The Bloodsworn (23 page)

Alix backed away, holding her sword two-handed, her heart hammering in her ears.
One man
, she told herself.
It's only one man . . .

Then a shadow fell over her. Sunlight kissed red-gold hair, glinted against a blade clutched firmly in a white-knuckled hand. Dead blue eyes stared out from a beloved face. There was no hint of recognition in Rodrik's gaze. No hint of humanity at all.

He started toward her. Behind him, the sun rose steadily, shafts of light piercing the shadows like a hail of arrows. Alix had the fleeting, terrible notion that it might be the last dawn she ever saw.

*   *   *

“Your Majesty, I beg you to reconsider.”

It was Sirin Grey, of all people, who pleaded with the king as they dragged Liam onto the pyre. The rest of the dignitaries were still clustered around the dais. Liam could see Highmount
arguing with Green, Rona's shoulders shaking with sobs, but they were too far away to hear.

The king barely seemed to register Sirin's presence. “I will do this myself,” he informed Meinrad. “It is only right. Fetch me the torch.” The guardsman looked a little queasy, but he obeyed.

“Your Majesty.
Erik.
” Sirin grabbed his elbow. “You'll regret this, I know you will. Please, this isn't you.”

Liam couldn't help it; he burst out laughing. Not a
real
laugh, obviously—the completely manic sort, the laugh of a man about to be burned at the stake. “Yeah, well spotted. Do you think that might have had something to do with us locking him away for a time?”

“Silence,” said the king.

“Or what? You'll burn me at the stake?” Liam could feel himself losing his grip, but really, what did it matter now?

“You have only yourself to blame for this,” the king said.

“Do you think so? I tend to think the bloodbinder holding you in thrall has rather a lot to do with it.”

Sirin Grey sucked in a breath. “What did you say?”

“The same nonsense he's been saying for weeks,” the king growled. “Pay it no mind.”

It was incredible. The face was Erik's, and the voice, but at that moment the man before Liam bore no meaningful resemblance to his brother. Even through the fear—the roaring, nauseating fear—Liam felt a terrible sense of loss. The sheer injustice of it, that a great man should be brought to this . . . It was more than he could bear. “The worst part is, I know you're in there somewhere, Erik. I saw it.” Only for an instant, but still, it had been there, a glimpse of humanity peeking through a tiny crack in the ice.

“Enough,” said the king.

“Allie is going to find that bloodbinder and she's going to kill him. And when she does and you're free of the magic, you're going to remember all this and . . .” Liam broke off, tears brimming in his eyes. Not for himself, but for his brother. Because he
would
remember all this, every detail. And he would never forgive himself. Liam squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I'm so sorry, Erik. I tried.”

“Oh gods,” said Sirin Grey.

The ropes bit into Liam's arms. In spite of himself, he started squirming, though he knew it was pointless. Panic was climbing his chest, closing around his throat, a sensation so much like drowning that he actually tipped his head back. He fought it down as best he could. Erik needed him to be strong now. “It isn't your fault,” he said between gritted teeth. “Remember that when you wake up from this nightmare. Remember that I died knowing it wasn't your fault!”

“Oh gods . . .” Sirin Grey whirled toward the dais.
“Green, come quickly!”

“It isn't your fault, Erik,” Liam said again, trying to sear the words into his brother's memory.

The king paused. A flicker of doubt lit his eyes. “Liam . . .”

Meinrad appeared with the torch. Erik took it as though he didn't quite know what to do with it. The flames guttered and snapped, black smoke curling maliciously into the morning sky.

“Erik,” Liam said pleadingly.
“Brother, please.”

Erik grimaced, clutching at his head as though it pained him. He looked from the torch to his brother, and in that instant the ice shattered. Horror flooded his gaze, and for a moment, Liam dared to hope.

Then Erik gasped. His head snapped back, and he went rigid as a corpse.

“Sire!” Meinrad put a steadying hand on his arm. “Are you well?”

Slowly, the king lowered his head. His gaze met Liam's once again. The eyes were completely lifeless.

Liam sagged against the ropes.

The king advanced toward the pyre, moving as mechanically as every other thrall Liam had ever known.

A thrall. Your brother is a thrall. You're going to die.

Liam tried very hard to pass out then, but the gods refused to grant him even that. Sirin Grey was weeping, Raibert Green was rushing toward them, but it was all too late. The king raised the torch for all to see. Then he turned back to the pyre.

And collapsed like a puppet shorn of its strings.

The torch clattered to the flagstones in a shower of sparks, missing the pitch-soaked pyre by inches.

“Erik!” Liam struggled fruitlessly against his bonds.
“Erik!”

“Don't just stand there, you great fools!” thundered Albern Highmount from across the courtyard. “Someone help His Majesty!”

