89. The Truth of War
Chapter 89
The Truth of War
24 th Day of the Blood Moon
Salme – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Anya crouched low as she moved through the streets, the rain hammering down over her so heavily it turned the ground to little more than sludge. Screams and clattering steel joined the crackling of fire that filled her ears. She turned down a side street, then pressed herself back against the building’s wooden wall as three Uraks appeared at the other end and fell upon a group of defenders, black steel hacking them to pieces.
Isla and Kam stood across from her, their bodies still, their faces shrouded in shadow. There had been three others that night who had volunteered to venture out with her and drag the injured to safety. They were dead now. Tom had vanished without a trace, but she’d watched a Bloodmarked tear Jenna in half and another crush Samwell’s skull beneath its feet while trying to drag one of the Lorians from an overturned wagon.
Those images flashed through her mind again and again, but she smothered them, focusing on her thumping heart and the feel of the coarse wood against her fingers as she pressed her hand into the wall. She drew a lungful of air through her nostrils, tasting the smell of burning wood at the back of her throat. Her tongue licked dirt and sweat from her lips. Anya had found, over the course of the months, that those senses grounded her, kept her fear from consuming everything.
“Let’s move,” she whispered to the others as the Uraks at the end of the street carried on. She crept through the mud as quickly as she dared, stopping where shadows met the light of the moon and the street opened up into a larger thoroughfare that ran perpendicular. She dropped to one knee and rested a hand on the neck of a man who lay in the mud, blood pooling about him. No pulse.
She lifted her gaze to look out across the street. A score of bodies were strewn about, unmoving. Not a single chest rose with breath, and many were so mutilated there was no possible way beneath the Enkara’s light that they yet lived. The Uraks had a tendency to never leave anything living where they passed. Anya rarely found injured warriors anywhere other than where Salme’s defenders had pushed the Uraks back. But that didn’t stop her from searching.
She wasn’t a fighter, and she never would be. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t do her part. She might not have the capacity to take lives, but she sure as damn well had the capacity to save them.
“Over there.” Isla pointed towards another alley across the way, some twenty feet to the right. It took Anya a moment, but she saw something shifting in the shadow, something too small to be an Urak. She checked up and down the street, nodded to Isla and Kam, then darted down the street to the alley.
When she reached the alley’s mouth, she found herself staring down at four youths who couldn’t have seen more than fifteen summers. She recognised one immediately. “Conal!” she snapped in a whisper. “What are you doing here? You should be in the hall.”
The young man knelt over a dead Lorian, a spear in his hand and a scrappy leather jerkin protecting his chest. Ever since Dahlen had taken Conal under his wing, the young man had only grown more and more eager to join the fighting.
“We wanted to help.” He gestured back at the other three. One girl and two boys. Anya recognised their faces from walking through the city but didn’t know their names. All three held spears in their fists, and one had a small wooden shield strapped to their arm.
“You’re going to get yourselves killed. You need to come with us. We’ll bring you back.”
“But he’s alive.” Conal gestured at the body over which he knelt.
Anya squinted, trying to see through the dim light. The man coughed and spluttered, groaning. She dropped down beside him and checked him for wounds. Blood flowed through a slit in the leather just below the ribs, warm and thick. He was alive, but there was more chance of him succumbing to the wound in the next hour than there was of living to see the sun rise.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” Anya snapped at Conal, shaking her head. “It’s not safe.”
“Nowhere is safe.”
Anya could hardly argue with that. She sighed. “We need to get this man back to the hall, and we need your help. Can you do that?”
Conal’s face grew serious. “Of course we can, Lady Anya.”
“Right. Help me lift him.” Anya dropped a hand under the Lorian’s armpit. Like most others, the young required little more than a sense of purpose to give them strength.
The Lorian grunted, lurching upwards and clasping his hand to his gut. “Leave me.”
“Not an option.” She dropped one knee into the mud and hefted the man upright. “The hall isn’t far. You’ll be… safer there. Some stitches and some Brimlock sap and you’ll be fine.”
