Page 114 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

Rising, Marcus pointed to the front of his tent. “Get out, Amarin. And reconsider your place else you will find yourself returned to the Senate in exchange for someone who knows how to hold his tongue.”

Amarin’s dark eyes met his. “You have become everything the Empire wanted you to be. The perfect legionnaire. The perfect weapon for the villains on the Hill and the monster who rules them.”

The walls in Marcus’s mind trembled as if they were being bombarded with the same relentlessness as the walls of Revat.

You are who you were meant to be, the voice soothed, and the walls steadied. Ever victorious.

“Get out.”

Gibzen caught hold of Amarin’s tunic and bodily dragged him out of the tent, leaving Marcus alone with Rastag.

“Give me your report,” Marcus said to his engineer. “Have you put the explosives into position?”

The engineer’s eyes were on the front of the tent, expression strange. Clearing his throat, he said, “It won’t take long to do, sir, but I chose to wait until we’ve fully cut off the flow of water. We’ve allowed a small stream of drinking water to continue to flow while the city evacuates.”

His actions will cause delay, the voice warned. There can be no delays. You must take the city now or the consequences will be dire. The structure at the center of the city filled his mind’s eye, beckoning him.

Marcus blinked away the vision. “Those weren’t your orders, Rastag. I want the flow entirely cut off and the explosives set so that they understand the threat is real. If they are wise, they’ll surrender.”

“You don’t really intend to flood the city, do you? Empty casks would suffice, would they not?”

“No, I do not intend to do so. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want the option to do so.”

Rastag pursed his lips. “With respect, sir—”

“Show your respect by obeying,” Marcus snapped.

“I’ve no interest in a prolonged siege. I want Revat now, which means we break their will to resist now.

I don’t want so much as a trickle running toward that city, and I want them to see disaster sitting in the form of casks of black powder at the base of that dam.

Let them understand what it means to defy the Empire. ”

Silence.

“I used to think being under your command was a privilege,” Rastag finally said.

“That, for all I built machines of war that were designed to kill, I was no villain, because you were always fighting to keep casualties low, especially for civilians. Yet now I question whether that was a delusion I told myself so that I could live with what I have done. Amarin is right: What have we left in our wake but conquered people? And those who are conquered always suffer, even if those who do the conquering cannot be bothered to see it.”

The world swam around Marcus, his head again filling with a loud hammering that was probably his heartbeat but sounded like fists pounding against a wall. Like something trying to get out, the noise making his head hurt.

“This dam you have me building is a weapon of incredible destruction. If we release that much water on the city, it will explode through Revat like a monstrous battering ram, killing everyone in its path and leaving destruction, famine, and pestilence in its rotting wake,” Rastag argued.

“You claim you’ve no intention of using it.

That it’s a threat to motivate them to surrender without a fight.

Yet whether you use it or not matters little, for in your wake there will be destruction, famine, and pestilence.

You think you are better than the other legati, but you are not.

You are merely a more insidious breed of villain. ”

Marcus stared at his engineer, then pressed his fingers to his temples, the war going on inside his head so painful he wanted to fall to his knees.

Because Rastag was right.

What choice do you have? the voice screamed at him. If you don’t do it, they’ll execute you for treason and then send someone else to do the job.

This is how it has to be.

Inevitable.

Inescapable.

Blood dripped from Marcus’s nose, and he wiped at it, feeling his chest tighten, each breath more difficult than the last.

“May I go, sir?” Rastag asked, gathering up his pages.

Marcus nodded, the engineer passing Gibzen as he returned.

“You all right?”

Marcus wiped at his bleeding nose, trying to get air into his lungs. “They’re right.”

“They’re not.” Gibzen knelt before him, giving his shoulders a shake.

“Amarin is running his mouth, and Rastag just doesn’t have the nerve?

Thinking like old Drusus and his boys that things would have looked good if we’d hunkered down in Arinoquia, but you know that was never a possibility.

We’re raised to fight, and if we don’t, the Senate puts us down.

Someone has to be food for the crows, and it’s either us or them. ”

Colors were bleeding together, the hammering fists of an ocean full of guilt and grief and fear trying to tear down the walls. Trying to climb over. Trying to get out, even if they destroyed him. “There has to be another option.”

“Yeah, there was. ” Gibzen’s eyes were like voids, dragging Marcus into their depths. “You gave the Gamdeshians countless chances to do this peaceably, but they chose war. They chose it, Marcus, not you.”

He’d given them no choice.

“If we’d stayed in Emrant, they’d only have gathered all their forces and all their allies’ forces and attacked us. It was always going to be blood.”

Gibzen wasn’t wrong.

“Your duty is to the Thirty-Seventh. To ensuring we aren’t the ones who do the bleeding, and this is how that happens.”

Each of his primus’s words steadied the walls in his mind, raising them high and strong.

They calmed the raging pulse in his veins, and the breath in his chest.

Until everything was quiet again, and Marcus said, “Change bombardment from the walls to the city itself. Let’s end this.”