Page 4 of Fate of the Argosi

‘Smart answer, kid,’Durral had told me.‘Eminently logical.’

‘You’re saying I’m wrong?’I’d asked, irritated.

‘I’m sayin’ anyone who’s ever tried to walk twenty miles with a fifty-pound pack and a knife stuck in their boot knows it’s uncomfortable. Only reason to make a law forbidding it is because . . .’

‘Because Daroman soldiers keep hiding daggers in their boots anyway,’I’d finished for him.

Turns out Daroman foot soldiers get into a lot of fights. Getting arrested using a military-issue sword against your fellow infantry is treason, but accidentally stabbing them with a knife you just happened to find on the ground when the fight broke out is . . . excusable.

Crazy-ass empire, if you ask me, but I was grateful this one time, because old habits die hard. The former Daroman soldier with his knee on my chest was no exception to the rule. When I slid the fingers of my left hand inside the top of his boot, they found the leather-wrapped grip of a short-bladed dagger.

I hate hurting people nowadays. Even people who fill me with such anger that it shouts down the voices of my teachers urging me to stay on my path. My foster mother, Enna, though, she taught me that while an Argosi might walk a thousand miles around a problem to avoid a fight, when there’s no other way but the Way of Thunder, you strike like lightning: no hesitation, no remorse.

Sensing my manoeuvre, the Daroman reached for my wrist while his other hand seized hold of my hair in preparation for cracking the back of my skull against the stone floor. The tip of the dagger I now held hadn’t yet cleared the top of his boot, which meant the difference between survival and death existed only in that tiny sliver of time between choosing mercy or murder.

The sharp edge of the blade sliced through and along the vein in his wrist, sending a spray of blood between us. Before the first grunt of pain had even reached his lips, I’d spun the dagger to a reverse grip and jammed three inches of steel into his throat.

Two seconds. That’s all it had taken from the moment I’d reached for the dagger hidden in his boot until the blood from his throat began to pour down on me. How can nature allow such awful deeds to be performed so quickly?

There’s no silence so deep as that which follows the last echo of thunder. I watched through the windows of the Daroman’s eyes as a lifetime of military training took over and cold hard calculations told him he was out of moves. His right hand was no good now, not with all that blood spilling from the gash in his wrist. I hadn’t cut across; that doesn’t work fast enough. That’s why I’d sliced vertically along the artery.

The hand yanking my hair might’ve done some damage if he hadn’t needed it to staunch the puncture in his throat that was competing with the laceration in his wrist to decide which would kill him first.

We stared at each other, him and me, as if neither of us had expected to travel this road and we each blamed the other for its destination. The clarity of his eyes, which I only now noticed were an almost sapphire blue, gave way to the watery blur of tears as he teetered to one side and then slumped to the ground.

I rose to my feet, coughing from what would soon be ugly and painful bruises around my neck. The other guards were splayed across the floor, eyes open, still conscious despite the paralysis. The Daroman who’d tried to strangle me whimpered as he waited for death. Fiery wrath rose like bile in my throat, demanding payment for what I’d endured. There are a dozen different civilisations on this continent, each with their own laws, their own courts. Not one of them would’ve denied me retribution.

The Scarlet Verses acted up something awful. They always do at times like these. They whispered ideas to me. Terrible ideas. But terrible things can be beautiful sometimes. Cruelty is a language that transcends cultural barriers, which makes it useful when you want to send a message to those who speak no other.

Yes-yes! Yes-yes!’the verses repeated over and over like a drum beat that kept perfect pace with my heart. I felt a tightness on my face that turned out to be a grin matching the one I’d seen on the Daroman soldier when he’d tasted my tears.

I have other voices in my head too. My pappy, Durral Brown, who took an angry little Mahdek girl, lost in her own darkness, and shone a light to show her a different path. His wife, Enna, who saw that I couldn’t walk her and Durral’s path no matter how much I wanted to, and so helped me find my own. Others too, like Sir Gervaise and Sir Rosarite, two knights from a land far across the sea, who used words likehonourandcouragea lot, but what they really meant was love and compassion.

I crawled over to my pack near the edge of the tunnel and brought it back to the dying man, who was trying his best to keep from bleeding out. I took out a small clay jar and unstoppered the lid. The smell was nearly as bad as one of Conch’s farts, which was probably what brought the little spire goat to sniff at the rim.

‘Not for you,’ I said. My voice was a raspy growl.

The goat curled his upper lip, took in a breath and I swear was about to belch me into paralysis again before he caught the look in my eyes and thought better of it.

There’s not much you can do to stop a bleed as bad as the one on the Daroman, but before I’d come to Soul’s Grave I’d spent a small fortune on a jar ofaquae sulfex. Daroman medics use it to save the lives of their most valued officers. The guard must’ve recognised the smell, because he didn’t fight me when I took his hand away from his wrist. Aquae sulfex has an oily, sticky texture that beats just about anything when it comes to staunching wounds and staving off infection. Wasn’t long before the vein on his wrist was sealed up and the blood stopped spilling.

The wound on his throat wasn’t as bad as I would’ve expected. I doubted he’d be singing in any choirs, but he wasn’t going to die. Not yet, anyway. His fingers were weak as wet strands of grass when he tried to grab my arm.

‘Don’t bother trying to talk,’ I told him.

He tried anyway. Didn’t sound too good. Didn’t matter though. I knew what he wanted to ask me. I wanted to smack him across the face and tell him he didn’t deserve to know, and the fact that he so desperately needed an answer only made me less inclined to give him one. But there was Durral’s voice in my ears, just like always. The savviest fighter I’d ever met, reminding me that surviving is all fine and dandy, but victory? That requires something . . . more.

‘You think you can do this, kid?’

I shook my head, which was silly, seeing as how he wasn’t there.‘Could you?’

‘Doubt it.’

‘Then why the hells should I try?’

It’s quiet, even in my imaginings, but somehow I can always hear that smile of his.‘You ever see a wild daisy blooming on top of a dune in the desert? Prettiest thing you ever saw.’

‘Quit it, Pappy. Everybody knows daisies don’t grow in sand.’

---