Anya hated lying. She could see now he’d lost too much blood. His face pale as ice, his skin almost as cold. But Conal and the other youths had risked their lives to drag this man from the street. She needed them to see that saving lives meant something.
“Conal.” She gestured for the young lad to help.
He nodded and moved to wrap his left arm around the soldier when a scream erupted behind Anya, followed by a crash. Splinters spat at the back of her head, and Anya turned to see Isla swaying side to side, her jaw hanging loose, only clinging to her face by exposed muscle and strips of torn flesh on the right side. A massive black spear was embedded deep into the wooden wall beside her. She turned and stared at Anya, nothing but pure terror in her wide eyes.
A second spear burst through her chest, and she crashed forwards into the wall before collapsing into the mud with a splash.
Kam just stood there, awestruck. His lips moved as though he were attempting to speak, but no words left his mouth.
The youths all shrieked. All but Conal, who stared at Isla’s mutilated face without a sound.
“Kam!” Anya scrambled to her feet and reached out to grab Kam by the shoulders, only to watch as a black axe hacked down into the man’s clavicle, the snap of bone accompanying the blood that spurted around the steel.
“Go.” The Lorian soldier was on his feet, one hand pressed to the wound in his gut, the other gripping the hilt of a sword. He grunted and coughed up blood, using the sword’s pommel to hook Anya’s shoulder and pull her back.
“You can barely stand.”
“It’s fine,” he said, wiping mud from his eye, only to smear it with blood. “I won’t have to stand for long.” He glanced back at Conal and the others as the axe was wrenched free from Kam’s body. “Take them and go.”
“You can’t?—”
“Go!” The Lorian threw himself forwards as Kam’s body dropped to the mud and two hulking Uraks took his place at the alley’s mouth.
“Run!” Anya pushed Conal towards the other end of the alley, but the boy dug his heels in and looked set to charge after the Lorian.
“I’m not going to run!” he snapped when Anya grabbed his shoulder.
“Fight, Conal. By all means, fight. But don’t be an idiot. Dahlen would never die for no reason. He uses his head. Live now, fight later. Go!”
The mention of Dahlen’s name caught Conal’s attention and the young lad looked from the Uraks to Anya, then turned and sprinted through the mud, following the other youths who had already set off like hounds unleashed.
Anya, too, ran. Her head told her it was the only option. She would be no help to the Lorian, nothing more than another corpse for the street. But her heart tugged at her. She threw a glance over her shoulder as she ran. The man had driven his sword into one of the Uraks’ legs, but the beast grabbed him by the shoulders and tore a chunk of flesh from his neck with its teeth, tossing him to the ground.
Anya slipped in the mud, crashing down and scrambling back to her feet, terror wrapping itself around her pounding heart. She didn’t dare look back. She had spent enough nights pulling the injured and maimed from the battles to know the Uraks would not give up the chase until either she died or they did.
Ahead, Conal and the youths sprinted out into the street, looking right, then left. A shriek like nothing Anya had ever heard left the young girl’s mouth. Crimson light spilled through the deluge, followed by the monstrous shape of a Bloodmarked. One swipe of its claws and the girl fell in three pieces.
Conal and the other boys stood, staring in shock at the mutilated remains, all frozen in place.
“Run!” Anya screamed at the top of her lungs, but still they remained frozen. She buried her fear, darted from the alley, and barrelled into the three of them. The Bloodmarked slammed its fists into the ground and sent a shockwave of fire streaming past where the boys had just stood.
Anya slipped and slid in the mud, grabbing at each of them, ensuring they were still alive, before once more scrambling to her feet. The sounds of battle echoed down the street, followed by the slap of hooves.
Anya thought she was in a dream when she looked up to see a woman clad all in black armour riding a monstrous stag, white as snow. A host of other riders flanked her on either side, each grasping long spears with curved blades. The woman waved her hand, and the rain around the Bloodmarked froze in an instant.
