Page 34

DAXEEL

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The legionaries are skilled, formidable warriors not of the true positions of the military, but sourced from other fields, such as extractors, spies, assassins—but the legionaries come with a rank high enough to behold a steed.

Daxeel dismounts that very steed he is allotted in the unit. His boots smack down on the packed dirt.

The path ends some steeds ahead of him, then transforms into a stone bridge arching over the rushing waters of a moat.

His rank affords him a kelpie and status, but a legionary is still just a warrior. He is not given the rank closest to the general, and so there are at least a dozen steeds and warriors between him and the stronghold.

His gloved hands creak as he fixes the reins over the saddle. His kelpie stands, unfazed, in the drizzle invading the Breeze. He reads the time of phase in the light winds that weave through the unit.

Daxeel touches his chin to his shoulder and casts a look back at the rest of the unit.

The exhaustion wears on them, on their weathered faces, on their cold and bloodied hands, but the defeat is in their numbers.

The unit embarked with a hundred but returns with just half of that.

The length of the year has been weary—and has cost lives. More than expected.

And still, as though he will find him there amongst the common foot-warriors, not with his fellow legionaries, he scans the faces for familiar eyes, one gold, the other blue. He looks for the brother he won’t find there.

“Daxeel Taraan.” The bark of his name carries over the bridge.

He turns his back on the foot-warriors and lands his gaze on the male rushing over the bridge.

A parchment official, by the looks of him, with his woollen coat pinched at the waist, the crispness of his blouse, and the emblem stitched onto the sash that’s fastened around his breeches in place of a belt.

His leather boots, glossed and not a scratch on them, clop over the stone bridge before the terrain changes to packed dirt, and little clouds of dust are kicked up on his way to Daxeel.

The official jolts to a brisk stop, a proud lift to his pointed chin. He extends his gloved hand, an offering of parchments ribboned to a wooden board.

Daxeel spares him a dark look, one that lingers with the unspoken word, coward , a male to hide in darkness as an official, despite his able-bodied condition.

He snatches the parchment-board into his grip and casts a fleeting look down at the inked lines and scribbled words.

“General Agnar delegates the duty of the kuri count to you,” the official tells him. “Once count is complete, they are to be held in the stockade—” His hand sweeps in a crisp gesture to the wooden prison over the bridge and some steps down from the entrance to the stronghold. “—and recounted. Note here,” the male reaches over to curl the edges of the parchment, then peels them back to reveal the fourth layer of paper, “the kuris lost in the journey, their blood strength by freckle count, and the causes of their deaths.”

Daxeel runs his tongue over the bite of his teeth. The look he lifts to the male is glaring and unkind.

“As I understand, much of this unit has been lost,” the official goes on, undeterred by Daxeel’s gaze. “I will need these forms returned to me within the hour,” he adds, then offers a second parchment-board, this one only slightly different in that it is headed with ‘ DECEASED WARRIORS ’, not ‘ KURIS ’. “The names of each lost warrior, breed, origin, the cause of death, and—on the third page—the same for the list of any forsaken warriors.”

Daxeel’s sigh is long and weary as he steals the second parchment-board into his gloved grip.

That is all, and so the official gives a sharp nod before turning on his unscuffed heels and marching back to the stronghold.

Without turning to look at the male dismounting the steed behind him, Daxeel extends his hand and offers the second board, the one of lost warriors, dead and forsaken.

“Did you get all that?” Daxeel asks, monotonous.

Cadwyn grunts. He takes the parchment-board with a mutter, “They are already impatient. We should be quick.”

Daxeel turns a swift look on him, the mint-leaf eyes that gleam against a complexion as white as milk; and he casts those gleaming eyes down the path to the foot-warriors.

There is a sense down there, a supressed urgency that’s thrumming beneath the surface. Warriors shift their weight too much, from boot to boot; low murmurs hum not unlike wasps circling their own nest; some have inched out of formation, chins lifted, and their gazes aimed at the spanning darkness of the fields and the forests surrounding them.

There is no family out here to greet them, no towns nor villages nearby to see, no matter how focused their stares might be.

But the excitement of returning home, it warps reality, distorts rationale, and can turn so quickly into agitation.

“Let them line up for the ravens,” Daxeel decides. “It will ease them—give them something to do right now.”

Cad’s jaw tightens as, slowly, he turns a look up at General Agnar, dismounted and standing at the mouth of the stronghold with a half-dozen officials. “If he allows it.”

“So take parchment and quills down to them now, let them sit, ponder, and write.”

“Distract them, you mean,” Cad says. “Before they realise the inevitable.”

Daxeel turns a blank, patient look on him.

“We lost too many,” Cad scoffs, “and with the litalves out there in the dark, with what they did, accomplished … I doubt we will be leaving this stronghold and returning to our families this phase.”

This stronghold will be their home for the next few phases, at least.

Daxeel won’t write.

Not until his last, final hour here, in a fortress planted in the seams between fields and forests; a two-hour trek from the bridge that arches into the nearest settlement of the Blood Court.

It is a wild area. The stronghold is all the structure that manages to survive. Homes once built out here, villages dared to stand for a moment, so the ground sank them into the earth and swallowed them whole.

It remains wild, so it is forever remote.

If Daxeel writes to Nari on his final phase here, it will take him a full phase to reach the Midlands—and that is supposing she is still there.

A whole year to him might only have been three months to her… But three months is too much time to have left her alone in her misery.

He said he would write to her upon his return, and that he hoped she would come to meet him.

It was a foolish hope.

Cad considers him for a moment before, “The quicker we start, the sooner we are out of here. And you can finally stop moping over that bracelet of hers.”

Daxeel grunts a disturbed sound, his hand instinctively reaching down to the thigh pocket of his leathers. There, the bracelet is nestled, safe.

Without a word, he shoves into harsh, punishing steps—and makes for the congested crowd of shivering, cowering kuris. Their faces are unrecognisable as human at all beneath the dirt and grime and, in some cases, blood.

There are many kuri deaths to account for in the paperwork, many causes to explain. But it isn’t a total loss.

These kuris who shrink back at his advance, unable to flee as they are surrounded by armed guards, are more in numbers than they ever expected.

Each unit was estimated to snare a dozen kuris, but at least thirty cower away from him as he comes to a stop next to a red-haired guard, and he starts to count them off, one by one.

Lower officials come out of the stronghold with cloth collars, numbers painted onto them, and those are then fastened around the necks of the kuris.

Daxeel works through the monotony of this duty, and it takes him more than an hour before the kuris are locked, weeping, in the cage.

He could steal a moment to join the foot-warriors, those who sit and lounge on the dirt, share the last of the supplies from overripe wines and dehydrated meat strips, as they write out their messages.

It was a good distraction.

But not one for himself.

Daxeel told her he would write when he is returned, and that if she still considered choosing him, even a little, she should come and meet him.

That was before the blood of the Sabbat.

So no, he won’t write. Not until his last moment at the stronghold, and the raven will out-speed him to Kithe—but he will be only a handful of hours behind it.

Because the last thing Daxeel can face right now is the truth, the truth of how deep her indifference runs for him.