34. A Visit Gone Awry #2
One of the other soldiers waded into the conversation with another story that had made its way around the rally camp. “I heard you called one of the Eastern lords an earthbound piece of shit.”
“Well, Hize is an earthbound piece of shit,” grunted Imalroc. He kept his eyes fixed on the river, but he could practically feel Almatra’s approving grin. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tefka peering back at him.
“Hize!” exclaimed Martau. “Did you really break his nose in front of all of Tamasyad? The Easterners keep talking about it.”
“That wasn’t me. That was my—” Imalroc fumbled, then caught himself. “My other handler. Master Toriem.”
The pain that came with any thought of Rerdas was not as raw or all-consuming as it had once been, but it was still nothing he wanted to linger in.
“Was he as bad as Hize?” asked another soldier.
Comparing Rerdas and Melgreth Hize was laughable. But silence wedged in his throat. He didn’t want to slander Rerdas to them. He found he didn’t want to defend him either. Before he could say anything, Almatra broke in.
“All handlers are beasts,” she said, the same way someone might tell a child that trees are green. “They may be different breeds, with different methods, but still beasts.” She turned and spat on the ground.
Martau agreed and regaled the rapt soldiers with the stories of his own handler. His recounting was punctuated by obscenities from Almatra.
Imalroc walked in silence, besieged by his thoughts.
The entire rally camp thought he was some kind of miracle for surviving and defying so many handlers, and they assumed he shared their hatred.
A year ago he would have been bellowing right along with Almatra, cursing all handlers to Drida and back.
The truth was much muddier, and far less heroic.
He shortened his stride gradually and dropped back behind the group.
Tefka slowed too. “You don’t like talking about that handler,” he observed when Imalroc had caught up.
“I don’t much like any of them,” Imalroc said sharply.
Tefka nodded. “But… the last one in particular?”
Some part of him was tempted to plead for understanding.
Tefka had never met a handler, let alone seen a battlebox fight.
Maybe he could understand what could happen when someone finally offered trust, and comfort, and admiration.
“He was…” Imalroc swallowed. Even in his own head, his explanations sounded pathetic.
Deluded. He shook his head. “You’re right. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fair enough,” Tefka said quickly. “Sorry to pry.”
“It’s alright.” He snatched for something else to occupy them as they walked. “How did you come to be in the Southland army?”
Tefka studied the map in his hands, although he’d already consulted it a thousand times and nothing about their path had changed.
“I was a city guard,” he began. “In Sol Serene. Married young, had children, and worked my way up the ranks until I was training city squads. My wife’s family was from the Midlands.
We used to go visit them.” Tefka recited the words as though he’d said the same lines a hundred times, gaze fixed on the road.
“The queen grew angry with the Southern Felds, and the Red Guard pressed into the midland towns, arresting and beating anyone who challenged them. My wife—” He faltered, dipping his head.
“She spoke up against them, and I wasn’t there to stop them when they attacked her.
She survived them that night, but then there was an infection, and nothing the apothecaries and medics could do.
” He grimaced at Imalroc with something that was probably intended to be a smile.
“I sought the Southland Army as soon as I heard the rumors there was a chance to fight the Red Guard.”
Imalroc had heard plenty of sad tales in battleboxing, but he’d never known then, and he didn’t know now, what he could say. The world is cruel, sorry to hear it fucked you too? That sounded too defeated, even if it was true.
“The Guard draws the worst kind of people,” he said softly. “Maggots to a carcass.”
“And more of them than ever.”
“Your children are…?”
“Sol Serene, in my parents’ care.” Tefka smiled, a little watery, but a proper one this time. “A girl and a boy. I see them as often as I can.”
Almatra jogged up in time to hear the last of this and rolled her eyes. “Don’t get him started talking about his children; he’ll never shut up.” She said it with a surprising amount of affection in her voice, and Tefka brightened.
She turned out to be right. Once Tefka started talking about his daughter and son, there was no stopping him. Imalroc had never heard the captain speak so freely, nor so much.
He chattered on about teaching his daughter to ride and his son’s first words being about poop.
His recounting of how he had taken his children to a market fair and found his daughter attempting to trade her younger brother for a puppy had them all laughing.
By the time he was walking them through various strategies for training a child to use a washroom, all of which seemed to amount to desperate pleading and bribery, they followed a winding path east.
The harmless talk relaxed Imalroc. Since the subject of handlers had been left safely behind, he could go back to stifling the storm he felt whenever it became clear how much his friends did not know about what he had done.
He wanted to escape his own head. The memories crackled and singed, smoking his insides with guilt.
After everything he had done to free himself, it felt like Rerdas still had a hold on him.
Only, he felt none of the foolish hope, or the sense of dreaming that used to come over him when he thought of the huntmaster.
How had that become the best he could hope for?
A few desperate nights stolen with a man who was willing to gamble his life the next morning. It was pathetic.