The creature paused, staring at the shards of ice that hovered about it, but could do nothing when those same shards tore its thick hide to ribbons.
Anya watched in horror as the Bloodmarked was shredded alive, blood spraying in all directions, strips of flesh dropping to the mud. The runes in its flesh burned with bright crimson light, smoke pluming. Before she even had the time to understand what was happening, the two Uraks who had chased them down the alley burst out into the street.
The first was taken down by a launched spear to the chest, but the second careened into the side of a white stag, burying its claws into the animal’s ribs again and again. The white fur turned pink from blood as the stag shrieked and thrashed, collapsing onto its side and taking its rider with it. More Uraks charged down the same street the riders had come from, the pommels of their black weapons glowing with red lights.
“Inari,” one of the riders called to the woman, pointing his curved spear towards the Uraks. “Orin av?r!”
Anya didn’t recognise the language they spoke, and the armour they wore was like nothing she knew.
The woman in black looked down at Anya and the youths. “Find shelter,” she said, her voice soft and fair. “This battle is far from over.” The great stag turned, and the woman charged towards the Uraks, roaring at the top of her lungs. “Imbahír til haydria!”
As the woman rode back towards the fighting, Anya grabbed Conal and the other boys. She cast a glance down at the three chunks of flesh that had once been a young girl. A young girl she should have kept safe. “ Stay at my side.”
None of them spoke, but they all nodded. More screams and the sound of fighting rose into the night. But these sounds came from deeper within the city, closer to the port and the great hall, where the children, elderly, and injured were being sheltered while the battle raged.
Anya looked over her shoulder where the riders and other warriors fought viciously with the Uraks, then back down the street before her. What was she to do? No matter which way she took the boys, death awaited them.
She made a choice and ushered them towards the port and the great hall. At least that way there was a chance. They passed clutches of Salme’s defenders as they moved. Some charged the other way, back to where the riders had saved Anya and the boys; others sprinted through the alleys and side streets; and some simply sat and wept over the corpses of people they had once known, resigned to death.
This was not like the other nights. This felt like that night in The Glade. The night the Uraks had destroyed everything she had ever known and taken her mother from her. This felt like death come to life.
By the time they reached the main square that fronted the great hall, everything was chaos. The hall was ablaze, shrieks and screams rising from within, the flames climbing high as the tallest trees, bright and hot. Men and women scrambled about, tending to dead bodies and carrying buckets of water from the port.
“No, no, no…” Anya sprinted through the square, Conal and the boys following. She stopped the first man she came to, who knelt over the body of another, a hand resting on the dead man’s breastplate. The copper rings in his nose marked him as a man of Salme from before the unification. “What happened here? The Uraks haven’t broken through, have they?”
Panic flared in Anya’s veins, and she scanned the square once more, seeing nothing but blood, bodies, and madness.
“Yarik Tumber.” The man stood, swallowing as he looked down at his fallen companion. Ash and soot marred his face, hands, and hair. “He, Elder Benem, and a group of others decided to make for the boats. The guards stopped them, and a fight broke out. Somewhere in the middle of it, the hall caught fire. It went up like a tinder box.” He shook his head, jaw slack as he watched the blazing building collapse inwards. “It all happened so fast. They must have set it ablaze to cover their escape… We got some of the children out, but… The flames grew too high too fast… There was nothing… nothing we could do.”
The screams took on new meaning. The hall had not been the only place where those who couldn’t fight had been sheltered, but it had been the largest. Almost a thousand souls had sheltered within, squashed shoulder to shoulder. The children, the elderly, the injured who were well enough to leave the Bloodhouse, and the guards set to keep them safe.
“How many got out?”
The man’s lips moved, but what left his mouth was akin to a short choking sound.
“How many?” Anya roared, her own anger surprising her. She grabbed the collar of the man’s leather cuirass. “ How many ?”