*   *   *

Alix fought on two fronts—or rather, she defended herself on two fronts. It was all but impossible for her to attack, even with two hands braced on the hilt of her sword. She had all she could do just to parry, each blow sending a bright arc of agony through her injured wrist. She couldn't keep this up for long. With every deflection, her reflexes were a little slower, her limbs a little heavier. She was like a wounded stag holding off a pack of coyotes; any moment now, she'd be too exhausted to continue, and then they'd have her.

She pivoted, trying to keep Rodrik between her and the Oridian. He was weak and not a trained swordsman; using him as an obstruction was the only thing keeping her alive. But even as she did so, Alix was painfully aware that she was not the only one being worn down by attrition. Every moment of exertion brought Rodrik one step closer to death.

The Oridian lunged, forcing Alix back. Then, quicker than she would have thought possible, he spun around and came at her again, landing a hard blow that sent her stumbling back into Rodrik. It might have ended right there, but Rodrik was slow to react, and they tumbled together to the hard ground. Alix's bloodblade jolted from her grasp; she scrambled for it, but the Oridian kicked it aside. He loomed over her, in no hurry now. His eyes blazed with triumph—before widening in shock as his body jerked violently. He staggered forward with a cry. Behind him, Vel stood as if paralysed, arm half raised, frozen in the moment when she'd plunged her dagger into the Oridian's back.

It was all the distraction Alix needed. She rolled, grabbed her sword, and thrust it into the Oridian's side; he collapsed in a heap on top of the still-prone Rodrik. Alix dropped to one knee and hauled the dead man off her prince. He was unconscious, his skin deathly pale, but he was alive. As for the priestess, she remained stock-still, her expression suspended somewhere between horror and grim determination.

“The bloodbinder,” Alix said. “I have to find him . . .”

Vel blinked as if waking from a dream. She pointed at the brush nearby.

Cautiously, gripping her sword with both hands, Alix picked her way over.

A man sat cross-legged in the undergrowth, concealed in the foliage like a newborn fawn. His head was bowed, hands folded in his lap, and though his eyes were open, they stared sightlessly at the ground. Alix had seen this near-catatonic state once before, on the face of the most frightening human being she'd ever encountered. The Priest had been unable to stand on his own when Alix had burst into his tent, too drained by his dark magic even to raise his head without difficulty. Even so, she had failed to kill him.

Not this time.

Alix drove the point of her sword between the bloodbinder's shoulders, hard enough that it erupted through his chest and bit deep into the dirt below. She barely noticed the pain in her wrist; it was incinerated in the blaze of her wrath.

For Erik, you twisted son of a bitch.

And then, in an instant, her rage was spent, and with it her strength. Alix's knees buckled; the sword tumbled from her grasp. She had to grab a tree to steady herself.

Moments later, Ide crashed through the brush, bloodied but apparently unharmed. Warily, she took in the scene. “That him? The bloodbinder?”

“It's him,” Alix said. “It's done.”

“Y
ou sure?” Ide kept her sword levelled at the corpse as though it might spring to life at any moment.

Alix didn't answer straightaway, watching anxiously as Vel knelt over Rodrik. “How is he?”

The priestess shook her head. “Alive, but beyond that it's difficult to say. His pulse is weak, and the fever is worse than ever.”

Alix closed her eyes briefly.
Farika have mercy on him. He has suffered so . . .
“Does he have a chance?”

“There is always a chance, but it would take a miracle.”

Ide still hovered over the dead bloodbinder. “We need to be sure this is our man.”

“It's him,” Alix said. “He was in some kind of trance. I don't think he even noticed me—he was too busy concentrating on his magic.”

“Lucky you found him,” Ide said.

“I didn't. Vel pointed him out, right after she saved my life.”

Ide didn't bother to conceal her surprise. “How's that?”

Alix nudged the dead Oridian with her boot. “Vel got her dagger into this one.”

“I stabbed him in the back.” The priestess's tone was
strangely distant. She gazed down at her hands as if they were someone else's. “I must pray for him,” she said. “For them all.”

For once, Ide didn't object, or even make a face. She just gripped Vel's shoulder and said, “Bloody well done, anyway.”

Vel didn't seem to know what to say to that. She knelt by the body of the Oridian knight.

“Wouldn't've thought she had it in her,” Ide said in an undertone.

“I think she's just as surprised as you are,” Alix said, feeling sorry for the priestess.

“So what now?”

“We get Rodrik home.”

Ide sighed. “He's not going to make it to Erroman, Alix.”

“We have to try. We owe it to him, and to Erik.”

Erik.

Alix gasped. She'd been so busy worrying about Rodrik that she hadn't fully processed the implications of what had just happened. “He's free!”

“What's this?”

