Page 52 of Scorched Earth

Gibzen scraped the blade up the side of Marcus’s throat. “You sure Titus wasn’t lying?”

Marcus closed his eyes, remembering the look in Titus’s dying eyes. “Yes. He was guilty of many things, but not this.”

“Did Ashok give Teriana a description of the individual?”

“No.” Marcus held his breath as the blade passed over his jugular. “Only that whoever it was held a grudge against my relationship with her and desired things to go back to normal. Ashok thought we all looked the same.”

Gibzen huffed out a breath. “So it could be anyone? You have no idea who the man might be?”

“Unfortunately not.” Out of the corner of his eye, Marcus watched as Gibzen wiped clean the razor, then set it on the tray. “But I want you to find him for me. I can’t have a traitor in my legion.”

“Want me to kill him?”

Marcus shook his head. Climbing out of the bath, he wrapped alength of toweling around his waist. “No. I want him brought to me because this is personal.”

“Yeah.”

Hand resting on the hilt of his gladius, Gibzen walked to the door and opened it, nodding at the men standing guard outside before taking the lead down the hallway. Marcus followed, legs feeling like lead, every inch of him aching, and he watched with dull eyes as Gibzen checked his room.

“Head hurt?” Gibzen asked.

“Everything hurts.”

A flash of emotion played through the primus’s eyes, and he dug into his belt pouch, then held out a vial.

Marcus took it. Recognizing the etchings, he said, “You shouldn’t have this.”

Gibzen shrugged. “Racker’s cheap with it, especially with my men. I only give it to them when they’re really hurting.”

A flicker of irritation passed through Marcus that the surgeon would deny men in need out of personal spite between him and Gibzen. “I’ll talk to him about that.”

“Nah. You take it, then we’ll all be on the right side of the rules.”

Staring at the vial, Marcus slowly nodded.

“Get some sleep, sir,” Gibzen said, opening the door to where the rest of his men stood. “We’ll watch your back.”

The others murmured their agreement, and Marcus nodded at them, wishing they all stood outside his familiar tent and not a room in a fortress that felt far too much like Celendor for him ever to be comfortable.

As he set the vial down on the table, his eyes skipped over a rack holding his old armor, which Amarin must have squirreled away, though the weapons with it were all new. Turning down the lamp on the table, he crawled onto the cot and shoved the pillow onto the floor. Faint light from the fires and torches in the camp filtered in through the window above, which was little more than an arrow slit—Rastag was too engrained in warfare to have been swayed by the need for beauty.

Go to sleep,he told himself, squeezing his eyes shut.You need to rest. You need to be able to think clearly.

Except in the silence, the problems reared even as his skull ached.

One hundred and twenty-four of the Thirty-Seventh are dead.

I paid one of your men to spy on Teriana for me.

Why did you bother telling me that you loved me?

Six months.

It was the last problem that took over, finally shoving aside all else with its terrifying magnitude. Six months to find paths, and his only good lead was a terminus in Gamdesh. Six months to capture a major port city from the most powerful nation in the West.

Six months.

If he failed, one hundred of Teriana’s people would head to the gallows for each month that passed.