“Only those you see…”
Anya’s throat tightened to the point that she could barely draw a breath. There were no more than a hundred in the yard. A group of children, some as young as two or three, were gathered on the far side of the square, being watched over by three guards who themselves looked distraught. A handful of injured men and women, all wrapped in bandages, were at the base of the old, gnarled oak only a few feet from the children. She didn’t see any of the elderly. Most of those who’d made it out were guards and children.
A chill ran down Anya’s spine as she realised the screaming had stopped.
“Heraya embrace you,” she whispered, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. No soul was meant to die that way… The sorrow within her slowly boiled to rage. She turned back to the guard. “Yarik Tumber, where is he?”
“They made for the boats. They’d be long gone, Lady Gritten.”
“You know my name?”
“You’re the one who drags us from the field. There’s not a man or woman who defends Salme that doesn’t know your name.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that.
Shouts sounded over Anya’s left shoulder. She looked to see a handful of guards drawing their swords and running towards the mouth of the main thoroughfare.
Riders streamed in. Warriors in bright steel bearing the marking of a white dragon on their chest rode atop a mixture of enormous black mounts and smaller bays and piebalds, all barded in the black and red of Loria. Beside them rode warriors in black steel atop stags like those she’d seen earlier.
This must have been the army Dahlen had been speaking of… Anya had never seen warriors garbed in such fine armour. They looked like something plucked from one of Therin’s stories.
For a brief moment, a pang of hope rose within her, but that was quickly dashed when more screams came from the rooftops that overlooked the southern end of the square and lined the thoroughfare.
Two men soared from the rooves, falling for all of a second before smashing into the ground, bones twisted and broken. More men and women followed, arcing through the air as though launched from catapults.
Uraks soon appeared on the rooftops and wasted no time in vaulting into the square, dropping twenty feet or so as though it were nothing.
The creatures paused for a fraction of a second before charging at those lying about across the square.
A pair of them bounded towards her, Conal, and the two boys.
“Get back!” The guard darted forwards, drawing his sword, but as he blocked the strike of the first Urak’s blade, the second creature hacked an axe into the side of his neck. The gemstone at the end of its weapon pulsed with a deep crimson light.
Anya had seen that light many times. And over the months, she had come to question what it was. She had not spoken those thoughts aloud to any others, but she could think of no explanation except that the Uraks claimed the souls of those they killed. And that thought terrified her.
“With me!” Conal roared and surged forwards.
“Conal, no!”
One of the two boys charged at Conal’s side. The other dropped his spear and ran towards the port.
Conal stabbed out with his spear, but the Urak simply swatted it aside and planted its foot square into Conal’s chest, sending him sprawling. The second creature split the other young boy’s skull with its axe, the blade bedding deep into the bone. As it grabbed the boy’s shoulder and ripped the axe free, the other Urak picked Conal up by his arms and held him in the air. It stared at him, then snapped both arms like twigs and tossed him to the ground.
Anya froze in place, staring at the two boys, then back to the Uraks. They moved towards her. The smaller of the two slammed its axe into the chest of a guard who ran to help her.
Run. Run. Run. Anya’s legs didn’t listen to a single word her mind spoke. She just kept staring down at Conal, who lay still on the ground. Her breaths quickened, and her heart felt as though it were going to explode out of her chest.
An arrow burst through the Urak’s neck from left to right, followed by a second that crossed over the first. The beast staggered, then dropped to one knee. Before it had even hit the floor, a rider on a dappled grey mount charged past, a white bow in his hands. He nocked an arrow and loosed it straight into the eye of the axe-wielding Urak. The beast dropped like a sack of stones.
The rider drew his horse near. He wore armour as beautiful as the sky was blue, emblazoned with a white dragon on the breast. “Anya! Are you hurt?”
Anya stared up at him in complete shock. How in the gods did he know her name? She nodded.
The man gazed back at her for a moment, then over towards the mouth of the thoroughfare, where more and more soldiers were flooding into the square. Some trickled in through the other streets as well, but nowhere near as many. If they were all falling back to the square, then this was it. This was the end.
