Page 45 of Scorched Earth

“Marcus.”

Teriana’s voice caught his attention and Marcus turned to find her standing next to Felix, eyes black-tossed seas of terror, her whole body shaking.

The tendons in his wrist screamed beneath Zaide’s grip, but Marcus couldn’t pull his eyes from Teriana’s terrified face, her chin quivering as she said in Bardenese, “Corrupted.”

18TERIANA

An icy shiver coursed through Teriana as though the breath of the Corrupter himself had brushed the back of her neck. Her pulse fluttered like a caged bird in her throat, fear freezing her tongue in place.

The man who’d kidnapped her and held her prisoner all those long months ago had been young, his hair inky black and skin smooth, but the moment Teriana heard the old Gamdeshian speak, there’d been no doubt in her soul who he was.

Ashok.

And he held Marcus’s bare arm in his grasp.

“Get your hands off me!” Marcus snarled at the corrupted, trying to shake him loose, but Teriana saw what he did not. Ashok’s eyes pooling black, a ring of flame beginning to glow around them.

Already stealing Marcus’s life.

“Marcus!” Her mind raced for a way to warn him that wouldn’talert Ashok that he’d been discovered. Latching onto a language there was no chance Ashok spoke, she said, “Corrupted!”

Marcus’s eyes widened, but Felix reacted faster.

In a blur of motion, his gladius was in his hand and swiping through the air. It bit into Ashok’s forearm, severing it in a spray of blood that struck Titus in the face, blinding him. Marcus fell back. His head cracked against Felix’s breastplate, and the whole tent turned to chaos.

Ashok shrieked in agony and fury, moving with incredible speed as Felix closed in for the kill. The corrupted snatched hold of Titus by the throat, using him as a shield to block Felix and the other encroaching legionnaires. Titus struggled, but with each second that passed, the corrupted grew younger.

And Titus older.

“He’s killing him!” she cried. “He’s draining Titus’s life!”

Titus fought to get free, but Ashok wrapped his wounded arm around the legatus’s waist, binding his weapon to his side. Teriana screamed as she watched the corrupted’s forearm healing, growing, reforming first wrist then hand even as Titus’s face morphed into a near replica of his father’s.

But Ashok didn’t stop there.

As he backed against the tent wall, Titus’s face wrinkled and sagged, his muscular body deteriorating under his armor until what slumped in Ashok’s arms was a wizened old man, the corrupted young and whole again.

It had happened in seconds.

Ashok plucked the gladius from Titus’s grip and sent the legatus toppling to the ground, now possessed of speed and strength that only a warrior marked by Tremon himself could face. He grinned, eyes fixing on Marcus, and Teriana screamed a warning.

Only for Ashok’s eyes to bulge in shock, the tip of a gladius protruding from his forehead.

Howling, the corrupted pulled himself free of the blade. Blood poured down his face as he whirled to face the long slice that appeared in the canvas.

Quintus stepped through.

He was already swinging as Ashok reached for him, and her friend chopped the creature’s head clean from its shoulders.

Ashok’s body fell to the ground with a thud. Blood flooded from his severed neck withone, two, threegreat gouts before his heart went still.

For long seconds, no one moved, and then Felix was shouting orders. Marcus pulled away from the protective circle that had surrounded him to fall to his knees next to Titus, rolling the now ancient man onto his back. “Get Racker!” he shouted.

Oh gods.

Titus was still alive.

Teriana rushed toward him, trying and failing to ignore the decapitated head on the ground. Which was impossible given the corrupted’s lifeless face wasaging.