Wayward Soldiers (20 page)

CHAPTER 26

Sered reacted off instinct, lunging after Evran. He caught the boy’s wavering arm and slid over behind him. I reacted in turn, launching myself at Sered. My torso struck the ground hard, knocking the air from my lungs in a giant whoosh as both of my hands wrapped around the former blacksmith’s ankle. My arms screamed under the strain. Somehow my grip held, but I wondered if my shoulders would ever be the same as they popped in ways not natural.

Evran lost the rope at some point for the chest crashed against the sides of the fissure as it descended. The last man below screamed as metal clinked and rock cracked.

I jammed the toes of my boots into the ground as I slid after Sered and Evran in the hopes it might bring me to a halt. It didn’t.

Sered and Evran screamed over the faint sounds of fighting behind me.

I saw a boulder protruding up from the ground two feet from the lip of the fissure. I snaked my left leg out and then swung around my right. Both bounced off, barely slowing me.

I was half a breath from falling in after Sered and Evran when hands latched onto my right leg. Two more fell on my left. I came to a halt and managed to look over my shoulder. Nason held onto one leg, Sivan the other.

“We got you,” said Nason. “Hang on.”

I snorted at the irony of those two words.

Footsteps pounded the ground next to me. Boaz and Liam appeared. Two more had made it. But what about Meshek? I feared the worst, especially seeing the blood splashed across Liam’s chest and shoulder when he squatted beside me and grabbed Sered’s other leg. Considering how well he moved, I knew it wasn’t his.

“I got him,” he said.

“Nason, come and take Sered’s other leg now that I’m not sliding,” I followed.

Nason hurried over and did as I instructed.

I sat up, then re-gripped. “Liam, get that rope you and Meshek were using. See if you can throw it down to Evran. We need to get the boy up first.”

He went after the rope.

“How you holding up, Sered?” I asked.

“Beautifully,” he grunted in a strained voice. His reply echoed from the hole.

It was hard not to appreciate a man who could joke during a life or death situation.

Liam threw the rope down, and hollered. “Evran, you see it?”

“I can barely see anything.”

“I’ll try to get it closer.”

Liam swung it over until the boy made a strained noise. “I got it.”

I shouted. “Evran grab it with your other hand, and we’ll start pulling. On three, let go, Sered. Liam, get ready to take Evran’s weight. I don’t want you going over the side too.”

Liam squatted and leaned back. Boaz gave him a hand. I counted out to three. The exchange was made without any problems. Nason and I hauled Sered up quickly while Sivan helped Liam bring up Evran.

Moments later, we all sat a few feet from the fissure catching our breaths. I looked over what had happened after Sivan and Nason jumped the man holding Boaz.

Bodies lay strewn about. We lost Meshek from the confrontation. A deep cut from a sword had sliced his neck and collarbone. I swore as a knot formed in my gut.

A bit farther back, the woman we rescued still lay unconscious. Everyone else was dead.

“How are we going to explain this to her?” I asked.

Lots of grunts. No one offered any suggestions. I had no doubt the responsibility would fall to me.

I stood slowly. “Let’s get that arm looked at before Dinah gets here, Boaz.”

He stood as did the others.

“What about the bodies?” asked Evran, wearing a frown.

“What about them?” I answered.

“Should we dig a hole or burn them?”

“Forget that,” said Liam. “They just tried to kill us. No different than what those bandits did to your town or the raiders that attacked us on the road. Let them feed the crows and the rats.”

“No,” I said. “We should do something for when the woman wakes up and asks after them. But we don’t have any more time to waste either.” I looked over my shoulder. “Throw them in the hole. It’ll save them being from picked clean by animals while burying them all the same.” I turned to Sivan. “You all right to ride?”

He offered a grin. “Horse does most of the work.”

I smiled. “Go back to the group. Tell Ira and Ava to hold the others up while we get the area cleared. You can tell Dekar to come alone though, so we can put the woman in the back of his wagon.”

“What should I tell everyone about what happened?”

“Nothing. I’ll fill them in when I get back to the group.”