The man turned his horse around to where more of the Uraks were leaping from rooves, each getting cut down by the riders on the white stags. He gestured towards the children and the injured near the oak tree. “Can you get them to the port?”
“I think… I…”
“Anya, I’m going to need you to come back to me.” He laid his bow across the saddle and removed his helmet to reveal a head of dark blond hair and eyes Anya had known since she was a child.
“Dann?” She took a subconscious step, still not sure she believed her eyes. “Dann, is that you?”
There were parts of him that were the same: his eyes, his hair, the way his lips always threatened to curl into a mischievous smile. But the passage of time had changed him. He looked harder, more fierce. His face was marked with pale cuts long healed. Even his voice had changed; he spoke like someone who expected others to listen.
“You can ask as many questions as you want once there’s nothing trying to kill us. Please, Anya, take them from here.”
“Erdhardt,” Anya whispered as her eyes fell on the face of Erdhardt Hammersmith, who walked amongst the riders and warriors who spilled into the square. A sense of relief washed over her. The same way it did after every attack when she saw his face, saw him still walking amongst the living. They were a strange pair, the two of them, but they kept each other afloat.
Dahlen Virandr appeared beside Erdhardt. Less than half of the man’s Silver Wolves walked with him, along with Nimara and her dwarves.
For every face that Anya recognised, two more were absent.
“Anya,” Dann called down from his horse. “I’m going to need you to focus. I need you to get them to the port. Can you do that?”
She nodded sharply, finally regaining herself. “Dann?”
“Yes?”
“Calen?”
He shook his head. “He’s always late, isn’t he? Always.” Dann must have seen the look on Anya’s face, because he carried on, saying, “He’s alive, and he’s well, Anya. Now go so I can say the same about you.”
With that, Dann rode to join the warriors forming together and cutting down any Uraks that launched themselves into the yard.
Anya watched for a moment, then grabbed three of the guards and did exactly what Dann Pimm had told her to do, and that wasn’t a sentence she’d ever thought she’d say.
Dahlen weaved through the thick of Urak bodies, his blades leaving arcs of blood in their wake. With Erik at his back, everything felt different – simpler. It was as though a piece of him had been missing since the Burning of Belduar, his balance shaken.
The square was chaos incarnate. There was no holding battle lines against an army of Uraks and Bloodmarked. Neither was there surrender. Whoever was left alive would be the victor. Everywhere he turned, axes, swords, and spears hacked, slashed, and stabbed. Everything was the colour of blood, and the rain continued to hammer down without respite, the ground sodden and squelching under foot.
All he cared about was keeping the Uraks away from the buildings along the port, where those who couldn’t fight had been taken for safe keeping – those who hadn’t been in the great hall. Despite the rain, the massive structure still blazed relentlessly. He pushed the thoughts to the back of his head as he turned an Urak spear to his left, then carved open the beast’s leathery throat with a backswing.
He could do nothing for the dead, but he could save the living from joining them.
Dahlen spun his left blade into reverse grip and drove it into an Urak’s chest while Erik swept past him, slid onto one knee, and raked his steel across thick, grey hamstrings.
To his right, Erdhardt fought alongside some of Dahlen’s Wolves, that black hammer crushing Urak skulls and shattering limbs. The man was more a beast than any of the Uraks and dispensed even less mercy.
Nimara and the other dwarves stayed tight as well, never straying too far from Dahlen, while the elven mages wrought havoc with the Spark.
A realisation swept through him as another severed Urak head rolled to land at his feet: they would win this night. The horns that bellowed over the city told him as much. The remainder of Erik’s army had crushed the Uraks at the walls and were now moving through the streets to catch the last of the beasts in the rear.
The moment should have brought joy beyond measure, but it was cold and empty. For it was a victory in name alone.
He stood still for a moment, the rain splattering his face, and watched a black spear punch through Jorvill Ehrnin’s chest and another catch the Alamant – Oaken Polik – in the neck. With every second that passed, Heraya embraced another soul. ‘Victory’ might only be a short time away, but they would continue to die until that moment arrived, until the rest of the army flooded into the square and the Uraks were routed. The dead would number in their thousands come the morning, and the living would go on, broken and never quite the same.
