Page 49 of Swordheart
He was, in truth, no longer young. His muscles were smoothed by a layer of fat and his figure thickened substantially at the waist. But that wasn’t what astonished her.
Across his sternum, written and overwritten like a scribbled line, was a slick silver scar as wide as Halla’s hand and at least a foot long. A few of the lines started at his shoulders before trailing down to join the others. One, longer than the rest, ran down the line of his belly and then jerked jaggedly to the left.
“What on earth…” she breathed, reaching out and tapping her finger against his breastbone. She half expected the silver mark to ring like metal when she tapped it, but it was only skin and scar.
“Ah,” he said, catching her hand. “Yes. My deaths. Most ofthem, at any rate. There are one or two across the back that cut my spine, but this is where most of them end up.”
She looked up to met his eyes, astonished. “When you said you died several times…”
“Well,” he admitted. “Perhaps more than several.”
“There’s dozens here!”
“They weren’t all fatal. I got back into the sword in time to heal from a few.” He traced the line that ran across his side with his free hand. “That one spilled my guts in the roadway. Not an experience I recommend, but I didn’t die of it. The sword healed me up. The scars, though… well, I can’t do much about the scars.”
“It must have hurt so much.”
She could actually see the glib answer rise to his tongue, and then he simply nodded.
The contrast between scar and flesh was strangely stark. His dark bronze skin was made even darker by black hair across his chest, running in a line down his belly. The silver marks stood out like wounds… which, of course, they were.
It occurred to Halla that she was standing with her hand pressed against a man’s bare chest for the first time in many years. Had she ever touched her husband this way? Surely she must have, but she couldn’t remember.
Sarkis’s hand held hers flat against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat. He still had a heart, then, pumping blood in the usual way, even if he bore the signs of dozens of mortal wounds.
She swallowed and stepped back. He released her hand at once, as soon as she moved, and she told herself that was right and proper and correct and there was no reason to feel disappointed.
She absolutely did not have any desire to keep moving her hand across his chest and feel the texture change from skin to scar and back again, or to move it downward, following the line of hair to… well, regardless, she had no desire to. None whatsoever.
Sarkis pulled on the undershirt and rolled it down over his arms, then shrugged into the surcoat and his cloak. Halla pretended that she wasn’t watching.
She hefted her pack over her shoulder. “I suppose we should get moving,” she said, giving the bed a longing look. “We’re not getting any closer to Amalcross standing here. And I can already smell breakfast.”
CHAPTER 16
Sarkis was concerned.
Halla had been walking beside him for several hours now, and she hadn’t asked him a single question. It was not that he missed her endless chatter, he told himself, but it was certainly cause for concern.
He knew she’d slept the night before. Her breathing had been deep and even and then she’d started to snore. The dark circles were gone from under her eyes and she was no longer limping.
I would think simply that she is no longer talking to keep herself going, except…
When she did not know he was looking, she was gnawing on her lower lip and her pleasant mask slipped. She was chewing something over and by the flat, unfocused look in her eyes, she did not much like the taste.
Yesterday’s attack is still bothering her, or I am a pronghorn’s uncle.
Well. If she would not ask questions to distract herself, it seemed that it fell to Sarkis instead.
“You have two nieces,” he said.
“Huh?” She blinked at him, then smiled. “Yes. Erris and Nola. Good girls.”
“Their mother has gone under the earth, though?”
“Well, she’s dead, if that’s what you mean.”
He nodded. Halla nodded in return. “My sister Anatilya was their mother. She died in childbirth a few years after Nola was born.”