“Erik! He's free of the bloodbond!” And a thought that should have brought a flood of joy brought only dread. Because Alix had no way of knowing what was happening in Erroman. “Oh, Ide, what if we didn't get to him in time? What if—”

“We did. Commander's fine, you'll see.” She said it with such staunch conviction that Alix couldn't help hugging her, even though she knew Ide would stiffen like a board. Which she did.

“Okay,” Ide said, patting Alix's back awkwardly.

Once Vel had finished her prayers, Alix helped her to make Rodrik comfortable. He needed rest, and for the moment at least the time pressure had eased. Whatever had happened in Erroman, there was no changing it now. As for the Warlord, Alix and the others were as safe from him here as anywhere. Which was to say, not safe at all.

“Your arm,” Vel said when they'd finished tending to Rodrik. “Let me see it.”

Alix glanced down at her wrist. A streak of purplish red ran from her forearm to her palm, and the swelling had turned her hand into a ham with five fat sausages. She didn't need the priestess to tell her it was broken.

“How in the name of blessed Olan did you hold a sword with that?”

“Not courage,” Alix said. “Fear. And I don't think I can do it again.”

“Let us hope you won't need to. I have a poultice that will reduce the swelling and help with the pain, but there is not much else I can do beyond immobilising it.” Turning to Ide, she said, “I will need wood for a splint . . .”

It was a measure of their exhaustion that no one, not even the priestess, objected to spending a few hours resting at a campfire surrounded by enemy corpses. They said little, each lost in her own thoughts, their glances straying every now and then to the pale form lying in a swaddle of blankets near the fire. But when noon came and went and still Rodrik showed no sign of stirring, Alix knew it was time to move on.

“We'll need to make a litter,” she said. “I'll see if I can find some rope around here, but I'm in no shape to chop wood.”

Ide glanced down at her sword ruefully. “It'll ruin the edge.”

“Use his,” Alix said with a weary gesture at one of the dead men.

Satisfied with this solution, Ide wandered off in search of a good bit of timber. Vel, meanwhile, stood over Rodrik looking worried.

“Building the litter is the easy part,” she said. “But we're in no position to carry it, and dragging it through this brush will be difficult.”

Worse than difficult, Alix knew. They had a lot of forest to get through before they reached the Imperial Road, a journey that would have taken days even without an injured man to carry. But what choice did they have? It was the quickest way to find help, and she was determined to get Rodrik to Erroman, no matter the cost. Though his chances of a full recovery grew dimmer by the hour, she refused to allow Erik's twin to die before the brothers even had a chance to meet.

So they did the best they could. Alix and Vel pulled the litter like a pair of oxen, ropes tied round their waists. Even with Ide hacking a path through the undergrowth with her borrowed blade, the sled slipped and jarred and snagged in the brush, forcing them to stop frequently to reposition Rodrik. Alix's hips were soon raw and bleeding from the chafing
ropes. Vel must have suffered even more with only her thin robes to shield her, but she didn't complain.

You'll never make it
, the coldly rational part of Alix's mind argued.
You're only prolonging his suffering.
She shoved the thought aside, bent her head like a beast of burden, and slogged on.

Gradually, the terrain began to swell on either side of them, herding them into a long, narrow valley with an ancient riverbed at its bottom. The going was a little easier here, the trees a little more sparse. As they continued north, the valley widened and the bluffs grew steeper until they found themselves at the base of a broad bowl dotted with wildflowers. A memory lurked at the edge of Alix's thoughts, but she couldn't quite grasp it. The pines and steep bluffs reminded her of her homeland, the riverbed and wildflowers of the tribal lands of Harram. But no, the memory stalking her now was something darker, more visceral . . .

She stumbled over a hard edge sticking out of the dirt. Stooping, Alix found the broken remnants of a half helm. And then the dark thing at the edge of her memory gripped her in its cold talons, and she knew where she was.

“Farika's grace,” she breathed.

Ide turned, a question on her lips. Then she saw the broken helm in Alix's hand, and her gaze did a slow tour of their surroundings. She took in the steep bluffs, the wide clearing. Recognition dawned, and she swore softly. Like Alix, she'd been so focused on the gruelling task at hand that she hadn't even noticed.

“What is it?” Vel asked. “Where are we?”

Wind sighed through the pines, and it seemed to Alix like the whispers of the dead. Glints of metal peeked through the swaying grasses; here and there, the hard white of bone. The earth felt suddenly cold beneath her feet. “Boswyck Valley,” she said, and she shuddered.

Vel's gaze flitted over the battlefield. “I read about what happened here.”

What happened here.
Alix wondered how they'd described it, those who saw fit to record the horror.
Massacre. Treachery.
The day the tide of the war turned and a king lost his innocence.

“A great act of heroism took place in this valley,” Vel said. “It will live forever in scroll and song.”