And so Dahlen fought until his lungs burned and his limbs cried out for respite. He fought until he had spilled so much blood that he could have filled Haftsfjord twice over. And he fought until the sound of horns grew ever closer and a flood of warriors swept into the square, some bearing the white dragon, others a golden stag, or a silver star, or a green tree. They crashed down like a wave, and the Uraks broke beneath their weight.
The old Lord Captain of the Belduaran Kingsguard, Tarmon Hoard, charged astride a mountain of a horse, black and ferocious. The man was possibly the only match for Erdhardt in size and strength. But where Erdhardt was fury and raw power, Tarmon was precision and excellence, his years in the Kingsguard forging him into a warrior even Dahlen would have hesitated to face. He made every warrior around him appear like a hero of legend.
The Uraks fought like caged animals, taking three for every one they lost. Until Vaeril Ilyin charged on that white stag and drove his star-pommelled sword through the Shaman’s heart after Erdhardt had smashed open its jaw.
And when the last of the Uraks fell, the remnants scattering at the sight of their dead Shaman, Dahlen dropped to his knees. He tilted back his head and let the rain wash the blood from his face, the flames of the great hall blazing in the night.
Dann rested his forehead against Drunir’s muzzle, stroking the blood-matted hair on the horse’s neck. “You did good.”
The horse gave a soft snort, shaking his head. ‘Of course I did,’ Dann imagined the horse said.
He patted Drunir’s neck and handed his reins to Nala, who had entered the city along with the other squires and porters after the Uraks had been thoroughly routed. “See that he’s fed and watered, and scrub the blood from his coat. And Nala, give him as many carrots and apples as he wants. He’s earned it.”
The young girl smiled, scratching under Drunir’s chin and leading him away, whispering in his ear.
Dann made his way through the square, where Urak bodies were being piled into carts to be burned outside the city limits. The place was still crowded, packed to the brim with the injured, who sat about having their wounds tended by the elven Healers. Without Healers capable of using the Spark, Salme’s casualties would have doubled over the next few days. He couldn’t help but think back at how many lives might have been saved in The Glade across the years if they’d had access to Healers. Freis Bryer was an incredible woman, and she’d pulled back more souls from the edge of death than Dann could count. But there was only so much a person could do with herbs, poultices, brimlock sap, and catgut.
The remains of the great hall still burned. The centre was a massive pile of smouldering embers, but flames licked the wooden frame and billowed smoke into the night. Had they not arrived with the army when they did, the entirety of Salme would have resembled the burning ruin that was the great hall. Even still, both Salme and the army had taken great losses.
A deep voice called out behind him. “Master Pimm.”
Dann’s skin prickled at the sound of Erdhardt Hammersmith’s voice. He spun on his heels. The man was covered in blood and what looked to be small flecks of Urak flesh, and he carried a monstrous, spiked hammer, his massive fingers choking it around the neck. Somehow Erdhardt looked even larger than he once had. He was leaner, but his muscles were dense and strong. Dann would have paid good coin to see who would come out victorious in a brawl between Erdhardt, Tarmon, and Haem.
To Dann’s surprise, Erdhardt stepped forwards and wrapped an enormous hand around Dann’s forearm and stared into his eyes. The man had never greeted Dann that way. “You’ve grown up, Dann Pimm.”
“So have you,” Dann said, puffing out his cheeks. “What are they feeding you?”
Erdhardt cracked a broken smile. “It’s good to see you, Dann.” He looked at Dann as though he were appraising a new leather coat, his smile rising just a touch more at the edges. “It’s good to see the man you’ve become. A man of The Glade.”
Dann gave a soft nod. “I saw it… what’s left of it.”
“We are what’s left of it.” Erdhardt let go of Dann’s forearm and slung his blood-coated hammer into the loop on his back. There was a pensive look on the man’s face that Dann couldn’t quite decipher. “How is Calen?”
