Chapter 5 #3
Others lifted their arms to the sky, as if to drag the gods down and force them to witness what we had done.
But I did not cheer.
My eyes were on Salvatore.
He stood apart. Bruised. Bloodied. The last embers of arrogance burned into ash. His sword dangled limp in his hand, caked in gore. His shoulders sagged—not only with exhaustion, but with something heavier.
Failure.
I walked toward him through the wreckage—bodies broken, armor split, spears jutting from the sand like grave markers. The sun blazed overhead, merciless, glinting off every shattered helm and blood-slick shield. Heat rolled over the field, carrying with it the stink of decay.
When I reached him, I said nothing. He didn’t even look up.
“It’s over,” I said at last, my voice low. “We won the war.”
Still, he didn’t answer.
His pride had always been armor. But here, in the white blaze of day, it looked more like a prison.
I stared at him—not just the man before me, but the boy I had once known—the boy who shielded me from fists and fury. Who bled so I did not have to. Who stepped between me and the older ones when they circled like jackals, fists clenched, jaw tight, daring them to come closer.
The same boy who came to me afterward—broken, shaking from his father’s rage. And I would patch his wounds in silence, whispering, “You’re not him. You never will be.”
We had held each other through fire and ash, dragging one another from the dirt again and again.
Now he said nothing. His eyes stayed fixed on the sand.
So, I did what words could not.
I set my hand on his shoulder—not softly, not out of pity, but with weight—a reminder.
That he was still here.
Still breathing.
Still one of us.
Then I turned, walked to the corpse of the enemy warlord, and wrenched the severed head from the blood-caked sand. Blood ran thick and slow from the ragged stump, the color of rusted wine. His face was frozen in disbelief—death hadn’t frightened him, only surprised him.
I raised it high.
“The army of Ugarit!” I roared, my voice tearing through the smoke-stained sky. “Look upon what we’ve done! Let the ghosts of this war remember us!”
The roar that answered could have shaken the mountains.
I climbed into an abandoned chariot—reins in one hand, the warlord’s head in the other—and rode across the blood-slick sand toward the camp. Soldiers swarmed around me, cheering, howling, fists striking the air as if we had slain the gods themselves.
That night, we drank until the fire blurred. Songs rose with the smoke.
And in the center of the camp, impaled on a stake like some cursed relic, the war chief’s severed head stared out with hollow, unseeing eyes.
A silent tribute to the gods of death, survival—
And vengeance.
But even in triumph, the taste of victory soured in my mouth.
Too many of the army of Ugarit lay broken or buried—their deaths stitched into the battlefield by Salvatore’s recklessness and pride. We had won, yes. But the win had been carved from the backs of the fallen.
And I could not forget that.
A foot soldier appeared; his face streaked with filth and blood.
“Turtānu summons you both,” he said. “Bring the head.”
I turned toward the stake. The skull leered at me from its pike, jaw slack, eyes hollow. I gripped it and tore it free with a wet snap. Blood clung to my fingers, tacky and thick. Flies swarmed instantly, their wings buzzing like a whispered curse.
I trailed behind Salvatore and the soldier, clutching the head like a grim badge of honor.
When we reached the war pavilion, a guard stepped forward, arm outstretched, and barred Salvatore with a firm gesture.
“Only you,” he said, nodding toward me.
Salvatore’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing.
I glanced at him once, then stepped past the canvas flaps into Turtānu’s tent.
The air inside was heavy—thick with burning cedar and sweat. A brazier burned in the center, its smoke curling against the crimson-dyed walls. Shadows writhed across the fabric like ghosts, restless and waiting.
Two guards stood at the entrance, as silent as statues.
The war table before me was littered with tablets, scrolls, and maps marked in blood. Behind it stood Turtānu.
He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, the way a predator moved when it didn’t need to prove itself.
“Kneel,” he said.
I dropped to my knees, the severed head still warm in my hands.
“Hand me the skull.”
I extended the offering.
Turtānu took it with a reverence that bordered on ritual, turning it in his scarred hands as though presenting it to gods who had long since gone silent.
“He doesn’t look so fearsome now, does he, Commander James?”
“No, my lord of war,” I said, my voice steady though bile threatened my throat. I could not look away from the hollow gaze of the dead chief—glass-eyed, frozen, vacant. I blinked, forcing the sickness down, banishing the ghost that seemed to linger behind that expression.
Turtānu nodded slowly, contemplative. His calloused fingers curled into the blood-matted hair.
“No, indeed,” he said. “Reduced to meat and bone. Nothing more than a whisper in the wind.”
He set the head down atop a worn, leather-bound tablet—its presence a grim punctuation on the story we had written in blood.
Then his gaze returned to me. His eyes burned like the coals in the brazier—quiet, smoldering, unforgiving.
“You led the army of Ugarit with honor, Lazarus. With clarity. With courage—when others… faltered.”
A swell of pride rose in my chest.
But it didn’t last.
From outside the tent came a sound—low, guttural, clipped. The sound a man made when trying not to cry out like a breath caught in the throat. A pride swallowed.
Salvatore.
I inhaled slowly, keeping my expression composed as Turtānu stepped closer.
“This war has drained us,” he said. “It’s bled the land dry and bled the men who tread it even drier. But you—” he leaned in, his voice thick with solemn truth, “—you reminded us what discipline can do. You brought us victory, even when the gods turned their backs.”
He reached behind the war table into a carved cedar chest and drew out a small pouch—its drawstrings frayed, its fabric stained from years of handling. Yet the weight of it was unmistakable.
He placed it in my hands.
“Your promised gold,” he said. “It’s a pittance for what you’ve done. But take it, Commander James—and remember this day. You’ve earned your name in the songs.”
I bowed my head, murmuring thanks, though my mind had already left the blood-soaked tent.
It drifted to Amara, the love of my life.
To my mother’s quiet strength.
To the fields of home, where my hands might one day sow life again instead of war.
“Thank you, Turtānu. My father was a war hero himself,” I said, forcing steadiness into my voice. “He gave his life for Ugarit—fell in battle. My mother told me he died with honor, and I’ve fought to carry that honor forward. Now that we’ve won, his name can finally be remembered.”
Turtānu watched me for a long moment, the brazier’s glow cutting across the scar above his brow. His eyes burned like dying coals.
“Your father—a war hero?” he said, the words slow and cutting. “Lazarus, I’ve marched beside kings and buried soldiers by the thousands. I remember every man who bled for this city. I would have known your father.”
My chest tightened. The words sat like a stone in my throat.
But Turtānu wasn’t finished. His gaze cut deeper, a knife twisting.
“Your father was no war hero. He never died for Ugarit. He never stood in my ranks. Looking at you, I know it in my bones. Whoever sired you, it was not the man your mother named. Your mother lied. Perhaps your mother… lay with some nameless wanderer. Perhaps she birthed you from another’s bed.
But a hero?” His lip curled. “No. I would have remembered.”
The words broke through me in a way no weapon ever had.
The tent spun. The brazier’s smoke choked my lungs. My heart pounded so loud it drowned the world.
It wasn’t just the insult—it was the truth beneath it, the one I had buried in silence. My mother’s past. The truth I had ignored.
The foundation of my life—my father’s honor, my mother’s story, my own blood—split open and collapsed in a single breath.
I stood frozen, the pouch of gold slick in my palm, the severed head leering from the war table.
For the first time, I did not know whose son I was.
And worse—for the first time, I did not know who I was.