We Belong With the Dead

1: A dead fish, a bad start.

How strange it is to be a man of history, you might reflect, a man of consequence, when you cast your gaze a room full of people, tense, militant, and questioning, waiting for you to alter the course of fate for them.

How can it be up to the words of one man to effect history? Everyone hangs on them; they wait to be told what to do. But if you stutter or use a weak word when you meant to use a strong one, say ‘we will end this’ instead of saying ‘today the war will be over, and damn the man who tries to stop us,’ will they still listen? If you say ‘spare him’ instead of ‘leave him to me’ or ‘we must first learn what lead him to do this,’ will they do what you say? Will they be sufficiently inspired and allow you to change history, or will they lose faith and not allow you to? Will they ever realize they’re enacting your will for you, changing fate for you—shouldn’t you want them to realize that?

What if you woke late because of a strange dream and did not eat? Being just a little tired, just a little hungry, just a little bit temperamental is a huge liability, in war or in diplomacy. A second of pause can lose you your life. Poor wording can lose you your allies. The failure to notice hints and signs, the inability to stare down a room of twenty people and spot who is doubting, who certain, who understanding, who has misunderstood—a mistake is a disaster.

Tir could tell you about the most precious ten seconds the Empire ever lost, and they would never know it had happened, and will never know it happened.

The first time he took a human life was on Mt. Seifu, and still, after executions, massacres, and duels, he doesn’t like to wander back there in his mind. She was a young woman with her face covered. He remembers several tight, puckered scars on her skin; wispy, dark hair. Poor cloth made her robes, lovely glass beads glittered on top of them. Cleo shot her in the shoulder and made her stumble. Gremio shoved her to the side to unbalance her and turned his attention to another bandit. She caught her balance, looked up, and met Tir’s eyes.

At first he didn’t even think she was dead. That was the point of learning staff-fighting—acquiring a powerful weapon that is better at incapacitating than killing. But when he saw the split in her skull and the skin slowly sinking in, he knew.

Before he had finished the breath he took in after the exhale of the killing blow, a warm, wet hand tensed around his arm. He jolted and was drug on by the officer of the Empire. Cleo, he recalled, feeling his hand encircle the whole of his bicep, had thought he was creepy. “Hurry up, they’ve seen us.”

“But—” Tir protested.

“Hurry up,” the officer growled, “we can’t let them get away.”

“Every second is their advantage,” he heard Pahn growl, and he was being pushed on.

He ground in his feet for only a second before Gremio was gently beside his other shoulder to steady him. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

Tir shook his head but his jaw wouldn’t unclench. He was several steps behind the rest of the party, and could finally see what they say—movement higher up the mountain, ready to bear down on them; a tactical advantage.

“Gremio—”

“Tir, we have to go,” Cleo insisted, last one up, scurrying from her position. “They’ll jump us.”

He had wanted ten seconds to observe the loss of life. To close her eyes, like he had been told was respectable. To lay her down on her back, instead of sprawled to the side. See her. To at least lay his eyes on her and pray.

As he was grabbed and moved, pushed into line, thrown into the next dead man, he was dully begging, behind a blanket of silence, to know why he couldn’t have a few seconds.

Few things could fill him up with bile like remembering how he did not demand his grief. But they would never know. If they couldn’t appreciate the death of a woman on the slopes of a mountain, flying to her doom against a stronger and better-armed force, lifted by her belief in her cause, they didn’t get to know about it, either. They would all ask him what stupidity or selfishness caused him to turn traitor. They could assume it was politics, that it was teenage rebellion, that it was a misguided sympathy for the plight of low-life tax-dodgers, they could believe it was the death of Odessa that radicalized him, or the plight of Ted, or Victor’s charm and smooth-talking, or the small-minded cruelty of Kraze. They could make their partial assumptions on rumors and borrowed facts and be content they were right; all of those things helped sharpen his conviction.

But if they would not respect it, they did not have the right to know what it really was. They would never treat her memory with dignity.

He would.

-

After Ted’s disappearance and for a span of a few days, all he can remember is a pile of dead soldiers, stretched out across a dozen rocks, steams, and pathways, separated by short hours and miles, some cut, some shot, some beaten.

It is because of the dead bandit that he became a rebel; it is because of the dead soldiers that he agreed to become their leader. Each death hammers the stakes of the monument built in his mind further into the ground of his being; that now there is a pile of the dead inside him and he has a debt beyond reckoning to them.

-

Even though Tir mostly remembered fighting and killing when he recalled those early days in the Liberation Army, he’s inevitably faced with the knowledge that he spent most of that time building. It doesn’t seem true, but the sore and swollen muscles in his arms, legs, back, and stomach remember what his brain won’t so vividly.

As troops flocked slowly to Mathiu’s charming getaway, they were faced with the task of making Mathiu’s charming getaway livable. His was a brilliant plan if he had budgeted on needing years of housework before they began the revolution, but given the flummoxed and offended look Mathiu shot at Toran castle the first time they tried to use the centuries-old plumbing system to pump hot water through the lower levels for a bath and steaming water poured out of every little crevasse in the castle’s massive bulk, flooding the island and killing the spring-green shoots of the vegetables they had just planted for sustenance, Tir felt like Mathiu hadn’t actually thought this shit through.

Luckily they had good hands to begin with—even before Pahn had his adorably slow change of heart, with the combined forces of Tir, Viktor, Cleo, Gremio, Kai, Tai Ho, and LePant—eventually and especially LePant—enough construction gets done that the army practically has an easy time of finishing it once they have an army. Not that they ever get thanked for doing the work of a hundred men as a handful, but there are months of digging, fixing, hauling, stacking, cementing, re-imagining, failures, fixes, and flashes of brilliance that cut up the nightmares of murders, attacks, and defenses that are almost pleasant to recall.

He can remember the young men’s awe as Master Kai, newly recruited, hefted and placed a boulder that Mathiu and the fishermen had been arguing over how to even lift. And he could remember Mathiu trying to clutch that torn sweater around him to hold off the cold spray of Toran Lake in the spring before he finally gave up and went down to shirtsleeves like the rest of them. He remembers Viktor clapping him on the back and telling him he looked almost like a man, too, to Mathiu’s immense displeasure. No one does biting sarcasm like Mathiu, so Tir can’t remember how fantastically he phrased it, but Mathiu immediately replied that Viktor also looked almost like a man these days with all the fur shaved off. Tir believes he complimented him on achieving bipedal movement.

He remembers Tai Ho and Yam Koo refusing to live in the castle they built as more and more women, young people, and young lovers needed rooms of their own, as the only walls with strong rooms, the underground caves, were taken up by blacksmiths, alchemists, and mechanists who needed to know that none of their efforts were taking place in a room that could be easily destroyed. He remembers the half-finished effort to actually shield the walls of the castle, dreamed up by a Mathiu desperate to stop the leaking, before Maas, their first blacksmith, informed them that that was stupid and they should just be reinforcing the walls with natural materials.

He remembers Eileen, baffled, barely able to stand because of how hard she was laughing, as the heavy basket of laundry she carried up and out of the basement, heaving and sweating, was unloaded in a single minute by a dozen embarrassed men who hadn’t realized she had been toiling while they relaxed. Her husband chastised her for working too hard; she spent the rest of the day spotting, adjusting, and fixing their work for them as they broke into the system of copper pipes. Cleo did complicated acrobatics to slip between metal and stone and adjust them.

He remembers Camille racking up her bills higher and higher and Gremio turning paler and paler as she went back and forth to the mainland to pick up nails, cement powder, soap, clothing, tea, groceries, groceries, and more groceries. He remembers hunting down the supplies for alchemists, doctors, farmers, and cooks; the exotic and shady connections they made just for tea, lye, and salt.

Before the day he walked down to find Kirkis next to his death on the docks, he could remember a season of nothing but building, building, building. Viktor took him back and forth to the mainland to follow tips and recruit people he recalled and was convinced he could smooth-talk over to the rebellion; an elevator-builder, a merchant, a sellsword, an information broker, a chef, a thief, a gambler. Anyone at all, from any class, with any standards of respectable behavior; it still seemed like Viktor could win them with a glass of liquor on a cube of ice and a wink and a grin. Tir honestly wasn’t sure if he was attractive, or a good flatterer, or maybe an evil mastermind, or what. He didn’t know why he liked him so much either. Not knowing what he did didn’t change the fact that it worked; their little battalion grew, and grew, and grew; Viktor taking back recruits sooner than they had rooms (or functioning bathrooms) for them and listening to a tirade from Mathiu and Gremio with a smile on his face every time.

And Gremio.

Gremio, too, was eventually induced to take off his heavy cloak and sweater when the sun started rising earlier and bearing down hotter. He wasn’t quite induced to strip half-naked like Viktor or the fishermen, for whom labor in the heat was natural, and giving coy winks to the ladies tittering in the windows was natural too. (Even if those ladies were Marie and Onil, who were just having good fun and cackling like old hens.) No, he kept on an undershirt, at least, short sleeves if he could; still Tir was forced to bear witness to the scars of a hundred years cratering the skin of a twenty-eight-year-old man. He wasn’t the only one who had battle wounds, obviously, but he had the most of them. He had more even than LePant and Kai, though they were both marked sadly by the scourges of sparring and punishment. Gremio had the look not of honorable battle, nor of enslavement, nor even of an accident, but of disaster. The wreck of his flesh made the limp on his leg more apparent, and the cloudiness of his left eye, and the occasional stutter in his voice.

Still he worked for as long as Viktor and LePant and Tai Ho would, and often longer. Because they, Tir finally noticed, retired to drinking, story-telling, laughing, and arguing; Gremio retired to one knee, asking Tir if he would like supper, if he needed anything for his scrapes and bruises, if he would like a bath drawn, if he was feeling okay.

They really made fun of him for it too. Continuing to faithfully serve his master after they defected from the Empire and shattered any bonds of servitude and social status anyone had ever had. They talked about all being equals here; they talked about new order and opportunity for everyone. Gremio seemed a little behind the times, to say the least. And he never said a word about it. He glowered, fumed, and turned up his nose, and went tired back to Tir’s room at night, to ask him if he would like supper, if he needed anything for his scrapes and bruises, if he would like a bath drawn, if he was feeling okay.

A question came to his mind sooner or later, and it was a while before he could find a way to ask it.

-

Even in the afternoon sun, even if his muscles were stinging with work and everyone was pitching in to weed the fields of vegetables, or learn new sword fighting techniques from Kai or LePant or Eileen, or steer a newly born boat through the delta of a southern river, even with the sunlight bearing down on his back, Tir knew a pervasive misery.

Sometimes he remembered Ted, sometimes Odessa, sometimes her, the bandit. Sometimes his father. Sometimes he only remembered the misery itself. Sometimes it did not even feel like his, floating above and around him like a heavy grey sky or a flock of bats, sometimes it was like a ghost, someone else’s mystery misery thrust onto him, sometimes like nothing, the air, the moonlight, the morning fog; and sometimes it was his, distinctly his.

-

But then, of course, he did walk down one bleary morning to find Kirkis half-dead on the docks.

His first thought was not to help him, because Tir thought he was already dead. How sad he thought it was, but how fucking like this place it was, to have dead men float up like red fish on the docks, heavy and thick with drowning. The waters of Toran were, he was told, toxic with the wastes of blacksmiths and alchemists, having made endless weapons of war while on her shores, using her water to cool their machines. That was why they depended on professional fisherman to decide what resilient fish they could eat and what soft ones they would throw back or use for oil.

His second thought was to wonder what it was that had died when he saw the sharp ear poking out of rushes of deep red hair. Slight frame, very small and thin, but mature, evidently; carrying an empty quiver on his back and mottled with bruises and sunburns on incredibly fair skin. He bent down to investigate; he saw him breathe.

“Uncle Tai!” he bellowed down the shoreline as he struggled to heft the waterlogged body into his arms. “Yam Koo!”

He had gotten the elf onto his shoulders and was only a few steps down the dock when Tai Ho, squinting, got a good enough look at him to realize something was wrong. The fishermen were sprinting down the beach, poles shoved into the pebbles, with a gambler and a debt collector, odd company, just on their heels.

“Mother, what’s that?” asked Gasper, quick to catch his breath after a run. Tai Ho was already trying to help him breathe again, pushing on his chest and feeling in his mouth. He had small, round teeth, Tir noticed, and his pink flesh had swollen from swallowing the bitter water. But he was breathing, hoarsely.

“I’ll get Mathiu,” Camille shouted before taking the steps up to the castle three at a time. Tai Ho had gotten the poor creature gasping hard enough to start spouting tiny bursts of water up from his lungs, eyes screwing shut against the pain, in the two minutes it took for her to get the surgeon down the stairs.

Heaving almost as much as the elf from the effort, Mathiu weakly pushed Tai Ho aside and went to listen to the elf’s lungs. He made a growled noise of agitation and shoved at his chest just once. The elf’s eyes flew open as he hacked up a slurry of water, blood, and slime; then he was coughing in recovery, bent over half.

Mathiu directed the men in unfastening the quiver, overshirt, and belt, leaving only the loose underclothing that wasn’t tugging at his skin. Camille grabbed the clothes and folded them anxiously, then said she’d take them to Marie to be cleaned up and dashed away, up walls and through windows. Mathiu directed the stronger men to pick up the creature and bear him safely to his carefully-chosen clinic, above ground, theoretically far away from attackers, and cool, with only north-facing windows.

Tir excused himself to go get food, drink, and medicine for the victim, which, essentially, meant going to get Gremio, telling Gremio what happened, and then watching as Gremio anxiously cooked and concocted.

“I think he’s an elf,” Tir insisted.

“And?”

“So can he take fish oil? Don’t elves just eat vegetables?”

Gremio gave him that look. The one that said ‘are you fucking with me, or are you being dense? Because either is plausible.’ Out loud, he would say something like ‘please don’t joke at a time like this, young Master,’ but his eyes, always sharper than his words, said ‘are you fucking with me, or being dense?’

“I don’t think elves are real.”

“He had pointed ears,” insisted Tir, visually miming the features, “and he was tiny, but he wasn’t a child. He was this big, Gremio.”

“I’m sure you didn’t get a good look at him,” Gremio said, though sounding uncertain. “If he’s waterlogged it’ll help.”

“If he’s waterlogged, I think he’ll want anything but fish oil.”

“Well, he’ll be getting nettle tea to wash down the fish oil and lemon, so he only has to stand it for a minute.” Gremio snapped the kettle off of the stove and onto the stone counter in the same movement as fishing down a knob of gingerroot from the cabinet. He pulled a knife out of his—actually, where did it come from?—and diced like a man administering a sentence. “And soup after that if he can bear it; unless he vomits up the tea, in which case, he gets more tea.”

“Do you want me to bring up something now?...” Tir asked, grinning just a little.

“We’ll… wait for the tea to cool down a minute,” Gremio decided as he spoke. “Mathiu is still working, but the sound of it. He needs to catch his breath if he wants hope of keeping down anything.”

“Why do we have the clinic so close to the kitchen, by the way?”

“We will have to change that eventually,” Gremio agreed, looking with displeasure in the direction of the wet coughing.

Still, he got medicine, tea, and soup ready in remarkably short order. They carried them around the corner and up a set of dark stone stairs, and Gremio knocked on the wall outside the clinic witch knuckles wrapped around a teacup. “Sir,” he called softly, “I have the medicine you wanted. Is it alright to come in?”

“Brace yourselves for a smell,” said Mathiu, sounding dour, “but feel free.”

Tir followed Gremio into the tiny clinic. Just about every room they had was tiny at this point; half of the castle still needed reinforced before they could use it, especially the upper levels, and there was no roof at all. The clinic was one of the most clearly temporary rooms of all of them, with a few makeshift beds, a cabinet with a broken door, some baskets full of linens and bandages, and Mathiu, on a chair. No one had really spent a long time staying in the clinic at this point, Mathiu had only been required to patch up cut shins, thrown backs, sunburns, and one unfortunate case of a snapped wrist in the construction project (Pahn’s). He didn’t seem to be suffering from lack of practice, however. The elf was placed comfortably on a bed, stripped almost bare, and his scrapes were already patched up well, though Mathiu was clearly facing the fact, with gentle touching, that he couldn’t just patch up everything he was looking at. The elf had a vacant expression; he was awake, but Tir would guess he was still dazed, or perhaps had a painful headache.

Gremio went stiff as a board. “Brilliant stars, it is an elf.”

The elf startled in response, trying to shift into a ready position, but just succeeding in hurting his head. His face, made of delicate small parts, like a watch, wound up with pain. Mathiu put his fingers on his knobby shoulders and gently settled him down. “His name is Kirkis,” he said dryly. “And he’s in quite a difficult condition.”

Gremio shrunk a few inches. Tir walked in from behind him, curiously, setting down the teapot and bowl of soup. While Mathiu double-checked the contents of the medication with a humbled Gremio, Tir snuck up closer and closer to the elf, who, seeing him coming, did not stop him, but watched him with wary, blood-shot eyes. To Tir, he looked like a girl; he had soft ginger hair stuck to very pale skin, bright little eyes, and a tapered, skinny waist that, right now, was bejeweled with amethyst bruises. They regarded each other simply, like a cat and a hawk, unsure if or how either would make a move. “You’re Kirkis?” he asked.

Kirkis blinked at him slowly, as if he was still having trouble seeing through the water. “I am,” he said.

“I’m Tir.”

Kirkis nodded, and tried to shake his head, one arm lifting shakily to pull his hair away from his shoulders. “What happened… did I survive? Or is this the Summerlands?”

“Well, this is Toran Castle, and it’s almost autumn,” Tir attempted.

“Toran Castle…” Kirkis blinked more rapidly, driving away the stinging lakewater. “Toran Castle—is this—the Liberation Army?”

“You’re looking at us,” Mathiu admitted, approaching Kirkis with the cup of medicine and the empty teacup. Tir ducked back to where he put down the teapot and produced it for Mathiu, who wasn’t paying attention to him. “Sad though we may appear. Do you come as a friend or a foe, Kirkis?”

Unfortunately, Kirkis was a little more interested in watching Tir try to slowly tip the teapot he was holding into Mathiu’s teacup and fill it up without him noticing, tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth. “Friend,” he said, startled. “Friend, I hope.”

“If you do not come with orders from the Imperium, you are on track to friendship,” Mathiu reassured him, completely unaware that Tir was slowly, slowly tilting the cup he was loosely holding; “since we have a record of accepting any kind of upstart still able to swear that he’d spit on an imperial guard while swerving drunk. Better if you can still swear sober—“ Trying to gesture with his left arm to show his annoyance, he wrenched his hand out of Tir’s subtle grasp and smacked himself in the face with cold china and hot tea. ”Tir McDohl, what are you doing??”

“Pouring the tea?” Tir asked.

Gremio quickly and quietly removed the cup and the pot from the co-commanders as they began to bicker. Kirkis was handed medicine and tea with no further issue. “As General Silverberg was saying, this is Toran Castle, in Lake Toran, headquarters of the Liberation Army, and no, you’re not dead. What brought you here? Was there a sailing accident?”

“No—” Kirkis murmured, shaking hands pushing back his hair—“no, no, I have—how long has it been? What moon is it?”

Gremio’s eyebrows pinched as he pushed the medicine at Kirkis. “Please, I insist. It’s, ah, we should be not long after the dark moon. Two or three days? I’m not totally certain. It’s the fifth day of the month of the scales by our calendar, so I’m not sure…”

Kirkis downed the medicine like it was a bracing shot of liquor and immediately began coughing like it was. Gremio hastened to offer him tea, which he took without hesitation. “I must—” he swallowed. “I must talk to Lady Odessa, immediately. I must warn her of a dire emergency. Please. Sir.”

Gremio silently turned around to set down the teapot. “You can’t speak to Lady Odessa right now,” he said. “Our present leader is commander Tir.”

“Uh?” said Tir, head whipping around when he heard his name. He had been shoving Mathiu’s stupid woolen scarf in his face; the moment of weakness cost him dearly, because Mathiu, shrieking, was able to slap his hands away and struggle him into a headlock.

“Oh,” said Kirkis.

Gremio put his head in his right hand, closed his eyes, and sighed to himself. “Our present leader is commander Tir,” he repeated, louder.

Tir extracted himself from the headlock as Mathiu stepped backwards sheepishly. “Sorry. I bring out the worst in people, or so I’m told,” Tir introduced himself. He held out his hand for Kirkis to shake with a grin. Gremio watched as if he were watching a tornado crawl up the horizon, unable to stop it.

Kirkis took the pains necessary to grab Tir’s hand and shake it once. “Commander Tir,” he said weakly, with the slightest smile. “I am Kirkis of the Great Forest, hunter among the Toran Elves. I’ve come to beg for your aid.”

“Sure,” said Tir.

“No,” said Mathiu, literally wagging a finger at Tir. “Sir Kirkis, I am Mathiu Silverberg, lead and only strategist of the Liberation Army. What aid do you request?”

“Help,” begged Kirkis, faltering. “The aid of your army. The great General Kwanda Rosman has made an abominable declaration that he will exterminate all elves. No one will help us; no one cares about our lives. Already I have begged the Emperor to soften the hatred of his General and to no avail; no one will listen to me. You’re my last hope. Please. Please lend us the power of the Liberation Army.”

“Yes,” Tir declared.

“No,” Mathiu snapped, “no, we can’t. Tir, we don’t have an army.”

Tir snapped his eyes up to Mathiu, and he was shocked to see a burning hate in him; detestation for being stopped. “General Kwanda is planning to exterminate all elves, Matt. Were you just listening? He wants to kill every single elf.”

“We still don’t have an army, Tir. We—”

“We have to try!” Tir insisted. “We can’t let that happen!”

“We have some bandits, some men from the old, broken Imperial army, fishers and gamblers; we don’t have a tenth of the men we would need to just go fight Kwanda Rosman! Tir, listen—”

“You’re going to let him wipe an entire kind of people off of the face of the earth? Do you even understand what that—”

“That’s why we’re going to send a reconnaissance mission, Tir!” Mathiu barked, holding up a hand. “Of course we can’t allow that to happen. What kind of man do you think I am? But we don’t stand a chance unless we tackle this intelligently. We won’t be helping the elves if we throw ourselves at Kwanda unprepared, we’ll be dead!”

Tir’s suspicious glower slowly smoldered into a pinched, unhappy expression. Taking a deep breath, Mathiu strove to lower his voice.

(Gremio forced himself to put down the teapot he had gripped and pulled back so that he could smash it on Mathiu’s head if he had struck Tir.)

“Out only strength is the hope that people see in us,” Mathiu continued. “That is the only strength liberation has ever had. We must never betray that hope. Or doubt it. Without it, it is just a ruin on an island full of rebels, rejects, thieves, and gamblers.

“We’ll send a small reconnaissance mission to gather intelligence,” he continued, turning away from Tir to shakily rifle through the drawers of his cabinet. “It’s hard for heavily armed imperial troops to move through the forest so we’ll have much more time than they do, especially with a guide. Likely we’ll start by simply moving or hiding the elves… or recruiting them, if they’re amenable. They’re fine archers. And once the elves are mobilized, the predictable Imperial army will be at a great disadvantage.”

“Many could be convinced to join,” Kirkis insisted, quietly. “Some are in denial of the great danger but many are afraid, ready to act. I can take you there. We can make a plan.”

“We’ll help,” Mathiu confirmed to him, turning back around. “I only apologize that we can not, in fact, hurl ourselves at the Imperial army for you. We are too weak.”

Kirkis moved to thank him again, but Tir interrupted. “Who will go on the mission, then?” he asked, voice composed, eyes sharp.

Mathiu rubbed his eyes. “Not me, unfortunately.” Mathiu was not battle-ready any more, they all knew. “You, obviously. Viktor, absolutely. Gremio, to keep you both in line.”

“My pleasure,” Gremio said acerbically.

“After that… Ms. Cleo, I believe, so you have a skilled long-range fighter of your own if things become dicey. A few more people if you choose; but you should keep your numbers small and your troops quiet and agile.”

“You’ve shot quiet with Viktor and agile with Gremio,” Tir replied bluntly, “so I think I’ll stop while we’re behind. Or, no, we’ll bring Pahn, so Cleo doesn’t become depressed again.”

“Fantastic, done,” said Mathiu, palms open. “We’ll wait a few nights for Kirkis to recover, then—”

“No, please,” Kirkis interrupted, “we must go as soon as possible.”

Mathiu shrugged. “We’ll wait a night for Kirkis to regain some of his strength. That should be enough time for everyone to get ready, considering you’re mostly taking the people already used to sailing back to the mainland for recruiting missions. But if you go by water, you’ll want a better sailor.”

“It has to be by land,” said Kirkis. “The water route is held by Imperials.”

“Then it’s settled. Both of you be off and let me finish making sure the poor man’s teeth don’t fall out and his gallbladder won’t rupture; you’ll have plenty of preparing to do on your own side.”

Tir turned on his heel to stalk out of the room. Gremio stood up with more dignity. “Make sure he eats his soup,” he warned Mathiu. To Kirkis, he inclined his head, and said farewell. Kirkis did the same in return.

He had to jog to catch up to Tir, who practically marched away. “Young Master,” he implored.

“What?”

Gremio’s eyebrows pinched again. Not that Tir could see it, but he could practically hear it. “Young Master, is this wise?”

Tir stopped abruptly. “Is this wise?” he repeated, incredulous. “Are you going to tell me we shouldn’t try to stop a genocide too?”

“No, no,” Gremio said, walking until he was by Tir’s side. Tir wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I mean that General Kwanda is a powerful man, and a very skilled warrior. We’re putting ourselves into serious danger, and risking our positions. And—“

“Gremio,” asked Tir, tone unsteady, “do you just… not understand that we’re leading a rebel army that wants to destroy the Empire?”

Gremio fidgeted with his hands. “We don’t want to destroy the Empire.”

“Don’t we?” Tir asked, glaring up at Gremio. He watched him worry the corner of his bottom lip, and his eyes cast about uncertainly. “Because just about everyone in this castle wants to destroy the Empire, and they’ve told you so, in words. Or did you think they were joking? You’re kind of an outlier here.”

“Master—” Gremio’s high cheeks began to turn pink. “You—But—”

“But what?” Tir asked stubbornly.

“How can you justify that kind of thinking with Master Teo’s position as the General?”

Tir glared at Gremio, eye to eye, and waited for him to fold.

Slowly, Gremio lowered his gaze, and his tense posture relaxed. Trying to hide his downward glances, Tir watched his hands, which were grasping at each other, slowly release themselves into a resigned position, palm to palm.

“We’ll just have to make him see things our way,” Tir commanded, and let Gremio go. “We’d better tell Viktor and Cleo; they’ll have stuff to wrap up.”

Gremio spoke, whisper-quiet. “There will be consequences.”

“What?”

“I don’t think it’ll be so easy.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t think it’ll be as easy as you think it will be,” Gremio repeated. “I don’t think it’ll go so well. I think people—you—will get hurt. Master.”

In a moment, a moment far out of its place in a dull day of arguing, injuries, spilled drinks and fumbled connotations, missed connections and mismatched motivations, clarity drifted silently through the window with the light of the setting sun, on its gentle rays. A small clarity, dim as the evening, and a red one. It was this that Tir realized: he had been shouting at a voice in his head rather than the person at his side, and the person at his side had been struck with it. That, moreover, he had assigned a spirit of contention, detached from any real person, whose motivation it was to tear him down, to a person who had nothing to do with it, whose motivation was to protect him, and attacked him for something he had never done. In fact, he realized, as he finally saw Gremio’s downcast green eyes, his shoulders bent low, he hadn’t been talking to Gremio at all. He was about to go to his room remembering a different day than the one Gremio remembered. One that he had made up.

“I’ll be fine,” he hears himself telling Gremio. “Everyone will be fine, okay?”

Gremio nods.

There’s nothing he knows to do except take him along.

-

There’s something that happens the longer he sticks with this misery, the more intimately they get to know each other, through nights alone, bright moon slowly shifting into dark moon and back again. It begins to change him, and change with him; he would never know if he didn’t keep journal entries, fewer and fewer though they came, to read back and not remember, not recognize, not understand. He forgets the causes of the problems he has; he only remembers he has them.

He knows, for instance, that no one here really knows him. He would be exhausted in remembering how he knows that.

He begins, with dark disconcert, to wish that he was not spending all of these nights alone. With the thoughts. With the misery. Alone except for Gremio outside the door; nearby, it seemed, and, it seemed, more and more unreachable.

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2: Truly terrible tea in mass quantities.

The journey to the village of the Elves takes a long time. There’s nothing for it; it might take a week to walk from the shore of Lake Toran to the edge of the Great Forest, but that would be if they were taking the road and not dodging guards, garrisons, and watchful eyes on the way. As such even getting to the forest takes a week, and Kirkis makes it sound like walking to the village of the elves will take longer, because the true way through the hidden paths of the forest is turning and strange; the magic requires it.

Viktor seems to accept that as true, even though it sounds fishy to just about everyone else, so they reluctantly believe it. After a week of alternate marching and dodging they camp on the edge of the forest, its great dark line obscuring the sky. They’re brave enough to make a fire when they’re certain they’ll blend into a dozen such hunting parties brightening the hillsides around.

Tensions haven’t been so high for the past week, Tir reflects, thankfully but doubtfully. Almost everything he remembered was positive attitudes, positive movement, good plans and good procedure—when Viktor was around. When he went to scout or pursue an enemy or even to take a shit, things tended to get quiet fast.

Viktor had a very real effect, Tir considered as he observed him drive a post into the ground with his bare fist so that Kirkis, light on his feet, could drape a tent over it. Viktor had one of those uncountable, unprovable things that Tir was beginning to appreciate; a personality, a force, an effect, a something that he enacted on everyone else, unable to obtain, unable to separate from him, or distill, or transfer; a gift. It was something Tir had too, or so he was told, constantly. If Odessa had said it, after all, he didn’t even have the right to doubt it.

Perhaps he and Viktor were alike.

He watched him, quick, simple, and strong, snap together a campsite with a force that would frighten the average person; except his charm drew you away so fast you hardly noticed. His words were a bracing drink.

His attention was snapped away from Viktor as Gremio laid down his equipment next to him, stifling a sigh when the weight was finally lifted from his back. “We should set up too, young Master, before it gets too dark to see.”

