Page 147 of Swordheart
“Nolan?” Zale looked up. “Yes, I believe so. He and Bartholomew came over this morning. Nolan is in the front room, I think?”
“What’s wrong?” asked Halla, climbing to her feet.
If he had been able to explain, he would have done it weeks earlier. He led her through the house until they came to Nolan, in the front room, who was writing in a book.
The scholar looked up from his work and shut the book. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“Can you read ancient tongues?” asked Sarkis.
Nolan blinked at him. “Depends on the ancient tongue, I suppose. There’s a great many of them. I know a few. Why do you ask?”
Sarkis took the blade off Halla’s shoulders, and drew it all the way out. The words on it were etched in his memory as deeply as they were etched in steel, but he could not trust himself to read them aloud.
Coward.
Yes. I will see her face as I recite the words and I will break and I will not tell her all the truth. I know it.
Even in this, I will fail.
“Read these,” he said gruffly, tossing the blade down on the table in front of him.
Nolan blinked at him, then at the sword. “This is… oh, hmm, I do know this one. It’s an archaic form, but… let me see.” He licked his lips, taking the hilt in his hand and tilting it so that the light caught on the blade.
“This is… no, wait…Hereis… the prison and… judgment? Punishment? of Sarkis of the Weeping Lands. Faithless in life, he will be faithful in death, until steel crumbles and all sins fade away.”
The scholar stopped and looked up, his eyes wide. The moment seemed suddenly trapped in amber. Sarkis saw the sunlight coming through the window, the dust motes dancing in it, the fall of Halla’s pale white hair over her face as the color drained out of it.
She snatched up the sword, turned, and looked at him. Waiting for the denial or the protest or the explanation.
Sarkis met her eyes and said nothing at all.
That was enough.
Ican’t believe I’ve been such a fool.
No. No, that wasn’t true. It was all too easy to believe it.
A man who took you away from your troubles. A man who said you were beautiful. Of course you were a fool.
Only a fool would believe such things could be true.
“Halla—” he said finally, when the silence between them had become agony.
“Why?”
“I led a mercenary troop,” he said. “I’ll not pretend we were good people, because we weren’t. There was a war, and we became… well. Indispensable. But our side was losing. At the height of battle, I changed sides.”
Halla stared at him.
Sarkis shrugged. “My loyalty was to my men, not to myemployer. I was holding a citadel that I knew could not be held for long. The enemy offered me money. I saw a chance for us to survive.”
“And?”
“And if I had held out another two days, I would have been a great hero.” He smiled humorlessly. “Our allies arrived. They overwhelmed our position. Most of my men were slaughtered. I and my two captains—the Dervish and Angharad—we were dragged before the king who had trusted us.”
Halla put her hand over her mouth.
“He had the rest of my men hanged as traitors. A mercenary stays bought, that’s what separates them from murderers. But for the three of us, he had a more fitting punishment. Our deaths were bound to the swords, and the will of any who wielded us.”
