Chapter Two
They spent the next day walking, and the day after that too.
It was still midfall in the valleys, but up in the mountains winter was fast approaching.
Theos had heard of lands away to the west where the terrain was flat, where cities and farms could spread as far as their inhabitants wished, but he’d never lived in such a place, or even visited one.
This was the only world he knew, with tall, hostile mountains covering almost all of the land, and human habitation limited to isolated valleys.
There were many valleys, it was true; at last count he’d heard the Torian Empire contained seventy-eight of them, each a semi-independent city-state united more by culture and principles than by government.
Well, there was an empress, technically, but she was far away from Theos’s valley and was more a receptor of tribute than an issuer of orders.
The valleys sent soldiers back to fight along the eastern border of the Empire, where the enemies were larger and better organized.
The west was left to its own devices, defending and expanding however it could, and no one seemed to be too interested in them, as long as they sent their taxes and recruits east each year.
Of course, there were valleys that hadn’t been absorbed into the Empire yet, although they were fewer every year.
The Elkati should be the next to be conquered, clearly; they were close to the western border, rich, and as a midsize city-state, with no more than ten thousand inhabitants, they would never be able to stand up to the Empire.
But no one had bothered to convince them of that, yet.
So Theos and other soldiers from Windthorn patrolled the borders, as did soldiers from nearby valleys Cragview and Greenbrook, and they all waited for the order to invade, and start teaching the Elkati about civilization.
And, occasionally, they found someone on the wrong side of the invisible line and took prisoners.
Theos looked over at the Elkati he’d captured.
They were showing the strain, now. The two who’d been patched up by the boy seemed better, which was good; still they were all exhausted.
The Elkati were fit enough, but the Sacrati were the elite of the elite, and had been hardened by conditions these Elkati would never know, and certainly never survive.
And the Elkati were carrying heavier packs and hiking with their hands tied tight, and Theos had no intention of changing that just to make it easier for them to walk.
He wanted to push the Elkati as much as he could without breaking them; it was wise to keep them tired, and it would be nice to get off the damn mountain before the snow came.
The Elkati boy had protested, after a fashion.
He’d found ways to ask for special privileges: more food for one of the prisoners after he’d spilled his dinner on the ground; time to stop and bandage another prisoner’s knees when a stumble had turned into a nasty fall; more blankets for them at night since they slept farther from the fire.
Theos had refused every request without much consideration.
He’d given the boy a chance once, and a man had died.
The time for making deals was over. The prisoners would just have to make do. They had no choice.
Still, they were getting ragged. So Theos wasn’t completely surprised, in the middle of the third afternoon, when he heard a voice cry out from somewhere near the front of the procession.
But he was shocked to peer ahead and realize that it was Andros who was hurt, slumping to the side as the soldiers around him hacked at something on the ground.
Theos sprinted forward, then skidded to a stop when he saw the sliced remains of a rock viper at Andros’s feet.
He looked up and saw the glassiness already coming into the man’s eyes.
The viper’s poison was potent enough to protect it against bears and mountain lions, and was almost always deadly to humans.
“Where?” Theos demanded. He fell to his knees and felt Andros’s legs, up above the midcalf boots, and found a swollen bump that made Andros bite back a scream when it was touched.
One of the other soldiers had made a tourniquet, and Theos pushed Andros to the ground before slicing through his pant leg. The red lump was unmistakeable, with two spots already blackening in the middle where the venom had been injected and tissue was beginning to die.
Theos cut hard and deep, his dagger slicing into the flesh as Andros held himself rigidly still.
The blood poured out in a cleansing rush, but the original wound was only part of the problem.
Even if Theos had caught the putrescence and kept it from spreading, the poison was also in the bloodstream, traveling through Andros’s body.
The tourniquet would slow its progress and the venom might be diluted enough to not kill instantly, but that could just make death slower and more painful.