“How long do you have?” Dann asked with a laugh.
“All the time in the world.”
“He’s alive. As is Ella.”
“Ella?” Erdhardt’s eyes widened. “After the soldiers killed Vars and Freis… and we didn’t see her or Rhett, we just… We… we assumed the worst. Virandr told us that Rist was taken, but he said nothing of Ella.”
“She’s alive.” Dann didn’t feel the need to elaborate on the fact that Ella was alive but hadn’t opened her eyes since the battle at Aravell. “With any luck, Calen will be here soon and you can talk to him yourself. Erdhardt, my mam and dad, have you seen them? I lost my dad in the fighting.”
Erdhardt’s expression grew grim, and fear raked its claws across Dann’s heart.
“What’s wrong? Erdhardt? Please…”
Dann found his dad standing at the edge of the docks, looking out over the water. Tharn’s arms hung at his side, his shoulders drooped, the wind blowing at his loose clothes. Dann stopped a few paces behind him, his fragile heart trembling. He felt as though he was coming apart at the seams, his stomach churning and throat tight as a knot. “Dad?”
Tharn turned at the sound of his son’s voice. His eyes were raw and red, tears glistening on his cheeks. He held out his arms. “Dann.”
Without hesitation, Dann wrapped his arms around the man who had raised him, the man who had taught him what it was to be a man, what it was to be good and true. “I’m here, Dad.”
At those three words, Tharn burst into tears. His dad squeezed him so tight Dann thought his eyes might pop out of his head.
“It’s all right,” Dann whispered. He tried his best to keep his voice from breaking. “She can rest now.”
“I miss her already,” Tharn sobbed, his wet nose burying into Dann’s neck. “I miss her, Dann. She wasn’t even fighting. She was meant to be safe in the hall…”
“I miss her too…” Dann pulled his dad in close and lifted his chin so it rested on the top of Tharn’s head. He drew a long breath through his nose, tears rolling down his cheeks. All he wanted to do was break down and weep. But he couldn’t. He needed to stay strong for his dad. Tharn had always been the strong one, always pushed Dann to be better. It was his turn to be the one taken care of.
They stood there on the docks for a long time. Dann didn’t know how long, and he didn’t care. He held his dad, and he saw his mam’s face in his mind.
She was a sweet, kind, and – at times – fierce woman. And now she was gone, and he would never get to say goodbye. That’s what hurt the most. He’d been away for so long. He’d seen so much of the world, so much death and horror and darkness. And he never got the chance to thank his mam for keeping him from all that, for allowing him the opportunity to live a life surrounded by love and light and laughter. And he’d never got to tell her about Camylin, or Midhaven, or Aravell, or Durakdur, or about all the beautiful things he’d seen. He’d never got to tell her about Lyrei.
Tharn may have taught Dann a lot of things, but Ylinda had taught him how to be kind and how to find the light in the dark. But he’d never told her that, never told her how thankful he was for everything she had given him.
By the time Lyrei found them standing on the docks, the warm golden light of the sun was starting to spill over the eastern horizon. Dann’s heart had grown numb, a dark emptiness in his chest, and he shivered from the cold.
The pair of them walked Tharn back to the place he now called home: a wooden house near the dock with a small, covered porch and a slate roof.
“Jorvill lives right there.” Tharn pointed to another house only a few paces away. Jorvill was dead now too. Dann had seen his body. He wasn’t ready to find out who else they’d lost.
Dann helped his father remove his boots and leather armour. He took Tharn’s shirt and trousers and planted a gentle kiss on his father’s head.
Lyrei waited for him on the porch, her sword belt and bow set to the side, her knees pulled tight to her chest.
His muscles aching, Dann lowered himself to the step beside her. They sat there for a while, the rising sun slowly illuminating the corpse-filled streets of Salme. Lyrei rested her hand on Dann’s leg and squeezed.
That was all it took to break him.
He leaned forwards, planted his elbows into his legs, put his face in his hands, and wept.