Tir agreed quietly, gaze slowly flickering back to the task at hand. It went without saying that Cleo and Pahn had a tent together; it seemed like they were being polite, because Tir hadn’t heard anything from the tent, but Viktor still mocked them in the mornings. Maybe he was making up having heard anything, Tir thought, embarassed; maybe he just liked making Pahn mad and Cleo roll her eyes.
After that unspoken choice it was known that Gremio and Tir would be sharing space, or that, really Gremio would be taking up guard right outside of Tir’s space. That left Kirkis and Viktor who, though being unable to bond on the basis of being reasonable people, both at least had the fear of the enemy in their hearts, and they came to consensus that they would share a third space in the interest of having someone at their back. How that worked out for Kirkis Tir didn’t know, but he seemed to sleep fine through Viktor’s snoring. Maybe Mathiu had sent medicine that helped him sleep with him, because he was always awake and bright-eyed, at dawn, ready to sprint across the hillsides while the humans lumbered as best they could behind him.

Gremio went to set up the fire while Tir put things down inside their tent by himself. A brazier to keep lit until bed time; a bed of linens and a blue and cream quilt for himself, and a sparser one for Gremio that he will hardly use, if at all. Weapons and equipment between the beds and a knife at the entranceway, a basin and some pots by each bed, tightly bound belongings at the back, where they would stay out of the way. The moonlight lit up the colorful surface of the linen tent from behind, illuminating a violent and golden starmap that blocked out the stars. On rainy nights they used Tir’s quilt to keep out the moisture and dried it in the morning; this night was bright. He lit the lamp to finish his work; everything organized neatly, grass and ferns poking up from between the travel-soft bedrolls and dully glowing armor.

Gremio didn’t look unfamiliar without his armor and his cloak anymore, but he still looked strange.

Tir waited out most of the evening in his tent, writing in his journal, unconnected thoughts and conclusions unsatisfied, sense not quite made of matters he could not quite settle. What had made so many friends into foes? What had made a man who had once been a wonderful, funny dinner guest into a harbinger of genocide? What had turned a childhood friend into a 300-year-old mystery; no, what had turned a 300-year-old mystery into a childhood friend? What, if anything, turned Tir McDohl into Commander Tir—and what, though he did not let it dwell long under thick black lines, turned a familiar face into an unsettled feeling deep in his guts?

Gremio brought him dinner, Gremio took his plate back away, Gremio told him they were going to get clean and left again.

He ended up poking his head out of the tent, feeling alone and strange, when everyone but Cleo was gone.

“You’re missing the boy things,” she said with a grin, spreading around the coals so they would smolder.

“I’m alright with that.” He peered around, eyes squinting. “Where are they all?”

“River. Piercing cold and almost pitch black. I’m sure everyone is having fun.”

“Did they all wait for you to go first?”

Cleo grinned.

“You’re awful,” he accused.

“No, they’re gentlemen,” she said innocently. “Except for Viktor, but the gentleman party outnumbers him.”

He smiled. “Viktor isn’t so bad.”

“I sure wouldn’t let him touch me.”

Tir waited for more, but didn’t get it. “What does that mean?”

Cleo flicked something at him that he couldn’t discern in the darkness. He dodged it like a pro anyway. “It means something you have no business wondering about.”

He groaned. “I’m not a child, Cleo. I know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why’d you have to ask what it means, smart guy?”

“Because you sound like you’re accusing him of something,” Tir claimed haughtily, thinking fast. “Everyone always sounds like they’re accusing him of something. But I haven’t seen him do anything. Except lie all the time. And pickpocket, and steal things that aren’t necessarily in pockets. And… drink like a soldier. And beat people up. For fun. And money. And maybe he jokes around girls sometimes, but he doesn’t, like… make them feel gross, or anything.”

Cleo snorts. “He’s no Kraze, you’re right.” She turned around with an impish grin. “It’s not just girls, though, is the thing. He’s a queer. And it’s not just ‘jokes—‘”

“A what?”

“What?”

“He’s a what?”

“A queer?”

“What?”

Cleo froze. “Shit.”

Tir finally poked more than his head and shoulders out of the tent, oozing in Cleo’s direction. “Cleeeeoooo.”

“Oh Shit. Um. Ask Gremio. No, wait, don’t do that. His head will explode.”

“Cleeeoooo.”

“He’ll kill me. I didn’t say anything?”

“Cleeeeeeoooo.” He poked her shoulder.

“Don’t make me explain this. I’m sorry, Master Teo, wherever you are! I don’t want to corrupt your son!”

“There’s no way I’m letting you go now,” he sang, continuing the barrage of pokes.

“Tiiiiiiir…” she whined.

“If you don’t tell me, I will ask Gremio.”

“Noooo!” She whacked his hands away. “He’ll know it was me! Shit!” She looked around quickly. “Ok! A queer is a man who likes men and women, ok?”

“Like… what?” asked Tir, as honestly confused as he had just been faking.

“Oh fuuuuck,” Cleo groaned, hiding her head in her hands. “No, Tir, please. I repent. Don’t make me do this.”

“What do you meeeean,” asked Tir with suspicious, hooded eyes.

“Nooo. Ok. Alright. I’ll do it. Forgive me, Master Teo,” she pleaded one last time, her hands folded over her mouth.

“If he’s even listening, he has a lot more serious grievances to forgive us for,” Tir reminded her.

“Alright,” declared Cleo, “sit your butt down and listen. Nope, sit your butt down.”

Tir plunked down on the dry grass across from her, chin in his hands, eyes wide.

“You’re what,” asked Cleo, “16 now?”

“Yeah, we literally just had a birthday party.”

“I forgot what year it was!”

“You forgot what year it was?”

“You want me to explain this shit or not?”

“Ok, ok.”

“You’re like 16 now, so, even though you are a baby, you know what I mean when I say ‘a man who likes women.’”

“Y…yes? That seems obvious? Unless you’re talking about something other than?”

“Nope, that’s it.” Cleo waved a hand at him. “Normal guys. They like girls, they want to have lots of sex with them.”

Tir wrinkled his nose and quietly groaned.

“You asked, kid. That’s how it’s supposed to be with a guy, right?”

“I guess?”

“Well, Viktor’s another kind of guy. He’s the kind of guy who wants to have sex with men and women. That’s a queer.”

Tir raised an eyebrow incredulously. “That sounds fake.”

“It’s not fake? Why would I make that up! It’s just weird,” Cleo protested. “Most people aren’t like that. And if they are you usually never know. They just get a wife and sleep with their master of house secretly or something. Or get a wife and don’t do anything at all. It’s mostly guys that didn’t have dads or like… guys that had serious trouble with girls, I think.”

“Not having a dad makes you queer?”

“I dunno, sometimes? I don’t really get how it works. I was told that it was guys who didn’t have dads or who were beat by their moms and don’t like women. I guess that doesn’t really make sense, though, so I don’t know how it happens,” she admitted, flushed, “you got me there. It happens sometimes. Usually to really fucked up guys like Viktor. It’s not common. That’s all the pattern I’ve noticed.”

“How is he ‘fucked up’?”

“What? Nope. I’m drawing the line here,” Cleo stated, jabbing a finger at the ground. “I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. Even look at him if you want to see how he’s fucked up. He does everything he does in a fucked up way.”

“???”

“Are you serious?” She waved her hands around. “His?? Everything he does? How he’s so pushy and creepy about everything? No boundaries? Judges you and makes statements no one should make out loud?”

“???”

“Alright, just watch him, he’ll prove me right,” she concluded stubbornly, crossing her arms.

Tir shook his head. “He’s like… charming? That’s how he—”

Cleo cut him off with a noise of disgust, dragging one hand down her face. “He’s not charming, Tir. He’s a freak. You’re too young for this. I’ve just confused you.”

“I’m not too young for this,” Tir protested, with a spark lighting in his gut. “I know how it works, Cleo. I just don’t know the stuff you’re talking about. And I think you’re wrong about Viktor. He’s pushy and forward and kind of mean, but that’s because he runs an army. What’s he supposed to do, politely ask people to quit burning down elf villages?”

“Uh, you run that army, Tir,” said Cleo, leaning back to pick up her drinking horn, “and I’m pretty sure you are about to ask people politely to stop burning down elf villages, if I know you.”

Tir glowered.

“Don’t give me that face.”

“You’re wrong about Viktor.”

“Alright, I’m wrong about Viktor,” Cleo sighed, “but actually watch him for five minutes, without that rosy-eyed perception you got of him somehow, and may the moon bless me if I know how you did, and you’ll see.”

“Sure,” said Tir, packing as much disbelief as he possibly could into one syllable. “Sure. I’ll give him a good hard stare and see that he’s actually bossy and sleazy, which means actually he likes having sex with men, because he didn’t have a mom or something, and maybe he’s actually a bear in a man suit.”

They only bickered for a little while longer before they heard the men stumbling back to camp in the dark, lit by a spare old lantern. Tir could see Gremio was the one holding it; his pale face was inhuman in the light of the lantern, death-pale, like a ghost coming out of the dark trees.

“Ah shit,” said Cleo, “they asked me to get their drinks ready. Help me pour out a lot of mead.”

“Why are we drinking so much mead anyway?” Tir gripped, springing up to help her.

“It waters down well, heats up well, and stays sterile,” Cleo recited, putting a bit of Gremio’s soft accent in her voice. “Helps you sleep well and gives you energy. And we didn’t exactly have any time to bring any of last year’s wine or beer to Toran Castle, now did we.”

Tir reluctantly poured some mulling spices into the cauldron Cleo was frantically shaking mead into. “Quick,” she said, “fill up the big basket with river water and bring it back. I’ll distract them while you pour it in. Maybe they won’t notice.”

“Totally,” said Tir, picking up the earthware basket. He slung it up onto one shoulder and started sprinting off past the other warriors to the river they just came from. “Hey guys, Cleo forgot about your drinks.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Kirkis said, straining his head as Tir rushed past him.

“Fuck,” said Viktor.

“Oh, hello, young… Master…” Gremio trailed off as Tir disappeared into the dark.

It wasn’t far to the river, and once his eyes adjusted to being out of the firelight, he could see that the stars were bright and that the leaves and the grass shone silver, faintly, suggesting the wooded world around him. He had always been light on his feet; his nimbleness and agility had really been nourished by Master Kai, the staff-fisghting master who, in retrospect, knew that Tir would never get as big or as tall as most people he would have to fight some day. Kai pushed him to hone quick reflexes, to learn to dodge, duck, and squeeze around obstacles at his top speed, and to have the pride to take small advantages instead of waiting for the perfect strike. Nowadays, with even the faintest vision he could jump around rocks and scattered tree roots without injury and was at the river in a fraction of the amount of time it took everyone else to go there and back.

It was when he was kneeling down by the dark water that he noticed that Soul Eater glowed in the dark.

Elemental runes always lit up, he knew that; so did most battle runes, though not so brightly. He thought Soul Eater had been nothing but black.

“I guess it just takes it being really, really dark to notice,” he said to it, watching his right hand as he tipped it back and forth. It was so faint he thought it might have even been a trick, like watershine, but he could see it in the river’s shimmering reflection, too, a dull, deep red glow, as though his skin were sore around it. When he waved his left hand over it, he could cover the light and watch it shine, dimly, sickly, through his fingers. He flexed his fingers, back and forth, watching the glow dim and heighten; it was like coals, he decided, coals which were almost dead, about to fade out with final smoke. He took off his hand and watched it; and watched it.

“Huh,” he muttered, uneasily, “ok.”

He picked up the basket again and dipped it into the dark river. The waters flowed into it heedlessly, unaware that they couldn’t get back out, eyeless, distressed. He filled it up most of the way, but not entirely; he couldn’t lift it when it was totally full. Not that he was interested in anyone knowing that. He pulled it back into both arms and began walking back to the campsite, which seemed as bright as a star on the earth now that he was outside of it.

The daffodil-yellow light was bordered by the fabric of their tents, violet, blue, and emerald; silver charms and glass whistles glittered on them, shifting back and forth. Their solid walls separated the brightness of the camp from the featureless darkness outside with jagged, corners, an uneven, broken window into a better place. The brass cauldron was settled over the fire, reflecting shimmering golden curves of light around the party; Cleo in an undershirt, waving a stirring spoon at Pahn; Pahn practically undressed as he dried off in the firelight, dark hair let down, using a little glimmering razor to shave his stubble. Next to them was Kirkis, bent over the coals of the fire, shifting and testing; it looked like he was putting out some late-night snacks to heat. His orange hair was pulled backwards and water dripped down from it over his shoulders; he was absurdly pale, bright, his big green eyes like a mirror to the fire. He noticed Tir before anyone else, looked up, and waved briefly. Viktor and Gremio were on the opposite side of the fire, still standing, with their backs to him. Gremio was the person to still be wearing clothing, of course; he even had his hair towel-dried, he assumed, so that he could tie it back like he always did. Viktor had gone the same way as Pahn; he could barely be said to be wearing anything, and water still dripped down his back as if he had just stepped out of the river and shook himself once. He had dark spots on his back, Tir noticed; dark spots and the shining red flesh of scars and burns, and a light covering of dark hair. Was it being 300 pounds of pure muscle? Was that just how mountain people looked? Did he do something to have all that hair? Tir didn’t fucking know.

“Hey, so,” he said, as he got close enough to be in sight range to the humans.

Unfortunately, he said this at the same second that Viktor, apparently sensing a weakness, snaked the heel of his hand down the back of Gremio’s shirt, over his belt, and grabbed his ass. Gremio immediately executed a well-practiced elbow strike to Viktor’s gut, which, though thick, was not quite thick enough to keep the force of Gremio’s frustrated stabbing away from the squishy bits hidden inside. Viktor wheezed and bent over, only for Gremio to crack his heel down on his foot as he snarled, “you fucking sleazy son of a—”

This turned Gremio around just far enough to see Tir standing not far behind him, holding a full basket of water, mouth slightly open, and eyes peeled.

“Young master!” he finished his sentence, flushed red. Viktor, through his wheezing, started chortling.

“You have the water,” noticed Cleo, “neat. Pour it in, the mead’s already heating up and I don’t want it to boil undiluted.”

“Yeeahhh,” said Tir, inching by Gremio, “sure.” He stared at Gremio as he walked, daring him, mentally, to say some shit in his defense.

Gremio said, “let me, uh, help, you, with that.”

Pahn, however, declared he had it, picked up the bowl, fumbled it, and dropped the whole thing into the cauldron. The person who got the worst of the incident was, of course, Kirkis, who was splashed with fire-hot watery honey. As Cleo shrieked and waved a spoon at Pahn, who, to his credit, took it well, Gremio rushed over to Kirkis and began aggressively taking care of him, despite Kirkis’s insistence that he was alright. This was contrary to the evidence that his skin was turning red as an autumn apple in ugly blotches, over areas that were already ugly-colored blotches caused by almost drowning.

Tir walked over to the cauldron, slipped the earthenware bowl out of the cauldron, and began stirring the remaining mead. Thin, but if he put some tea leaves in, they’d have a relaxing bedtime drink.

Viktor wandered up with a mug, fished some mead out, and started drinking. “Not bad, considering.”

Tir gave him something of a stinkeye. “Relax,” said Viktor, putting up a palm, eyes wide, “wasn’t your fault. That honor goes to tall, dark, and stupid over there.”

Tir looked sufferingly over at Pahn, who was now, it seemed, trying to convince Cleo that that wasn’t a capital offense. “Pahn isn’t dumb,” he said, half-heartedly, “he’s just… not smart.”

“An affliction so many of us suffer from,” Viktor agreed, smiling.

Tir only hummed in response, not meeting his eyes.

“Something’s on your mind tonight.”

Tir glanced him over quickly, then bent down to rifle through Gremio’s cooking supplies for tea leaves. “I’m… I’ve been thinking about how everyone was different from how they thought they were, I guess.”

“Oh?”

“I suppose I had it on my mind… that I know Kwanda Rosman, and he isn’t like what Kirkis says,” he admitted. “Or I thought he wasn’t. But that goes for a lot of people. Everywhere we go when we travel from town to town, through the fields, we just see misery, and I’ve known the people who were starving them and killing them my whole life. Dad would dress me up for them and make sure I acted polite. I spend a lot of time having tea with Mr. Oppenheimer. Or Ms. Shulen. Or Mr. Ain Guide. Or… just about anyone else I’ve heard you and Mathiu and the old soldiers snarling about so far.” Tir started telling himself to shut up in his head, but apparently, he wasn’t listening. “It’s not just them too. Gremio. Cleo. My dad. Everyone I grew up with… they’re not who I thought they were. It’s not even that we’re the enemy to everyone else. Though that sucks. I just didn’t know who they were. I wasn’t trusted with it.

“I guess you don’t tell kids the truth,” he finished, trying to make light of it. “Goddammit, where are Gremio’s tea leaves.”

“I don’t know, but I do know you have a fistful of mint right now, which wouldn’t be the worst choice?”

“Mint isn’t tea, Viktor.”

“I know that neither thing is ale,” he griped, taking another reluctant swig of thin nectar. “Nah. You’re right. They were all lying through their teeth.”

“What?”

“They were all lying their asses off. They thought you were a baby and you didn’t need to be told the truth. Confront them about it. Watch them. See if they go running around in circles to excuse their selves or fess up. You grew up with a bad crowd. Most of them only cared about control and having power over you. The sooner you start asking questions about what they told you, the better for you.”

“Uh,” said Tir, “huh?”

Viktor grinned an animal grin over his drink. “You sound like you value honesty. I think your crew is full of horseshit.”

“Except for tall, dark, and stupid?” Tir asked.

“Hell no. especially tall, dark, and stupid. He ate the horseshit they gave him. So to speak, I guess.” Viktor looked off for a minute, as if trying to examine the construction of his metaphor in the darkness, and gave up. “Blondie,” he called over to Gremio, “is he dying, or what’s up?”

“He’s covered in second degree burns, is ‘what’s up,’” Gremio snapped, noticeably disdainful about using Viktor’s slang, “so if you would get me salve and make some mint, I would be much appreciative.”

Tir shrugged and dropped the bundle of mint leaves into the unholy concoction. “Done.”

Gremio and Kirkis watched the quarter-pound of dried mint disappear into the cauldron of hot, watery spiced mead with equal looks of horrified fascination. “That… uh… thank you, sir,” said Gremio weakly.

“I’m fine, really,” Kirkis insisted.

“I’m going to drink all of that fucking abomination,” Viktor stated.

-

Tir excused himself pretty quickly after that. Notably, he did not drink any of that abomination, though he was to be told later that Kirkis, true to character, was a very good sport about it.

Lying down in the dim tent, he opened his journal again and flipped to the pages. He reread, considered, and reviewed.

He put it down with dim visions dancing in his head, far-away times, picnics at the river, being pulled away from beggars, hushed words in the hallways; being brought downstairs for dinner, to a table full of family, kicking his feet in the air as Gremio giggled and fawned. Things collided, tried to mesh, but nothing fit together. The equations of what he knew as opposed to what everyone else already knows; the emotional memory, the images recalled, and the facts lost, all thin, wavering over each other, and pale. Gremio coming to his bed after he had a nightmare, Gremio doing schoolwork with him, Gremio taking the blame for a broken window because Tir had been scared of what his father would say. Gremio quietly helping put up blocks of stone with everyone else to build the castle tower, brow pinched and cheeks pink as he tried to ignore them speaking ill of Teo. Gremio’s neck and shoulder, a thick, old, white scar, like the dead limb of a tree. Viktor’s hand inching down Gremio’s back to—

Tir furrowed his brow, annoyed, and rolled over in bed. He had a lot to think about, but he just—kept thinking about what he saw and heard tonight, with uneasy dissatisfaction. A “fucking queer.” “Fucked up.” Viktor’s hand inching down Gremio’s back to touch his—“pushy and creepy, no boundaries—” “you fucking sleazy son of a—" “full of horseshit.”

It was all so… sad.

He found himself staring at the wavering red light of Soul Eater on his hand.

Eventually, he noticed the light shifting, and his eyes snapped up to see Gremio’s silhouette, blocking the dim firelight. He settled down to sit outside the tent, head bowed down. Tir watched him ruffle and smooth his hair, fix his hair tie; run a hand down his face, heave his shoulders.

He found that he could feel his heart beating as he considered what he was about to do.

“Gremio,” he called, softly, pulling the entrance to the tent back a little.

Gremio turned his head to look at him with one soft green eye. “Young Master, are you well?”

“I’m fine,” he said. He shuffled onto his thighs. “Hey, Gremio, you don’t have to stay outside all night.”

Gremio seemed calculating, Tir thought, as though he were trying to find a test in his words. “I would rather guard,” he protested in a whisper. “It’s more comfortable to me. I don’t like not having one.”

“But you don’t have to spend all night out there,” Tir argued.

Gremio turned around to face him, putting his back to the outside. “I usually don’t. I come in for a little while.”

“Not often.”

“Sometimes I can’t sleep.”

Tir, who had seen him passed out at the kitchen table while he waited for something to finish cooking on the fire, suddenly found that he doubted that. Stars, that had seemed funny at the time. “Well, then you should come inside tonight, so you can try.”

“Young master…”

“If Kirkis is covered in burns he won’t be sleeping,” Tir insisted. “He’ll hear if anything happens.”

Gremio raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little mean of you, young master.”

“I’m being situationally aware.”

Gremio sighed. “I’ll come in if you want me to.”

Tir held open the flap.

Gremio clambered in. He had always been a tall man; Tir occasionally saw him having trouble with short doorways, especially in their own house, which was made in an Eastern style. He carefully settled his axe back at the doorway, then he loosened his cloak so he could roll it up as a pillow. All the while he was preparing for bed, he didn’t say a word.

“You got hurt too,” Tir observed, surprising himself with a dark tone in his voice.

Gremio jumped. “Pardon me?”

“When the hot water splashed. You were right there; you got hurt too.”

“Oh—no. No, I just got some on my clothes, I didn’t feel anything.”

Tir stared at Gremio.

Gremio started shrinking under his stare. “What?”

“Are you lying to me?”

“What?” gasped Gremio.

“You’re lying to me,” Tir hissed. “You were right next to Kirkis. You obviously got hurt too, but you didn’t put anything on your burns.”

“What? No,” Gremio insisted, “I’m fine, Master.”

“Well, show me.”

“What?”

“Take off your clothes and show me you didn’t get any burns.”

“Uh— but—” Gremio started turning pink. “Yes, but— okay.” Tir could see as he began rolling them up that his pants did have sugar stains on them; they looked dark, sticky and incredibly uncomfortable. Gremio realized that his pants weren’t going to roll up as high as they had too, turned red, and started unlacing his boots. Tir watched him set the boots in the corner and go up on his knees to unlace his pants. His eyes followed his hands down as he reluctantly pulled the fabric down off of his hips and thighs—much harder and more toned, he noticed, than they ever looked in the sort of clothing he chose to wear.

But, in the fashion of the northern country he came from, it was very thick, durable clothing. Underneath were nothing but his pale thighs, with old wounds, for sure, and a bruise or two from shoving stones around and knocking into pan handles, but no burns; the skin was slightly pink from being scalded momentarily, but that was all.

“I guess I was a little bit burnt,” Gremio mumbled, “but, um, I hardly felt it. Some of my nerves are dead; I guess that’s my fault. It’s, uh, an old injury… so. I’m sorry, I’ll still, put something on it if you’d like.”

Tir was trying really hard to listen to what Gremio was saying, but it was a little quieter than him mentally screaming at himself to not stare at his. Don’t stare at him. Tir McDohl, you are a noble-raised man of good stock from fine culture. Don’t stare at another man’s.

“I mean, you probably should,” he finally said, turning away. “It’s still not good to be burnt. Uh. Even if you can’t feel it? Let me get your salve stuff.”

Tir turned around and stared at the wall for the process of Gremio taking care of his upper thigh burns, and hated himself. He waited until he heard the noise of Gremio re-clothing himself and felt like the pinnacle of uncomfortable and weird. “Sorry to be… pushy.”

“I…” Gremio swallowed. “I understand it was concern, young master.”

Tir glanced over his shoulder, wishing his face wasn’t burning so much. “You have, uh… a leg injury too?”

“The knee. They’re not the same after they’re hit once,” he said sadly. “It’s a good place to strike if you really hate someone. The bones were… after you get stuck seriously enough some will remain deadened.”

“What, forever?”

Gremio nodded, eyes cast down. “Some people are lucky and recover, but if it’s been several years, you can count on it being gone.”

Tir shuffled over to him, curious. “So—wait, is it just, like, your leg? You can’t feel anything?

“The upper half,” said Gremio, smoothing a palm down from mid-thigh to his knee. “A bit under the knee, but not all of it. Most of my toes, actually.”

Tir placed his hand gently over his knee. “Like, here?”

“The side is alright—it’s down here, and over here.” Gremio guided his hand.

“Oh,” said Tir, looking down at him. “Huh.”

Gremio spoke up with hesitation. “Master, you seem… distressed. Is something wrong?”

When Tir looked up, he met Gremio’s eyes too well. They locked onto each other, strangely fascinated, and looked down to look away.

“Are we friends?”

“What?”

Tir felt his heart pounding, to his own embarrassment. He thought his hand might be shaking, so he curled it back in. It was only that the question had been bouncing around in his head for months, and he kept trying to find time to say it, and now was the dumbest time, but— “Just. Are we friends?”

“Ah,” gaped Gremio, wide-eyed, “well, no.”

Tir felt dizzy.

“You’re my master, obviously,” Gremio continued, dumbfounded. “I… follow you. I serve you. And I’ve raised you, to the best of my ability, though I admit to many faults…” he cast his eyes down again. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Oh.”

“I only mean that we have… I’m not in that position, Sir,” he continued meekly. “I understand why you would be confused. But I’m your servant.”

“Of course,” Tir heard himself say.

Gremio took in a breath, but—didn’t say anything. He clenched and unclenched his hands, then turned around to pick his cloak back up. “I should keep an eye on things tonight,” he said quietly. “Kirkis being out of commission means we need someone with good eyes more, especially so close to the Great Forest.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And with Viktor drinking more than…” he pinched his nose and sighed. “It’s not that important. If there actually is danger he’ll snap up like a trap and I know it.” He muttered something and went to open up the entrance to the tent, one arm reaching down to his axe. “Sleep well, young master. And…” his face turned away, into the gloom of the night. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll take care of myself.”

The wall closed up behind him.

-

Tir wasn’t sure why he kept crying. It’s not like he was surprised. That’s exactly what Gremio fucking would say.

He began to experiment with how bright Soul Eater could shine in the dark. It was very dark in there. How hadn’t he noticed before?

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3: A pyre, a first name.

Tir spent a lot of time with Kirkis during the next few days, the only person on the face of the Earth he wasn’t aggravated with. He learned a lot about elves, actually. Kirkis said they tended to be small and thin because they lived in tall trees, or on mountains, or even in caves, historically. In other words, in places without a lot of good air. That’s also why they had superior night vision and farsight. He learned that almost every elf child starts learning how to shoot arrows once they can stand on their own; a history of being sustenance hunters informed a harsh lifestyle that wasn’t entirely necessary anymore. Kirkis could name any bird in the trees by its whistle; he could hear a storm rumbling by half a day away. He gathered plants he claimed were good food compulsively in his bag, roots Tir would have never known were under his feet and tiny fruits he would not have seen in the leaves. He learned that almost all elves had migrated away from the Empire because of intolerant policies, not just of the current Empire, but because of a long string of historical, even ancient, slights. He learned they tended to live twice the years of a human if they didn’t die in battle or weren’t killed by a beast. Both of these things were suspiciously common. Kirkis had uncles slaughtered by boars, sisters slaughtered by rocs, cousins killed by humans. He recounted these stories smiling; he showed off the handcrafted weavings of dead aunts and the knife of a brother lost long ago. He learned that Kirkis was courting the cheiftain’s daughter, actually; it was hard not to learn when Kirkis dreamily said “Then Sylvina…” or “That was when Sylvina…” or “Sylvina said…” every other sentence.

At nights he settled down to sleep alone, or to try to sleep alone. Gremio sat outside.

The Great Forest fought them. Kirkis’s strange backway through the forest was dangerous. He admitted himself that it seemed to call danger to large parties of people, as though the Forest didn’t want to be intruded upon through a backway. Vines in the trees, ferns at their feet, and flowers sprouting over head would all suddenly weave between them and tighten, open unseen mouths and breathe out pollen, or unfurl their leaves to reveal barbs and glistening stingers. Kirkis would fire on them before anyone else could see them; Cleo would follow his arrows and not her eyesight, throwing flames at the writhing, furious plants.

“They HATE that,” Tir observed for the fifth time, with due respect, as he poked his toes at the ashen remains of what had once been a 12-foot-long and hand’s-breadth wide constricting vine.

“They’re plants,” she said smugly. “Being a murderous, dangerous human doesn’t make you anything but a human. Murderous, dangerous plants aren’t anything but plants.”

They ended up less moving as a party and more moving in concentric circles through the jade lushness of the inner forest, some stalking above on the grey tree branches to look down from above—essentially Tir and Kirkis—some making a heavy trail on the ground through the mulch and yellow fungus to be able to watch for enemies above—mostly Viktor and Pahn, who could better force their way through tangled undergrowth—and Cleo and Gremio both went in midways or far off to the side, following the water, scouting the flanks, trying to pass on top of high tree roots or slip through the lower canopy. Tir made a game of trying to go as high as Kirkis could; Kirkis was an unbelievably good sport about it, and even Tir could tell that he was trying as hard as he could to give him a fighting chance. Yet there wasn’t an ounce in him of annoyance that he was followed or anxiety that he would be outpaced. Kirkis seemed, no matter how carefully Tir watched, to be glad for the company, happy to be able to have an intelligent conversation, and eager to share his knowledge of the Forest he was so desperate to save.

“You’re high-born, are you not?” he asked once, surprising Tir.

Tir carefully steadied his balance on a thin branch, marking how Kirkis had moved up in the winding freshwater tree. “Yeah,” he admitted. “My dad is… a general. How can you tell?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you’re from a military family, actually; you’re rather… laissez-faire,” he shrugged. “But you speak high speech, though not all the time.”

“High speech?” asked Tir.

