I wonder if they are staring back at me across that void with vengeance in their hearts. If they, like me, will carry the sound of those plummeting screams from this day until their souls meet the skies.
Chapter
Seven
“Let’s go,” Scythe says lowly.
There is no remorse in his voice. No guilt or grief over the fact that he has just executed an entire company of men—for the second time in our short acquaintance.
I stare at him, swallowing down the lump of horror lodged in my throat. My thoughts feel far removed from reality. My words, when I manage to speak, ring hollow in the quietude of dawn.
“All those men…you killed them.”
“If I hadn’t, they would’ve killed us. Or worse.” There is a terse pause. “You think me callous?”
“I think a man who can take so many lives in trade for his own, easily as coin bartered at market, is no man at all but something else entirely.” I shake my head, unable to dispel the horrific images. “Something more akin to a monster.”
If he is offended by my brash assessment, he does not show it. He merely sheathes his sword and sighs heavily. “Better the monster than the quarry it devours.”
“We could’ve gotten away without…without…” I gesture to the chasm. “You did not have to kill them.”
“They would’ve hunted us into the mountains. Even now, with the bridge felled, we are not safe. Not for long. They willfind another way across eventually.” His nostrils flare on a sharp exhale and his voice drops, almost as though he is speaking to himself. “Perhaps before, when they were chasing naught but whispers, they wouldn’t have bothered. They would have let us slip away, sought other bounty to fill their master’s bottomless cup. But now…now, they will never stop. Now that they have seen…” He looks at me sharply. “They will not stop until we have been captured. He will not let them.”
“He?He who?”
Scythe narrows his eyes at me. “Can you truly be so sheltered?”
“Can you truly not give a straight answer to a single one of my questions?”
“You try my patience, girl.”
“I wasn’t aware you had any to try.”
“Trust me, ten minutes in your maddening presence would strain the stoicism of a druid.”
“Amusing, coming from the most vexing man I’ve ever met.”
“Save your amusement. Try some appreciation instead.”
“Appreciation?For what, exactly? Kidnapping me? Making me party to not one, but two massacres? Leading me into a mountain range few men ever return from intact?”
“Would you rather I’d left you to die?”
“Perhaps!” I fire back. “For what kind of life is one lived with so much blood on one’s hands?”
“I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to your twisted idealisms.”
In my fury, I forget to be afraid of him. I take two strides closer, my eyes fixed on his. “Those men were soldiers, acting on the commands of a king they likely never even met. They had lives outside of this endless killing. Crops to tend. Homes to protect. Wives to take into their arms. Children to…to…” Bitingmy lip, I blink back infuriating tears. Emotions will get me nowhere. Not with him. I could sooner move a stone wall than the heart inside this man by weeping.
“It’s curious,” he says flatly. His stare is cold as it lingers on the wetness of my cheeks. “You freely lament the fate of your enemy…and yet you walk for days on bloodied soles without shedding so much as a tear for your own misfortune. I cannot tell if that is a mark of self-discipline or childlike delusion.” His eyes narrow on mine. “The latter, surely. If you had even the loosest understanding of the dire nature of your situation, you would be wailing for your parents like a babe torn too soon from the breast.”
“The fact that you cannot fathom my resolve does not indicate its absence. Do not speak of things you know nothing about. My parentage, for instance.” I suck in a steadying breath as I glare at him across the thin divide between us. “And as for our situation, is it any wonder I cannot fully appreciate its shadowy nature when you have failed to offer even a single ray of illumination at every given opportunity?”
His scoff is nearly a snarl. “Did it never occur to you these past few days, as we rode at a breakneck gallop, that we might be doing so for a reason beyond enjoying the feel of the wind in our hair? Did you never once contemplate the possibility that we were sleeping in the wild instead of at inns, traversing fields rather than roads, for a purpose outside appreciating the solitudes of nature?”
I blink, startled.
Until this point, I assumed I was the root cause of Scythe’s outright hostility. Perhaps I’ve been mistaken. Perhaps his hostility is a symptom of something else. Something bigger. I still don’t know the full scope of what is going on here, but clearly, this is more than mere retribution for what he did to Burrows’s unit. More than the hunt for an escaped halfling.