Then Xeno was there, called up from the back of the procession, and he eased in behind Andros and cradled him, kissing his hair and murmuring comforting words, ignoring the tears that were falling from his eyes onto Andros’s too-pale face.
This shouldn’t be happening. The damn viper should have been hibernating, not creeping around, attacking good men for no reason.
It was no way for a warrior to die. No way for anyone to die.
Theos stood up. The prisoners were standing, waiting, and Theos pushed through them until he found the boy who’d healed the other Elkati.
“You! Fix him!” Theos knew volume wouldn’t help when someone didn’t know the words, but he let himself yell anyhow.
Let the kid know how serious he was. He pointed to one of the Elkati packs, hopefully the one that held the medicine, and then pointed back to Andros. The boy just stared at him.
There was no way the little coward didn’t understand.
He just didn’t care. He wasn’t going to help because he didn’t care if Andros lived or died.
Theos took a deep breath. He pointed at Andros again, then rolled his own eyes back, mimicking death.
Then he pointed at one of the other prisoners and drew a finger across his own throat.
If Andros died, that prisoner died. But that wasn’t enough, because Andros was a Sacrati, by the sword, and these useless Elkati were nothing compared to him.
So Theos pointed to another prisoner, and then another, and made the same throat-slitting gesture.
He waved his arm to indicate all the prisoners, drew his hand across his throat again, and then stared at the boy, making it clear that the threat was absolutely real.
If Andros died, every prisoner on the mountain would follow him.
The boy swallowed, looked down at the ground, then up at Theos and started talking.
His words made no sense, of course, just endless Elkati gibberish, and Theos raised his hand to strike him into silence.
But before he could land the blow, the old man was there.
He’d been quiet since the capture, sitting back and watching, following directions and acting like just another prisoner.
Now, though, he caught the boy’s shoulders in his hands and shook him, just once, but hard.
He growled a phrase that sounded like an order, and when the boy began to protest, the old man said something else and pushed him toward the pack.
Theos nodded his approval, then reached out and sliced through the ropes on the boy’s hands with one tug of his knife.
He bent and freed his feet as well. He didn’t care what trouble the Elkati got into, not if he saved Andros first.
They were on a narrow pass, and the boy peered around as if trying to find something he needed. Apparently not finding it, he pushed past the soldiers and ran down the trail in front of them, waving an arm to indicate that they should follow.
“Bring the prisoners,” Theos ordered his soldiers, and then he jogged to Xeno’s side. “We’ll carry Andros. The boy . . . he’s our best chance. And Andros is tough.”
Xeno nodded, swallowed hard, and then grabbed hold of Theos’s wrists, the two of them making a chair to carry their friend. They lifted him carefully, then moved as quickly and smoothly as possible, following the boy.
The path wound around the side of the mountain, the curvature making it impossible to see ahead more than a few paces at a time, and Theos’s gut began to tighten as they ran. The boy had gone. Theos had cut him free, and he’d escaped.
But then the ground leveled out and they rounded one more corner to find a small clearing, flat on one side, with a grassy slope on the other.
The boy was there, breaking small branches off a fallen tree, clearly preparing to start a fire.
Theos and Xeno settled Andros as gently as they could near the fire site, and then Theos was back in motion, finding tinder and flint and steel, yelling at one of his men to find a pot and the others to produce their waterskins in case whatever the boy was up to required water . . . What else? What else?
The boy was busy. He’d found his medicines and had them spread out in front of him, picking up jars and reading the labels with almost feverish intensity.
Finally he seized one of the jars and a wad of clean fabric and headed toward Andros.
Theos tore his eyes away from the boy. He was the leader of this patrol, and he had responsibilities to all of them, not just Andros.
He scanned the area and decided that while the site wasn’t perfect, it was good enough for a night, and set his men to finding water, building a cook fire, and securing the prisoners.
This far from the border there was little need of a sentry, but Theos posted one anyway; he didn’t want anything else to go wrong.