“Yes… I think the concept is something else in your tongue,” Kirkis sighed, squinting as he tried to remember the words. “It’s when you use your language in its most polite and precise mode; speaking as someone who can read and write instead of an illiterate person is usually the most obvious sign. Speaking in sentences ahead of time instead of setting out bits and pieces and wrapping them together eventually. ‘What a pleasure it is to see you today, and how is the lady,’ rather than, ‘oh, hey! Oh, how’s your wife?’” He waved one hand as he approximated, spinning onto a new branch with the other. “I’ve noticed that most humans don’t use it unless they’re high-born; it’s not really too different with elves, it’s just that there’s so few of us that it’s more like everyone can do it, but we only do it at dinner, in front of the chief, and for formal events.”

“Huh,” Tir equivocated. “I don’t really speak like that, though.”

“But you can. I’ve heard you do it before. And you can reply to it. A lot of people are thrown off by high speech and stutter through their reply. You don’t, which is good, because you can speak to the chief with me. He has a low opinion of humans, sadly, and he’ll be grouchy about my proposition unless I can bring someone to him who can at least debate with him… and read.”

“Reading is his minimum requirement?” Tir asked incredulously.

“Yes.”

“That’s… harsh. Most people can’t.”

“All elves can,” Kirkis shrugged. “Older elves like the chief don’t… “ he gestured in circles as he walked backwards down a thinning oak tree branch. “Well, they don’t see things the way I do exactly. They don’t realize that humans are different and have a different culture. They expect everyone to be just like elves and look down on you if you’re not. They don’t realize that Dwarves have outmatched us in arts and technology, Kobolds in military prowess, humans in… power. They’re stuck in the old ways” He trailed off as the branches dwindled to twigs, watching clouds billow up in the west.

Tir followed him quietly for a while. “Will he be upset, then, about you bringing all of us?”

Kirkis winced, screwing up the corner of his mouth. “He’ll be… surly, I think, the way an old man is disappointed by things that are different. But they know, he knows, that it’s time to act. With a military commander with me, and with the warning of the Imperium they’ve already heard, together, we’ll convince him to act. By now they will know we have no choice. The reports of the massive forces gather against us; the sketches of construction projects in the South which we have copied or stolen, the vanishing Kobold villages… I only hope we’re not too late.”

“Villages have been vanishing?” Tir asked.

“Yes. That’s how we know the threat is real. It’s no small feat to just… wipe away a Kobold war band. They’re small, but they have a warrior culture. You have to be serious in your intent and bring many troops with you. That’s how we know this is a serious, long-term project. Humans don’t waste their short time on things they aren’t serious about.”

“Oh, we definitely do,” Tir argued.

“Of course I don’t mean to say that I don’t think you joke around,” Kirkis smiled. “I mean when it comes to your planning, your building—don’t you notice that the rest of us don’t have empires? We don’t have the dire seriousness you have. You swarm like ants, with collective intent, impossible to divert; when you die, a hundred take your place, and several generations wear down ancient strongholds. We aren’t… like that.”

Tir pondered Kirkis’s words at some length. “I don’t think I know enough about the other races,” he said.

“Well,” said Kirkis, a glimmer in his eyes, “what would you like to know?”

-

As it turned out, Kirkis was an amateur historian. He had once been studying old texts to be a loremaster when he became fascinated and infuriated with ancient politics and systems of law instead. In the present day he had a ready dissertation about any battle, kingdom, party, rule, movement, or royal family you could possibly want, and he would go from a cheerful young charmer to a snarling pitbull about it like a gust of wind.

Tir thought it was fun.

Tir also thought it was incredibly important fucking knowledge he maybe should have heard mentioned before, especially when it came to the long list of kingdoms, princedoms, fiefdoms, and city-states the Empire had crushed under their heels and assimilated as their own. These were places that had been crushed, brutalized, murdered; the leftover, twitching limbs, he learned, were still angry. It was the first time he heard a lot of names that he would come to hear again, and again, and again.

And it was when he began to have nightmares of dead, dying bodies. The process of the phrase “tens of thousands slaughtered” begins with hearing it; it does not end there. It never ends. The next step is seeing them.

He found himself jealous, sick, and sick that he was jealous. Kirkis, at least, had seen some of this inhuman horror. Tir was just afraid of it. And until now, he had been living safely, happily inside of it, clutched in its arms, calling it father.

-

All of Kirkis’s effort, study, begging, and belief led to him running his hands through the bones of a hundred dead elves and trying to put the joints back together so they could be buried.

It came to nothing. The chief of elves would not hear their plea; the villagers detested to look upon them. They were put in jail, broken out, sent on the run to the Dwarves, who also disdained to help them. Weeks passed in the mountains as they followed bitter cold streams and forced their way up and down wooded slopes to chilly badlands and dirty valleys.

Possibly the greatest challenge, at first, was to endure the awkward, chilly presence of their newest ally. Almost every one of the travelers was once a respected citizen of the Empire, an Empire-builder, who had flared up and turned traitor. None of them knew how to deal with each other, whether to be suspicious, relived, disdainful, or trusting, and the least of all of them when it came to graceful readjustment was General Valeria. In opposition to the explosive, furious disposition Valeria had when they found her in the elves’ prison, when she was broken up by the hateful response to her selfless, heroic actions, she had flash frozen into moodiness and cynicism once she was on the road, glaring at the grey sky, walking off with no warning to come back with fresh meat, often clobbered. She skinned aggressively and flung bleeding hunks of meat into Gremio’s stewpot with her knife. When she missed, Gremio quietly flicked them into the ashes so that they wouldn’t attract animals. Their path was marked by her bloodstains. This attitude too was in opposition to the Valeria they had all once known, vaguely; a well-dressed, icy, but polite General who was known for putting in the extra hours, taking the rough assignments, and never complaining.

Apparently she had been hiding a lot of baggage. Then again, they had all started lapsing a little without the structure of military days.

“Shit morning,” she would grumble to Tir as they got going. Or, “Hellspawn, I’ll need you to pick up the fucking pace.” “Speak the fuck up,” she would say to Gremio or Pahn if they tried to address her politely. “What’s it to you?” she snapped when Cleo spoke to her in a friendly way. Kirkis she seemed to appreciate, Tir figured, because he was as concerned about the threat to the Forest and the Burning Mirror as she was.

Kirkis, however, was almost more testy than she was; no one said anything, since he was reasonably worried about the impending slaughter of everyone he had ever loved. He was liable to get snappish and aggressive now, a far cry from the vivacious, energetic elf who first demanded they lend his people aid while half-dead himself. He continued to have bad luck, too; animal bites were wrapped up on his legs with ragged cuts from the mountain rock. He wasn’t used to walking where he could not climb, in the open elements; he was, within a few days, sunburnt by the thin light, hobbled by torn-up feet, and dirty from dust in his fine leathers. Still he persisted, determined to save those who did not want him.

Kirkis’s increased emotional strain sort of took the only good thing out of Tir’s life as it was. Not to be dramatic, of course. But he and Gremio were getting, as far as he could tell, icier and icier with each other (well, fine), reducing their relationship to a linear string of meals, outfits, baths, and whatever else Tir needed attended. Cleo and Pahn were continuing to not bother him, exactly, with this couple stuff, but they were keeping him awake with wondering how long this had been happening and how much of their lives he had missed while right there beside them. Viktor was Viktor, but Tir was still mad at him for shit-talking his friends, and even worse, being right about almost everything he said.

The Dwarves, in Tir’s estimation, were only different from the elves in that they did not imprison them. They put them through a hell of a lot more pain, delay, and difficulty, to be sure. He’ll never forget the sight of Valeria losing her already strained grasp on decorum and wailing on a solid rock wall with high kicks and punches because they had spent two hours trying to coax a dwarf-clever door five miles into an underground safe and no amount of tinkering, persuading, or cleverness had made it budge. They eventually got what she made out of the lock out of the wall and the whole thing fell flat with an echoing boom.

After almost starving to death in a vault of endless treasure for several days, Pahn, Viktor, and Tir all picking up some kind of virus from a questionable roasted rabbit and spending a day and a night puking down a mountainside as Kirkis desperately tried to keep them moving at least a little, and Cleo, who should have been well-guarded from almost any attack, suffering a scratch on her skull from a monster-sized bird of prey, the stress of which brought on her womanly cycle, which compelled Valeria into hers, which ruined their remaining stock of bandages before three days were up, they were given the instructions on how to make massive weapons of fiery death from a surly and suspicious dwarf chief. At that point, everyone was pretty charmed by the massive death weapons.

Still, even Tir was aware, with a gradually overbearing feeling, that they had to be too late. It had simply been too much time.

They could see the forest burning down days before they could have possibly travelled there. They had to watch as they straggled on, exhausted, unable physically to run the whole way, terror smoldering into misery and despair, until dirty, callous, and malnourished, they pushed themselves almost beyond endurance to reach a battle that had been lost a week ago, which they had never had a chance of winning.

Most of the tree’s trunk was still standing, black and hollow. There were even reddish coals still eating at the heart of it, which had so recently been wet and living. The branches were dust or hollowed shells, scraped out where they fell after crushing the elves that lost their lives beneath them. The fields around them were scorched or ashen for miles; the livestock rotted where it had suffocated. Their bones were scattered, fractured, and red-black; It was hard to find a whole body because of the heat and smoke they had endured. It was Viktor who started putting pieces back with that looked like their matches, silently, with his brown pinched in bleak frustration. Everyone else rest followed his lead.

It seemed like they were all trying to ignore Kirkis sobbing as he dug through still-warm piles of collapsed, burnt homes to collect the dead, but Tir couldn’t. Maybe he should have, but he couldn’t. “Kirkis,” he whispered, half-stumbling down to him over a set of rib-like rafters, splintered and fire-softened.

Kirkis looked up at him, with impossibly wide eyes, sea-green and rimmed with red, two inhuman mirrors that made Tir’s stomach shudder to look at. “Tir,” he croaked, “my friend.”

Tir knelt down with him. “I’ll pick them up,” he said, “I’ll do it. You can…” he didn’t know what Kirkis could do. “You can go, if you like.”

Kirkis shook his head. “All our efforts were in vain, Master Tir.”

“I know.” Tir’s eyes stayed fixed on his hands, numbly, dreamily picking through blackened lace curtains, shriveled up from the heat, to try to unbury a dried arm, its fingers bent around something that was no longer there.

“Everything I… everything I did, everything I learned…” Kirkis gazed ahead of himself. “The work I did. I betrayed my family, I ran away from battle, I thought… I threw my life away to try to save them! I disgraced myself, wandered barefoot, went without food, I swam through the waves of the sea and it almost took my life; I walked the Empire, I went to the humans, went to the dwarves, went to the kobolds; I begged, stole, did myself dishonor, and pushed it from my mind, and I was abused, mistreated, slandered, spat at, imprisoned, insulted and degraded, and stripped of my place among elves, I left them with their hatred and now—” his waist convulsed, burying his head in his forearms.

Tir let the wind fly between them.

Valeria approached them, holding a basket. She knelt down on the other side of Kirkis. “Elf,” she said.

“Nothing remains,” Kirkis growled, threateningly. “Nothing remains I tried to protect. And they didn’t even want me to. I did it for nothing.”

“Elf, heed me,” she demanded. Though Kirkis stayed still, Tir’s head snapped up at the tone of her voice, and he saw that her face was wet with tears. “This is the work of the Empire, which is evil. Against evil, we people can do little. You did what you could.”

Kirkis turned his head to her. Tir could not see his face. “It didn’t matter,” he said.

“Not this time it didn’t. Next time? We’re setting them on fire.” She stood up again, straining her thighs, which were weak from exertion. “Let up put together a respectable pyre for the dead and make a promise.”

“A promise,” Kirkis echoed. He bent down again. “I do not want to burn them.”

“How do Elves, then, let go of their dead?” asked Valeria, picking up her basket of bones.

“We burn them.”

“Make whatever is fitting to burn them on,” Valeria insisted. “We will do it in the proper way, and then make our promise.”

-

The pyre was hard to build, with so little left unburnt. There were as many bones on top of the wood as there was wood to burn them on. That only meant it was easy to burn it all again; with witnesses, and respect.

When the fire was low, scorching hot, and angry black in its heart, they began.

“So we shall do to your enemies,” Valeria promised.

“I will strike down the ones who did this,” Kirkis whispered.

Viktor bowed low to the bones. “I’m sorry we brought you our war,” he apologized. “That was irresponsible. We’ll end it for you. Sooner or later.”

Gremio was next in line. Awkwardly, he seemed unsure what to say. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “This was wrong.”

Cleo cleared her throat. “Rest in peace,” she said, typical for funerals in the Empire.

“Rest in peace,” Pahn echoed.

Tir watched the bones breaking down in the shimmering red ashes.

“This will never again happen while I am in charge,” he whispered, voice hardly louder than the crackling flames. “Never. Never. I’ll… kill myself first. I’ll kill them. I can’t… I won’t endure this. I won’t lay my eyes on a scene like this ever again.”

His face was burning from bending over the pyre of the dead. He could see, from the side of his vision, Gremio glancing over to him, face screwed up with crying. Tir saw him whisper something, bringing his hadn up to his face, but he couldn’t hear anything. He looked up at Gremio. He met his eyes.

He had never seen such an awful look on his face. It was so horribly miserable, and angry. It was a new person—strange—familiar—not familiar because he had seen it—familiar because—it was how anyone would feel. Yet it was on Gremio’s face, this strange, familiar, horrible thing. This overwhelming, everyday feeling of something beyond us. For a second, Tir forgot where he was.

Kirkis starting fumbling with something in his pocket. Eventually, he pulled it out; a small, glittering object. He knelt down, dangerously close to the flames. Tir could see Viktor tense up. “Sylvina,” Kirkis whispered. “Sylvina, can you hear me? Is your spirit not gone yet?

“I am ashamed that I left you in disgrace… my hasty actions put us both in danger. And now I’ve paid the highest price. My regret… chokes me. The weight of what I’ve done… is beyond bearing. I feel it on my neck.”

“Kirkis,” Viktor warned, kneeling down to get close to him. “Don’t.”

Kirkis tried to shove Viktor off with a weak arm. Viktor grasped him forbiddingly. “Sylvina,” he called again, voiced cracked. “Sylvina, I meant to give this to you… but now you must hate me, for having done what I did; for letting everyone die. Letting you die. For being so weak, so spineless, so stupid. Sylvina, I—I—I—” he sobbed. “I wanted to give this to you, but I can’t. Even now—especially now—I’m not worth it. I can’t.”

“Come on,” Viktor murmured. “Stand back up. You gotta walk away now.”

“Sylvina—”

“Come on now,” he repeated, pulling Kirkis away from the fire gently, but speaking to him harshly. “That won’t help anything. She’s gone. It’s time now.”

When Kirkis broke down, he was plenty light enough for Viktor to pick him up and move away.

Valeria, who was qualified, completed the funeral.

-

Tir was alone when he started crying that night, uselessly.

He had a face to that name now. Hundreds dead. Genocide. War. The battlefield, full of bodies.

That face was what kissed him that night and held him in an unbreakable grip, bone-white face to face. As the moon rose and sank in the sky, grinning, glowering, turning slowly, the bone-white face, he lay transfixed. Death lay next to him, in suffocating silence; with his hand he could reach out to it, and feel its thick, cool cloak. His gorge rose while his skin settled. Horrified, he was comforted. He began to see: death was the terror, but death was the release from it. The dark night was the fear of all, and sleep, slipping into it, was the only comfort. Into death all feared to go; when they were there, they feared no longer. The living were left with pulling unidentifiable skulls out of the wreckage. The living were left to go on with the war and see another massacre. The dead were spared.

Fascinated he reached out, terrified pulled back. Terrified he reached out, fascinated pulled back; somehow, he felt it was going in slow, heavy circle, like an ichorous whirlpool.

He wondered how Odessa would have stopped the massacre, or managed the aftermath. He wondered how Mathiu might have spoken today if he had agreed to take Tir’s place. He wondered how his father would have saved the elves.

He noticed his father didn’t save the elves.

He told himself that he could not let something like this happen again. It was impossible. He would make it impossible. He had to.

He repeated convictions into overwhelming silence.

-

Viktor may have been the guy for the crisis, but he wasn’t the guy for tender care after the fact. Kirkis wasn’t going to snap back to the way he was; he wasn’t even putting on an act of dignity. From what Tir gathered, forcing a cheerful face wasn’t really a part of Elven culture. The person for making sure everyone could move, everyone could eat, everyone had adequate time to rest, that everyone stayed healthy, tended, and were in an atmosphere of something other than abject misery was Gremio. He had always, Tir reflected, been uniquely skilled at making sure people were maintained through rough patches, or perhaps uniquely practiced.

He didn’t push, he didn’t tell Kirkis to smile or cheer up, he didn’t tell him to toughen up or put his battle face on; he told Kirkis to eat, sleep, change his bandages, and please scout ahead of them (so he could spend some time by himself). It wasn’t an easy task. Kirkis didn’t make it easy. He seemed to not care to go on right now, and putting him through the motions definitely didn’t make him more cheerful. Gremio got snapped at and snarled at and told to stop and he barely reacted. He did his most admirable best, tending, fussing, watching without being obvious, and being there without being conspicuous.

Tir hated himself for being jealous. He hated himself very much. He had known, of course, that he would be alone with his new convictions, and yet he wasn’t prepared to be alone with them. He was now determined to be a leader, to be such a leader that he prevented a calamity like this from ever happening again; how did he do that? How would anyone even know he had made that choice? What was he supposed to do about being a grand new leader on the long march back home, with everyone, including him, tired, worn through, hungry, irritable, and dizzy with infection? Should he be inspiring everyone with words, somehow, or supporting them, helping them, maintaining them silently? Like Gremio did?

What Gremio did didn’t make him a leader, though. It still seemed to earn him a lot of affection. Tir noticed that even Viktor acting respectably to him—maybe not kindly, exactly, but he wasn’t antagonizing him like he used to. Maybe he would start again once the atmosphere was gone and they had Kirkis shut off somewhere. Cleo and Pahn, he thought, had always treated Gremio with a lot of deference. Once he thought it was because Gremio had essentially harangued them into respect, but he now saw that that had always been a joke they made about it.

People loved people who cared for them. That’s all. And Gremio managed to care for any bitch he was put in front of, even if he didn’t seem to want to care, and for reasons Tir certainly didn’t know. He really hated himself for being jealous.

Wrapped up as he was in his own concerns about the issue—not that anyone could fault him for being wrapped up in his thoughts about mass murder and how he was going to avoid it through personal intervention—he didn’t quite pick up on how, exactly, everyone else felt at that time, other than miserable. He wasn’t so used to it, after all. He could understand, or comprehend, how Kirkis must have felt at the time. He could assume that Viktor was contemplative and disappointed, having seen tragedies like these before and upset to see them still happening, that Cleo and Pahn must have been having a hard time watching the fruits of their labors as subjects of the Scarlet Moon Empire.

But Gremio? He had been avoiding Gremio. What happened next came to him as a surprise.

It was several days after the funeral. Most everyone had wound down a little; there was less occasional sobbing, less snapping and shoving, more slogging. The tents were set up close together, less out of the fear of attack—who was alive to attack?—but because the trees pressed so closely together that it was the only practical way to make a camp. It was very dark in the Forest now, and very quiet. Besides, Tir, at least, felt better being close, so maybe everyone else did too. Not hemmed in together, not even in rooms together, but close, able to hear the quiet noises of sleep, the soft notes of emotion, able to vaguely see other flickering lamplights like nearby stars, knowing they were not alone.

Tir closed his journal and lowered his light. It wasn’t giving him much peace anyway. His thoughts, though tempestuous, had been spiraling that dark spiraling shape again, getting nowhere, when they were interrupted.

“Master Tir?”

Gremio’s voice was as soft as a raindrop would be to the thunder, but all the storm and noise vanished anyway. Tir jolted. “What?” he whispered.

“Master Tir, are you alright?”

Tir checked his face instinctually; it was dry. “I’m fine,” he whispered, confused.

He saw Gremio’s shadow settle down a little, outside the wall of the tent. His shadow didn’t even seem all dark; he was a deeper blue place in the thin blue water. “I suppose that’s good…” Gremio whispered back, trying, just like Tir was, to be quiet enough that the people not ten feet away, hidden by thin walls, couldn’t hear them. Their attempts were a polite lie; even a whisper could be heard, no matter how quiet. They spoke anyway, as little as possible. They learned how to give each other privacy in their minds, making room, letting each other have what they could, forgetting on purpose what didn’t belong to them. “I suppose I should bid you goodnight.”

Gremio was too obviously reluctant. Something was wrong. “Are you alright?” Tir asked.

The bowed head of the blurred silhouette took a long time to answer. “I know… that no one is alright, Master Tir.”

“No,” Tir agreed. “No. Especially not Kirkis.”

“Especially not Kirkis,” Gremio agreed, “but not anyone. And…” he sighed.

“What is it?” Tir asked. Anxiousness was brewing in him.

“It’s not my place, it’s really not my place,” Gremio sighed, “But I wish it were.”

“What?” Tir whispered. “Gremio. You’re acting strange.”

He shifted around uncomfortably; Tir could assume it more than see it. “I don’t want to upset you any further,” Gremio whispered in the most hushed voice possible, almost losing the definition in his speech. Tir shuffled to get closer, sitting on the other side of the sheet from him. They faced each other, shadow to shadow. “I know I’m being forward, and I know I’m being impertinent. I know that… I should keep to myself. I’m just inserting myself somewhere I don’t deserve to be. And I’m sorry, but I’m… frightened. I’m not sure what else to do.”

Tir could feel his pulse in his wrists and his neck—his guts in his stomach, his tongue in his mouth, uncomfortably physical. “What are you saying?” he asked, not sure if he was staying quiet. But he didn’t hear any rustling or turning.

“I mean that I don’t know what to do; I’m frightened for you, and I don’t know how to help you. Tir;” he gasped, “young master; I was too proud. I thought I knew… I thought that I was doing the right thing for you, but I don’t know if I was. I know you’ve been unhappy. I know this has been too much for you. But I couldn’t tell you not to make this choice. I should have, knowing the cost, but when I saw… your face… how much it meant to you…” Gremio’s tone did something odd, something proud and scared and crackling, and Tir’s guts flipped inside him. He was slowly folding in on himself, compressed with sadness. “I couldn’t stop you from going down the course you’re on. I couldn’t do anything to help you either. It was my responsibility to keep you safe, and I was so weak. And now… you’re so unhappy.

“I have only myself to blame. I’ve failed you. I know I angered you; I’ve been trying to keep my distance, so that I don’t anger you any more… but… but…

“Oh no,” he asked mournfully, “what am I doing?”

Tir wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he lightly touched the wall between them, his fingers shaking. “Gremio… I don’t know…” he didn’t know what to say.

“Well, me either,” Gremio whispered, voice cracking miserably. “I wish I hadn’t said anything… I wish I hadn’t done anything. I know I’m putting myself where I don’t belong. I’m… sorry. I’m trying to control myself, and I can’t. It’s only that I’ve always… well, I’ve always loved you so much. I’ve cared for you. I don’t know what to do, or how to make up for what I’ve done, but please, I know you’ve been unhappy, and—don’t shut me out. Please, don’t shut me out.”

Tir’s head started buzzing, buzzing like he hadn’t been breathing. Maybe he hadn’t been. He was stuck on—well—this wasn’t how—this wasn’t how Gremio spoke. How anyone he knew spoke. They weren’t so—his family, his people, their culture, the Empire, they wouldn’t speak this way. They weren’t so emotional. They stayed circumspect, things weren’t stated so—

So, I’ve always loved you so much.

Tir bowed his own head, flustered. He didn’t know what his stomach was doing. He had to keep a grip on himself. “Gremio. I don’t know what to say.”

Gremio could be seen shaking his head. “Forgive me, please,” he tried to apologize, “I didn’t think I had been drinking this much. Maybe I had. I’ve been irresponsible. Maybe I really shouldn’t have—”

“No, wait, Gremio,” Tir said sternly, hoping he would calm down. He couldn’t listen to this, how he was vomiting self-hatred and abuse, trying to stop himself. “Don’t speak like that. I’m not… mad at you.”

“But, Master…”

“I was a little mad, but I think… well, I think that was unfair,” Tir admitted, flushing at himself. “And I shouldn’t have been so cold to you. I wasn’t trying to punish you or anything. Really. What I wanted…” Tir didn’t know what to say.

“Master Tir?” asked Gremio, under the noise of crickets and cicadas.

“I’ve always loved you too. I guess.”

Gremio visibly startled. Tir found himself… finding it funny, a little. Not funny as if he thought Gremio were funny, though he was, but as though he were himself, and it made him smile. “Ah—”

“I mean that, you’re right, you’ve always been there for me, and I haven’t appreciated it, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I’ve felt so… lost,” he admitted. “Leading an army… starting a rebellion… battles, reconnaissance, drafting, even barracks… I don’t really know what to do. Up until just a few days ago, secretly, I was still wishing Mathiu had agreed to do it. But it’s me, and I have to do it. I’m going to do it. After the Village of the Elves, I’ve decided that.” He sighed. “And I wish you were… with me for it. I guess.” He lowered his eyes. “I don’t know. I feel like I should know you. But I don’t even know how you really feel. About any of this.”

There was a long silence. Tir looked up when he could feel another hand, warm pressure, slide up the wall of the tent, find his, and impress, just gently, bending the fabric around their fingers. Quickly, as if he had done it by accident, Gremio pulled back.

“I’m for you,” Gremio whispered, “for everything. That’s my position. That’s how I feel. I’m for you.”

Tir swallowed. He tensed his shoulders. He wiped the hallows of his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Gremio, I…” he had to search for words. I understand, but he didn’t. Thank you, but it wasn’t enough. I love you, but it was too much. Do you mean it, but he didn’t doubt him. But what about dad, but he didn’t want to know. What will we do, but he didn’t want to worry him. “I want… to do… this right,” he said, uncertain if it was.

“I understand,” said Gremio, immediately.

They waited, on either side of a door.

“I’ll watch for you,” Gremio promised. “Get some sleep, young Master.”

“Gremio,” Tir said, teasingly, with the crack of stifled tears in his voice, “for fuck’s sake, my name is Tir.”

Gremio—giggled. “It is, young master.”

“Gremio,” sighed Tir.

“Please get some rest…” Gremio continued. “…Tir.”

Tir’s heart fluttered.

-

Almost not worth mentioning—he had a strange dream that night. He dreamed he was lying down with Gremio, in a bed of white flowers. He could remember him laughing, and he could remember they were lying in a coffin, and little else. Only a noise, unpleasant, thick, and visceral, like thick, pungent water being laboriously sucked down a drain.

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4: An injury, a doctor.

In the morning, there was no time for complicated unpacking, defining, or explaining. If there had been, neither of them would have been remotely equipped for it. He saw Gremio’s smile with the sun rise; brief, made just for him, then hidden again. He went back to cooking up breakfast, focused on the rough day they had ahead of them, the low supplies, the handling of grief, the wounds they would have to keep tended without sacrificing speed.

Luckily, they were about to pass through the ruins of a Kobold village, through which they could scrounge for supplies. Unluckily, and as they were soon to find out, that put them on a crash course with a full two hundred Imperial soldiers. They were surrounded almost before they knew what was going on. Valeria, being her usual self, chose a completely unpredictable course of action—after cursing a streak and punching a wall, she announced to the others that she would turn herself in.

“I’m still wearing my insignia and armor,” she sighed, “and I have my identification on me. They can prove its me; the rest of you they can’t prove. Technically I outrank everyone here, even if I’m a prisoner they’re bound to take my word that you’re nobody. At least, they can’t be punished by anyone for taking me at my word. So,” she snapped, whipping her head around to face the imperials.

Gremio darted past Tir to grab ahold of Valeria’s upper arm. “Are you joking?” he hissed.

Tir wasn’t the only one who jolted at Gremio’s sudden action. “No?” said Valeria.

“You’re about to be charged with high treason,” Gremio reprimanded, “don’t be foolish.”

“They still have to take me at my word before I’m charged,” she insisted.

“I mean that you’ll be put to death.”

Valeria gave him a withering stare. “Oh shit,” she drawled, “put to death? I just hadn’t realized.” She tried to gently pull herself away from Gremio. “Let me go, McDohl.”

She had the habit of giving family servants their family name—it was a polite mode of addressing one, too polite according to many. Gremio even colored when she did it. “You have a job to do.”

“And I’m doing it. McDohl,” she continued, flashing over her gaze to Tir this time, “The Burning Mirror must be destroyed. That can't be done if we all die here. The Liberation Army can't afford to lose its leader. A leader must stay alive.”

Caught between Valeria’s determined face and Gremio’s fear, Tir sucked in his breath for a second. But he fancied, now, that he had an idea of what leadership looked like, whether he liked how it looked or not. He had to live up to it anyway. Valeria had always had the visage of leadership on her, despite her flaws.

“General,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

Valeria nodded. “Me as well,” she admitted, and, as she swept by Tir on her way to the enemy, “though I hope you can be quick enough to save me.”

“We’ll remember you,” Tir replied.

Valeria didn’t show any sign of uncertainty if she even felt it. Tir didn’t know how she couldn’t, but having watched her unbelievable (if sometimes unwilling) determination for several months now, he couldn’t help but believe in her himself. Someone with that conviction in their cause has won already if they go to their death convinced. It only made him feel cheap that he was sure he would never see her again.

Valeria halted not an arm’s reach away from the petty lieutenant that was about to handle her arrest. She had half a head over him and her bearing caused her to tower over him more. She wore glittering imperial armor over dress and skin that were filthy with ash, blood, and dirt, and the reek, hatred, and disdain which poured out of her very nearly made the enemy balk. “I turn myself over to the representatives of the Emperor,” she stated, “confident in their promise they will let these rabble go to live their lowly lives as they will.”

The completely inadequate lieutenant accepted her surrender. His men chained her around her neck, wrists, and waist, pinning her arms behind her as she stared with completely unaffected annoyance. The chains were tested for thoroughness and she was called a ‘good girl’ by a grinning subordinate who touched her jaw. Tir heard, Gremio, obviously horrified, clenching his leather gauntlets around his axe. Viktor gasped an agitated breath when someone ‘accidentally’ knocked her on the back of her skull with his elbow, causing her to flinch.

