Chapter 14 #2
Harthon was only paces away now. “I know what it’s like to think that a bad way of life is the only way of life because of your upbringing. You have a choice. You can be like them, or you can choose good.”
This was more than just a negotiation. This was personal to the warrior before me.
“How do I know you won’t kill me?” The small voice quivered with fright.
“You have my word. Now put down the dagger.”
The dagger only shook more, staying at my belly.
“Put it down now. I won’t say it again.” Harthon’s tone hardened.
“Y-you’re too close. Get away! I’ll do it!” The boy’s arm tensed, and I held my breath, dreading the moment that I was either stabbed or he was killed.
Harthon’s eyes slid to the side, and I followed his gaze to watch Stefano throw a dagger.
The boy screamed, and Harthon lunged, throwing the hand with the dagger away from my body as the arm around my waist disappeared. Grabbing my arm, he whirled me behind him before crouching low.
The boy’s screams turned to moans.
Moans were a sign of life.
Summoning courage, I peeked around Harthon’s bulk. The boy clutched his calf, the hilt of the dagger protruding from his skin as blood dripped. He had to be maybe nine or ten years of age, his face smothered in mud and his hair too dirty to know the true color.
Harthon’s hand rested on his shoulder. “You’ll be okay. You’ll live,” he told the boy, and then he waved two of his men over. “Tend to his wound, bind his hands, and take him back home. Ride fast and you’ll make it within a day. See Northen or Callen when you arrive. They’ll know what to do.”
Given that the band of looters was dead, Harthon wasn’t taking him for leverage. He could have only been taking him to care for him, and that was so unexpected—
Well, actually, it wasn’t. Harthon had all but pleaded with the boy to save his own life. Leaving him here now, exposed to the cold and wounded, would mean a certain death, and Harthon…I was beginning to think he wasn’t cruel enough to do that.
When Harthon stood and faced me, it was with unbridled anger painting the striking lines of his face.
Gone was the look of regret he’d worn not a minute earlier.
“Why the fuck did you get off the horse?” he demanded, storming forward until his toes touched mine and he towered above me like a fuming mountain.
Blood speckled his face, and his lips were twisted with fury.
The sudden change gave me whiplash. He’d never been this furious toward me before, but while my body tingled with warning, I wasn’t afraid. Harthon had proven enough times that he wouldn’t hurt me.
“I was saving your life,” I answered cautiously. Just because he wouldn’t strike me didn’t mean I wanted to rile the beast, and at this moment, his wild eyes appeared more animal than man.
“No, you weren’t. I knew the crawler was coming,” he snarled.
I fought to maintain my calm composure. “For all I knew, you didn’t, and he would have killed you.”
He stilled as if I’d struck him, and then he leaned closer, sneering. “Did you even think, for one second, that you could make the situation worse by coming down from that horse? You have no clue what you’re doing.”
The mean tone struck a chord. I’d just killed a man to save his damned life, and this is how he returned the gesture? Screw composure. “In case you forgot, I don’t want to be here. If I’m making situations worse, by all means, let me go.”
His nostrils flared. “Don’t be dense, Etarla.”
“Then don’t act like I’m an idiot for trying to save your life!
” I yelled, throwing my hands into his chest. He didn’t budge an inch.
“Or maybe you should, because clearly, I am an idiot for wanting you not to die. I should have stabbed you for him!” I pushed his obnoxious, ungrateful, too-hard chest again, and again, he didn’t move.
I went to do it a third time, and this time he snatched my wrists, holding them between us in an unbreakable grip. My fingers curled into fists as he brought his nose to meet mine. “If you didn’t come down from that horse, I wouldn’t have had to almost kill that boy,” he growled.
His words sank in and realization hit.
Harthon wasn’t this angry with me.
He was this angry about the boy.
I was just the scapegoat, because those who held the blame for the boy’s situation were all dead in the field.
I stepped back, yanking my arms. He let them go, no hint of apology on his face.
“That?” I said, pointing at where the boy was being tended to. “That is not my fault. You know that. Now I’m going to go sit on that horse, away from you and your big bad overbearing warrior attitude, and you can go take your anger out on someone else.”
I turned on my heel before he could react and stomped over to the black horse, pausing at the crawler’s body.
More blood than I knew possible had drained from his neck, his face buried in a thick puddle of it.
A bag of stones dropped into my stomach as my fingers twitched with the memory of stabbing him.
It wasn’t like when I’d stabbed the tree man.
That had been in battle, and he’d probably lived.
This was different. There had been no resistance.
