We’ll thin the rutting herd by one, Versen thought, but that image wavered as he fought to maintain consciousness. ‘Finish him,’ he tried to shout, but only a wet gurgle escaped his throat.
As the Seron smashed his elbow into Brexan’s poor damaged face, Versen’s rage erupted anew. ‘I’ll finish you myself, you dog-rutting half-human piece of ganselshit,’ he screamed, reaching towards the knife, but with one arm wrapped around the Malakasian’s injured leg and the other stretched out, Versen realised he had made a fatal error.
You’re exposed! The warning blared in his mind, but it was already too late. The Seron was too strong and too malicious: not even fatal injuries would get in the way of this victory. Versen’s eyes bulged as he saw the Seron’s boot coming towards him. As it struck, consciousness faded. He and Brexan were at the mercy of the scarred warrior.
Brexan awakened to the sun high in the sky; she watched as a pair of greyish-white birds winged lazily towards the ocean. Thick grass had provided a soft bed and she was sheltered enough to enjoy the sun’s warmth without being chilled by the autumn breeze. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious; for a moment she contemplated going back to sleep – then she remembered Versen and the Seron.
She sat up too quickly and nearly passed out from the pain in her face and ribs. With her vision tunnelling, she was forced to slow her breathing and to close her eyes while she fought the nausea and marshalled her strength. Rolling to all fours, she crawled the few paces to where Versen lay beside the body of the Seron. There was no doubt the Ronan was dead. His face was bloody, and brutally beaten, and his throat had been torn out by the Seron’s bare hands.
Tears welled up at the thought of how much pain he must have suffered. Brexan ran one hand through his shaggy brown hair and her fingers came away dripping with his blood. It had pooled around his battered body before being absorbed into the Falkan ground.
She turned away from her lover and vomited repeatedly until the pain in her ribs and face caused her to pass out once again.
Later that aven, Brexan sat by Versen’s body. She was too weak, too damaged and too tired to find enough wood for a pyre so she turned him onto his back and folded his arms across his chest. Using her tunic as a cloth, she cleaned the blood from his face and closed his eyes. It was at that moment she finally lost hope. She no longer cared what was to come.
She curled up on the ground beside Versen’s cruelly desecrated body and sobbed uncontrollably. As she wrapped herself in her grief and despair she nearly missed the guttural moan that came from the Seron lying behind her. Convinced he was dead, she hadn’t given Haden a second glance when she woke earlier. Now her sobs waned immediately. She pulled herself to her knees, ignoring the arcing pain in her ribs, crawled over to the Seron and slowly withdrew the knife from his chest. A trickle of blood ran from the wound. He was still alive.
Brexan’s eyes narrowed. ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you again,’ she said in a flat monotone, then shouted, ‘Wake up! I’m talking to you!’ She punctuated her commands with kicks – she hoped each one would break a few more ribs.
‘Come on now, my friend – I want to know that you are aware of what’s happening to you.’ She grinned devilishly when she saw his eyes slit open slightly, then gulped as she realised this evil, murdering, inhuman beast had eyes the same colour as Versen’s. She flinched as she recalled Versen’s light-green eyes gazing at her face while they made love hungrily in the sand.
The cold wave washed over her again and this time Brexan allowed the unbridled homicidal hunger to take her.
‘Can you see me? I want you to remember me. I want you to know who is doing this to you.’ She leaned in close.
A threatening murmur emanated weakly from the Seron: he was lucid, perhaps not ready to ponder life‘s ironies – pale green eyes, for example – but certainly aware of his condition. ‘You are in hideous shape, my friend,’ she observed. ‘You may not live through the day-’ she began rolling up her tunic sleeves, ‘-but then again, you just might.’ She wiped the knife blade clean on her leggings, pushed her hair behind her ears and began cutting.
BOOK V
Orindale
THE HOUSE OF ALEN JASPER
Alen Jasper’s house was deceptively small from the outside. As Hannah walked from room to room she thought that the strange mystic had somehow forced a much larger dwelling under the nondescript shingle roof. There was a veritable maze of narrow halls, twisting stairs and curiously placed chambers, several of which had stone fireplaces, although she could only see one chimney outside. The four companions spent most of their time in these rooms as the nights were cool no matter how hot Middle Fork got during the day. It reminded Hannah of early autumn in Colorado, when beautifully warm days were followed by cold nights heralding the coming winter.
Then there were Alen’s books, printed in secret or preserved since Prince Marek first took the Eldarni throne more than nine hundred Twinmoons earlier. The illegal collection, thousands of volumes, was the size of a small town library, but the books were arranged in no order Hannah could discern. Gardening books were stacked near physiology treatises; stories of great Eldarni athletes were thrown in a wooden crate with studies on nutrition; legends of man-eating fish and sea creatures were lost among a treasury of books on Eldarn’s stained-glass windows. But no matter the peculiar filing system, Alen, the suicidal drunkard, appeared to be able to find any volume he wanted, regardless of whether he was searching for an obscure reference to cheese or a mathematical algorithm governing motion in Twinmoon tides, within a few minutes.
He had not spoken again of suicide, but Hannah knew he was still drinking heavily in secret. She often heard him in the hallway maze at night, and in the morning she would find the empty bottles or flagons. One night she heard him stumble past her chamber door, then pause and retrace his steps. As he stood outside her room, Hannah fought the desire to throw open the door and ask what he wanted. He didn’t knock, or try to force his way in, but after a long while, he whispered, ‘We shall both get what we want, Hannah Sorenson.’
She heard him later that night as he rounded a corner somewhere near the front of the house and cried out, ‘Jer.’ The muffled cry was filled with such pain it almost broke her heart. It reminded her of Branag and his lonely vigil at the leather shop: Children are as close as we are allowed to come to feeling as though we have, for just a moment, been singled out by the gods. That was what Branag had told her. Hannah realised suddenly this struggle was real, this strange land, with all its peculiarities, was made up of ordinary people who were wrapped up in their desperate fight for freedom from an all-powerful dictator with legions of soldiers to deploy at his whim. They did commonplace things, like caring for their families, and adoring their children above everything.
Commonplace normal things, she thought. Things I would expect from- Hannah paused before admitting – from people back home, from people like me. The walls of her bedchamber seemed to close in on her. Nothing was different. ‘Children are as close as we are allowed to come to feeling as though we have, for just a moment, been singled out by the gods,’ she whispered to herself. It was love, compassion, and a genuine desire for all the things Hannah had once believed unique to the narrow world from which she came that fuelled this revolution.
Before drifting off, she heard Alen again. ‘We shall both get what we want, Hannah Sorenson.’
THE PICKET LINE