“Alright, men,” the lieutenant declared, turning Valeria around with a hand on her back, “kill the knife-ears, the dogs, and all rest of these miserable traitors.”

“What?” Valeria barked, seizing as hard as she could against the men who clutched her arms. “You—you son of a snake! You gave your word!”

He smiled. “Words don’t mean anything,” he spat, and smacked her with the back of his hand.

Perhaps he was not betting on her being fast enough to bite him.

By the time the lieutenant was squealing, Viktor was already two steps into his charge against the soldiers, completely unheeding of their numbers. Tir heard weapons being drawn around him, and he, too, had impulsively lowered himself into a defensive stance when he felt the stinging slap on Valeria’s face. He saw her thrust her weight into on of the men holding her; he saw people start to stumble and heard them begin to cry. There was a hundred identical scrapes of imperial swords being drawn from their sheathes. Behind him he heard the archers hurrying to get distance, wooden arrows being knocked and notched. Someone scrambled backward when they realized Viktor was upon them, heaving his zweihander overhead; Tir doubted they survived the downswing.

When blood started flying, he heard Gremio curse by his ear and draw back a half-step, foot scraping the pine needles and packed dirt. He heard the Kobolds begin to bay. He saw the army begin to surge, their glittering arms like a forest lake disturbed by a stone. Unsupervised and unorganized, they mobbed.

The mass pressed in on them.

It began, for Tir, strangely simply. A man ran to him with a sword and swung it at his side. It was a stupid move, one Master Kai had taught him to counter years ago; they must have not seen that he wielded a staff. He deflected it easily and repelled them with his backswing. Then he saw there were many more approaching. He had his right side exposed. He spun his staff, reacting to the dull, blurred commands of his instinct that he could hear just under the din; the staff is the best weapon for defending all of your sides, you have reach, a great range of movement, the ability to flow—the attacks of a dozen identical swords were steps in a dance, and he only had to meet them all. He parried a thrust, launched a sword over his head, jabbed someone in what should have been their liver, struck and felt the give and the bend-- until someone knocked him flat on the head.

For a second, he saw white. His vision fogged.

Then he saw a hundred wavering silver swords; a hundred things that would go wrong.

Desperate, he struck a wild blow. He felt heavy weight buckle under this strike. He heard pain. He struck to the other side without even seeing an enemy and a shout reverberated around him with the waves of his perception as a sword clattered out of reach. He thrusted with his staff and heard armor rattle.

He saw Kirkis diving in and out of sight, under the shoulders of much larger men. Caught in the thick of battle, his quiver was nothing more than extra armor. He had a small knife held in both hands and he was stabbing it, with an archer’s concussive force, into the gaps in the soldier’s armor, some below the belt. He heard howling.

Heat seared his cheeks as fire blazed in an arc to his right. He felt something warm hit his back; he whipped his staff around to try to strike their head. He missed and heard Gremio grunt as he struck his shoulder.

“I’m—” Tir shouted.

Gremio grabbed him and forcibly turned him back around so he was facing the mob. He anchored himself with him. He felt Gremio’s back muscles flex against his shoulders; he felt his whole body pushed and turned as Gremio took a swing with his halberd, landing a hit that splashed them both with bright blood.

“Ah,” he breathed.

There was a soldier upon him. Sideslash; deflected. Forward jab; easy to shove it away and follow up with the other end of the staff. Weaknesses in their moves, their armor, their dependency on bladed weapons; Tir realized without thinking it that he knew everything about how the common Imperial soldier fought. He had seen it rehearsed a thousand times on the other side. There was bitter breath in his face and body heat on him; with Gremio at his back there was no way to flinch back. He struck. A sword at his right, he struck. Gremio’s body moved. He responded. A sword, he deflected it. Heavy flesh shuddered and he felt the body yield under his strike. Snap.

He could hear howling, but it was vanishing, drawing thin, as if he were falling asleep to it. His vision was clearing; there was a body in front of him and he attacked it. He felt the body behind him move; he responded. He turned, he turned with him. There was a sword, he deflected it. Hot flesh in his hand; under his staff, he snapped it. He shoved and deflected. He moved, he was pulled, he felt something hard, and he snapped it.

Then someone fell on him. He was pressed body to body, heat and heat, and he could not move. Bodies surged; bile rose in his throat. There was nothing he could see but red; it was dark and loud and his body did nothing. He pushed. He shoved and fumbled; his staff wasn’t in his hands. He twisted his fingers around the flesh of the soldier and wrenched it. He babbled—“motherfucker—no—please, fuck—Soul Eater—"

There was a bitterly delicious sound, like dark tea on the back of the tongue, like heavy, dirty water being sucked down a drain. The body was gone; he could see. The air burst on his face, his foot scrabbled for his staff and he did not find it. There was a sword at his left.

He curled his right hand into a tiger’s claw and struck at the soldier, clattering on the curve of his armor. It didn’t matter; everything went quiet, and then there was a horrible noise, and then his vision waivered. He heard himself rattling with a gasping breath. Someone cried to his right, he whirled around, palm open, fingers clutched. He saw them hurtle backwards and saw their red mouth wide open. The air glistened around them like the heat of a blistering summer day. Their mouth stretched open, their arms turned around them like the hands of a clock. There was a gurgling, awful sound, a sound like some thick, stinking fluid being pulled—the body turned—as if there was some invisible, insensible whirlpool behind them, some unearthly funnel their whole body was being pulled back into, with skin stretched torturously from muscle, muscle stretched from bone, bones popping apart, and the parts were coming out, and it tore—

The world snapped into place in their absence. There was a mass of men, armored, glittering, with swords. He could feel the boiling heat on his cheeks; his lungs struggled. His eyes were pressing at his skull and his tongue at his throat.

The body behind him shifted. His knees bent. He stumbled.

The ground was cool. The body under him less so. He was staring at someone’s esophagus. Most of it was exposed as the head sagged low to the ground, slowly pulling off of the body. With instinct, he saw the kill and thought, Viktor. He felt light-headed.

Something pounded at his right, he turned around, gritting his teeth, palm outstretched; instinct, Gremio. He snapped it away, and looked up. Gremio was standing over him.

There was a soft breeze made by the brutal swing of his halberd, stirring the heavy air.

He heard a voice that was Kirkis; he felt Gremio reply above him. The words were incomprehensible. Someone saw Gremio’s open back, they saw Tir underneath him. Tir pulled his palm down his face. The soldier convulsed as he was wrenched down the drain.

All he understood next was that everyone was surging to the left. He struggled to get up; Gremio pushed him down with his knee into the dead soldiers. He heard him shout. He knew he was afraid. Tir felt like he shouldn’t be. The number of people increased; he knew something was wrong but he had to pause, collect his head, before he could get an inkling of what.

A different force was crashing into the imperial army. He saw many colors, no distinct uniform, they were some female, some male, they came with glittering waves of magic, unlike the imperials; they routed them in seconds. The army had been panicked by the sudden appearance. They were cut down as they ran, and their screams died off fast.

Slowly Tir could feel himself sucking breaths in and out rapidly. He could feel them in his lungs and they hurt. Feel his hands prickling painfully with needle-stabs. Feel wet, and dirty, and cold. His vision swimming as the water of his head surged.

He was being picked up. The hands were huge, warm; instinct. Viktor. He felt his knees struggle until his feet were solid on the ground. Not a body, ground. He felt Viktor’s hands slowly rub down his arms and come back up, take off his bandana, smooth his hair. Viktor was winter fireside warm. For some reason, he closed his eyes; the blackness was so peaceful. No soldiers, no bodies, no strange people. Viktor felt the curves of his skull, gently, leaving his skin tingling strangely after his hands. He felt his jaw, Tir tilted his head. He patted down his shoulder and made a disappointed noise, then asked him gruffly to turn around. Tir did what he said. Viktor ran a hand down the back of his spine; shuddering, feeling so strangely quiet, Tir felt another hand glance on his shoulder, pull away, and grab again; Gremio. He knew his hands, his uncertain poise, his almost perfect gentle anxiety. Tir opened his eyes and saw his face, very close, tight like stone with pain, concern, worry, and anger. He saw him dripping with blood. Even his fair hair was dark and sticking with it, and his glass-green eyes were glimmering from inside of the dark pool, tear-wet. Tir felt himself smiling at him.

Gremio smiled with pain, beautifully.

“I think he’s concussed,” he heard Viktor say. “I don’t think he has a serious break, or his spine out of place? But he’s got to be bleeding inside. And we’ll have to put that shoulder back.”

“Yes, I know,” Gremio replied.

Tir started giggling.

“Yeah, concussed for sure,” Viktor concluded.

Tir laughed, and swayed with his laughter; rolling his head caused his whole body to slack uneven. Gremio caught him and held him up as he laughed through horrible, horrible throbs of dizzy pain in his head.

“His eyes—” he heard Gremio say.

“Yeah, I saw,” Viktor interrupted, “that’s how I know he’s bleeding. We’ll need him to get attention soon. Luckily, Mathiu—”

“Queen of Heaven,” he heard a wonderfully familiar voice swear. “Commander—”

Gremio gripped Tir’s forearms tightly. Tir fought a dizzying urge to fold into him, and then gave himself up to it. Gremio smelled like blood, was wet with blood, and Tir put his face into it. He was so warm. He was so—solid, he didn’t know, human, living, tangible. He was full of blood too, Tir thought suddenly, blood, pus, bones, slime, skin and shit; just as shatterable as anyone else he had crushed today. A handful of disgusting things that formed a person painfully lovable when miraculously organized. Now that he had seen it, he knew that’s all anyone was, but there was so much unexpected, unasked for, and best of all, completely unnecessary wonder in the disgusting mechanisms of personhood, wonderful despite their nature. And it just seemed so—precious, and nice, and he could wrap his arm around its shoulders, and hold it. And when he did, it smelled sweet, and made him feel good.

How? How did something so disgusting?—

“—got battle madness?” He heard Mathiu’s angry voice. He heard Viktor huff and drop his sword, hazardly, from his shoulder to touch the ground.

“—about his head,” he heard Viktor say. Things were a little muffled by Gremio. He had his body all around him; that’s when Tir realized he was being held back. He was so warm. Tir loved him, he really loved him. He just seemed like such a person, and that seemed so fantastic.

“It’ll be okay,” he realized Gremio was saying. “It’ll be okay.”

“Gremio,” he said.

“I’m here,” Gremio replied, voice tight.

“I’m not scared,” Tir assured him.

“Young master—”

“For fuck’s sake, my—ahhh—” Tir’s complaint was suddenly cut off by a very, very bad feeling in his right shoulder when he tried to hold Gremio more tightly. His dreamy vision became a lot sharper suddenly. “Ahhh, fuck.”

“Hold that with your other arm for now,” Matt instructed, “like this.” He gently pulled Tir’s arms off of Gremio, supporting him with admirable precision, taking a full minute to reposition Tir so that he was cradling his own arm, which, actually, seemed like it was a little far down. “We’re going to have to put it back into place. It’ll hurt a lot. But we have to get you washed over first.”

“But—” Tir argued, staring with confusion at his arm, “it isn’t hurt. I just used it to—”

“Battle adrenaline was keeping you from noticing some serious injuries, but you’re about to notice them,” Matt informed him. “I’m going to bring you somewhere to sit down, you’re going to sit down, and then someone… no, I’m going to go over you with a water rune and we’re going to see what we need to do.”

“You can use runes?”

“I fucking hope so.”

Tir was led, on one side by Matt and on the other by Gremio, on a short walk that got longer with every step. By the time he was collapsing underneath a large ash tree his head was pounding and his arm was burning. The back of his right hand felt a little weird one second and like a live coal the next and he was twitching against it. “Oh,” he said dizzily, “fuck.”

Gremio sat down with him, easing him onto the ground. Mathiu knelt down in front of him, pulling a brightly translucent runestone out of his shoulder bag. It was a good one, Tir could tell; glimmering with potential instead of dull, no flaws, even a slight tint of blue color. Weak runestones were clear, strong ones were distinctive. When Matt pulled it out, he placed it on his own forearm, and Tir saw a blue fire flare up under his sleeve.

“You said you can’t do magic,” he argued.

“I can’t,” Matt growled, “anymore, I haven’t been able to since the final battle of Kalekka, but I’m fucking going to now.”

“You were… in Kalekka? Wait,” and then Tir felt water absolutely pummel him.

It was the most tough love healing magic he had ever felt, and he had felt a lot of healing magic at this point. Mostly Gremio’s. His lungs were full of it for a second; it tore over him like a riptide and rushed away. He could swear he felt pieces of him being pulled with it, but they snapped back tingling. Somehow it was all inside, and he was shocked to find he wasn’t wet when it was gone. He was, however, sore everywhere, wide awake, and pissed. “What the fuck, Matt?”

Matt, for his part, was sweating and out of breath. “Quite,” he agreed, annoyed. “How is your body so fucked up?”

Gremio whined in his ear, clutching his good shoulder. Viktor, who he wasn’t aware was still there, cackled.

Tir looked up to spot him and saw a Liberation Army.

There were so many of them.

They weren’t in uniform. They wore every color, freely, on man and woman, young and old. They carried personal weapons, swords, spears, staves, and bows, and they chattered, laughed, and worked to carry away the dead. Their cheer over the misery was incredible; it was the opposite of the elf village, strong, resilient, and loud. It was—it was victory. They were people he knew and did not know—people strange and foreign, and old friends, Master Kai helping Pahn with a wounded man, Valeria being loosened by a stranger—she looked badly hurt—Lepant and Eileen with a teenage boy he didn’t recognize—a hundred people, some he felt he must know somehow, wearing the symbols that Viktor, Flik, Sanchez, and Humphrey wore. Odessa’s army. There were Imperial soldiers he recognized out of their armor and wearing new insignia—their insignia, Odessa’s signs, his signs—there were the bandits of Mt. Seifu, in greater numbers now, they must have pulled in everyone who had been in hiding, there was the magician girl he sent to join them, looking worried, darting around, carrying bandages, people he’d never known, people he had seen once and never known they were on the side of the rebellion, his side, had been thinking like him all along, and—

“Hey, uh,” he said, as he gritted his teeth against Matt picking up his arm, “is that Kirkis making out with some chick?”

“Huh?” Viktor asked, following his line of sight. “Oh. Yeah. Apparently his ladyfriend escaped the Elf Village Disaster. I’m not sure how?”

“So it’s the same chick?” Tir asked.

Viktor squinted. “Think it’s the same chick.”

“Honestly,” Gremio reprimanded, “yes, it’s the same… woman. Tir, brace yourself.”

“What?”

Tir then experienced the most excruciating pain he had ever felt that wasn’t emotional when Matt snapped his arm back into place. He then smacked him with it, and then was in a lot of pain again.

Tir held onto his throbbing shoulder and hissed while Mathiu gave him a withering stare, wordlessly smoothing back his hair. “As I was saying,” he groused, “you have a concussion and a lot of internal bleeding. Were you hit on your head, or did you fall?”

“Uhm?” Tir gaped, trying to find a mental balance between the five or six competing aches and imbalances in his body asking for his attention at once. “I, uh…” he couldn’t remember being struck at all. “I fell down at one point but I didn’t get knocked down… someone fell into me, but I don’t think he hit my head? Uh, Gremio shoved me down once.”

Everyone stared at him for a second. Then Viktor started whistling a low note as everyone’s eyebrows rose. Mathiu looked over his shoulder to glare at the offender. “Sir.”

“No—” Gremio protested, putting his hands up, “he was—he was already injured and having a hard time standing! I had him under guard!”

“That’s fucked up, man,” sighed Viktor. “You shoved him into the mire?”

“No—” Gremio started flushing. “He was stunned, I was guarding him! I didn’t just knock him down! And besides, he got hit in the head in the beginning of the battle. That’s why I was guarding him!”

“I did?” asked Tir.

Gremio looked at him with his pinched expression. “Yes. When you were fighting alone, a small soldier hit you with the broadside of his sword. You blanched, and looked like you might have been about to fall, so I fought to you to cover your back.”

“But I—oh!” It came back to him. His perception shattering; the world fractured into peaks and valleys of loud noises, bright colors, sensory bursts strong enough to break through the haze. “Oh. I could barely remember—everything gets hard to… understand after that. I couldn’t even remember it happening.”

“Blunt trauma damage,” summarized Mathiu, disappointed. He reached his hands into his hair, searching with his doctor’s precision. “Up here?”

“It’s up there,” Viktor confirmed as Tir nodded. “I felt it too. There’s a—”

“Skull break,” Mathiu finished for him. “Shit. We’ll have to spend some time on that.”

“Skull… break?” Tir repeated weakly.

“Skull break. Well, a crack. If your skull shatters, there’s not much hope for you. You cracked, like a… like a plate that has thread in it from overuse but hasn’t been shattered yet. Unlike a plate, though, your head can heal itself; we just need it to not be hit again. I had it happen to me, and it was much worse than this. Mine DID crack, the pieces just… stayed where they were.”

“Is that what happened?” asked Viktor, with a tone of awed respect. “Did your brain leak out? How are you so smart if your brains leaked out?”

“Viktor, can you use that quick tongue of yours to go tell people to organize a medical station? I have ten times as much work as able-bodied healers and we’ll only keep enough people alive if we can work efficiently.”

“Your word is my command, Oh Demanding One,” Viktor declared with a bow. Turning around, bellowed, with a voice that must have sounded for a mile, “Alright! Who’s still alive, fellow traitorous scum? Show of swords!”

There was a dull roar as people, both standing on two feet and lying braced against trees, lifted swords, knives, spears, hatchets, and bows in response to his call. “Fantastic liveliness, top form!” Viktor congratulated. “Now, everyone who just lifted up a weapon, thank you for volunteering! You’re gonna start lifting bodies for me.”

As Viktor walked away to whip up the tired troops into a workable state, Mathiu turned back to Tir and sighed. “Unbelievable.”

“He’s intolerable,” Gremio groused.

“I meant he’s an unbelievable asset,” Mathiu rebuked him. “Do you want to do the work of organizing a few thousand exhausted soldiers so that we can tend to hundreds of wounded as fast as possible while in an actively malicious forest? Do you think he’s not tired of this too? Take his place if you want. Anyway, this isn’t a life-threatening injury unless it’s agitated, and even if you do split your skull a little in the next few days, we can still salvage you.”

“Because you came back from it,” Tir said.

“Yes, barely, and I’m going to be the person to tell you that you don’t want to go through that. I had years of prolonged suffering and I’m still not the same. I never will be the same.” Mathiu broke off to sort through his bag again.

“That was Kalekka.”

“Astute of you. Yes, the massacre at Kalekka. We had been there for almost a year but got the go-ahead to start mass murdering once the court go tired of paying for a war of attrition. I fought the heartless plan with a few of the advisors and a very few of the lieutenants, but we lost that game of political chess. Humphrey, too, was a vocal dissenter then.”

“He was there?”

“Yes. He had been one of Great General Hasan’s Lieutenants. Hold still, I need to at least try to heal you magically before I get surgical with this.”

Tir did his best to brace himself, sitting up straight and loosening his back muscles. “Humphrey and you have been working together for a long time.”

“Much longer than we’ve been in the Liberation Army. He’s a good man. We weren’t the only people opposed to the plan, but we were some of the only ones to live through the massacre. I found an excuse, though barely, to stay in the medical area during the fighting so that I wouldn’t have to help. At least, I told myself I wasn’t helping. I just helped plan it,” he continued, with deep, dark self-hatred in his voice. Tir could feel a cool stone rest on his forehead, and he forced himself to not grit his teeth against it. “But the citizens of Kalekka were by then very trained in dishonorable combat and ready to take as many of us down with them as they could. Would they have taken more. There was a small but nasty contingent that invaded the hospital with the goal of targeting some important people who were already wounded. Many of their killings were merciful, honestly. Whoever attacked me, and I can’t recall their face, must have assumed I was dead after they split my skull. Reasonable. Be prepared, I’m about to cast.”

Tir couldn’t help wincing, but this one wasn’t so bad. It flooded his head uncomfortably, swirling around in whorls in the places that hurt the most, tickling his inner space. It trickled away less viscously than the last healing spell, pouring back into the stone. “There,” said Matt, with obvious pride. “Perfect. Obviously minimal damage since you were just walking and talking… there’s no break to cast, not even any skin to sew up really, we’ll just have you wait this one out…” he started digging in his bag again.

“What happened then?” Tir asked, watching him shuffle through papers, leaves, jars, and sharp, silver instruments.

“What happened… oh, after the attack on the hospital? I have to take someone else’s word for that. All I know is that the counterattack came fast and a few people were rescued; I’m told I was found because I had been carrying dangerous magical elements that kept bursting and fizzing around my fallen body. It took me quite a while to really regain control of my senses; I wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital in Gregminster for quite some time but when I did, my first act was to resign from military duties. Because of my near-death experience while serving the Empire they were willing to forget my harsh and vociferous criticism of my… of the General’s plan and allow me to resign with honors. I guess they thought I had had enough time to rest since then, however,” he finished sourly.

“…How much time has it been?”

“Since I was allowed to resign? Only about five years,” he continued. “It feels long. There were many things… I never got back. After the war, and that injury. For some time I could not even write like I once had. I could no longer recall people I had met in war. I could not remember many things. I could not do magic, though once, I had been an honored surgeon. It was… hard.”

Mathiu seemed to have forgotten what he was searching in his bag for. His hands were still.

“You can do it now though.”

“It seems I can. Oh, scissors. I have to cut off some of your hair.”

“What??”

“It’s some or all of it. I doubt I need to stitch you up but I do need to sanitize you so you don’t die of an infection. Be reasonable, Tir.”

“But—but—Gremio!” he whined, turning to give Gremio his most wide-eyed, panicked stare.

Gremio pulled back uncomfortably. “Ah—Master—that is—”

“Sir, do you want this young man to die of a malign seizure? Or from an internal infection in his spinal column? Do you know how those feel? Because I have gotten reports as eloquent as ‘claws tearing at me up and down my spine and all over my skin, though I cannot see them.’”

“Young master, please be reasonable with this man,” Gremio whispered.

Though he had been watching the process with morbid curiosity until that point, Tir had to grit his teeth through an uneven patch in the middle of his scalp being shorn. He reminded himself that he usually covered his head and that noblemen didn’t cry.

Mathiu told him some few things about his life after his service and his struggle to regain himself after his injury. Tir was curious about what he knew about the beginning of the Army, and Matt admitted that both Humphrey and Odessa had visited him, at first overjoyed that he was alive, and then incensed that he would not join them in their cause.

“What was I supposed to do? I was useless as a surgeon without the skills I had once had. I was useless as a strategist with a broken mind that dropped words, numbers, facts, and memories into a hole where I couldn’t find them. How could I even write her letters for her when sometimes I picked up a pen and knew what to do and sometimes, I didn’t? Even if they took me on anyway, what then? What could I do for them other than play as a midwife and nurse, which I had never been so good at anyway? And all that assumes I even wanted to go back to war, and…”

“It was much like that for me after my injury,” Gremio muttered at length. “Things were very hard.”

“I did notice your strange limp,” Mathiu admitted.

“What?” asked Tir.

“Hold that thought, I’m about to make you very mad, and I need you to focus on not slapping me again,” Mathiu interrupted.

Tir grit his teeth through his wounds being sanitized, prodded, healed, wrapped up, and secured. He did not, however, stop his wondering. He listened to Matt’s ridiculously extensive instructions for how to rest and not crack his head on anything, but could not seem to focus. “But how did you just… forget how to write and do magic and strategize? And how did you just remember?”

“I did not remember, I forced myself to try to years until it started coming back,” he sighed, “and teaching the basics to the children helped me recall what I couldn’t keep in my head myself.”

“That’s right, you’re a schoolteacher,” Tir gasped, “but you’re not, you’re some kind of… death-defying badass surgeon-advisor-strategist-escape artist who has literally punished Emperor Barbarossa in the face, or something,”

“Fuck no,” Matt spat, without deviating in the least from his dignified tone, “and I will thank you to never say such things about me again. Now, can you get up?”

Gremio helped him stand, but it was unnecessary; his body was tired and his head was still pulsing a little, but it wasn’t a struggle to coordinate himself. “Yes, everything’s fine.”

“Fantastic,” Mathiu said. He even smiled. “I would say you have an hour, maybe two, of post-battle adrenaline before you crash. Hard. You’re going to spend that hour mingling, giving heart to the troops, making sure everyone knows you’re alive and confident and just thrilled to have a battle with Great General Rosman looming on the horizon, but you will NOT help them with their physical labor. You will drop. Sir, you’re staying with him to make sure he doesn’t drop.”

“Sir,” Gremio confirmed, squeezing Tir’s forearm with a nervous grip.

“Once he starts wilting, and I’m sure you’ll be the best judge of that, you’ll engineer a break for food and drink, and get everyone to join, because that’s when they’ll start to notice their hunger anyway. Afterwards you will retire to your rooms to strategize, except you will not strategize, I will. You will take him to his room to sleep and I’ll fill you in in the morning.”

“Matt—”

“And,” said Matt, silencing Tir with a wave, “you’ll see that he rests as best as he’ll able. If he starts turning colors and hyperventilating, come get me, if not, he rests. Absolutely do not let anyone enter his room for several nights.”

“No one enters his room but me,” gasped Gremio, shocked.

“That’s none of my business, but keep it that way. I know you know what to do for an ailing patient, so the rest is up to you.”

“What the fuck, I’m not dying,” Tir protested.

“No, you’re doing the next best thing, even if you don’t feel it right now,” Matt countered, “considering death. We’re going to be creating a thorough and substantial argument against that for the next few days. Alright, march. There’s morale to boost.”

Matt shoved him around with something that was about a hand’s breadth too high to be a lovetap but had the force of one besides. Tir swatted him away and marched with all the dignity he possessed, which, though he wasn’t aware of it, was quite a bit.

-

It was a wonderful evening for about an hour and a half. Tir realized that Mathiu wasn’t exaggerating, there were thousands of people here, and Humphrey, who gave him a bruising fist-bump after seeing him again, had the pride of a father while introducing the major players to Tir. They came from everywhere, spoke strange languages, carried amazingly weird weapons, knew Odessa once, knew his father, remembered Barbarossa from other times, once studied under the Dragon Masters, knew strange arts of battle, were familiar with Master Kai or came to aid the calls of Viktor, Varkas, or LePant, and they were all, to a person, very excited to meet him.

Tir McDohl. You’re his son? Odessa choose you?

I heard you have the what attached to you?

He didn’t stay up long. Gremio had to hide his exhaustion as skillfully as he could and retire him as early as he could manage with a hundred social graces tugging at his sleeves. As Tir lay down, feeling feverish, ashamed to let Gremio take his shoes off and unbutton his shirt for him, this was all he could ask: “What Matt said, that you have a limp… is that why you couldn’t walk, when I was young?”

“Yes, Master; it was an old injury.”

“You couldn’t walk, and then you could sometimes, and now you can… so it was like that?”

“Yes… it was my spine that was injured.”

“Oh.” He thought to himself as Gremio pulled up a blanket for him. “Did it feel like… what… what did he say… a thousand hands tearing up your spine?”

Gremio giggled, but briefly. “Well…” he whispered. “Yes. And then it didn’t feel like anything. While my ability to walk was coming back, it felt very painful.”

“Does it still?”

Gremio shook his head. “Of course not.”

“…At all?”

He cast his eyes down. “A little, I suppose. But not like it did.”

Tir stared up at him, haloed by the dim light of the lamp, in their little world. “It hurt you a lot when I was a child and you had to take care of me,” he reasoned.

Gremio pulled in a breath, but said nothing. His considering eyes searched the floor. “Well,” he whispered, pulling back from Tir to sit at his feet, “You… helped me a lot.”

Tir felt that dizzy buzz in his head; right now, it only caused it to hurt more. Gremio saw him wince. “Young master, it’s time for you to rest,” he admonished. “I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”

“By who?” Tir teased.

Gremio gave him that look again. ‘Are you fucking with me, or are you just dense?’ He hadn’t seen it in a while. “By any number of people, right now, now that you’re surrounded by a force of thousands who want your attention and instruction,” he huffed, “so I have my work cut out for me as a guardian.”

“Good luck,” Tir smiled. “And get some sleep yourself, too. I know you were hurt.”

“I was bruised, young Master,” Gremio insisted.

“I was bruised, who?”

“I was only bruised… Tir.” Gremio whispered, eyes soft with a smile. “Be quiet, now.”

He slipped out of his tent. And all things considered, it did not take Tir long to sleep.

-

He had a strange dream that night, almost not worth mentioning. He opened his eyes and saw the tent around him, but he could not move. The walls seemed to shift, they were a palace—a castle—a house—a tent—the open forest above him. As they shifted, they grew teeth, longer and longer fangs, pressing in on him. But he could not move. He swore he could feel Gremio just outside; there was nothing he could do about it.

They grew teeth and his skin prickled and pinched.

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5: Several issues are introduced far ahead of their relevancy.

While having an absolutely surreal breakfast, complete with blurry vision, occasional senses of falling even though he was sitting on a very solid rock, his shoulder feeling like Viktor had personally tried to tear it out, and being cheerfully greeted by a hundred men and women in armor that he did not fucking know, Tir managed to ask one intelligent question: hey, how the hell did Matt know how to bring an army to them in the middle of the great forest?

“IT WAS ME,” snapped a bright, nasal, incredibly close voice.

Tir jumped and snapped his head around, which hurt, but whatever. He was too fucking happy to see what he saw.

“It’s you??” he asked, failing on remembering his name, but certainly not who he was. The blue-haired elf—the fast runner! He had been imprisoned for the same thing as Kirkis, that is, trying to desert the elves on the brink of war, except that Tir got the impression he hadn’t been running to get help.

“I, STALLION!” he continued, thumping one delicate elven hand proudly on his chest. He wore an archer’s armor around his chest, but of the lightest possible leather; his shoes, dangling out of the tree he sat in, were well-worn and many colors, edged with bright metal and patched with dyed leather. He had virtually no camouflage, honestly, between the cyan hair, the bright clothing, and the kicking and occasional bouncing. “I ran when I saw the fire coming—and I took little Sylvina with me, who needed to confide her sorrows to me, the only one who knew where her love had gone! I picked her up and ran her and did not put her down until I reached Toran Castle, where little Kirkis was to be!”