“Heroism,” Alix murmured. “That's not how I remember it.”

“Heroes rarely do, I suspect.”

It was only then Alix registered what the priestess was talking about, and she felt herself colouring. “What happened with Erik . . . That wasn't . . . I wasn't—”

“A hero,” Ide said, turning back to look at her. “Saved the king's life. Carried him off the battlefield. Stuff of bloody legend and no mistake.”

Alix stared, searching her friend's face for some sign of mockery. “
That's
what you remember about this place?”

“Not the only thing.” Ide's gaze took on a faraway look. “I remember the Raven sitting up on that bluff watching our brothers die. Nik and Gwylim throwing themselves down the hill, screaming like bloody fiends. I followed them without even thinking. Stood on a rock somewhere over there and just . . .” She mimed firing her bow. “And then after . . . I remember Liam thinking he'd lost you, that it was all his fault. Remember them carrying the king away to the healers, and Arran Green using a tree to put his arm back in its socket. I remember running and thinking half the world lay dead behind me.”

A ribbon of wind raced through the valley. The grass sighed, as though in sympathy. Gradually, Ide's gaze came back into focus. “What you did was the only good thing happened here, so yeah—that's what I choose to remember.” She turned away, cutting through the grass with her head bowed, lips moving silently in memory or prayer.

Alix looked out over the valley.
So many dead.
Thousands upon thousands, each and every one a story cut short. How could hers count any more than any other?

When she found her voice again, it cracked with emotion. “What happened here . . . it wasn't the stuff of bard song. It was a tragedy, Vel. A
massacre
.”

“Those who fought here must carry those memories forever,” the priestess said gravely. “It is part of their sacrifice. They bear the burden of the darkness, that the rest of us need remember only the light.”

“The lie has value, is that what you're telling me?”

“Not a lie.” Vel laid a hand on Alix's arm. “Just one memory among many. Those who perished here will be honoured and remembered. But when this is over we must rebuild, and no one ever built anything out of ash.” Vel squeezed her arm. “I will pray for the dead,” she said, “and for you, my friend.”

*   *   *

A touch on her shoulder startled Alix out of sleep. Though it was too dark to see, she knew instinctively that it was Vel. And she knew why the priestess was waking her in the middle of the night. “Rodrik.”

“It won't be long now. I'm sorry, Alix. I did everything I could.”

A cold ache filled Alix's breast. She'd known this was coming, but she'd forced herself to deny it. As though she could change Rodrik's fate through sheer stubbornness.

“He's awake,” Vel said. “He asked for you.”

Alix rolled to her feet, pausing to let the bracing night air fill her lungs. She needed to be fully awake if she was going to be able to face this. She took a step toward the bundle of blankets on the far side of the fire, then paused to look back at Vel. But the priestess shook her head. “This is for the two of you alone,” she said.

Steeling herself, Alix crossed the camp to kneel at the side of her dying prince.

He trembled with fever, and though Vel had left his side only moments ago, he'd already fallen into a fitful slumber. He started awake at Alix's approach, a look of wild terror in his eyes. “Rodrik,” she whispered. “It's Alix. You're safe.”

Liar
, a voice inside her whispered.

He struggled to sit. “Save your strength—” Alix began, but he brushed her off.

“It doesn't matter now,” he said, his voice grating from disuse.

She gave him some water. He held it to his mouth, but did not drink. The ache in Alix's chest gripped her so tightly it was hard to breathe. “We're on our way home,” she said, for want of something better.

“Home.” He spoke the word as if it were foreign on his
tongue. “They say home is where your family is.” He raised his eyes to her; they looked thin and watery in the low light.

“If that's true, then you have many homes. And many people who love you.”

He didn't seem to hear. His gaze flitted over the campsite as though seeing it for the first time, and a hint of fear came into his eyes. The fever was toying with his mind, as subtle and pernicious as the bloodbond.

Instinctively, Alix reached for him, stroking his hair back from his forehead as if he were a restless child. Rodrik closed his eyes. He might have drifted back into sleep, for he didn't speak again for a long while. But when he opened his eyes again, they were sharp and lucid. “You're still here,” he said. “Good.”

Alix forced herself to smile. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“I was afraid I would . . . that it would be over before I could say thank you.”

The words were like a knife in her belly. Alix's body seized in a silent sob; she had to look away so he wouldn't see her wrestling with tears. “I don't know what you'd be thanking me for,” she whispered tremulously.

His hand slipped over hers, gripping it with surprising strength. “I know this is hard for you,” he said, and at that moment, he looked so very much like Erik that it took her breath away. “You think you've failed, but you haven't. I would have died on that table sooner or later. In the meantime, the gods only know what evil my blood would have wrought. You saved us both, my brother and me.”