He nodded and set off. The man walked every bit his age after our bit of physical exertion. The second he mounted his horse though, he appeared younger than me.

“Let’s get started,” I said, turning.

Nason was the only one still waiting for me. Liam, Evran, and Sered had started grabbing bodies. Boaz went to check once more on the woman we rescued. Considering how little he’d be able to contribute with his arm, I thought that probably for the best.

I took two steps forward with Nason to help with the bodies when a feeling came over me. Maybe it was a premonition, something like a hunch. Perhaps my instincts were just working harder than usual. I think on some level everyone had those moments. My gut tightened, and cold sweat ran down my back.

I swore. Loudly.

In the past when I’ve had those feelings, things usually got ugly, fast. Sometimes I was able to mitigate the damage, but not always.

“Everyone stop!” I yelled.

Nason froze beside me. The others halted. Everyone stared at me, tense and waiting. I scanned our surroundings slowly, straining my ears, concentrating, hoping to get some sense of what was about to happen. I had no real information that would satisfy them. I had none that would satisfy me.

“What is it?” whispered Nason.

“I . . . I don’t know. Just a bad feeling.”

Everyone waited. Still nothing.

“I don’t feel anything,” said Nason.

My jaw clenched. “Let’s hurry and get out of here.”

A deep thunder sounded from the fissure.

“What was that?” asked Evran.

The ground started to shake, rocking violently back and forth while the thunderous noise swelled. I lost my balance and fell to my knees. I shouted at Liam, Evran, and Sered to get away from the fissure. To leave the bodies behind. To run.

They got my meaning and scrambled away.

But they didn’t get far.

The ground near the fissure fell away and with it so did Liam, Evran, and Sered. Each man wore their horror differently as they dropped into the heated pit we had fished the strangers from. Evran, panic. Sered, confusion. Liam, resignation.

I reached out to them, but I didn’t get far as I too began falling.

CHAPTER 27

Though I didn’t see Liam, Evran, and Sered disappear into the blackness, I heard their screams. They echoed above the roaring growls of the earth until fading into nothing.

I thought I would join them, but Nason grabbed me before I became another casualty of the land. I came to a jarring stop. With little to brace himself against my weight, Nason’s feet slid on the dirt and I began to drift down again more slowly. His red face strained with effort. I gathered my wits quickly before we both fell to our deaths and swung my free hand around to find a handhold. The sliding stopped.

Boaz rushed to the opening and pulled us up despite the injury to his arm.

With the ground still trembling, we ran toward the woman we rescued. We carried her a hundred feet away from the wound in the earth that now gaped at least fifty feet across and probably twice that in length.

I doubted travelers would fall inside again. They’d have to be blind to miss the hole now.

The rumbling from below stopped. I looked to the two men beside me.

“Thanks. I thought that was it for me.” I shivered. “Nason, that’s twice today you saved me.”

I imagined Sered, Evran, and Liam falling, never striking bottom as if their afterlife would be a constant state of anticipation. Their screams would haunt me forever. One more nightmare I’d relive again and again.

That could have been me.

“You’d do the same for me.” He wore a solemn look and sighed, “I never used to hate life, Tyrus, but each day it’s getting harder not to.”

He looked over his shoulder. I followed his gaze. Sivan and Dekar came alone. I was glad that I told Sivan not to say anything to the rest of the group.

Nason continued. “This isn’t the world I wanted to raise my kids in.”

Boaz added in a low voice, “Nor I.”

I spat, thinking of the last ten years. War. Then hate and ridicule from my countrymen. The supposed end of the world. I hadn’t wanted to raise my kids in this world for some time.

“No,” I finally said. “But this is the world we have.”

* * *

Telling the group about what had happened was every bit as hard as I knew it would be. People cried out. Some cursed the gods. Some cursed me for not bringing all of the men back alive or for going to help the people we ended up killing anyway. In their spot, I might have done the same.

This was not one of my most enjoyable moments as a leader.

The one thing that helped ease people’s minds was the fact that we managed to save the young, pregnant woman. Some of the women looked her over and made her more comfortable in the back of Dekar’s wagon.