His accent was absolutely fucking delightful. Tir could hear the old warriors, veterans of one or two or three armies though they might be, stifling laughter at his loud voice, soft consonants, and blurred pronunciation. Kirkis, Tir realized, had been speaking human tongue VERY well. “But how did you know where Toran Castle was?” He teased.

“Eh, it was no problem for me, Stallion!” he bragged. “I knew it was in a big lake in the Empire, so I ran the Empire until I found the lake. Then I ran the lake until I found the Toran Castle.”

He said ‘Too-rhan Kee-sel.’ It was adorable. “Bullshit,” Tir said, laughing.

“Is not!” Stallion declared, slipping so lithely out of the tree one couldn’t be sure how he shifted to do it. “Do you want to see how fast I run?”

“Well—”

“You will see how fast I run!”

There was a chorus of whoops and assent from the gathered soldiers. The tall elf turned, braced one foot on a rock, and sprang into the air. Tir was trying to take him lightly, but honestly, it was like he was flying—it was probably twenty feet, maybe more, before his first foot hit the ground. When he landed, he could turn on his heel and change his direction like a cat.

In seconds he was darting back with a squealing elfmaid in his arms. He plunked her down next to Tir. He braced her so that she didn’t jolt on the makeshift wooden benches around the breakfast fire, where they were making sausages, eggs, and oolong. “Here is little Sylvina!” declared Stallion proudly.

“Stallion!!” she squealed, pulling down her nightgown over her legs. Her tiny face was red, but she was grinning.

“What?” Tir laughed, holding Sylvina with one arm to comfort her. “What was that!?”

“Now another!” Stallion hollered. He jumped up as if he could fucking levitate and was gone again—in a few seconds, Kirkis was dumped right next to his girlfriend. Unfortunately, it seems Kirkis hadn’t been as far into the morning as Sylvina had been—screeching, he whacked his fists at Stallion while trying to hide his body with nothing but a bedsheet, because that was all he had around him. The soldiers roared with laughter; Sylvina, though she tried, failed to look offended. She burst into giggles, accepting a terrified Kirkis as Stallion dropped him into her arms.

“Stallion, oh shit,” Tir said. “Wait—”

“ANOTHER!!” he roared.

The unfortunate victims piled in at rapid fire rate. Indeed, he gathered a sizable company in a single minute, proving his boast and making a lot of enemies in record time. Cleo was shocked but not really bothered; Pahn was scores of both. Gremio was absolutely hollering and brandishing his axe like a shieldmaiden; Stallion, who very nearly received a dire wound, had to drop him unceremoniously and dart like a frightened sparrow, shouting “ANOTHER!!” in a high-pitched squeal over his shoulder.

“Good morning, Gremio,” Tir said as he watched him lying flummoxed on his back, giggling.

“Good—morning, young master?” He asked. “What was that?”

Gremio was an early riser—he had been off helping with the washing and tending of wounded, so he was luckily enough to be fully clothed, unlike many of Stallion’s victims. “That was Stallion,” Tir said, “remember him?”

“Ah,” said Gremio, looking with an absolutely stupefied expression at Tir’s laughing, smiling face, “better now than I did.”
That was almost more time than it took for Stallion to arrive with Lorelai, who had been scouting the perimeter probably half a mile away, and drop her down with everyone else. “What?” she asked. “The fuck?”

“How have you been, Lori?” asked Cleo, who was pouring her some tea.

“Busy?”

“ANOTHER!” Stallion bellowed, and was gone.

The skinny teenager that Tir had learned was Lepant’s irresponsible son was next. He, like Kirkis, was practically buck naked, which earned him some whistling that he blushed and preened under. “Uh, good morning, guys,” he said, “is this a drill? Did I fail?”

“No,” said Tir, “but you failed.”

“Ahhhh…” he sighed, “that’s what I get, I guess, for letting my guard down.” He looked about as ashamed as a cat who drank all the cream and got away with it might be.

“Were you hurt?” asked Cleo curiously, poking at the bandages on his midsection and chest, which Tir had never noticed before either.

“Yes,” he sighed, “by the pain… of love.”

“Queen of Heaven.”

This was all the time it took for Stallion to dart back with a screaming bundle of anger, drop it on Tir’s lap, and literally leap over the gigantic breakfast fire, startling attendants and screaming “ANOTHER!!” Tir was left with figuring out how to deal with a furious, and we mean FURIOUS, magical 13-year-old sociopath.

“WHO DOES THAT PRANCING FALSECOLOR SON OF A BITCH THINK HE IS?” Luc screeched, hands clutched into claws that were very close to Tir’s face.

Gremio was trying to pull him off of Tir as he thrashed. “Morning,” said Tir.

“Yeah, good morning!” said Cleo, who was pouring more tea.

“Morning,” Sheena echoed, who had settled onto a log and was sprawled out, still almost naked, enjoying breakfast.

“Aaaa,” whined Kirkis, from his place within a bedsheet on Sylvina’s lap.

“I WILL TEAR HIM APART,” Luc continued.

“You will have to catch him,” huffed Gremio, finally lifting him into the air. Unsure what to do, he just held him aloft, wriggling and thrashing. “Honestly,” he sighed, lost.

Viki arrived with nothing but a heartfelt “Ah, what?” and was immediately given food and drink. Valeria arrived with a less amused “Ah, what?” and had her sword out but was making no slashing or stabbing motions. She, too, was given food and drink, this time by Pahn, who had been whacked on the head and told to help out. Luc was eventually convinced to stop carrying on as a determined Sylvina slowly but with great mental strength pushed a mug of warm tea closer and closer to his hands until he was forced to take it from her, so as not to appear impolite. Then he hung in Gremio’s grip like a scruffed cat, aggravated, embarrassed, and complimenting the working girls on their tea.

Gremio set him down very cautiously and put a hand on his halberd once he was seated. “Are you done, young man?” he asked.

“I am done until the little blue freak runs back in there,” Luc spat with disconcertingly dark intent and a high-pitched, prepubescent voice.

“He’s been a minute, actually,” said Valeria with some concern.

“Yeah, that guy moves like thunder,” said Sheena, straining his neck to look around at the trees. “Where’s he gone? It’s been a good… thirty seconds. Probably.”

“It’s been thirty-six seconds, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,” chanted Viki dreamily.

“Lemme know if you get a sight on him,” added Lorelai, notching an arrow.

“Put that down,” Gremio admonished. “He’s obnoxious and culturally dense, not a threat.”

“He is a threat to the propriety of this army,” Luc argued.

“Literally everyone in this godforsaken camp is a threat to the propriety of this army, including you, squeaky,” Cleo shouted.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, come at me, baby boy.” she smiled, lifting up a carving knife. Pahn, for the record, did jack nothing about this.

“Hey, uh,” asked Tir, rubbing his head slightly, “does anyone else hear that, or is my skull falling apart?”

Everyone stopped to listen. Faint at first, it got closer, and closer; an incredibly rapping humming noise, like a hummingbird striking a tree.

“What is that?” asked Valeria. “A weapon?”

“Not any I know of,” muttered Lorelai, tapping an arrow against her knee.

“Nor I,” agreed Gremio.

“It is not the dreadful Mirror,” Sylvina interrupted nervously. “It had no sound.”

“But it is getting louder,” Tir continued nervously.

“Maybe it’s like… a horse?” suggested Sheena, shrugging.

“Oh my fucking stars and fucking moon,” sad Cleo, in a voice of awe, eyes wide, “look.”

They followed her gaze. There was a second of silence, and then, immediately, howls of laughter. For just in sight, beyond the line of trees, they could see a familiar blue figure, tugging on an incredible weight; his muscles strained to drag it behind him while his feet made furrows into the ground so fiercely and rapidly that they made a sound like approaching horse hooves. Still, he moved only a little at a time, because with his compact, lithe frame and comparatively weak arms, he was trying to drag Viktor, dressed in his full armor, or what armor he chose to wear, fucking filthy from being dragged through dirt and leaves, with his arms crossed behind his head and a bemused smile on his face. “If you want something, elf,” he called, “you can just ask.”

No one was in a position to break it up as Viktor was dragged into the circle because of their laughter, but dragged he was, unresisting and completely unhelpful the whole way. Even Luc, bitter as he was, couldn’t help but snicker. Stallion got Viktor close enough that it was considered fetching, dropped his arms, and collapsed on the ground. “NO MORE,” he declared.

“Aw, come on,” said Viktor, not making a single effort to move, “I can make it another lap, baby.”

“STALLION IS THE FASTEST,” said the poor, bedraggled creature, “NOT THE STRONGEST.”

“Everyone has their limits, sunshine,” Viktor consoled him.

Tir walked over with a fresh cup of tea. “We’re having breakfast,” he said, setting it on Viktor’s chest.

“Fantastic,” Viktor said. “Captain Killjoy wants to see you when you’re done out here; he stopped Speedy in his tracks with a feather quill and he decided to take his chances with me instead. He says he needs your approval for something.”

“Mr. Silverberg can have him when he’s done eating,” Gremio called from where he was starting to force people to sit down neatly, “which is what everyone here is going to do right now, since he have a long, long day ahead of us on the road. Including you, Sir. Sit down. Mr. Lepant, what are you wearing?”

“Well, nothing,” shrugged Sheena.

Eventually, everyone was induced by Gremio to sit down, calm down, and eat. After all the chaos and laughter, Tir couldn’t help but feel… strange. It felt childish. Alright, they were having a good time, and now that was over. That didn’t mean he should suddenly feel so… bad. But it did, and he did, and he found himself excusing himself to go see what Mathiu needed pretty quickly. Gremio, of course, came with. And so did Viktor, without a word.

-

Mathiu Silverberg made Tir nervous. From the start he had been coming at him from a disadvantage. Being put in the position of having to beg a man to put his life on his line after his sister, and Tir’s previous commander, had died on it, colored his feelings about him for the rest of time. He tried to reason himself out of it but couldn’t. His heart would start beating nervously when he first walked into a room; he felt like he was always asking too much of him, like he was out of his depth with him, behind, and in short, in debt, and he didn’t like it. Even when they developed enough of a familiarity and repertoire to be grappling with each other in conversation he felt indebted and outclassed. And even though he kept learning more about Mathiu lately and noticed areas where he had grown too, or was still rusty, or was just human about things, the feeling of nervous inequality wouldn’t dissipate.

It probably made him more aggressive around him, Tir reflected, as he drew the curtain aside to the ramshackle linen medical wing. That wasn’t good, but considering Mathiu brushed it aside like it didn’t even matter, well, it’s not like it made Tir feel any less nervous, which made him annoyed, which wasn’t good. It was possible that, without his realizing, they had developed a bad relationship.

These thoughts seemed a bit grandiose when was led to Matt and found him sitting by the bedside of a badly wounded man, sewing up the side of his stomach next to small pile of bloody bone shards. They were almost certainly a part of the patient’s ribcage once. Matt covered up his mouth with a bloody hand to stifle a yawn and then stared sadly at all the blood, because he couldn’t well rub the sleep out of his eyes like that. Viktor spun a chair around and plunked his ass down next to him, grinning, and instead of starting, Matt just raised a side eyebrow at him without turning from his work.

Thy both stared at the sleeping man then, whose chest was heaving in pain though he had the weight of magical sleep on him, feeling murky and heavy in the air. Beads of sweat ran down his dark sides, some of them pink. “Is he gonna make it?” Viktor asked cheerfully.

Mathiu shrugged and picked up a cloth, not to wipe down his hands but to clear up the stitches he just made. “I believe so, unless he gets an infection as well, or there was something I didn’t see. Which is possible at this point. I feel like I could cut someone open and not even know what I’m looking at today. I don’t trust myself to positively identify a liver right now. I want a drink. I doubt he’ll be fighting soon, or ever again, if he’s smart, but he should live. Tir, how’s the head?”

“Uh,” said Tir, familiarly off-balance. “It hurts. But I’m standing up, which was hard last night.”

“Good, good. If you’re not having balance issues and not hearing noises, you should be on the mend. Let me take a look at you though. Oh, blood on my hands, lots of blood. Viktor, where’s my…”

“I’ll just get you some new water,” Viktor decided, not liking what he saw in all of the closest bowls. He picked one up and walked off with it, sloshing the mixture of river water, human blood and sweat, and sharp-smelling medical poultices on the dirt just outside the door.

As he walked off, Mathiu slouched down, looking very much like he wanted to put his head in his hands. Then he realized he hadn’t been done with he surgery he was in the middle of before and started putting the patchwork on the ailing soldier. His eyes were hooded low, focused on their task.

Other medics were scattered in the background, one or two finally succumbed to sleep on beds, almost indistinguishable from the wounded. Some of those sighed and groaned or even cried, though softly, some chattered and complained and whistled, depending on how seriously they were hurt. Not to his surprise, knowing the code of honor among medics, Tir saw quite a few people in under-armor from the empire here, their hair shaven short in Imperial fashion. He wouldn’t say that it looked like they were being treated first, exactly, or with the most attention, but they were being treated. Staring at a young man that reminded him of someone his father kept in his guards, he accidentally met his eye. Tir raised an eyebrow, the man looked flushed and turned away.

Mathiu sighed and placed his hands on the wounded man. He looked troubled, his eyes squeezed shut. There was a dim blue light on his fingers, the most simple, energy-conserving healing spell he could possibly cast. Still, he slumped over after it was done.

He tired to pop his neck without touching it. When Gremio noticed what he was doing, he walked over and did it for him. He was weirdly good at popping people’s necks, and Tir had to admit the fact that he was probably good at bare-hands murder. Mathiu sighed and slumped into it, looking like he was going blurry in the head. “Thank you, Sir,” he said, “and how about your cuts? Nothing has turned red or swollen?”

“No,” Gremio replied softly, “one is swollen slightly but I’ve given it as much attention as it can get. I think it’s because of the skin abrasion.”

“The skinswipe on your arm? It looked nasty. Right, I remember it. Probably going to bother you no matter what we do but keep the turmeric on it.”

“I will. Thank you, doctor,” Gremio whispered.

Mathiu sighed. “Don’t start doctoring me now just because I’ve looked at you both with some of your clothes off. Keep it informal. Or else.”

Tir couldn’t help but notice that even though he said that, Mathiu kept it formal with Gremio, calling him Sir, asking him politely for favors, and not taking any liberties in his speech with him. He wondered what was going on there; was Matt putting himself below Gremio on purpose? Why? He didn’t seem afraid of him, at least. Gremio rushed to apologize, who knows for what, and Matt cut him off with a hand, which worked more because it was covered in gristly blood than because of any force behind it. “Unrelated, Sir, but do you know—”

They were interrupted with Viktor, who had fresh water in a basin. “A blessing from Vega,” Mathiu declared with false gravitas, falling on it.

“Oh, you dog, I’m nothing special,” replied Viktor almost noncommittally, and Mathiu didn’t even respond. Viktor slung back down into a chair while Matt scrubbed himself, looking as if he had been given something much more precious than a washbasin. Viktor saw Gremio standing behind Matt, with his hands working around his shoulders, and grinned. “Hey, blondie, you wanna do me too? I hear you’ve got a lot of talent in those hands.”

Gremio huffed and Tir felt a bit of heat crawling up his neck. “You know, I might, if you didn’t say it that way.”

Viktor leaned back, eyebrows raised, and a smile creeping up his face. “Ahhh,” he sighed, “not every approach works with every man.”

While Gremio snubbed him and Mathiu ignored the preceedings entirely, Tir grumbled. “Hey, it might help if you didn’t call him Blondie.”

Viktor gave him a considering glance. “Hm.” He rubbed a hand over his chin, casually glancing back and forth between the man and his boy, seeming to reappraise something. “You’re right,” he said, “it wasn’t meant to be a racial comment. Sorry if you took it that way. I apologize, I was only taken in by the beauty of—”

Gremio snorted and interrupted him, crossing his arms. “I wasn’t taking anything in any way, and won’t be besides,” he snapped, “so don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, shit,” Tir said, on reflex.

Viktor obviously tried not to laugh and obviously failed. “Alright, alright,” he said, putting his hands up. “No more foreplay, I’ve got it. Matt, what are we up to?”

“First,” Mathiu said, standing up out of his chair with a slight wobble, “I’m going to check Tir’s progress, like I said I would. Then we’ll step outside so we can talk logistics.”

“More logistics,” Viktor sighed. “This man is a logistics freak.”

“Logistics is the art of making things happen successfully, which is something I am very interested in,” Mathiu replied blandly. He wiped his hands off on a rag and asked Tir to hold still.

Tir reluctantly took off his bandana and let Matt inspect the shorn down wound. He asked him a few simple questions about the last night and exactly how awake and aware he felt today and then, with no warning, moved to slap him in the face. Tir deflected him easily, since he did not move fast, and jumped backwards, pure betrayal on his features.

“Your reflexes are fine,” he said, with only the barest smile. “Sir, I would thank you to put the chair down.”

Gremio sheepishly put down the chair he had immediately hoisted over his head when he saw Mathiu raise his hand.

“???” Tir asked.

“If you’re able to react like that I have no doubt your brain will heal just fine, though please, take it easy until we have the misfortune of reaching Great General Rosman’s base at Pannu Yakuta… which is what I wanted to talk to you about. Viktor, is there anyone in the meeting room?”

“Shouldn’t be,” Viktor shrugged, “but I’ll go ahead of you.”

Viktor swung himself out of the tent and booked it down the halls of makeshift buildings and around the corner. Mathiu stretched himself stiffly and the other three followed, much more slowly, Tir curiously watching the hoards of people waking up and packing up as they passed by. On the way, Matt tiredly but rapid-firely explained that in his figures it would take the whole army five days to reach Pannu Yakuta, though he had considered the wisdom of pushing it into four days in order to give Rosman, who would know they were coming soon if he did not already, less time to draw forces and prepare. “By my math it would be not impossible though difficult,” he summarized, “because the army is so disorganized, in essence, being several different forces we slapped together with no preparation or warning, I could pretend we wouldn’t end up scattered, stretched, and out-of-line by a strenuous march, but I’d be kidding myself. At the end of the day I think it’s smarter to take an extra day and keep the forces tighter than risk the rear and the supply lines breaking.”

“We have a supply line? Where the hell is it based? Who’s giving us food?” asked Tir, baffled.

“Do you remember doing a lot of boring, strenuous set-up all over the island so that it could be farmed effectively?” asked Matt.

“No shit, it’s already ready?”

“Fuck no. But we’re producing enough that symphasizers are willing to let us borrow the basics if we’re going to repay them. Very, very understanding symphasizers. Now, that’s going to bite us in the ass a few months from now when we have to give away all of our food, especially when we’re out on campaign unable to grow more right now, but I literally have no time to plan that currently and no one to order to do it, so we’ll see about that if we survive until then. Now,”

“Who the hell are these symphasizers? Kalekkans?”

“I wish. Almost every man who made up the standing resistance force in what was once Kalekka is already here, in this army. Sure, they brought their own supplies, but Kalekka is a corpse. We have this kind of help in the western and southwest territories, especially the Antei area, which contains several organized city-states that haven’t been in the Empire long. A lot of them are still chafing and we can get them to let us borrow, even though it’s not in their nature to give. Now—”

“West and southwest,” Tir interrupted, considering. “That’s Milich Oppenheimer’s territory.”

“It’s his protectorate, yes, though territory it isn’t,” Matt equivocated, “not after his parents surrendered to the Empire.”

“Was it that recently?”

“I believe so. I may have my facts not quite straight but the Western territories were independent when my grandfather was working not fifty years ago… mostly they’re subdued these days, especially the more civilized areas that were under the Oppenheimers’ direct rule. No one wants this information spread, but the southwest territories, where the southern warrior cultures are settled historically, are barely subdued by the Empire. Most of those areas were claimed in the last few decades and they don’t consider themselves state territory at all. They hardly ever pay taxes and are more or less put under guard to keep them settled. A lot of military force is wasted pretending nothing is wrong south of Lorimar, and forget the tribes in the mountains.

“Now, the Antei area has been actual civilization for as long as I know of, which is why they have produced food we can borrow reliably, with interest, and stipulations, and so on. But the southwest… they tend to be hunters, not herders or farmers, and they have a more, ah, rustic way of life. So though they might have the sense to know we’re on their side, there’s really not much help to be getting from them aside from troops. Who are also largely too stubbornly independent to know where their bread is buttered, which is why they’re represented by such sorry souls as—”

“But the hold that Milich has in the west…” Tir interrupted. “He was always being congratulated on what he’s done.”

“He’s funneled hundreds of thousands into making model capitals for his ancestral holdings, that’s sure. There’s a bit of a scandal about that, since it almost looks like he’s creating a power base for himself, but they provide the Empire so many troops and so many luxuries that Gregminster doesn’t dare complain. A more stable economy in Antei and Rikon, a more comfortable life in Gregminster. Mutual benefit. His strategy works great in the city parts of the city-states, less great in the state parts. People who aren’t seeing the guards and the horses and pomp every day, people actually living in the places where the food is grown, many of them don’t really see themselves as part of the Empire. And why should they? It barged in only a few generations ago and started making demands. Shoving the ruling family into roles as duchesses and generals didn’t fool them one bit, and they’re starting to scoff at anyone who’s playing their role as sycophants. One mister Oppenheimer is enemy number one in the country even if he’s beloved in Antei. Alright, here we are.”

‘Here’ was just another tent among the tents, simple linen with a marker out front denoting it as the meeting hall. Inside was a wooden table Tir recognized as just one of the hall-tables from the castle, water stains and all. There was one large map on hide stretched across its surface, pinned down in thirty-two compass points, and several papers scattered around it of lists, plans, and more detailed area maps. There was a large ink stain on the ground and half-drunk beers scattered precariously around; Viktor, who was seated in a knife-scarred chair, was holding one, getting a little less sober and he ran his eyes across lists of men, calculating.

“Wait, so if Milich’s parents were independent rulers before they surrendered,” Tir was saying as they walked in.

“—what’s he doing as a trained monkey?” Viktor guessed, looking up from the papers. “Hey, Matt, how’d you start talking about this?”

“Oh, nothing, were you aware that Tir thinks logistics are perfectly interesting topics of conversation, you overgrown child?” Matt asked in the tone of someone offering up a topic for idle small talk.

“Look, I shouldn’t have to explain to you why enjoying three-hour discussions about wheat distribution is weird,” Viktor argued. “Can we have a three-hour discussion about carnage distribution already?”

Mathiu sat down with a huff, gesturing to some chairs across the way for Tir and Gremio. “Who else is coming?” he asked Viktor.

“I made sure to get word to Humphrey, Sanchez, and Lepant, and you’re about to meet a lovely young woman named Valeria,” Viktor said, with a bit of a smile.

“Valeria y Meullefleur, former lieutenant to Kwanda Rosman? I heard,” Mathiu continued smugly, clearing some papers and plates off of the map in front of him. “That should be fun, I only ever saw her in passing since she was only beginning her career when I resigned, but I am relatively, though not entirely, sure that I recall Humphrey going on record for calling her a heartless, blood-thirsty bitch the last time they were in the same place. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Stop… stop doing that,” Viktor complained. “Stop knowing everyone.”

“Humphrey called someone a ‘bitch?’” Tir asked. “He gets angry?”

He didn’t really feel comfortable with the way Mathiu chuckled in response.

That said, you wouldn’t have any idea that something heated had happened between any one of the ten people who quickly filed into the room, because Lepant, obviously, had brought Eileen and Sheena along. Sheena brightened when he saw Tir and sat immediately on his other side, chattering at him; Tir just found himself wondering when he had been put into clothing.

It was hard to pay attention to whatever Sheena was talking about (he barely knew him, what the hell) when there was so much to scan in the room; Lepant and Eileen, both armed as if the battle were today, stately, ready, with smiles on their faces; Tir had to admit he had always been looking for some sort of flaw in their apparent closeness, and still was. Across from Eileen was Sanchez with his books and records, opening a bottle of wine for everyone. No time was too early for him, it seemed. Humphrey sat next to him, also prepared for battle, face focused, examining the map in front of him. Next to him was Matt, inscrutable, eyes heavy with exhaustion. Viktor was leaned back casually, at it seemed he grew more and more casual as the air grew more and more tense. Valeria was seated next to him, one elbow on the table, eyes scanning down the line, sword on her lap. Across from her was Gremio, taught as a bowstring, chair scooted very close to Tir’s.

For people who were willing to sit around a table of war together, he reflected, they had some pretty different reasons for being there. Or did they, really?

“Well, before I begin outlying my plan as it exists now,” Mathiu began, without preamble, accepting a glass of pale grey wine from Sanchez, “are there immediate concerns to bring to the table?”

There was shrugging around the table. “Immediate, I suppose not,” Humphrey said.

“You know this camp is a mess,” Lepant said with concern.

“It… isn’t exactly Imperial standard, and I suppose we should all accept it won’t be,” Mathiu admitted. People chuckled, a wry, disappointed sound.

“It’s going to be hard to move everyone, and to order them, harder,” Valeria complained. “There isn’t even a sense of who to take command from.”

“Tir,” Matt replied instantly.

“Yeah, I know that and you know that,” Valeria continued. “And you can be the one to tell Varkas or Flik or Ronnie that.”

“Ronnie and Flik aren’t here, and Varkas doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Mathiu summarized, “Done. Everyone else can be transitioned gently since they’ll be used to listening to Humphrey or Viktor in the absence of… anyone else, and Humphrey and Viktor are on board.”

“Damn straight,” Viktor said. Humphrey nodded seriously.

“Yes, it will definitely be that easy,” Valeria continued. When she saw she was getting a few glares, she shrugged. “You brought in an entire force that doesn’t KNOW him. They’re not blind followers if they broke off from the Empire their selves. People will want concrete reasons why Tir is the commander in Odessa’s place and not someone they know.”

“Rest assured, I had not failed to notice this,” said Mathiu. “I know it’s not going to be the easiest sell. A lot of people will be wondering why Odessa made the choice she did. Which is why it’s lucky that this battle is going to be a bit do or die, isn’t it?”

“Not bad, good take, but can you do it again without the creepy smile?”

“Thank you for your input, Viktor,” Matt sighed, still smiling a little. “Seriously.” He leaned forward to spread his fingertips on the map, indicating where they were then and where they were going. He explained his reasoning behind taking a five-day march to reach Pannu Yakuta, with long breaks, and Tir saw people initially with furrowed brows, but eventually nodding. It was concise reasoning, and he had plans for those days far more than merely walking. They would be surveying, organizing, sorting people into a structured line as they went on. Valeria was asked to whip up the banditry in line with Varkas and Sydonia, as Mathiu figured they would respect her harsh demeanor and trust her to make strategic choices as for their place in line. “From everything I’ve heard about you, I would trust you with that, at least. And as you’ll be our only member with a mental map of Pannu Yakuta, it’s best that you’re informing our best infiltrators.”

“Leave it to me.”

“They’re rowdy, and I want your eye on them. Right now they’re only about two hundred strong, which is a small section of the army, but that sort of corps is always important… and easy to lose to desertion. Keep them in line. Humphrey, I’m afraid I have to give you a much rougher job, as usual.”

Humphrey grinned. “Odessa’s boys can be rowdy.”

Matt shook his head. “No, actually. We’ve picked up a lot of imperial runaways, both on the way here and after the last battle. Some are prisoners, some are conversions, some, I’m not sure. You’re going to be making a fighting force out of that.”

Humphrey raised his eyebrows. “How many?”

“Counts have failed me thus far. Maybe three hundred, maybe five hundred, maybe less, maybe more. The trouble was that we ran into a similar battalion as you did on the way here and I made the somewhat risky choice of simply apprehending them all. Some have run off, more keep getting found sneaking about. I’m not sure yet how many are protesting performatively and how many are really waiting to start backstabbing. I think Rosman is having the forest surveyed; I don’t know why else we would be regularly running into large bands of Imperial troops seemingly on patrol hundreds of miles from their home ground. See who can be changed, see who wants to fight, see who can’t be help, and make me something by the time we reach Pannu Yakuta. The rest are hostages.”

Humphrey let out a very expressive sigh. All the same, he replied just like Valeria: “Leave it to me.”

“Lord Lepant, I would have you remain with your troops as they are, though do your best to mingle them and spread their sense of responsibility around to my rabble, would you? I know they’re loyal, so there’s no point testing fine soldiers with a shake-up in command when we have much bigger problems.”

“Naturally,” Lepant replied without hesitation. “My five hundred will be your vanguard if ordered. Leave it to me.”

“For our new allies, the elves and the kobolds, I myself will keep watch on them,” Matt continued. “Both races have cultures of pride and independence, and I would like to start with them having an advisor rather than a commander. Anything else is presumptive and will lose us what could become valuable connections.”

“You’re going to give yourself maybe fifty charges when sticking others with several hundred?” Viktor asked teasingly. “Really, Matt.”

“And you, you feckless miscreant, will be assigned to your own kind. You’ll be seeing what you can make of the core force we took from Toran with us, the recruits from the Kaku, Kouan, Seika, and Garan areas. It’s more people than you may realize by now, maybe 1,500 strong, maybe 1,800.”

Viktor whistled. “What were you doing when I was starving in the mountains for three months? Real work? Take it easy, Matt.”

Mathiu seemed to be hiding a pleased grin. “Nevertheless, they’re new. Many are belligerents, not trained fighters. You’re the one who knows how to make a soldier out of a street fighter with a chip on their shoulder. Make it happen. Tell me where they can be placed in the line. Sort out the warriors from the supporters.”

“Leave it to me,” Viktor declared, picking up his tankard again. “No sweat.”

“And commander,” Matt began, levelling his eyes at Tir. “Odessa’s army was not so great as the Emperor’s, but we still had many numbers. They are devoted and experienced fighters. They loved her and will love you. They were split between several areas at the time of her passing; Flik is still gathering many bodies, but Humphrey had the core with him and brought them here. They are at least 4,000 fighting people. You will command them over then next five days, and ad infinitum. I suppose ad mortem, rather. This will be the body of our army in the upcoming battle and the seasoned fighters that we will be trying to model the rest off of. They are already prepared, so I’m not expecting you to construct an army; I am expecting you to take full command of it.”