No warning. Nothing he could have done except feel that terrible wash of fear and helplessness when he felt the bite of the blade.
That was a horrible way to die.
Had Harthon killed him, it would have at least been a fight. He would have expected the slash.
When I pulled myself onto the horse, it was with the knowledge that I never should have come down in the first place.
* * *
I didn’t glance at Harthon when he mounted the horse again, and neither of us spoke as we continued on.
His two men had taken the boy in the other direction, leaving us with seven as we approached a troop of soldiers when the sky began to darken.
The wind had picked up, and I fought a series of shivers, refusing to lean into the heat behind me.
Harthon’s relaxed body was enough to tell me that we’d made it to Fifth and these were Ellan’s men. One of them broke from the crowd and approached us. There was a golden seal pinned to his chest.
“Edmund, Ellan’s second-in-command,” Harthon said quietly to me.
Edmund’s hair was cropped short to his head, eyes pale and features plain. “Princeps Harthon, welcome,” he declared, stiffly bowing his head.
At Harthon’s sharp nod of acknowledgment, Edmund turned to me. His stoic expression morphed into slight interest when he saw my eyes. “And a sincere welcome to you, magvis.” Again, he dipped his chin.
“Thanks.”
I would never get used to anyone bowing at me.
Edmund’s attention lingered just long enough to make me uncomfortable, and then, as if remembering he was there to greet Harthon, addressed him once more. “There is a small village less than an hour from here. Princeps Ellan has made sleeping arrangements for you there.”
“We’re going to camp instead,” Harthon said, declining the invitation.
Edmund lips pulled down. “There are comfortable beds and warm food. The people are happy to host you.”
When Harthon responded, it was with a tinge of annoyance. “No one is ever happy to sleep outside their home so strangers can take their beds. We’ll make camp. Is here a good place, or do you prefer other grounds?”
I was begrudgingly grateful for Harthon’s choice. Unless Fifth was an anomaly, small villages didn’t have inns, so anything we enjoyed would be stolen from people who had nothing to give in the first place.
“Of course. Here is fine,” Edmund gracefully acquiesced, and everyone dismounted at once.
Doubting that Harthon was willing to give me any aid—and not wanting an ounce of it, anyway—I waited for him to drop, and then I swung my leg over, laying my belly over the saddle to control my slide to the ground.
Midway down, a sturdy hand landed on my back, guiding my fall and steadying me when I landed.
It quickly disappeared, and I spun to see Harthon grab the reins and lead the horse away.
I stood in the clearing with nothing to do but watch as horses were tended to in the growing darkness. Minutes passed, and my fingers began to itch with the memory of sliding that damned dagger into the looter’s neck. Biting my lip, I desperately scanned the scene to find a distraction.
I stopped on a group of Fifth Territory soldiers who dragged a thick, fallen tree trunk toward the center of the group, its branches catching and snapping against the ground. They dropped it, and one of them unsheathed an ax.
I walked over to them as the first chop was made. The wood splintered easily, having been long dead. I stopped only when I was in front of the man with the ax. He paused, holding it overhead, eyes wide as they stared at mine.
“I’ll do it,” I said, extending my hand.
He stepped back, lowering the tool as confusion parted his lips. My hand waited.
“M-my…” he struggled to land on a fitting term. Surely, they’d been told who I was—or at least, who I posed as—but we hadn’t assigned me a title. He settled on, “My Lady, why don’t you rest?”
I smiled, wiggling my fingers. “I don’t want to rest. I’m going to chop your firewood.”
“But surely, I mean, you should face no burdens while you’re here.”
I didn’t have time for his obsession with propriety, not when I needed my hands to do something other than remember how it felt to slice through the man’s flesh.
“Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do.
Give me the ax and leave,” I said sternly, dropping the smile.
When he didn’t move, I added, “You would defy the magvis?”
The question jolted him into action, and he flipped the ax, settling the handle in my palm. I tested its weight and grip, finding it similar to what I used at home.
“Thanks. Why don’t you go rest,” I told him sweetly, and he backed away with hesitation, as if he still wondered if giving me the tool was the right thing to do.
It was.
I widened my stance, heaved it over my head, and slammed it into the cleft he’d made, reveling in the reverberations that traveled through my arms when it struck the ground. I stood the small stump upright and cleaved it in half in two precise hacks.
I kicked the wood with my boots, nodding at two soldiers who watched me with wide eyes. “Make yourselves useful and start building the fire,” I instructed, and then I returned to the trunk, wedging the ax into the bark two feet from the end.