Of course, how much comfort would we be able to provide her after she woke and discovered we killed her husband?

After securing the woman, we readied ourselves for travel. Some wanted to make camp for the day. The priest from Uman especially wanted to stay so he could properly pray to Molak for the passing of the souls who died.

Despite my lack of belief in his nonsense, I almost gave in to his argument if for nothing else than to build up some of the goodwill I had lost. But a tiny flash of light in the distant sky talked me out of it.

Unfortunately, the road we traveled was now split by a gaping hole we could not get around with our wagons. After some scouting, Ira and Sivan found another route, though it caused us to backtrack nearly two miles.

The mood of the group was pretty somber. No one outside of my friends and family said a word to me. I wasn’t sure if it was because they were angry or just too heavy-hearted.

Those who did speak to me like Zadok or Ava, didn’t say a whole lot. They either gave me a quick hug or a word of reassurance.

It wasn’t much, but sometimes the simplest things mean the most. I’ve saved many lives over the years, hundreds in a sense, when you consider what my unit accomplished. Thousands if you think about those I didn’t personally have contact with, but the actions of my men affected. Yet, those faces rarely crossed my mind. Most were blank.

The faces that did pop into my head were always the ones I had lost, the ones I had failed. Even if I couldn’t remember a name, I could recall every line of those dead faces as they stared at me with judging eyes. Especially people in my unit, men who had counted on me most to look out for them. People like Gal who probably hated me as he breathed his last for not letting him keep his dumb religious charms before my unit’s last mission.

I sighed.

If there were gods, I hoped they wouldn’t punish him or anyone else for following my orders, but instead let me bear the weight of any sins caused by my decisions.

But we all know that if there were gods, they couldn’t care less about me.

CHAPTER 28

We made camp well after dusk. The decision ingratiated me to no one. It didn’t matter anyway. I wasn’t in the mood to care. We had needed to make up for lost time, so that’s what we did.

My mood continued, sitting alone outside of the camp’s perimeter, past pickets.

Zadok had tried to follow, but I told him no. Ava and Nason had called after me too, but I ignored them both. Everyone picked up on the message. With Hamath no longer around to help me work things out, I needed time alone.

The deaths of Liam, Meshek, Evran, and Sered really bothered me, even more than I thought they would. That was odd because I had been close to none of them. They were really just acquaintances.

But again, they died because of me.

A small breeze picked up, sending a chill down my neck. I shivered and started collecting small sticks and brown grass, arranging them near my feet for a fire. I didn’t have to look far to find what I needed. The world was now full of dead and dying things. The occasional patch of green or sprout of life visible every now and then seemed as out of place as a flower in a snowstorm.

Satisfied with my arrangement, I pulled out a dagger and flint. Two strikes gave me the spark I needed. The grass began to smoke. I bent low and blew on it gently, nursing the embers until flames found life. Within minutes I had a small fire going, large enough to keep off the chill.

I watched the flames sway, stripping away the bark and consuming the flesh of each piece of wood. It reminded me of a funeral pyre as fire removed the layers of a corpse, starting with skin and stopping at bone.

My anger and anxiety lessened.

It hit me.

After battle, I had always gravitated toward the pyres, saying goodbye to those I knew died, and those I didn’t know as well. It was something I felt every man or woman had deserved.

At those hellish pyres, I’d make peace with whatever my squad went through that day. Even after Denu Creek, we had a pyre that eventually accomplished the same. In my rush to get back on the road, I hadn’t said goodbye to Liam, Meshek, Evran, and Sered.

So, I did.

It wasn’t much, just a few words about what little I knew of each man. I thanked them for what they had done. I apologized that I hadn’t done more for them.

As I finished, the faint sound of footsteps tickled my ears, soles of shoes scraping over dry land, legs brushing against brown bushes. The spacing surprised me.

“I didn’t expect you to come. I thought Zadok or Ava might instead.”

The footsteps paused briefly, then resumed. A moment later Myra sat beside me. She put her hands out to the fire.

“Why wouldn’t you expect me to come?” she asked.

I could think of quite a few ways to answer that question. Call it fatherly instinct, but I decided that none of them would do me any good. Yet, I felt the need to be at least partially honest.