How can one describe how Tir felt? It was an impossible task, it seemed, but it was his. Humphrey’s army; wasn’t it a grave insult to reassign it? But no; it was Odessa’s army. Odessa’s people. That didn’t change the fact that he was completely unprepared to lead them; that didn’t change the fact that he had to.

In the brief second he had to reply before he looked hesitant, he thought of two people: his father, whom he had seen in a position of command a hundred times. It was natural to him, and Tir had seen how he did it. HE had already been trying to act Teo’s part, aware of how devoted his father’s troops were to him and how few other successful examples he had.

The other person he thought of was right by his side. He was the one whose care made people love him.

“Leave it to me.”

Mathiu held his stare for a moment. “Sir,” he said, and then returned to addressing the table. “With that, we have command shaken up and the vast majority of the army forced to recognize new commanders, not just the old corps. Within a few days I expect to hear your opinions of how able-bodied your troops are, how well organized, and where you think they should be placed in battle at Pannu Yakuta. Confer with Valeria about the terrain. I expect to hear the truth, not whatever you think I want to hear. If it’s hopeless, I want to know it’s hopeless. Now, let me lay down some possible plans for battle, though they are necessarily sketchy, so you can see what kind of positions I have in mind.”

Mathiu had asked Valeria to draw out a map of the fortress and the surrounding areas. She drew with he same kind of exact, parallel lines and spare geography that Tir’s father always had, marking out towns and territory up and down elevation lines with minimal notes. It looked like Mathiu had had a second artist flesh it out so it was more comprehensible to someone who wasn’t trained by the Imperial army; Tir had little doubt it was Mathiu himself, considering the calligraphic flair the second artist had.

Pannu Yakuta lay in the far south; it was a river fortress among the hills, making approach in what was otherwise a flat land difficult. The brilliance, Valeria explained, was that because of the featureless, indefensible landscape, Rosman could see an army coming from half a day away, theoretically; however, that army would be inevitably slowed and pushed out of line by the hills and rivers around the fort itself, slowing them down and leaving them victims to archers and spellcasters on the high walls. “I can’t imagine sneaking up on the fortress,” she admitted, “the most successful strategy would probably be maintaining a siege, since they’re very far from their suppliers in the Empire, but we don’t have the resources either. I would counsel full force and overwhelming numbers, which we don’t have. In lieu of either of those options, I would expect us to wage underground warfare, which we cannot, because we don’t have the trained troops for espionage. So, strategist,” she said, turning full body to Mathiu, unamused look on her face.

Mathiu gazed down at the maps in front of him. His eyes surveyed, in miniature, the monumental task ahead of them. A very large space to march, unknown territory with unpredictable hostiles, being outnumbered 3:2, at least, and a battle with every possible statistic stacked up against them waiting at the end.

He smiled.

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6: A circle is drawn in the sand.

What did Tir did to gain their trust? He wouldn’t even be aware of what it really was. These are the things he consciously tried to do: he worked to exhaustion to appear stoic, strong, and sensible in front of the troops, like his father always had. He asked simple questions with polite speech, keeping his voice low; a trick that had always done wonders with scared or aggressive soldiers. He went out of his way to not appear aggressive and apologize for any slips, even if he had to do so with his teeth ground and his right hand throbbing. He encouraged seasoned, older soldiers to speak to him and listened on end, even when the talk was dull. They had knowledge he did not, and, after reflecting that he had spent the last battle being guarded, he knew he needed much more knowledge and experience to be able to stand up to the people he was supposed to be commanding. He was acting like a petitioner, not a commander, and he knew it, but after the failures of the past year, his humility was such that he couldn’t imagine doing anything else… and it rankled him, and his temper would flare, but he would suppress it.

It will not surprise the reader to know that it was at this time that there were people who began to occasionally slip into calling him “Commander Teo,” after which they would act as if they had not made a mistake. Their names sounded similar enough.

What he really did to earn such devotion he was not aware of. It was this: his private persona was completely different from his public persona. The catch, of course, was that both were agreeable. While the public persona, despite slips of emotion, was a non-threatening, attentive, and serious young man, the private persona at dinner, or around the fire, or while they were washing clothes, or caught alone outside was passionate, joking, emotional. He was, people quickly decided, the sort of person to ‘say strange things,’ to engage you suddenly in serious conversation, to say without prompting that he was worried about something, or vexed, or unable to sleep because of the days ahead; to confide honestly with strangers and go a bit too far in being candid. He was bad at lying and worthless at keeping secrets. You would get an honest answer with him because he found it impossible to bullshit you. (He had learned from watching Mathiu, Viktor, and Sanchez do it that he was no fucking good at it, at least, not in this point in his life. Each of the lot could have sold bullshit to a bull.) He was not aware of the impression it made. He was not aware that the average adult could not depend on an honest answer or a genuine answer from anyone, but you could expect it from Tir. He meant what he said, and he said what he meant. People felt, in short, that they could go to him. If he couldn’t solve a problem, you could at least depend—and this was a miracle—at being frankly turned down and not left to hope.

And if Tir could know how he made people feel in battle, he would have had a lot more confidence in himself sooner.

-

It was Valeria who decided that she was going to learn the personal fighting strengths of her people by literally fighting them. Since her people were now a ragtag group of filthy bandits, they LOVED it. She suplexed the vast majority of them onto the ground and bellowed at them for being weak; the women came to admire her and the men who could speak tried to stutter out compliments to her beauty and strength. It worked great for Valeria; unfortunately for the rest of the lieutenants, everyone else thought that was an incredible idea.

Humphrey was on board with fighting furious ex-imperials until they started trying to stab him. That said, he earned respect for motherfucking rolling about a dozen of them before they got dirty, and it had a pacifying effect on his new troops. He had a blended fighting style, Tir noticed dizzily, on the night he was woken from his sleep to rush out into midnight firelight and help break up what had turned into a rumble between a few fanatical converts to the cause and a few loyalists; he parried and evaded like a trained duelist, stepping quickly to the side and cleanly deflecting blows, but he hit like a street fighter, ready and willing to forgo swordplay and slam his opponent into the ground with a hilt, a knee, or a fist. Tir was to find out much later that he fought like a Kalekken street fighter, for the most part, combined with what he learned in the Southwest from the warrior tribes. At the time it just looked like he vacillated between neat and respectful empire training and bare-hands murder, and it did great at keeping people off their feet. That said, the time he almost got knifed and Mathiu lost his mind at a soon-to-be prisoner while more and more people stuck their heads out of their tents, gaping, was the day a few new rules were added to the impromptu competitions.

It could no longer happen at any time. People would gather after dinner and before lights out. The challenges were not allowed to go on longer than an hour’s time. Both parties had to agree to a challenge beforehand. If no one could vouch that someone had agreed to a challenge, it was a fault and you were spoken to harshly from that point on. All challenges were one-on-one; if anyone else tried to join the ring, they would be ripped out, excepting the case that the person was a medic or a peacekeeper, each of whom was known.

Initially, what they had to sift through was about five hundred people wanting to challenge Humphrey, Viktor, or Valeria. Tir knew immediately what was really going on; they were incensed about being given new commanders and having their chain of power broken and reforged, and they wanted to make a few complaints, but didn’t feel like they were at liberty to do so. Taking out anger with their swords was the next best thing, and it was no harm, no foul for as long as the three seasoned warriors could take it and keep going. Lepant would get involved as well, but not nearly so often—he was a respectable duelist as well as a hand-to-hand fighter, and from what Tir saw, he was fun to fight. He played by the rules, gave you a fair fight, and congratulated you when it was over. Sure, the challenger would almost certainly lose to him, technically, but no one lost against Lepant or Eileen. He was able to say ‘Lepant or Eileen,’ because after their hysterically goopy showpiece battle with each other, he was aware that he would probably be put facefirst into the dirt by Eileen too, but nicely.

He wasn’t sure how to take the fact that he wasn’t involved in these fights at all. Should he take it as a sign that he looked weak, that no one wanted to embarrass him? Was it a good sign that no one wanted to air out a grudge with him publicly, or was it that he was so inoffensive and so unwilling to push people that he hadn’t made any changes? Were they unwilling to challenge someone in the top position, knowing it was a faux pas? Did they think of him as a child?

He managed to shove these thoughts aside and force himself to get an education while watching fighters with very different styles go at each other. He was no stranger, at this point, to watching Viktor go in with someone, but it was still impressive to watch. When fighting a monster or an enemy, Viktor liked to end the battle as soon as possible, usually with a cleaving attack, and keep pushing forward, through the bloodspray if need be. He got gristly, he got dirty, he was about quick and decisive action. It still flummoxed Tir, a little, to see it, since Viktor had trained himself to react with force quickly, he could be cracking a skull before Tir had the chance to move. At first, it was frightening; maybe just because it was so frightening, he had developed a fascination with it, and couldn’t get enough of watching it. He wanted to be able to do that.

In the ring, however, Viktor liked to play. There wasn’t a better word for it in Tir’s mind. He knew that Viktor was toying with people because he knew how fast he could be decimating them. But he didn’t. He started battle in the ring with a round of teasing, or a round of shit talking, depending on how belligerent his opponent was. And he could be harsh. His usual repertoire involved calling bandits street trash who couldn’t keep wives, former Imperials spineless traitors who couldn’t get a single goddamn hit on the Evil Rebel Leader, hell, you traitors might even like him. He called his own troops worthless rebel scum, usually with a big smile and with laughter in response. They were the same words, but they hit some harder than others. He called Pahn a collared lapdog to rile him up, with an almost sinister smile. Pahn then dislocated his jaw, to his credit, but he didn’t expect Viktor to come back swinging from that, so that one kind of had to be broken up. Kirkis he went out of his way to call weak and powerless, purportedly to convince him to blow off some steam. Whether he bargained on getting bit by a battle-maddened elf, no one knows. Valeria, who actually took him to the ring, had some fucking filthy insults thrown her way, which was alright, because she responded by calling him nothing but Odessa’s callboy and asking him if he was just feeling lonely without his mistress.

She didn’t know, of course, that Odessa wasn’t with them anymore. Viktor walked off a bit worse for wear after that one, and earlier than he usually did.

Tir figured out quickly that he was trying to get his opponent to attack first, because if they did, it was simple for him to use their body weight against them, considering he was likely to weigh twice as much. He could push them off, disarm them, shove them aside; the battle would be finished after that, normally, but he would cheerfully drag them back up or toss back their sword and suggest they try again. That usually made someone mad if the shit-talking hadn’t, which led to Viktor usually taking controlled, even half-steps to the side and around as he deflected furious attacks. He would play for not too long, not so much that someone would be embarrassed, before finishing them with a respectably gut-busting move that they could forfeit after without looking weak; a crack to their shins, an elbow to their kidney, a smack on the side of the head.

If someone managed to keep their cool, which started happening more often once people understood the game, things could get a bit more interesting. Once you got in close with Viktor, you were accepting your defeat, so people tried to skirt around him, keep their steps wide and their posture low, hit him quickly and jump back. Lorelai went on record for holding on the longest against him; not that she was the only one who put the hurt on him or even beat him, but she was the one who kept him running for the longest—until he had more competition later. He was probably expecting an easy fight when she pulled out a bow in close quarters—then she dropped it outside the ring and pulled out a whip.

There were some whistles and catcalls; she stayed focused on Viktor, grinning. He made a dirty crack at her, one of the ones that made Gremio heave next to him and look panicked. (He used to be embarrassed about Viktor trying to phase someone by calling their dicks small or saying their tits were out, but after he noticed how badly Gremio took it, it started to get funny.) She smiled at him and pulled the whip taught.

There were louder, more emphatic catcalls; Viktor turned his sword in his hands, calculating. “Oh, don’t do that,” he said, teasingly, “I’ll just get hot.”

Gremio covered one side of his face with his hand. He was always beside Tir, in the front row, for the shows; he didn’t look like he enjoyed it too often, especially when Viktor or Valeria, both notoriously dirty fighters, were in the ring, but having become one of the designated peacekeepers after the first time he separated a bad fight with the heel of his palm and a glare, it was kind of his job. He loosely held a mostly-empty tankard of cider in an arm that trailed recklessly over the fence, knowing he could move fast if he had to. And anyone moved fast when they saw the commander’s fanatical guard coming.

“Oh no, it’s going to be like that,” Gremio complained.

Tir giggled, and Gremio gave him that look. He liked to see that look anymore. It didn’t feel like he was being a naughty child anymore, it felt like he was… he didn’t know, interacting with Gremio. Making a bad joke and pissing him off, having a normal, human interaction. Joking with him. These days, sometimes, he would even smile afterwards, or shake his head. Right now, though, he seemed pretty embarrassed, so he just huffed. “It’s not exactly dueling as I’m used to,” he defended himself.

“Get as hot as you want, I don’t care,” Lorelai whispered—they could only hear her because she was circling close to them—“you won’t be able to touch me.”

The first few rows hissed and gasped. Everyone else pressed in, trying to hear. Tir, standing on the other side of the ring from Viktor at that moment, had a front-row seat for seeing the initially shocked and then heated expression that came across his face. His eyes were tightly focused, but low-lidded, watching Lorelai as closely as a tracker would watch a snake; he shifted his body subtly, almost imperceivably, and tightened his grip on his sword. Tir literally saw him open his mouth, consider the crowd around him, and rephrase what he was just about to say. “You’re kind of putting me on the spot, Lori,” he complained. “You’re making it a little unclear whether you’re up for a good thrashing or not.”

It was on the line, but a few people still chuckled. Lorelai, who was just circling back into Tir’s vision, smiled venomously. “What’s the matter? You’re backing off just because you think you might not end up on top tonight?”

The reaction of the crowd was less like hollers this time and more like screams. Viktor was even a little flushed. Tir could see him lightly bite his lower lip and let it roll away. His stomach twisted suddenly, very low, like he was seizing with nerves, but it felt…he didn’t know. Viktor didn’t take long to come back. “Let it be known that that doesn’t worry me, sweet Lorelai,” he called to rising laughter, “I’m just worried about your poor, delicate frame being able to take the intensity… of my attack.”

Even Tir flushed a little. Gremio decided it was time to cover his whole face and sigh with disappointment for a while. That said, the couple hundred, or thousand, soldiers looking in just loved it. There were shrieks from the bandits and shieldmaidens for Lorelai to whip him into shape, and a few devoted guard hollering at Viktor to go get it. The excitement was getting a little too intense—the other guys who were there to break up fights that got too rough, and the thin, jumpy young medic who had the guts to run into the ring whenever, stated whispering with themselves.

Lorelai didn’t give a shit about that. She cackled and told him that he didn’t have to be worried about her. He should be worried about how much he can take up the ass before he has to beg mercy.

It was a wildly popular comment. The bandit girls shrieked and a few of them actually started throwing things into the ring. The guards tensed, ready to break it up, but were on the fence about whether this was an emergency, really, or just indecent. At the risk of further cluttering up a perfectly good war story with pointless vulgarity, Tir was potentially the only person close enough, and watching at the right place and time, to see Viktor get a little hard.

He felt a nervous, weird, hungry pull in his stomach—

Viktor decided it was time to act, which was a wise choice, but one the crowd hadn’t predicted. He almost never moved first. He rushed at her, sword swung around to be wielded backward, like a club, aimed at her shoulder. It was too obvious, it was a feint, but Lorelai had to decide to where. She pulled back her whip to strike and made a guess; it was a good one. Viktor swung his sword down low and she feinted in the opposite way on instinct. Her whip cracked in the air behind him, causing him to slide further backwards, leaving them five feet apart again. The crowd was shrieking; both of them had bright, livid eyes, absolutely hooked on the battle.

Lorelai pulled back again with a wide smile and Viktor dropped into a stance. By the time her whip hit, he had his zweihander held in front of him; he sought to wrap the whip around it, but she snapped it back fast enough that all he achieved was getting a bit of recoil in his wrist. Tir didn’t see him wince, instead, he immediately dodged hard and dove for her other side.

It’s impossible to whip someone when they’re a few feet away from your arm holding the whip, so Lorelai had to improvise. She dropped down practically to the ground and kicked; Viktor had to rearrange his rush fast to not end up on his face. Even so he stumbled a little, and Lorelai turned herself like a top, with unbelievable deftness, and lashed her whip at his legs. She caught one and yanked; the consequences for her was that the motion left her on her ass, but she got up more quickly than Viktor did, who landed with a shaking thud. She was on him before he had time to get up, but after he had just enough time to prop himself onto one elbow. He kicked effectively at her shins, and when she dodged the kick perfectly, she was shocked to find a different hand around her ankle.

She went down.

Viktor, however, made a fatal mistake, and he realized it when he scrambled up onto his knees; there was no fucking way he could get on top of her and start wailing after the tone with which they had started the fight. Even if it wasn’t actually a breach of consent, and it might have fucking been, it sure as hell would look like one. Instead he scrambled back to grab his sword, using the free second to arm himself, which was, though not the best possible move in a real fight, a respectful one in a duel. Lorelai took almost less time than he took to pick up a sword to spring onto her feet and then lashed out wildly with her whip, betting on speed rather than precision this time. Unfortunately for Viktor, it worked—he cursed in a bellow when the whip wrapped around his wrist, twisting it painfully and disarming him again. Lorelai came running in with the same motion she used to pull her whip back; Viktor had to dart away.

For over a minute the dodging and feinting went on, Viktor using his weight and force to the best of his ability to make up for the fact that he was a big, slow target, and that was exactly what a whip wanted. Lorelai, for her part, was heaving and sweating with the effort of trying to lash him so many times; after all, a whip is a hard weapon to use correctly. Though she had arm muscles that would make a shieldmaiden feel faint, endless thrashing is hard on anyone, especially with a victim that could take it as well as Viktor. He took a single slash to the forearm and the crowd screamed; Tir watching Viktor gasp, and then bare his teeth, with an animal grin. His heart was beating so hard.

“We gotta—” one of the guards was shouting. They were clearly arguing at this point. Gremio had joined them. Tir was too spellbound by the fight to see what was worrying people about it.

Luckily, the choice was made for them, in the most unpredictable fucking way. Viktor took the hit and immediately started running. A lot of times he depended on people thinking he would be deterred or would stop to take stock of his situation—and he wouldn’t. Lorelai cursed and darted to the side, drawing back as far as she could to pull back her whip again.

She misjudged how far away she was from the wall. She tripped and fell back onto the crowd.

Only her head and shoulders left the ring, but still, that meant she was out. She would have fallen if not backed up by a horde of screaming soldiers. Viktor stopped in his tracks, which, considering the force he was putting into his rush, made him wobble a little, but he managed. The guards and the medic immediately hopped in the ring, including Gremio, and the fight was over.

While the combatants were both being looked over, the medic and Gremio on Viktor’s arm and several people propping up and congratulating Lorelai, the announcer declared a draw. Both the combatants nodded instead of contesting the rule, and so the decision was final. The crowd went apeshit with delight and frustration, screaming for more. Tir heard Gremio insist that they both cool down, though neither of them looked very interested in that. Eventually, under the noise, Lorelai was convinced to go pick up her bow and examine her weapons, which led her away, leaving Viktor getting bound up and chastised by Gremio. He was smiling darkly at him, watching his lips move. Tir was trying very hard to hear what they were saying to each other, but he couldn’t quite.

“Alright, who’s next up?” the announcer asked the guards.

But as one was unrolling a parchment sheet, he heard Viktor bark with laughter and say “Prove it, Blondie. Everyone knows you don’t have the balls.”

He would beg to know what they had been talking about for a long time afterwards and never learned—Gremio never came out with it and after some time, Viktor claimed he forgot. All he knew was that Gremio turned as red as the sun, practically shaking with anger, and then, as one of the other guards came up to steady him, he smacked his hand on his forearm and pushed him away, never taking his eyes off of Viktor.

The next thing he did was unlatch his halberd from his back.

Viktor’s eyes lit up as the crowd picked up the noise again. Even Mathiu, who had been trying to look unconcerned from three rows back, leaned in a little. He could see Cleo’s jaw drop from her position half-way across the ring from him and watch her shout over her shoulder at someone—probably Pahn, sent off to get food. The medic protested and Viktor pushed her away, eyes as tightly locked on Gremio’s as Gremio’s were on his.

Gremio was one of the peacekeepers. What the fuck were they about to say to him?

“May I have it in words,” the announcer shouted, following the script he had invented to let the crowd know shit was about to go down, “that both challengers consent to the fight?”

“You have it,” said Gremio, voice low.

“Hell. Yes,” said Viktor.

Everyone but the two of them and the announcer fucked out of the ring double time. The announcer turned his back and threw up his arms. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TRAMPS AND TRAITORS, OUTLAWS AND OATHBREAKERS, RABBLE OF THE REBELLION, ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE,” he bellowed, “YOUR REIGNING CHAMPION, LOVE HIM OR HATE HIM, KING OF THE RING, VIKTOR REINBACH!”

Viktor, looking like it was Yule morning and he was an excited five-year-old, got off of the ground and picked up his sword. Normally, he would work up the crowd. Right now, he kept his stare with Gremio.

“AND THE CHALLENGER, FIRST TIME IN THE RING—EXCEPT FOR THE LAST TIME HE HAULED YOUR UNGRATEFUL ASS AWAY FROM A BEATDOWN—GREMIO MCDOHL!”

Even when the announcer got himself out of the ring, they didn’t take their eyes off of each other. They didn’t circle each other, either, as Viktor had with Lorelai. They stared, sizing each other down. Viktor took the time to cool his head and slow his breathing, since he must have been just drowning with the adrenaline in his brain, and Gremio put on his most deadly, dire serious, fuck-did-you-say-about-me game face.

It was a good fucking face.

Slowly, very slowly, silence fell, as people realized this wasn’t changing. Viktor needed the time to collect himself. Gremio was inscrutable to most, who didn’t know him like Tir or Cleo or Pahn did. But they knew what he was doing, and they sent each other ‘oh, fuck me, I didn’t get dinner for a week after I saw that last’ looks across the ring.

He was trembling with fury.

“You got something to say, Blondie?” asked Viktor, in a quiet growl.

“My name is Gremio McDohl.”

Viktor pulled back slightly. He tilted his head, an acknowledgement.

“Got something to say,” Viktor asked, “McDohl?”

Gremio bit his lip and tried not to say anything to him. But, with scorn on his face, he couldn’t stop himself. “I can’t kick the ass of every dirty, traitorous, lawless son of a bitch here,” he whispered, loud enough for no one but Viktor and the very front row to hear anything but the hissed s sounds, “but as a representative example of the worst of the worst, I’m going to love kicking yours.”

Let it not be said that Viktor balked. Viktor definitely braced.

“On guard,” Gremio whispered.

It might be hard to say what happened first. Viktor threw up his sword in front of him to take a blow; Gremio swung his halberd up in a wide arc that practically cleared the arena from his position five feet into it, making the audience scramble backwards, Gremio sprang forward on his heel in a fierce dive attack, one of them, maybe both, shouted. When Gremio’s halberd clashed against Viktor’s sword, Viktor was thrown back to the fucking fence, slammed against a post with the small of his back. He braced well, rolling forward, but Tir definitely saw him shout and his eyes screw tight. He couldn’t hear what either of them shouted over the clash of metal.

Gremio broke backward, bracing himself low and swinging his halberd back over his shoulder. Viktor braced the wrong way. He wasn’t aware of the fact that Gremio could swing that gigantic weight of cold iron over his back, run it over his shoulder blades, grip it backwards, and attack from the other side. To Gremio’s credit he attacked him with the blunt of the axe. He might have taken his head off otherwise. All the same, it hit him with a resounding clatter, and Tir felt himself wincing, convinced that Gremio had just concussed him. In the corner of his eye, he saw Mathiu dragging a hand down his face.

It didn’t hit Viktor as hard as it would have hit almost any other person. He let the blow push him to the side, repositioning himself several feet away. He grimaced as he gripped his sword in a ready position, running over possibilities in his mind, disoriented, off of his game. Gremio wrenched himself backwards, also knocked a little off balance with the force of his blow, and held the halberd in front of him.

It was a good guess, because he was pushing away a crown-splitting strike from a four-foot broadsword in the next second. The push took both of his arms, but seeing as they were both fighting with and defending themselves from heavy weapons, neither of them could recover instantly anyway. Viktor made a risky bet by letting the zweihander fall down to one side in his right hand and lunged at Gremio to grapple him with the other.

It went alright for him. He grabbed Gremio around the waist, making him brace himself, but following suit, Gremio decided to just drop his halberd on Viktor’s head, making him howl. Gremio smiled an honestly ugly sneer before he realized that Viktor had reflexively tightened his grip around him and they were both about to go down.

Gremio made the choice to fall. Viktor was dragged with him, half-willing, which became completely unwilling when he felt cold iron on the back of his neck. Gremio had regripped his axe before it fell; it was pressing him down now, on top of the person he thought he had pinned. Viktor almost pulled back a knee enough to slam Gremio in the gut; before he could, Gremio clocked him with his forehead.

Viktor cursed, and Tir winced despite himself. That was three blows to the head now? Yikes. He found himself wishing he had thought about the fact that Gremio’s preferred weapon was a beheader sooner than this moment. Viktor rolled out of the grip while Gremio was repositioning, acting entirely on instinct, rolled over his sword, grabbed it while he was down, and got the hell back up, panting. The crowd roared as he struggled to get his breath, eyes still fixed on the fanatical guard.

Gremio didn’t take long to get up. He had, so far, not gotten a fraction as much hurt on him as Viktor had. For whatever reason, and Tir couldn’t be sure why, though, he left his halberd on the ground.

Viktor nodded, and dropped his sword.

A hush of disappointment fell over the crowd. Apparently, they weren’t expecting Gremio to bare-hand rush at Viktor with a murderous bellow in the next instant.

They went hand-to-hand and they fucking wailed on each other.

This isn’t to say there was hair-pulling, biting, and scratching. They kept up a sense, however slight, of a duel—they did moves to fucking hurt each other, not to scar or kill. There were punches roughed into the tough parts of their bodies, not the eyes or the throat. Viktor slammed Gremio in the gut, and Gremio responded with smacking his chin up with a clawed hand and trying to get him into a chokehold. Viktor countered, wheeling around, and they grappled, struggling, at the end, to just not fall down. The crowd roared, and anyone who thought they might have, maybe, wanted to stop this from happening, realized they didn’t want to get their wrist broken today.

Tir heard Gremio growl something, but not what. Viktor, to his shock, bellowed in response—“COME THE FUCK ON.”

Gremio was torn off of him and put into a hold that he struggled against. “I’M NOT—” Viktor wheezed as Gremio elbowed him harshly in the stomach, causing him to fall backwards. Gremio came at him again, but blindly, having to turn around, and Viktor grabbed his fists and braced against the slide when he came at him. “I’M NOT YOUR ENEMY!”

Viktor roaring in what was, to all indications, sincere anger, caused a lot of murmuring and balking in the front rows. Behind them, people couldn’t be certain what he said, between the heavy breath and the accent the got thicker when he was agitated. “FEEL FREE TO HATE ME,” he bellowed, suffering to hold Gremio in place, “BUT—”

Gremio knocked him down. Tir wasn’t even sure how; it had to be pure, raw strength. When he landed on him, though, gasping for his own breath, all Gremio did was lay his arm across Viktor’s throat, effectively pinning him to the ground.

They landed right in front of Tir. He could see Gremio’s twisted expression and the agony that had to be building in his throat. He saw bruises just born on his skin. He saw how Viktor was heaving, badly, uncomfortably sprawled in the dirt. He could look down at Viktor and see pain all over his face.

Because of this, being practically above his head, Tir was perhaps the only other person who looked up at him and say “—just don’t hurt anyone else. Just don’t take it out on the Liberation. Don’t sell us out. We’re not trying to ruin your country. For fuck’s sake, we’re trying—we’re trying to help.”

Gremio kept Viktor pinned down, chest spasming, staring wild-eyed at him.

“Think of the kid, man, if nothing else,” Viktor whispered to him, “please.”

Gremio looked a little sick.

He pulled his arms back and dragged them down his face, pulling off sweat. When they were gone, his eyes were tired, half-closed, and fireless.

Viktor pushed his hair away from his own face, and then raised a shaking arm into the air. “UM,” he shouted, loud enough to be heard, “I GIVE.”

There was still a substantial pause before the announcer, shaking his head, jumped into the ring. The medic followed, pulling Gremio off of Viktor and shoving him at someone else. She fell on Viktor, who waved his hand at her, trying to sit up himself. He did, but he looked like he was about to vomit.

The announcer grandiosely indicated Gremio with a wave of his arm. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, GREMIO MCDOHL! WE HAVE ONLY ONE THING TO SAY, AND THAT’S DON’T FUCK WITH HIM.”

Usually, this was when the crowd broke into screeches and whoops. Tonight, they broke into respectful goddamn applause.

Tir braced his elbows on the side of the ring, feeling dizzy himself, and stared at Gremio until he caught his eyes.

His gaze darted away, back, and back again. He held, letting Tir stare back at him, expression exhausted, broken down, and strange.

Tir licked his lips, not sure what to say, not sure if there was anything to say, not sure if Gremio would hear him. He shook his head and raised his eyebrows, then propped his chin on his hands, and he did his very best, oft-practiced though never revealed, imitation of that face Gremio always gave him.

Seriously? Are you fucking with me, or are you that dense?

Gremio smiled at him. He smiled and Tir could see him giggle in the arms of the people who were physically restraining him from going ape again. He wiped the smile off of his face with the back of his hand—well, he tried to.

“Crazy son of a bitch,” Tir whispered. The phrase was recognizable enough to be lip-read.

Gremio, off his fucking head from battle adrenaline, mouthed, I love you.

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7: A broken boundary, a staircase descended.

At that time it was the night before the day when they would reach Pannu Yakuta. It was the last night to be beating each other up and hollering about it, but that’s exactly why it was necessary. Still, Tir found himself wishing Gremio and Viktor hadn’t beat each other up quite so hard. He was going to see what Viktor looked like in the morning; for now, he was the one who had to take care of Gremio, because he certainly wouldn’t let anyone else do it.

Not that he was letting Tir do it. When Tir managed to extract Gremio from the crowd, walk him through the press of people while he was stumbling over his own feet, and plunk him down inside his tent—INSIDE the tent, thank you, Gremio—he was still resisting being cared for. Worse, he was trying to care for Tir, god damn him.

“My head is fine,” Tir insisted, grasping Gremio’s wrists and pushing his hands away. “Gremio.”

