.
In the moment that followed—muscles bunched and chest heaving—he understood what he had done. The Regent wanted Laurent dead. These men were different. They probably wanted Laurent alive until they no longer wanted him. This far south it was, as Laurent himself had insouciantly speculated, at least partly the blond hair.
None of that applied to Damen.
There was a harsh to-and-fro of words in Vaskian, and Damen did not need to understand the dialect to understand the orders: Kill him.
He was a fool.
He had let this happen. He was going to die out here, in the middle of nowhere, and Kastor’s claim would be made true. He thought of Akielos; of the view from the palace out over the high white cliffs. He had really believed, throughout this whole, drawn-out mess on the border, that he was going to make it home.
He struggled. It did very little. His hands, after all, were tied, and the men were bringing all their force to bear on the task of holding him back. He heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed to his left. The edge of the blade touched the back of his neck, then lifted—
And Laurent’s voice cut across the scene, in Vaskian.
From one heartbeat to the next, Damen waited for the sword to descend—it didn’t. There was no bite of metal; Damen’s head stayed where it was, attached to his neck.
In the ringing silence, Damen waited. It did not seem possible, at this point, that there existed any words that could better this situation—let alone a handful of words that could get the sword removed from his neck, get the leader to rescind his order, and gain Laurent a hint of approval from the clan. But that was, impossibly, what was happening.
If Damen wondered dazedly what it was Laurent had said, he did not have to wonder long. The clan leader was so pleased by Laurent’s words that he was inspired to draw close to Damen, and translate.
The words emerged in guttural, thickly accented Veretian:
‘He says, “Fast death doesn’t hurt,”’ just before a fist was applied to Damen’s stomach.