I decided that we needed to finally have that heart-to-heart I had put off since I had returned to Denu Creek. Even though I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind, I realized that I’d likely never be, and being a parent wasn’t something to do only when it was easy.

“Well,” I said slowly. “You haven’t exactly been very warm to me since I came home.”

She stared at the fire. Eventually, she picked up a stick and started breaking off small pieces. She threw each one into the flames.

I waited, but not with much patience. Not jumping in and saying more wasn’t easy, but I knew I needed to let her speak next.

She broke several more sticks apart without a word. The little patience I had ran out.

I cleared my throat. “Can we talk about the way you treated me?”

“Sure.”

“I assume you blame me for all the stuff that happened to you, Zadok, and your mother while I was in the army.”

“Yes,” she said, almost a whisper.

“That’s really not fair.”

“I know. I know you couldn’t leave the army without being labeled a deserter. I know thousands of other kids had their father leave them too. But I still hated you.” She sighed. “Unlike Zadok, I unfortunately remembered what you were like before you left.”

“Why unfortunately?”

“Because. Zadok only hoped you were as good of a person as Ma told us you were. I knew you were. I remembered how much you loved us. I remember being a little girl and truly believing that no matter what happened I never had to fear anything because you’d be there to protect me.”

“But when you needed me the most, I wasn’t there,” I whispered, understanding her hurt.

“And you weren’t ever going to be there.” She looked at me, eyes welling, but refusing to shed the tears. “Then you came back out of nowhere and did something I had always wanted you to do, what I always imagined you’d do if you found us in trouble. You beat up the bad guy and took us to safety. Well, relative safety. The woods wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

I snorted, fighting back a few tears myself at hearing my daughter finally open up to me.

“So you push me off so you don’t risk feeling the same way you did as a little girl?”

“I guess. I don’t want my dreams crushed. They weren’t something silly like Zadok’s of you fighting make believe creatures and saving princesses. I just wanted my father around when I needed him. And then with Ma gone. . .”

That dream was stronger, I thought, seeing plainly what was written on her face.

“I should have brought this up sooner.”

Her voice cracked. “Me too. I almost did after the fight with the raiders at Denu Creek.”

I remembered her look that day, hesitant, uncomfortable.

“Then with the raiders we fought after Uman, I wanted to as well,” she added.

I cocked my head, curious. “What made today different?”

“Nothing at first. I could tell you hid a lot of the facts about what happened. But then I overheard Nason talking to Ava about everything. About how close you came to dying.”

She started sobbing. I reached out and wrapped her in my arms. For the first time she embraced me back. She squeezed tighter as she rested her head on my shoulder. It reminded me of a time when she skinned her knee and I comforted her on our front porch. My heart went out to her pain then, but nothing like it did now. I felt helpless. I knew she was hurting, not just from today, but from years of suffering, yet I had no way to take it away. I’d have gladly bore it all for her.

I swayed side to side with her by the fire, rocking her almost as if she was that same little girl with a skinned knee. In many ways, she still was.

“Don’t leave me again,” she whispered.

“I told you I wouldn’t.”

“You told Zadok.”

“Then, I’m telling you now.”

“And don’t die either.”

Easier said than done, I thought. But I kept that comment to myself.

“I won’t. I promise,” I said, bringing up a free hand to stroke the back of her head.

“I missed you,” she mumbled into my chest

“I missed you too. Every single day.”

She squeezed tighter. “I love you, Pa.”

Pa? Not Tyrus, but Pa? My chest tightened. I had been trying to tell myself that I hadn’t cared about her calling me by my first name, but truthfully I wanted nothing more than to hear her acknowledge our relationship again.

“I love you too, little girl.”

She made a sound that resembled a laugh, a sniffle, and a cry. I’m sure I sounded no more coherent as we held each other tightly for some time.

I can only think of a handful of times I nearly said a prayer to the gods. Most of them were admittedly in times of extreme stress or danger. That was usually when most people conveniently found religion. However, a few instances of almost-prayer came from joy. This was one.

I had my daughter back.