“But—”

“I know you’re worried, but—” Tir huffed. “How about this. I’m going to check to see if you’re okay, and then you’re allowed to check to see if I’m okay, alright?”

Gremio chuckled once. “Alright, fine.”

Tir glared at him suspiciously, but when he let Gremio’s wrists go, he just laid them down by his side obediently. Tir raised his eyebrows, scanning him up and down once. Gremio chuckled a little again, and closed his eyes.

“You’re being weird,” Tir huffed. “No, keep your eyes closed. Okay, I’m gonna do it.”

Then Tir immediately had to face the fact that he didn’t know how to make sure someone was okay. He told himself that what he had to do what check the places that Gremio had been hurt, but what was he even supposed to do about them? Make sure they looked alright? What did he do if they didn’t look alright? He didn’t use healing magic and he didn’t even know what the boundary between looking okay and not okay was. If the skin was broken he knew something was wrong; further subtleties, he knew, would be lost on him.

Then he realized Gremio would know what was wrong. He just had to get Gremio to say that something was wrong with him. Alright, natch.

Thinking back to the fight, he knew that most of the serious hits had been landed on Viktor, but he remembered Gremio being pulled down and hitting the ground with his hip and back. He remembered Gremio wincing as he had to use arm strength to push Viktor, or his sword, away several times. He remembered a lot of low hits to his sides and guts when the two of them were grappling. So his hips, his sides, his stomach, his arms. None of those were too hard to examine.

Tir waved a hand over Gremio’s face, and he raised an eyebrow. “Hey, are you peeking?”

“No?”

“Well, good,” said Tir, not even sure why he had closed his eyes, or why he was rolling with it now. He lifted Gremio’s right arm with both hands, and after a moment of resistance, Gremio went with him. He pulled up his sleeve with one hand, watching the pale skin pour out of it. He couldn’t say that it looked good—it looked mottled red and purple, and moved stiffly. He set that arm on his shoulder to keep it still—he doesn’t know, it sounded like a solid idea—and turned on his waist to grab the other one. He did the same thing, paring the fabric off of the flesh, and looking it up and down. It looked… a little pink but not like the right one. He pressed the pads of his fingers into Gremio’s wrist and slip them up the tendon, watching him shudder. “Does that hurt?”

“Not… in particular? You’re just digging in pretty hard.”

“Oh, I see,” said Tir, and then he moved to backhand slap Gremio’s right wrist with his knuckles. Gremio practically jumped out of his skin, reeling back from him and opening his eyes. “But that one hurt.”

“You slapped me!”

“It wouldn’t hurt so badly if it wasn’t obviously injured,” Tir huffed. “What happened? Did you dislocate it?”

Gremio glared while he held his wrist, and then looked down at it reluctantly. “I think I stretched it,” he muttered. “I absorbed a heavy shock… when my grip was uneven. It’s going to be loose and painful for a while.”

“Well, what should you do about that?”

“Probably wear a brace on it… just pinned heavy cloth will do the trick. I want to keep it from moving… or swelling too much.”

Tir raised one eyebrow expectantly at him.

“Okay, okay,” Gremio muttered, trying to turn away.

“Nope,” countered Tir, turning him back to face with a hand on his shoulder, “not yet. We’re not done here. Close your eyes again.”

“But—”

“Close your eyes again.”

“But, young master,”

“Definitely close your eyes again.”

“But—”

“If you’re going to all me Master, you’re going to take commands from me. If you don’t like that, think about what else to do,” Tir reprimanded. “Now close your eyes and sit still again.”

Gremio flushed red as he slowly lowered his arms to his side and closed his eyes again. He was a lot more tense than he was the last time he did it. His fingers were clutched in his palms, his lips were thin, and his back was suspiciously straight, given his long-term spinal problems. Tir stared at him for a bit, making sure he wasn’t moving, and then he put his hands on Gremio’s waist. If he thought he was going to be able to feel anything through his under-armor, he was wrong. Gremio always worse several layers of clothing, obscuring both his build and any damage from sight. It was a good tactic, Tir admitted. But it meant that undressing him was about to be tough.

He slipped his fingers under the hem of his shirt to hitch it upwards; there was another shirt under it. Gremio sat still enough for him pulling up the under-armor, but the undershirt, it seemed, was tucked in to his trousers. Ignoring a weird pounding in his neck and his jaw, a vein of anxiousness, he dipped his fingers into the waist of Gremio’s pants to find the end of all the damn fabric and hike it up. Unfortunately, he hiked the rest of him up too, because the feeling startled Gremio so badly that he jolted away. “Master—” he complained, flushed.

“You got hit in the gut how many times?” Tir argued, wishing he couldn’t feel his face burning up. “You’re obviously injured there and I’m not going to be able to tell through your shirt.”

“You could—you could ask me to take it off!!”

“If you’re going to keep calling me Master, I’m just going to take your clothes off if I like to! Do you have a problem with that?”

“Uh—” Gremio looked as if he had smacked him. His eyes flickered up and down Tir, sizing him up. “Are you serious?” he asked, still panicked, but with a softer panic.

“Are you serious, who?” asked Tir, hands braced on his waist.

Gremio was obviously going through a pretty complicated mental conundrum, if Tir were to judge by his face, which flicked rapidly between states of pinched anxiousness, worrying stresses, and open-eyed curiosity. Had he always been so expressive—or was he really that far out of his depth now? He could see now that Gremio had never liked things changing on him, and preferred to keep things the same, from day to day, time to time, on the hour. The shifting tide didn’t work for him.

“Are you… serious…” Gremio asked, looking up from below, but with a brightness in his eyes, “…Tir?”

Tir smiled a little, and shrugged his shoulders, side to side. “Well, I gotta check to make sure you’re okay, aaaaand your shirt is kind of stopping me. So.”

Gremio worried his lip. “Okay,” he muttered, “alright.” He crossed his arms over his front and pulled off his shirt himself. He distressed his hair when he pulled it over his head, which was already mussed and tangled from fighting, so he had to blow it out of his face and then spend a minute pulling it back from his shoulders and tying it again. “Alright,” he snapped finally, flipping his head back and catching Tir’s eyes. “Uh… alright. What do you want… to… see?”

“Uh,” said Tir. Truth be told, he was actually a bit distressed by how much hurt was piled up on Gremio’s midsection. He peered to one side, and then another, and saw bruises unfolding all around. “Can you stand up?”

“Uh,” said Gremio, glancing up at the low ceiling of the tent, “Probably. These tend to be a bit short for me…”

He managed it all the same, and Tir stood up in front of him, staring down at the pain in Gremio’s guts, seeming to morph in the lamplight. Finally, he put the fingers of his right hand on Gremio’s stomach, and pressed in. “Tir—”

“Bear with me, okay?” Tir asked. Gremio let out a reluctant breath, which came out in shudders on the tips of Tir’s fingers. He felt himself shuddering in response, one heartbeat after; prickles like someone had run a hand down his shoulderblades and the small of his back, making his skin rise. Tir swallowed thickly, and pressed into Gremio’s stomach, on a bad bruise. Gremio’s stomach muscles twitched, trying to absorb the pain, sickly slow from taking all of Viktor’s blows. “Hits like a boar,” Tir muttered.

Gremio whined. “Like a bear, you mean.”

Tir chuckled. “Alright,” he said. Then he began slowly pulling his fingers across Gremio’s midsection, up to another area where it looked bad—he twitched again, but not as hard. He pulled his hand down, and across, hitting discolorations that looked bad but didn’t seem to bother him, and surprised, tenderized patches that made him jolt and grunt. He had to run a hand over his hip heading backwards, knowing Gremio had fallen on it—yeah, he jumped badly at it, and Tir could even feel that it was puffy and soft it wasn’t supposed to be. He clicked his tongue and Gremio sighed shakily, turning his face away.

Tir pushed his fingers down the curve of Gremio’s backside, and yeah, he probably jumped because that was his ass, but he also cursed really, really quietly, sounding almost angry. Tir snorted at him, annoyed. “Yeah, not hurt, sure.”

“I never said I wasn’t hurt,” Gremio protested in a thin, breathy voice. He abruptly snapped back around when Tir put his palm on the small of his back, lifting up slowly to dig his fingers in.

He paused, because he felt like he could feel… something under his palm. He didn’t know what. It was like,,, even though he wasn’t quite touching Gremio, he could feel him there, under his palm, like he pulled something of him back with him. It was strange. Tir flexed his fingers up and down, feeling some nothing push and pull with him.

He resumed his task, pushing just a put too far into the skin, feeling up his back, exploring what didn’t look right, didn’t feel quite like it was supposed to. He paid attention to where Gremio jumped, where he shifted, trying to hide his reactions, where he seemed ready to just swat his hand away. Finally, Tir ended up face to face with him, with his hand slowly pushing its way up his midsection, wondering, with sudden desperation, where someone goes from here.

“So, uh… what are you going to do about that?”

“What?”

Tir shook his head. It seemed so foggy and sticky. “So you’re obviously not okay. How are you going to fix it?”

“Oh—geeze—” Gremio put a hand on his face, turning away. “For the midsection—that’s not an easy fix, uh… if he had burst anything, or cracked a rib, or ruptured an organ, Heavens forbid it, I would already know… I suppose it’s not impossible he did crack a rib on my side,” he admitted, gingerly touching the space on his side he had really hated Tir going over. “Even if he did, there’s still nothing to do but… brace it securely and try not to agitate it, which will be hard tomorrow. Since there are no cuts or abrasions to clean up, seeing as he’s an… admirably clean puncher… I guess I need to… wrap my skin up so that nothing can agitate it, put my shirt back on, and sleep as much as I can.” Then Gremio seemed to realize that he had been tricked into lecturing himself, because he shut his mouth with a huff, and made the most minute attempt to step back away from Tir.

Tir let him, grinning. “Alright,” he said, taking his own step backwards, “hold on, and I’ll get something to wrap you up.”

“Clean it, first,” Gremio muttered, with clear annoyance.

They ended up on their knees, so that they didn’t have to stand for the procedure but Gremio was as straight-backed as possible. Tir bound up his wrist first, to practice on an easier target. It took him a few tries to get the wrap tight enough, since he was trying too hard to not make it too tight, but eventually Gremio nodded, flexing his wrist, and told him to move on. The next part was harder; so many of the blows were enough below the belt that it was impossible to wrap them of, and Gremio clearly would not have him stripping him naked to disinfect them, so it was a matter of dipping the bandages for his stomach as low as they would securely go. Tir wrapped him up with hardly touching him; he only needed to secure the bindings tightly on his side, with capped pins that struggled against his fingers.

“Tir,” Gremio sighed, “you don’t have to fuss so much.”

“I’m just trying to do it right,” Tir muttered, utterly focused on the fastening of a pin.

“it’s really not your problem,” Gremio sighed, looking the other way. “It’s… too strange for me to have to be looked after by you.”

“Keep complaining and I’ll stick you,” Tir grumbled.

“No, I’m—I’m not complaining!” Gremio rushed to correct himself. “I just don’t know… how to take it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean—” Gremio huffed. “I mean I don’t like… you having to look after me. It feels like the wrong way for things to go. It’s my position to look after you, and… if you have to look after me, haven’t I done badly?”

“Hey—”

“I spent the afternoon in an organized brawl—barely organized—getting myself pummeled because I fell for an obvious instigation. Those aren’t the actions of a guard—if I’m getting into my own—arguments—petty fights—how am I supposed to be looking after you?”

Tir at first felt anger rise into his throat, but he closed his eyes against it. Not because he had a good concept of why he shouldn’t chew into Gremio, but because he had gotten so practiced at chewing on his own angry retorts and sense of being patronized over the past few days that he did it on reflex. “Well..” he sighed, not even sure what to say. He pinned up a bandage somewhat aggressively.

Gremio slowly peeked over at him. “Tir?” he asked, quietly.

“I don’t know how to handle you sometimes.”

Gremio turned pink again. He did that a lot, it seemed, once you were on common ground with him. “Ah—you don’t have to—”

“Look, I don’t know—”

They both shut up.

Tir sighed, slowly letting out a hot, frustrated breath. Then, feeling aggravated, ashamed, and tired at once, he let his forehead rest on Gremio’s side with a little bump. “I don’t know how to handle you at all.”

Gremio took a deep breath. Tir felt his lungs filling up with it, and closed his eyes. Skin to skin—that kind of connection, he realized then, was so easy. And as much as he would come to learn how easy it was, miraculously so—how frustrating it was that any other kind of connection was so messy, and so slow. “I’m not sure how I upset you,” Gremio started, voice low.

His speaking was felt on the skin of Tir’s head. He rolled over a little, to peer up at him. “I guess I’m being obtuse,” he said, and looked down again.

Gremio took some speaking breaths in, but didn’t say anything. Tir, feeling a little sick, and like he didn’t want to do this, spoke his mind. “I’ve been going over in my head… how you saved my life, on the battlefield. I didn’t realize it at the time, because everything seemed fine, or like a minor annoyance, at best, but I would have died when the soldiers swarmed us at the Kobold Village. I realized that night, as I was trying to fall asleep; that’s how people die. Suddenly. It doesn’t matter if you think you have it under control or it seems like everything is fine. That’s how the soldiers died, completely unaware that I could kill them and that it was about to happen. I was down on a battlefield. That’s how you die.

“I didn’t, because you were protecting me. You saved my life—how many times? Three? Five? Were you in a state of saving my life for several minutes? Sixty times a minute for as long as I was on the ground—a hundred times? More?”

“Tir—”

“You’re about to tell me it’s your job, and I get it, and I know you think it’s not my job to take care of you, and it feels weird, and like you’re not doing your job, if I do it, but… I don’t know, isn’t that all just stupid?”

“Tir.”

“No, I’ve got to finish this,” Tir continued, before I lose my nerve again. “Thanks for saving my life? It’s not like I’m mad about it or I think you shouldn’t. It’s just… why is it your job?? My dad told you that that’s what you do ten years ago, so now you have to, and I don’t get a say in the manner? Looking out for me isn’t wrong, but… why does it have to be your job?”

“Tir…” Gremio whispered, frozen in place by their strange position. “I…”

“It’s all so… I don’t think you’re doing a bad thing. I think you’re doing a great thing. A lot of great things. But why can’t you just… do that? Why can’t you have my back, and I have yours, and there isn’t all of that bullshit in the way? I’ve been turning it around in my head and feeling guilty and feeling weird, because I should say, ‘thank you for saving my life,’ but I couldn’t because I didn’t want to hear you say ‘it’s just my job.’ Which is stupid and a little selfish of me, because I should thank you, but… maybe you should accept the thanks, asshole.”

“Uh?” said Gremio, voice a little strangled. “I don’t really know what… you’re saying, I think.”

Tir removed his forehead from Gremio’s sweating side, and sighed as he pulled back. He then glared an acrimonious glare at Gremio and said, with bitter venom, “you’re welcome for patching you up, Gremio. That’s what family’s for.”

“Oh—but—uh—you—really shouldn’t.”

“What?” asked Tir, glower deepening. “Why can’t I help you when you’ve helped me? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Isn’t that how family works? Why do you have to be so…” Tir didn’t know what he was. He huffed as a substitution for any real conclusion.

“No…” Gremio whispered, “don’t be upset.”

“What do you mean?” Tir grouched. And then Gremio was smoothing his cheek, and then he felt tears welling up so quickly that he couldn’t stop them. “No, wait—why is this happening?” he asked, at a loss. “No, shit.”

“It’s alright.”

“I’m not even that upset, no, don’t—why is this happening?”

“It’s alright,” Gremio promised him, moving his hands down to gently hold his shoulders. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No don’t—stop it,” he whined. “Don’t get all—don’t—don’t start babying me because this is happening. I’m not—I’m still mad at you!”

Gremio looked down, his eyes softening. Tir felt himself wishing he would just move to hold him—didn’t he used to do that for him? When did he stop?

“Just—” Tir scrubbed at his eyes. “Fuck. No. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. I don’t even know what I’m so mad about. Stop just—don’t you have something to say??”

“Ah—” Gremio looked up at him, eyes wide. “Tir, I—I don’t—oh, no. I don’t know what to do either,” he confessed, stopping short.

“Shit, me either!” Tir growled, rubbing the tears resiliently out of his eyes. “Fuck, you’re able to basically break Viktor’s skull open, but you won’t even say a word to me when I yell at you, and act like an asshole to you, and smack you in the ass? Fucking hell, how do you feel?”

“Ah—” Gremio was bright red again. “What is this—why do you want to know??”

“I don’t want you keeping yourself away from me! If you can be so honest with Viktor, when you hate him so much, why can’t you be honest with me? Why do I have to push you and push you to get an answer out of you? Do you think I’m stupid? Do you not trust me? Do you think I’m still a child?”

Finally, Tir saw a bit of a glimmer enter Gremio’s eyes, an angershine. “Don’t accuse me of—of not caring for you,” he stated. “It’s not true.”

“Then why keep me at arm’s length?” Tir spat, knowing damn well he was being unfair, but feeling hotheaded as hell.

“I won’t have you hurt,” Gremio fired back. “I am your guard. I’m not going to see anything happen to you. I am supposed to literally be an arm’s length in front of you so you don’t have your head cut off by a maniac with a broadsword. That is literally my position.”

“Well, stop doing it when there isn’t a maniac with a broadsword!”

“That’s the best definition of Viktor I have.”

“Well, he’s not here now, is he?? It’s you, and me, and you being deliberately evasive because you think I can’t handle the truth. I can handle the truth! I’m not a—”

“I’m terrified of you!”

Tir froze in his place.

“Huh?”

“I love you very much,” Gremio continued, eyes shimmering, “more than I’ve ever loved anyone. Do you understand? I was rescued by your father and made his servant because I could not pay him back for my life. I deliberately disobeyed him by becoming yours instead. He let me, in his kindness. I’ve loved you while you were a child, as you grew up, and you’re right, you’re not a child anymore. Now you’re grown, and you can see me for what I am. I know… what I am. There isn’t much that’s good. And if you really look into me… I’m terrified of what you’ll see. I’m terrified of what you’ll think of me then.

“I guess I’ve been trying to preserve an old relationship pointlessly… haven’t I?

“And I can’t have you owe me your life… you’ll resent a debt like that. Maybe not today, but you’ll learn sooner or later. You can’t be in debt to me. You just don’t understand…”

Tir was at a loss, again. Gremio had him at a loss, constantly; if he ever thought he sized him up, there was something completely unexpected, hidden in the shade; more shadows, more sides, more strangeness. He had that feeling again, that awe-struck feeling, of something human, and how heavy it was, like a million small things were hidden in the corners of his person, tucked behind the folds of skin, a million trinkets of yesteryears. He was fucking gobsmacked, and feeling humbled made him feel not so fucking raw.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“Didn’t really want an answer, huh?”

Wow, he sounded so bitter. “No. I did. I have no regrets. I just realized that it was really mean, wasn’t it?”

Gremio lifted his chin. “A little.”

“Should I be sorry?”

He wouldn’t look at him. “Ah,” he considered, “you should definitely be sorry if you push anyone else like that. You’d make a woman cry.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Gremio.”

Gremio bit his lip.

Tir really didn’t know how you came back from this sort of thing. He knew you apologized, but for what? For what he said? For being angry? But he had felt it honestly, and he was glad that he got Gremio to open up, even if it was a little… forceful. What if he didn’t feel sorry about what he did, really, but was sorry it upset Gremio so much? What did he say?

Eventually, Gremio tried to excuse himself to guard the tent. Tir, surprising himself, grabbed his wrist. Gremio jolted, and almost glared at him.

“You’re resting your wounds.”

“Tir—”

“You’re resting your wounds, right here.”

Gremio faltered. “But—“

“You’re lying down and resting, because we’re going to fight Kwanda tomorrow, and I need you there.”

“But—Master—”

“Is that how it is? You’re lying down right here, right now, Gremio.”

Gremio shut up and let the tent flap close, turning around to face Tir. His face was hard to see in the shadow of the lamplight, confused, and shakily drawn; Tir knew he as on thin ice. That they were on thin ice, together, making moves that could cost them both. “You’re laying down right the hell here, Gremio, where I can keep an eye on you, and you can keep an eye on me, and neither of us is going to fuck ourselves up any more for one night.”

Gremio shifted slightly on his thighs, easing slowly back into the tent, with his eyes on Tir. Tir felt nervousness crawl up his neck again, suddenly suffocating. “Well?”

Gremio tilted his head to the side, incredulous and almost suspicious. “Are you sure?”

“Why?”

“You seem like you might rather be alone.”

“No, I wouldn’t rather,” Tir said, feeling himself reddening even though he didn’t want to give away how deeply that statement sunk in his chest. “And the last thing I want to do is be worrying about you. And the last thing you want, apparently, is me worrying about you, so you had better stay in my sight.”

Gremio visibly acquiesced with lowered shoulders and a pinched brow, and then he slowly settled himself down beside Tir, giving him a look. “You’re growing up to be a strange man, Master.”

Tir felt his heart beating a little giddily. Perhaps he was nervous that he wouldn’t really be listened to. Should he be nervous? “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, what’s it to you?”

Gremio settled slowly down on his back, having to roll down over his wounds. “Because I’m going to have to be stuck with you no matter what, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” said Tir, feeling a bit more heat and anger than he should have at the comment, “you are.”

Gremio gave him another odd look, and Tir glared back at him. Neither wanted to settle down to sleep for a minute; the air as disturbed, shifting restlessly, undiscernible exactly. Tir felt his eyes browsing down Gremio’s chest to the bandages on his torso; the tiny thing, a collection of bruises, a bit of skin, that set him off so badly. The bruises and, as loathe as he was to admit it in the dark, the fist that made them, and the tongue that flared up Gremio’s temper so fast.

He wanted to keep him. He was thrown off of balance, put completely out of joint by the suggestion, as slight as it was, that he might not be able to. That even—maybe, weirdly, possibly even—Gremio might want to go. Might want to not be someone’s servant. But he should feel that way, and Tir wanted him to rebel against the role imposed on him and be his friend instead, but—

He had been glaring at Gremio too long. He made himself lie down, completely dissatisfied, feeling unfulfilled.

They wished each other a good night.

-

Tir had an odd dream that night, almost not worth recounting. It was the sort of insubstantial thing the mind vomits on you, trying to balance its uncertainty, throwing the worst out at your expense. To be plain, and albeit risking distressing the gentle reader, who no doubt will be shocked to hear this but must soldier on, he had his first wet dream in the night.

It would have been impossible, no matter how trusted the councilor, to get him to detail what his relationship to his new-born sexuality was before this time; shaky, ashamed, misunderstood, and left to sit where it was, ignored as best as possible. He had woken up with his body aroused before, and, though he vaguely understood it, he felt fit to ignore it, having been convinced already that the time and place for this sort of thing was in one’s marriage bed and not outside of it. Not too concerned, but not willing to become concerned, he let it go in his head. He had trouble most young men had not and it shoved its way into the space that a young sexuality might have otherwise taken up, but what that meant was that the young sexuality had to squeeze its unstoppable, invasive way into the cracks between.

This was the dream, as much as could be recalled. He was in his father’s home, sitting in a sparse wooden chair that he couldn’t place as his, looking down an empty hallway while voices rose behind him. Father was berating Gremio, who was crying. He didn’t know what they were talking about, but father was being uncharacteristically harsh. He was cursing him. Tir’s guts hurt; he curled up in on himself.

With no thought to how he found himself walking down the stairs at Toran Castle, a hundred sandy steps, skipping and hopping down, and they went on. Weird echoes sounded empty around. A voice made him peek into a corner; Odessa needed him to help her. He didn’t want to do it; something didn’t seem quite right. What was it she needed?

He skipped down the sandy steps, looking for Odessa; he heard a voice down the hollow ways and darted after it. He couldn’t quite see anything; the hallways were long, featureless, and flat. He turned down the west hall, following a winding way, calling for Mathiu. He heard his voice floating around; he tried to chase it like a glimmer on the water. Each one became dissolving echoes.

He thought he saw red hair around the corner, and he skipped after Kirkis, fast and lithe. Help me, help me, sounded around; someone else’s echoes.

“Tir,” said a voice. It was deep and strange, but somehow he was sure it was Gremio. He ran lightly down the halls of the caves under the castle, halls of dark grey stone with thick mist sliding around him. It was as though he were in a snake. The air was heavy. “Tir, Tir.”

“Gremio,” he called out.

An organ opened up in the hallways, stomach of the snake, something slithered over his feet and he stumbled, kicking it away. He had to crawl, and he could see pale skin.

Viktor ran his palms down Gremio’s purple-bruised stomach. It swam in his eyes, violet, red. He smoothed his hands down over his hips in two curving lines and down his thighs, which he lifted up around his hips like they weighed nothing. Gremio’s arms curled around Viktor’s shoulders, grasping at his coarse hair, and it smelled like human hair, soft, herbal, human, ticklish. Viktor was pushing Gremio against the wall and Gremio molded into it, skin against stone, wet and slick and rough. He saw Gremio’s head twist away and is eyes flutter as he exposed his neck. He pushed Viktor’s head up with his grip on his hair to make him kiss his neck, and that felt like teeth, hard, hot, disorienting.

He heard Gremio gasping and wheezing like pain, as he pulled, and grasped, and pulled on Viktor’s hair. Viktor bit his neck and Tir saw underskin blood left behind him. He bit up Gremio’s throat to the base of his chin, contorting Gremio against the wall. Gremio molasses-slowly rubbed his body up against Viktor’s, from his thighs to his collarbone, and Viktor rubbed down; their bodies went even and uneven, hipbone rutting thigh or stomach, and arrhythmic, until they molded together, slowly settling into place. Gremio sighed high-pitched noises when Viktor ground him into the wall, breathy and delirious.

There was no way to look away. His stomach was sickly hot, with a deep, low, swallowed, stifled coal.

Gremio called Viktor something derisive, cruel, and dirty; it fell from his mouth in weird syllables and Tir only felt it in his gut. He tugged so hard on Viktor’s hair that he was pulled back, nearly unbalanced. Gremio decided where Viktor stood and then took his mouth with his, pale, calloused hand rubbing roughly over Viktor’s scarred and stubbly face. He heard Viktor groan, and he felt the thunder-rumble in his lungs. Gremio pushed his thin, beautiful hips against Viktor forcefully, cresting almost slowly, sliding their sexes over each other. Tir could just feel it, hot blood pulsing and swelling.

“What are you doing—” his voice fell off of his tongue and hit the floor. They couldn’t seem to hear him. Gremio told Viktor to do better. Viktor told him he didn’t think he could take it. Gremio was being smashed against the wall, with a burly arm shoving his shoulder backwards, and another one rubbing almost spastically over his hip and clutching at the curves of his ass. Viktor fucked him with his hips, domineering almost—but not quite—as mercilessly as Gremio was commanding. Gremio started panting, and Tir’s throat was dry. For a while, he was saying “Viktor, Viktor;” for a while, he was saying “Tir, Tir, Tir.”

Tir was panting on the ground, his hands scrabbling on the rough stone. For a dizzy minute he was lying wounded, blood underneath him and carrion birds circling above. The sun was hot. He was dripping with sweat. With each breath that he gasped in and out, there was another sickening, satisfying pulse in his sex. “Viktor, Viktor,” he called from the grave.

He was forcing Viktor in-between his legs—his hands were all over his hips, they felt rough, cracked, and hard, the hands of a man. They were so big and warm on him that he was aware how small he really was. He rolled over and felt the cool stone at his back, the blood, the sweat, the body, stuck to the stone. It scraped him painfully. He pushed his hands through Viktor’s hair, felt the slick, dirty sheen, smelled the skin that needed a shower, gross, dirty, musky, he felt so hot. Viktor’s body warmth was almost intolerable and it pressed him entirely down, making him open his thighs catching-wide to take all of him. Viktor’s mouth was on his neck, hot breath curling around him, smoke and fire. It felt bad, it felt painful and stinging and wet, and yet his skin had never felt so fucking satisfied, and awake, and he could feel every inch of his own body. Compared to this, he usually felt so little.

He was hard and he rubbed himself on Viktor, feeling up his hot cock in his trousers, it was unfamiliar, and so easy, and something seemed wrong, and he heard himself laughing a sick, delighted, breathless giggle. Viktor started rutting him and saying his name, and Tir felt his back throbbing with pain as he was pushed against the stone. But there was a demanding and beautiful pulse in-between his legs that felt sticky like honey and hot like fire in the hearth, and all he did was wrench his thighs open farther so that Viktor could thrust at him harder. It was overwhelming. He was sure suddenly he had needed this, bad. This is what a volcano felt like; the fire of aching, about to pour out. He felt faint and like he couldn’t reach his own head. There were hot teeth on his throat and he laughed at how weird it was and then groaned and bucked at him.

He scrabbled with a free hand for something and felt Viktor’s sword clatter away. His head was pressed down to the side, Viktor’s hands rubbed bruising at him, his cock pressed him from his thigh to his stomach; it didn’t seem like that big of a deal, nothing seemed like it was really that much of a problem when all he could think about was the fucking pounding ache--

Metal clattered and rang fucking cacophonically outside. Gremio jolted up and swore under his breath. Tir gazed wild-eyed at the blue ceiling. Life swam in and out. “What?—the?”

“I’ll go find out,” Gremio grumbled darkly, moving to stand up. He grunted when he tried to tense his midsection and was forced to move more cautiously; he rustled through the blankets looking for his shirt, and found it shoved aside. He pulled it over his head and stiffly limped out of the tent, a six-foot-tall glower.

Tir slowly realized he was awake, on the edge of the Great Forest, and about to prepare to march into battle. That bit he usually pretended he didn’t have was as hot as a live coal and pressed against his sticky stomach by a twisted bedsheet.

“Oh fuck,” he wheezed, at no one. He just lied there, for a minute, frozen and terrified. His heart was pounding under his ears. His back hurt and his palm itched something terrible. The skin of his stomach and groin felt hot, tight, and unsatisfied. “What do I do?...”

He put his hands on his face and breathed. Nausea rose in his throat. Eventually he scrambled up and started to get dressed; he knew it would go away. It should go away faster though. It usually went away faster. It wasn’t going away—

He jolted and had to stay turned around when Gremio walked into the tent again. He could fucking feel his own blood.

