Page 265 of Scorched Earth

Kicking back his stool, Marcus strode to the front of the tent and out into the sunlight, his breath disappearing as his eyes locked onto his once primus slowly walking his horse through the gap in the ranks, a white flag on a stick resting nonchalantly against one shoulder.

“It’s good to see you boys,” Agrippa called out. “It’s been an age, hasn’t it? You all grew up! Finally put some muscles into the lines, I see!”

The Thirty-Seventh’s neat ranks were now all jagged as the men stared at Agrippa in astonishment. Though he was clearly fighting on the side of those who’d ambushed their brothers, not a one of them had anger in their expressions.

“Took a fall into the river at Hydrilla after we took the fortress!” Agrippa shouted, avoiding Marcus’s gaze as he drew closer. “Wasn’t the most pleasant journey across the world, but I learned a very important lesson about not pissing off the wrong woman!”

“Didn’t those washer women claim he’d run off to join the rebels with his girl?” Felix muttered.

Though that had been years ago, in the shadow of Hydrilla, the memory of that conversation remained vivid in Marcus’s mind. “Yes.”

“Didn’t Gibzen also confirm their story based on tracks?”

“Yes.” A suspicion he hadn’t put much thought to in far too long began to grow in Marcus’s chest. “Gibzen brought the women to speak to me as well. He provided all the proof that Agrippa deserted.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb,” Felix’s voice shook with anger, “and say that Gibzen lied.”

Anger began to simmer in Marcus’s chest, but where the emotion usually bolstered the walls in his mind, this time it made them tremble. Because Gibzen had done more than just lie.

Marcus and Agrippa had never been friends, but they’d been brothers. Part of the same family forged in Lescendor and cemented on the battlefield, and an attack on one brother was an attack on all.

Even when the attack came from within.

“Send someone to fetch Quintus,” he ordered. “And someone else to find Gibzen.”

Felix muttered the order to one of the men, and Agrippa chose that moment to lock eyes with Marcus, drawing his horse to a stop. “Sir.”

“You didn’t desert.”

“Not then, no.” Agrippa dismounted, handing his reins to Felix. “I spent years trying to find my way back east without any luck. Imagine my shock to learn that you and the boys were on this side of the world.”

“But you’re not here to rejoin the Thirty-Seventh’s ranks, are you?”

Agrippa hesitated, and Marcus saw his throat move as he swallowed hard before saying, “No, sir. I am not.”

All around him, the Thirty-Seventh seemed to hold its collective breath as they waited for Marcus to react. To give the order that needed to come, given that Agrippa was now, by his own admission, a deserter. For once, the voice was silent, seeming uncertain of what to make of this moment.

And the part of Marcus that was trapped behind the walls in his mind took advantage, screaming,He is not your enemy!

Closing the distance between them, Marcus wrapped his arms around the man who’d been both his rival and his savior, clapping him on the back. “It’s good to see you, Agrippa. You’ve been missed more than you know.”

Agrippa stood frozen for a moment, then relaxed and thumped Marcus on his armored back. “Thank you, sir.”

Letting go of him, Marcus gestured to the tent. “Should we get to business, then?”

Agrippa cast one backward glance at the ridgeline, then nodded. “Yeah. Though I think both of us know what the other will say.”

Right up until the point Agrippa had appeared, Marcus had believed there was a chance that the Mudamorians would surrender and hand over their queen. But Calorian’s choice to send Agrippa was not the strategy of a general who believed himself defeated. “For old time’s sake, then.”

Entering the shade of the command tent, Marcus returned to where he’d been sitting, then watched as Agrippa circled the tent, inspecting the contents.

“It’s like going back in time,” Agrippa muttered. “Everything is the same as it always was.”

Not everything.

As he watched Agrippa root around in the cabinets, Marcus examined the changes that time had wrought upon his once primus. Agrippa was taller and broader. His skin, which had always been darker courtesy of his Bardenese heritage, was darker still from the sun, new scars pale by comparison. His eyes were harder, posture more wary; that might be attributed to the circumstances, but Marcus’s gut told him otherwise.

“I learned something recently,” Agrippa said. “We’re family.”