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The Elderwomen of Lykos say that when a man is bitten by a pitviper, all the poison must be drawn out of the bite, for the poison is wicked. When I was bitten, Uncle Narol left some in on purpose.

34

THE NORTHWOODS

There is agony.

And claustrophobia.

I am sick and wounded.

The pain is in dreams.

It is in darkness. In the pit of my stomach.

I wake up and scream into a gentle hand.

I glimpse someone.

Eo? I whisper her name and reach up. My muddy hand smears her face. Her angel’s face. She’s come to take me to the vale. Her hair has turned Golden. I always thought she could be Golden. Her Colors are golden wings. No Red sigil on her hands. It took death.

I sweat despite the rains and snows that come. Something shelters me. I shiver. Clutch my scarlet headband. Lost the haemanthus. When was that again? Mud in my hair. Eo washes it away. Tenderly strokes my brow. I love her. Something inside me bleeds. I hear Eo speak to herself, to someone. I haven’t long. Have I time at all? Am I in the vale? There is mist. There is sky and a great tree. Fire. Smoke.

I shiver and sweat. Rot in hell, Cassius. I was your friend. I might have killed your brother, but I had no choice. You did. You arrogant slag. I hate him. I hate Augustus. I see them hanging Eo together. They mock me. They laugh at me. I hate Antonia. I hate Fitchner. I hate Titus. I hate. I hate. I am burning and mad and sweating. I hate the Jackal. The Proctors. I hate. I hate myself for all I’ve done. All I’ve done. For what? To win a game. To win a game for someone who will never know about anything I do. Eo is dead. It isn’t as if she will ever be coming back to see all I have done for her.

Dead.

Then I wake. The pain is there in my gut. It goes through me. But I no longer sweat. The fever is gone, and the angry red lines of infection have faded. I’m in a cave’s mouth. There’s a small fire and a sleeping girl just inches away. Furs cover her. She b

reathes softly the smoky air. Her hair is tousled and gold. She isn’t Eo. Mustang.

I cry silently. I want Eo. Why can’t I have her? Why can’t I will her back to life? I want Eo. I don’t want this girl beside me. It aches worse than the wound. I can never fix what happened to Eo. I couldn’t even run my army. I couldn’t win. I couldn’t beat Cassius, not to mention the Jackal. I was the best Helldiver; I’m nothing here. The world is too big and cold. I am too small. The world has forgotten Eo. It has already forgotten her sacrifice. There’s nothing left.

I sleep again.

When I wake, Mustang sits by the fire. She knows I’m awake but lets me pretend otherwise. I lie there with my eyes closed, listening to her hum. It’s a song I know. It is a song I hear in dreams. The echo of my love’s death. The song sung by the one they call Persephone. Hummed by an Aureate, an echo of Eo’s dream.

I weep. If ever I’ve felt there was a God, it is now as I listen to the mournful chords. My wife is dead, but something of hers lingers still.

I speak to Mustang the next morning.

“Where did you hear that song?” I ask her without sitting up.

“From the HC,” she says, blushing. “A little girl sang it. It’s soothing.”

“It’s sad.”

“Most things are.”

It has been four weeks, Mustang tells me. Cassius is Primus. Winter has come. Ceres is no longer under siege. Jupiter’s soldiers sometimes come into the woods. There are sounds of battle between the two superpowers of the North, Jupiter and Mars. Jupiter to the west, Mars to the east. Since the river froze, they’ve been able to cross and raid one another. Our buzzards have risen out of their winter gulches. Hungry wolves howl at night. Crows flock from the south. But Mustang really knows very little, and I grow impatient with her.

“Keeping you breathing was a little distracting,” she reminds me. Her standard lies underneath a blanket near my feet. She’s the last of House Minerva. Yet unbridled. And she didn’t enslave me.

“Slaves are stupid,” she says. “And you’re already a gimp. Why make you stupid too?”

It is days before I’m able to walk. I wonder where those nifty medBots are now. Tending someone the Proctors like, no doubt. I won Primus and they never gave it to me. Now I know why the Jackal will win. They are getting rid of his competition.

Mustang stalks with me through the woods during the next weeks. I move stiffly through the thick snow but my strength is returning. She credits medicine she found lying conspicuously under a bush. A friendly Proctor placed it there. We pause when we spot the deer. I draw the bow, but I can’t get the string to my ear. My wound aches. Mustang watches me. I try again. Pain deep inside. I let the arrow fly. I miss. We eat leftover rabbit that night. It tastes funny and gives me cramps. I always have cramps now. It’s the water too. We have nothing to boil it in. No iodine. Just snow and a little creek to drink from. Sometimes we can’t have fire.