“Idiots,” Gremio huffed. “They’re just dropping things, young master. If this is how taking down the camp goes, I am loathe to find out how we’re going to sneak up on the fortress. But I doubt either of us is going back to sleep after that…”

“Nope,” muttered Tir, running a comb pointlessly through his already untangled hair.

“We might as well find Mr. Silverberg and Viktor and get ourselves ready for whatever they’ve planned.”

“Right. Let’s do that. Sounds great.”

He could feel Gremio looking at him, though he didn’t dare look around. His stomach twisted in knots; he could feel reddened, excited skin, dark bites on his neck, sweat and blood that wasn’t there, he couldn’t believe it wasn’t there, and Gremio had to see it.

He felt Gremio kneel down right next to him. He cursed himself out to act casual, but he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t even look up at him. He felt that—sense—delusion—of feeling Gremio on him, even though he was a foot away from him, as if he felt him outside his body.

“Oh, master,” said Gremio softly, putting a hand on his forehead, “you had a bad dream.”

Tir surprised himself by feeling like crying. He looked down shamefully.

“It’s alright,” Gremio whispered. “It’s often that way before a battle. That’s why most men don’t sleep, or drink so that they can. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; but don’t tell it to the others. They’ll think it’s a bad omen, because you are the leader.”

Tir nodded minutely, feeling the blush on his cheeks. “I…”

Gremio shook his head. “It’s alright,” he said. “Put it behind you and focus on what’s ahead. If there was a warning, heed it; if there was only terrors, leave them with the night.”

If there was a warning, heed it? He couldn’t imagine of what.

“Alright,” he said shakily, “let’s go see Matt and Vik.”

When it was time to go, he was able to stand; it was enough.

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8: A thief, a treasure.

Sure, the announcer had declared that Viktor lost the fight. When you got a look at him the next morning, however, you really got a sense that he had lost the fucking fight. There wasn’t any bandaging things up for this motherfucker; there wasn’t a way to. When Tir opened up the entrance to the tent, he saw Mathiu lowering a faint blue glow away from Viktor’s forehead, who had his eyes closed tightly. Blue light shimmered over and under the many lines of worry, stress, and fear on his face.

Viktor’s dark eyes caught Tir the second he was visible, and he smiled and leaned back in his chair, flickering a few fingers in a wave. “You’re early, chief. Hyped up for the showdown?”

Tir looked at him as evenly as he could. He couldn’t think about it. No matter what. He needed his guard up around Viktor. “I figured this was the day to take things seriously.”

“It is,” Mathiu agreed, standing up with a couple of cracks and pops and gesturing at the table. “Both of you, sit down.”

Gremio silently pulled out a chair for Tir, who sat down, not looking at him. Gremio quietly sat on his other side. Tir pushed it out of his head for now. “you’ve got the plan finalized?”

“No,” said Mathiu. “I’m not finalizing anything.”

“We’re really doing this?” asked Gremio nervously.

The same debate they had been having carried on, without any of the passion it had been carrying on with. Mathiu had a brilliant plan that almost no one else liked and he wasn’t budging on it. Tir supported it and thought they could pull it off; Valeria and Viktor thought he was being naïve. Gremio wouldn’t make statements like that but he thought it was too dangerous. Humphrey thought it was a bold and brilliant new idea; he thought Mathiu was completely wrong about how to implement it. Lepant wouldn’t speak for or against it, he merely asked for the details of his position in the plan and seemed flummoxed by how few he got. Kirkis, who had started coming to the meetings approximately three hours after Mathiu starting working with him, was in Lepant’s position. Sanchez would write and write and scratch the lines back out, going around the table to pour drinks when too tired of it all. As people filed one by one into the hall, they simply took up their positions of the argument again, tired and worn.

Mathiu listened to the roundtable smackdown as his belligerent coworkers filed in that day, but once everyone was there, he lifted up his hands in a bid for silence. It fell. “It will take about half an hour to get this camp on the move now that everyone is awake,” he began. “Our men work at an admirable speed. We’ll give them their due today by working as well as they do, for once. We’ll have this decided in half an hour and be ready to march.”

Saying it didn’t make it that way. “I’m proud of my men too,” Valeria said, contention in her tone, “and I don’t want to watch them die today.”

Mathiu let himself breathe out. Sanchez got up to start pouring out cold liquor for everyone. “Then we need the best possible plan for the day,” he finally said.

“Give me your command and I’ll follow it,” pronounced Lepant, giving the same ultimatum he had been giving.

“As will I,” added Kirkis, holding out a glass to Sanchez. Tir wasn’t sure why, and he was reluctant to ask, but the elf was the most clearly beat up person at the table. He had been getting into spats with someone. Tir had lost track of him with his responsibilities.

Looking at him, looking at Gremio, trying to hold onto his midsection in a subtle way, at Viktor, who had a black eye, a black forehead, and a catch in his throat, and at Mathiu, whose hands had an awful tremor, Tir came to his decision. “I’ll give you your command,” he interrupted.

Eyes turned to him. Lepant inclined his head respectfully; the rest followed, some more immediately than others. Valeria and Gremio were the outliers by far; she seemed to follow the trend so as to not be insulting, and Gremio did not bow to him at all. He only watched him.

“Mathiu’s plan has sense in it, though it’s hard to see like this,” he began, standing up so he could put his fingers on the map of Pannu Yakuta and the outlying grounds that Valeria had made. He spread out the markers of position, which they had made to signify the major players on the field. They were a few dozen wooden chips cut from one birch branch with inked initials carved on them, written in bright, beautiful colors. T MD was scarlet red, M.S. was silver, V. was umber brown, VyM gold, C. LP and E. LP both sunset orange, H. spring green, K + S lavender, L. dark blue, K. hunter green, a chip with a symbol that belonged to the Bandit’s guild was painted violet, there were many symbols for lieutenants of the army in their own colors, a strange scribble was drawn in teal; chips for Flik, Ronnie, and Odessa all lay off to the side of the map, and there was one that Tir was keeping upside down in front of him. Those of the enemy were all listed in black. Most of them were names only Valeria knew, and she had already arranged them in positions she thought they would start battle in, though she reminded them at every opportunity that things had probably changed in her absence. K. R., in devastating capital letters, stood solitary at the crown.

“What we’re not seeing, and we have to keep this in mind, is an unknown number of troops on the walls of the fortress, all watching us, all completely confident that they outnumber and outmatch us. They have better weapons, better troops, the advantage of the field, and utter confidence that they will win, and we want this.”

Tir’s heart was pounding in his throat. He didn’t know how he was going to pull this off.

It was so strange to be the integral person in this room. So strange to have everyone’s eyes on him, watching him, to know that they would leave this room to either victory or defeat, either confidence or uncertainty, either cohesion or chaos, and the difference was him. Either he would give them a good plan and convince them to follow it or they would follow their own plans and inevitably face death. They were divided, uncertain, they had been tearing at each other—literally—and looking around, he could see it on every single one of them. Even Valeria, composed as a statue, had shadows under her eyes and a subtle binder under her armor. Even Lepant, with a knife-cut on his arm.

He would put it together, or they wouldn’t be put together.

How strange, to be the man of history.

He realized then that it wasn’t his superior courage, character, or training that would make this work. It was knowing that he had to.

He began to place chips evenly in a fan in front of the fortress.

“We want them to be dead certain that they will win and sure that they have nothing to fear from us. That is what will let us even get close enough to the fortress to attack. We have been loud, wild, and obvious in our approach; if they have already seen us coming, and they had to have, they will have drained their troops out of the fortress to meet us on their field. If, for some reason, they are afraid of us, and they have kept everyone inside the fortress and barricaded the walls, we have lost. How could we hope to take down the fortress with our few numbers? We have already detailed that it is impossible. But if they are not afraid, and they have come out to face us, we can bring them their doom.

“They will figure it is their advantage to face us in clean battle rather than shoot us down from their walls because they want to surround us and massacre us. They’re risking the slight possibility of defeat for what they think is a chance at total victory. Kwanda Rosman is inclined to take this chance; both Valeria and I have vouched for his character and we know that he is a man easily tempted by great victory, honors, and spoils. He’ll risk it if he isn’t afraid. And considering our loud approach, and Mathiu’s plan to look like we’re simply approaching the fortress normally, he shouldn’t be.

“As we have already detailed, I will lead the core of the army, several thousand, to his gate, demanding exactly the sort of head-to-head battle he’s used to. He will believe I am like my father and I am expecting a traditional battle, in which two vanguards meet and try to tear into each other’s rearguard. His secret plan will be to outflank us and surround us so he can kill every man but the leaders and capture them to return to his Emperor for the greatest possible glory. We can count on this being his plan.

“He cannot, however, count on our plan. It is new, he is traditional. It is inventive, unpredictable, and yes, a little chaotic, and he is rule-bound. He will be off balance, and after he has already shown his throat by exposing his army.

“Like Matt has detailed, this is how it will be: though it looks like one mass, secretly, our army is divided into about twenty factions, each watching for the signals of a sub-commander. Each faction is mobile and must be willing and ready to change course at a moment’s notice. His army is completely unequipped to be this way; the threats and compulsions the lieutenants and soldiers are under to not deviate from a plan or disobey any command are intense. They cannot change their course without lengthy confirmation from one commander; we can and will be able to switch our courses quickly and efficiently with a dozen sub-commanders, each trusted to have good judgement and enough bravery to make tough calls. When the enemy army presses in on us, even though they will secretly have wings sent out to surround us, we will have ten fingers, each grasping another way, impossible for them to close on.

“Matt wanted us to initially break off in something like a circle pattern, but Valeria, who knows the terrain of Pannu Yakuta, disagreed with his decision. Trusting her inside knowledge I agree with her. She believes that Kwanda will treat the river as a weak point and over-fortify it; I agree with her.” He pulled several chips out from the edge of the map and pulled them farther to the side, detailing a far-flanking position. “We will immediately send extra forces to flank outside of the river and meet them instead of them being overwhelmed. Those will be the forces under the command of Valeria herself, as well as Viktor’s sections two and three, so that they may begin the invasion of the castle early if they find a break in that sensitive area.”

People began to crowd around him to see what he was doing more closely; at first they had been inching over in their seats, but now, people began to stand up and crane their necks to see around him. Tir’s heart was beating harshly, but he began to feel a strange, dizzy elation—they were listening.

“As consequence the left flank will be sparser. This will only be evident once we’ve broken formation, but still, I want my best troops in that area… Which are mine, the veteran Liberation troops. As such I’ll actually organize all my troops to be to the left of me, not directly behind me, so that I can break to their head once the first volley is thrown.” He shoved a half-dozen chips out of the way as he described, leaving himself vulnerable in front. “Humphrey’s new recruits will be the center of the setup since, with our new battle style, the center is actually the least important area. It is the least maneuverable and least able to make snap changes in direction, so if any of the former Imperials want to defect or try to sabotage us, they’re in the worst possible place to do so—under fire and less protected.”

Humphrey was nodding along. Valeria had her eyebrows raised but wasn’t objecting; most of the others had their eyes peeled on the map.

Tir went over some details of what section would be placed where, changing Mathiu’s plan in places where specific lieutenants had argued against his decision. Valeria was closer to the front, like she wanted, and Viktor’s sections were close together instead of scattered about. Tir was liberal with his own sections, because they were more used to him and more versatile. “There is no way that Kwanda will expect this plan, since it has literally never been done before, and if we get him on the ground, he won’t be able to protect himself from it. We will be reacting real-time. The second he makes a command and moves his forces, we will be able to move faster, sooner, and outflank him more effectively because you don’t have to wait for me to cross-check each of your actions or fear dire punishment if I don’t like your choice.

“That should address most of the concerns I have been hearing over the past few days, but,” he continued, holding up his hand when Viktor moved to speak, “I know people have also been concerned about this approach being TOO chaotic. What if someone, who is off to the side and can’t see the flow of battle, makes a choice that is bad? What if someone moves too fast, or two subcommanders unknowingly choose to move away from each other, crating a gap in the lines? How do we fix the mistakes quickly enough?”

Viktor supplied the response with some hesitation, looking over Tir’s shoulder. “We intended to us the runner elf as a signal that someone needed to pull back immediately,” he said, tapping the chip with the weird teal scribble. “If you saw him, you considered what you were about to hear an order. But—”

“Yes, but that wasn’t good enough, as you said yourself,” Tir continued. Viktor was unexpectedly cautious when it came to battle plans. He hated planning risks, as much as he liked taking them. “He’s fast. Weirdly so. But we’re talking about the possibility of dire mistakes that need immediate correction.”

Tir tried to keep himself from grinning, but he couldn’t help it. He was too proud of this one. “We need someone who moves instantly.”

He snapped and pointed at the empty seat across the table from him.

Without a warning, without a noise, without anything but a rustling breeze, Luc appeared in it.

-

Two nights ago, Tir had entered his tent intending to sleep, after the fights and the drinking had gone on later than they should have, to find Luc in his tent, rifling through his belongings.

His initial reaction had been to immediately pull the door shut behind him so no one could see what was going on.

Luc’s immediate reaction had been to freeze in his tracks and stare at the owner of the tent he was robbing, wild-eyed.

They ended up just staring at each other.

Tir slowly lifted a finger to his lips.

Luc lurched to get away, and Tir half-stepped to him, grabbing his wrist. “Gremio,” he hissed.

Luc jolted.

“Gremio will hear you.”

Luc, like everyone else in the army, had seen Gremio rip a belligerent man off of his victim, clock him asleep, and hand his limp body off nonchalantly to a medic. He stiffened at the threat and pulled into himself, rolling through half-plans and panic in his mind.

Then, both of their eyes snapped to the place where Tir’s right hand was holding Luc’s right wrist.

There was a feeling like a snake uncoiling under his skin. It was—not uncomfortable, not overwhelming, but completely alien, like it was the feeling of an inhuman species, happening to him. It was in his skin—in the mind in his skin, not felt but known, curling and uncurling, seeking the light.

They pulled back from each other, with identical gasps. They scoured each other with their eyes, searching for a sign, hunting for weakness, catching each other’s glares and intensifying them.

Like birds that don’t know who has the quicker wing, they drifted, waiting to strike.

Tir curled the fingers of his right hand together, feeling a weird, thrumming energy in their joints. “What are you doing here?” He whispered.

Luc glanced around the room. He had to be looking for an easy exit; it was a tent, so it wouldn’t be hard to find one. He glowered at Tir, refusing to respond.

Tir narrowed his eyes at him. He was a small boy; he couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall, if he even was five feet, since Tir was short as well and he easily crested him. There wasn’t much meat on his bones, either, and there should have been no threat about him. But Tir’s first encounter with him had been a ridiculous display of violent strength, one that Tir hadn’t easily come out on top of, even with the warriors he had helping him. In retrospect, it was an overdone, anxious display of strength, but that only worried Tir more, since he was uncomfortable around people willing to be reckless. He hated that it set him on edge, because it was a mental play that was supposed to set him on edge, but Luc and his big, wild eyes, and tiny frame housing ridiculous displays of recklessness and power, really fucking set him on edge. Especially alone where he wasn’t supposed to be.

“Wait,” he asked, “How are you in here? Gremio was just outside—and I was only gone for a minute…”

Luc made a sudden dart past him, but Tir caught him easily. That sickening feeling—it belonged deep in his gut, but it writhed in his hand. Luc jolted when he caught ahold of him and whined. Tir closed his eyes to the sensation and pulled Luc into him, though he dug in his heels and resisted. “Be quiet. He has good ears.”

“Let go of me,” he growled. Tir pulled him in close until they were barely a few inches apart and gripped his shoulder tightly, hoping the feeling making him sick would have at least half the effect on Luc, though he doubted his thoughts the second he thought them. All the same he turned pale.

“How did you get in here?”

“I teleported,” Luc snarled, eyes full of fury though his body was frozen.

“You teleported?”

“Yes.”

“You can do that??” Tir asked, louder than he intended to.

But though they both glanced to the door, Gremio did nothing. Tir was in the habit of speaking to himself; he likely wouldn’t stir unless he heard someone else’s voice or Tir asking for help. They looked back at each other, more nervous. “You can teleport?”

“Yeah,” Luc continued, cautiously.

“Instantly?”

“Obviously?”

“Magically? Like, with a rune?”

“Yeah.”

“That thing…when you did that on Leknaat’s island… that’s like… not something that happens on the island?? That’s something YOU can do?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Can you do this… like, at any time?”

“Pretty much?”

“How many times a day?”

“Probably… fifty?”

“Fifty??”

“If they’re really long jumps it’s harder,” he admitted. “I mean short jumps.”

“What’s a long jump?”

Luc shrugged awkwardly, considering he was still being manhandled a little, and it was shivery and slippery where they touched. “Over a hundred miles?”

Tir let go of his wrist and plopped down on the floor.

Luc watched him put his head in his hands and then smooth back his hair, shell-shocked. “Can I… go?” he whispered. “Like, am I being detained, or,”

“A hundred miles??”

“Yeah? I could do, like, five of those in a day.”

“The fuck. How far can you go?”

“Uh… any… amount?”

“Any fucking amount?”

“I mean, across the continent I’ve done.”

Tir cursed expressively. Luc shuffled on his feet, left hand rubbing his right wrist, until Tir made a ‘sit down’ gesture emphatically. Luc refused a few times, but Tir kept telling him to sit the fuck down until he did.

They sat cross-legged across from each other, Tir holding his face, looking incredibly vexed at the boy across from him. The boy across from him looked like he was ready to throw down at any fucking moment, and he didn’t care what about.

“You can teleport anywhere, any time, and only ridiculous long distances tax you,” Tir confirmed.

“Yes.”

“Because of your rune, so that’s not something you will ever stop being able to do.”

“No.”

“The same rune that lets you pull golems out of the ground to attack people?”

“Uh… yes?”

“What the fuck else can you do?”

“Uh… hurt people a lot? I mean a lot. Move in their air, like, decently well? ‘Flying’ is kind of an overstatement, it’s more like… not falling. Adjust very small weather patterns? Flip skirts? I don’t?”

“Fuck off, dude, that’s so cool,” said Tir with a tone of misery.

Luc turned a little pink. “So?”

“So,” Tir said, as if what he was about to say didn’t have to be said, “fuck, that’s so cool. So… so a lot of things! Do you know how we can use that? Shit, you can teleport anywhere??”

Luc’s posture relaxed slightly, before he pulled his arms in together and leaned forward. He grinned like a cat. “Yeah, it’s easy. I just need a mental image of what it looks like from above and I can go there. I can even use pictures of a place if they’re good enough.”

“Like a map?”

“Usually… not… they usually don’t give you a clear picture of where you’re going. But a painting, yeah.”

“A painting…” Tir rubbed his chin, looking away to the side. There were a few beats of silence.

“So, am I being detained, or,”

“Hey,” Tir interrupted, snapping his eyes back to Luc.

Luc balked for only a second, then held his gaze. His eyebrows pinched up and he had an intense glare covering him without hardly a shift. “Hey, what?” he asked.

“I won’t tell anyone you came in here. No,” he interrupted himself. “I’ll let you have whatever you were looking for if you agree to do something for me. Some things. Ongoing thing. Open agreement.”

Luc narrowed his glare, tilting his head. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to carry commands for me. Be a messenger. I’ll tell you what to say to someone, you go to them, say what I told you to say, snap back. That’s all. And no one will know you were here and you’ll have whatever you were looking for.”

“Wait, when? For what? For… in what situation? Why?”

“Battle. Like, tell people to do what I say in battle. You go out, you tell them to turn right, push forward, stop the shit they’re doing, pick up the pace, or whatever I say, then come back to me. Several battles. Not just Pannu Yakuta. Whenever we are in open battle with the Empire.”

Luc leaned back, looking away from Tir as he considered the request, tapping two nails together. Tir watched the motion. “That’s a lot of work for one thing.”

“That’s a lot of leniency for finding a thief in your tent when you have a guard right outside your tent.”

Luc snapped his eyes back to Tir’s. “You wouldn’t do it.”

Tir’s gorge rose and fell as he asked himself, honestly, if he would do it. He pulled in a breath.

Suddenly, he found himself diving forward, clasping his hand over Luc’s mouth, and grasping the first thing he could with his left hand—a knee. A light that flared up behind Luc’s glove died again when he grabbed him, and it took Tir a second of processing to realize he had just killed a spell being cast—almost certainly a teleportation spell. He didn’t have a fucking clue what he was doing before then.

“Listen, you little prick,” Tir whispered, feeling the fear rise in him, “I’m being nice. Help me out, I’ll help you out, and things don’t have to get any weirder.”

Luc wrenched his head away from his hand. “Let go of me.”

“If you teleport again I’ll start a fucking manhunt for you.”

“How the fuck will they find me?”

“Why the fuck haven’t you left already?”

Luc glowered at him. Of fucking course they knew how he couldn’t teleport. Somehow, Tir was stopping him, when usually an entire continent of space couldn’t stop him.

Luc chewed on his lower lip and considered. Tir endured a howling fury in his head explain to him, rapid-fire, the many reasons why this plan didn’t work.

“Fine,” Luc said, for reasons Tir couldn’t guess at, “fine. You should be glad I don’t want to cause any trouble for Lady Leknaat.”

“Fine,” Tir repeated. “Jerkface. Whatever you want, you got it. Just help me out a little and I’ll let you do whatever weird shit it is you’re on.”

“Fine, but…” Luc held his eyes, vivid brown almost gold. Tir felt sweat on the back of his neck. “If I’m stuck in an agreement with no foreseeable end date, so are you. If I’m going to keep helping you, you’re going to keep helping me. Not just today. You’re going to keep working on my project with me.”

“Okay…” said Tir, reluctantly, but, though he wouldn’t admit it, more interested than he was calculating. “What do you want?”

Luc let his lower lip go and smiled. Tir glowered a little, absolutely sure he had been played, but not sure how. “I want Soul Eater’s runestone.”

Tir stared at him, then looked away. He reviewed a couple of memories he should have reviewed more closely before this moment. “I… don’t… have it?”

“What?”

“Ted gave me my rune…” he whispered, “while he was dying… he had me agree to take it and transferred it to me by contract. It went from his hand to mine. I never saw a runestone… I never thought about it before now. Of course there should be a runestone but… I don’t have it.” He stared at his hand, shocked. “Wait, how do you know I have Soul Eater?”

Luc turned red as he gaped at Tir. “Are you serious??”

“Yeah. Wow, I should have thought of that before now. Where the hell is the runestone? Weird.”

“You don’t have??” Luc got up, stomped over to the bag the had been searching through, and dumped it out on to the floor. Notebooks, pens, bandages, shirts, coins, leaves, a couple bugs; Luc shifted through everything on the floor and didn’t find what he was looking for. Tir watched him turn through the contents of the tent, as quietly as possible, with a smile on his face, but he knew it wasn’t there. Luc eventually turned on his heels and glared at him, annoyed.

“I don’t have it.”

He walked over to him, sat down—on top of him—and grabbed Tir’s right hand. Tir stiffened but didn’t have much time to react before Luc was tugging the bandages off of his hand. It hurt; Luc didn’t wait to see how they were tied on before he ripped them off. Soul Eater flared to life with rust-red light.

Luc stared at the rune, wide-eyed. He flipped Tir’s hand front and back, as if he was going to find answers in his palm. He slipped his fingers into and out of the spaces between Tir’s, and the slips were followed by sparks, pinches and prickle underneath his skin. He was already trying to pull away when the back of Luc’s hand brushed his as the boy muttered, fast and high-pitched, skin to skin.

They both pulled away from how that felt.

Tir felt the snake barely kept inside him, at his eyes, at his nerves, beneath the skin of his face and throat and chest, and then it trickled back like water, coiling up, around his spine, around his heart, hissing, trickling away.

Luc was breathing heavily, left hand clutching his right.

“What rune do you have?”

“Breath,” he whispered.

“Breath?”

“True Wind,” Luc said. “He’s Breath to me.”

“It’s a true rune?”

“Yes.”

Tir examined him. Luc examined him back. They came to their conclusions separately, and decided, wisely, that they were at an impasse.

“Alright, so,” said Luc eventually, shakily pulling his glove back onto his hand, “let’s go over how you want me to do this messenger boy thing.”

-

“Luc will be right beside me, at all times,” Tir continued, letting his gaze slowly fall back to the map. He picked up the chip that he had set in front of him, flipped it over, and slid it to his position on the table—they clattered off of each other and ended up a centimeter apart.

H.L., scratched into the wood, varnished without color.

Luc settled his elbows onto the table and rested his chin in his hands, grinning.

“He can teleport instantly to any position he can see,” Tir said. They had agreed to purposefully undersell his abilities. “If he shows up while we are actively in battle with a command, it’s a command from me. Mathiu will still give commands if he’s in the position to, but once the factions are split far enough that a shout won’t carry, or if I have to issue a command I don’t want shouted across the battle field, this is how it’ll come from you.

“Valeria, if you would fill him in with the visuals of Pannu Yakuta as best you can ahead of time so he has an idea of where he’s going, that would be appreciated.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said.

“Hopefully that should address most concerns about getting reliable commands or the organization of the army being too chaotic,” said Tir, looking back down toward the map. He was trying not to grin, he really was, but he wasn’t doing well. “Moving on, how we plan to actually take the fortress once we’ve used quick-changing positions to confuse and overcome the enemy’s troops.”

Tir laid out a plan. Everyone agreed to it. Luc vanished before anyone could talk to him and Sanchez silently got up to refill everyone’s glasses with fresh liquor. It took twenty minutes to wrap up the meeting, not thirty.

-

Imagine, if you will: after almost a year since he made the choice to join the Liberation Army, months of preparing, and a week of marching, he was only a few hours away from looking one of the Great Generals, the representation of the Emperor, on the battlefield and declaring war on everything he had ever known. The time had come. And there’s never enough time to prepare. Have the greatest plan in the world, plot all the twists and turns a man can plot, be as impressive as you can possibly be, and you still won’t feel prepared. What can prepare you for the death of thousands? It’s not something we are supposed to experience.

Gremio prepared him for battle.

It was a tense experience. He fitted him into armor; leather, Tir had never grown used to metal and would never be able to wear it unless he changed his battle style. Gremio had insisted on a piece or two of chainmaile that he could fit on him without restricting him. He tied everything tightly, pulling the clasps and knots snug; bending and bowing to check that every part of the outfit was correct. He handed Tir his staff, which he accepted with both hands. He handed him his bags, his knives, his ropes and potions and fire starters; anything he could possibly need to claw his way through. Finally, he untied the bandages on his right hand and fit a leather glove he had had worked onto it instead. One that could be easily taken off.

Gremio then stood in front of him, eyeing him up and down, looking for something that he wouldn’t find.

“I’m ready,” Tir said.

Gremio nodded.

Tir looked down at the floor. What did you say? What would his father have said? Something to reassure him, no doubt. ‘Wait for me,’ perhaps. That’s the sort of thing he used to tell Tir before he left again. Something that sounded so fucking cool. But Tir didn’t know how to do that.

“Hey, have you got something to say?”

No, that definitely wasn’t the coolest thing he could have said.

Gremio sighed. “It’s foolish.”

“No way it’s as dumb as what I just said.”

Gremio chuckled derisively. He looked up, and Tir finally caught his eyes. The night before was ricocheting in his head—Gremio fierce in battle, even vicious, fanatically loyal and fantastically loving, how gentle and miserable he was in private, silent when he was berated, bitterly remorseful when he was provoked into lashing out, suffused with deep convictions and heavy suffering that Tir had never known before. He had had some time to think over it, he could see how being made a servant settled into Gremio’s bones, he could see how he had been pushed in the last ten years of his life. He wasn’t stupid, he could imagine; he had been his own man, and now he wasn’t, and he had to have hated it, once, considering he could talk with revulsion about the hatred of debts; but he loved Tir now, Tir especially, more than his father. He could see it was a lot for one man. He could see it was a heavy weight.

It all seemed like an unfamiliar person, superimposed on the man he knew. But he saw now that it was the same man, and he just hadn’t been trusted with the whole picture. And he could be bitter about that, and he was, with a sharp frustration in his forehead and his gut, but he could also be happy that he was being trusted now, or, perhaps, that he was lucky now, and he was witnessing the upheaval of Gremio’s life, terrifying as it was, and helping him sift the layers of uprooted dirt, and put away the bones.

How could he communicate trust to him—how could he prove it? How could Gremio know he meant it? And yet he was still mad, discontented with the way Gremio had treated him last night, or the way they had treated each other; he was still full of anxiety. What did he even mean, himself?

“I was thinking it wasn’t too late to leave,” Gremio whispered. “I was thinking that, even, now is the last possible time for us to just leave, and not do this.”

Tir sighed. “I… understand how you feel. I don’t fully want to do this either.”

Gremio looked at him with stupid hope.

“But… I still think I’m doing what’s right. And I refuse to do anything but that. And I don’t necessarily like it, always, and I don’t even think I’m very good at it. Actually, I think I suck at it. But I want to do what’s right. I have to. So many people have died already because the Empire has been let to do what’s wrong.”

“People die no matter what you do,” Gremio whispered.

“Well…” Tir said, “they shouldn’t die like that.”

Gremio closed his eyes, and nodded.

“I just don’t know why it should have to be you,” he whispered. “You haven’t done anything to deserve this. You don’t have any sins to atone for. Why should someone who hasn’t done anything wrong be chosen to make up for the crimes their fathers committed? Seeing you today, I was so proud, and so scared. Why does it have to be this way? You are… you’re so young.”

“Gremio, don’t cry.”

Gremio shook his head, eyes twitching with his tears. Tir reached up to wipe them away, and Gremio bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tir waited through his trembling, silent as the grave. “Do you think we’re not doing the right thing?” he asked, frightened.

Gremio shook his head, and it took him a long time to reply. “Don’t ask me that. I don’t have the answer. I don’t know what the right thing is. I just know it wouldn’t be right to let you die here.”

Tir put his hands on his shoulders. He thought about what he was going to say to reassure him, but he just wanted to hold him. And then he felt hot anger about the fact that he couldn’t hold him. Why the hell couldn’t he? Why was it okay to hold Gremio when he was a child but he couldn’t when he was a man?

He held him tightly, as close as they could geared up for battle, his head at his shoulder, and rocked on his heels.

Gremio wrapped his arms around him, and kissed the crown of his head when they let go.

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