Page 185 of Dragon Slayer

The men looked down at the ground; shuffled on their knees.

“I amspeaking to you.Look at me. Did you know who his master was?”

They tipped their heads back, seeking his face with reluctance, shrinking down into their coat collars.

A crowd of onlookers began to gather, motion and murmurs at the edges of Val’s awareness.

“Had you,” Val continued, beginning to pace a tight line in front of them now, “seen him around camp? Fetching water? Carrying a letter for me? Did you notice his fine clothes, and the jewels around his neck? Did you think to yourselves, ‘He must belong to a wealthy master? To aprince, even?’”

He turned a slow circle, hand on the pommel of his sword, and met the gazes of those around him. Faces full of shock, of worry, of anticipation.

He turned back to the captives. “A whole camp full of whores.” A sweep of his arm to the gathering crowd, still growing, their whispers getting louder. “But no. The four of you decided to have a go at my personal slave. You took from me. From your sultan. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

Silence. Even from the crowd; Val could sense them straining to hear the answer.

The one with the injured eye finally licked his lips. “It – he – it wasn’t rape, your grace. He wanted it.”

Mehmet had dispatched janissaries right away, and in the time before a breathless messenger returned to tell them the criminals had been found, Val had eased Arslan’s ruined clothes from his wrecked, trembling body and ordered a bath drawn. A pair of Mehmet’s slaves had seen to him, and Val had bit his lip until he tasted blood, cataloguing the scratches, scrapes, and bruises on the boy’s skin.

“He wanted it,” he said in a flat voice, and the murmurs started up again, a ripple moving through the onlookers like a wave. “He wanted you. You fat, smelly louts. To take turns at him.”

The other three had the grace to duck their heads once more.

The speaker shivered. “I – I – but he–”

Val pulled his sword and swung.

A chorus of low shouts from the spectators.

The blade caught the man in the side of the neck. It was a sharp, well-made weapon, and Val’s swing had been powerful. But still – swords weren’t made for taking off heads.

Blood spurted, splashing across the face of the man beside the speaker. The blow severed the spine, killed him instantly, but the head fell sideways, connected to the body by a stretch of muscle and skin.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Val was screaming.

He swung again, and the head rolled across the grass.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Your grace,” one of the janissaries said. None of them had flinched. “If you’d like for one of us to–”

“No. Line them up. I’ll do it.”

His arms ached afterward. Blood on his blade, on his hands, on his clothes. He wet his lips and tasted it there, too, hot and salty. He could kneel down, in the puddle on the grass, and drink straight from the stumps of their headless necks.

He turned instead to face the crowd, and they shrank back, though their gazes stayed fixed on him, fascinated. “This” – he gestured with his sword – “is what happens when you touch something that doesn’t belong to you! This is a lesson!” He turned his sword on them, aimed its bloody point at his audience. “Learn it well!”

It grew fuzzy after that. He walked away, and everyone let him go. He was aware of his legs and his lungs working, the weight of his sword in his hand.

He walked right out of camp, and no one stopped him. Into the trees, the shade and pine-scented cover of the forest, away from all the stink, and the flies, and the tightly-packed humanity. The gentle chuckle of a stream drew him, and when he reached it, he knelt on its bank, sword falling from numb fingers to a cushion of moss.

Val stared down into the clear water, its bed of smooth, brown rocks. His distorted, broken reflection stared back, just clear enough to make out the pattern of droplets and spatters on his face. Blood, gore, chunks that he didn’t want to think about.

He leaned down and braced his hands on the moss, stuck his face in the water. It was shockingly cold, its source some deep underground spring, cool beneath the soil. It trickled past him, washing away the blood, the sweat, the tears.

Could I drown?he wondered. If he breathed in now, and let the water fill his lungs, could he die like this? It wouldn’t be so bad. In the cool, and the dark. Alone.

Or would he pass out, and eventually expel the water, all his immortal powers pushing him toward life and health, like always?

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