Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 (7 page)

“Just like everything else in this damned swamp,” Sara said as she used her free arm to wipe sweat away from the corner of her eyes. She knew that creature always struck when the poison did its final work and the victim lay comatose as easy prey. Sara wasn’t about to let that happen. When Ezekiel’s right leg succumbed and he finally couldn’t shuffle forward anymore, Sara planned to beg a fellow soldier to lift Ezekiel in their arms like a babe and carry him. She knew it was a foolish though. Ezekiel wasn’t even a full mercenary, he was a curator drafted into the ranks of the archer because of her insistence. None of them would want to waste their remaining energy on carrying him. She knew they would sooner let him fall behind than kill themselves with the labor or danger of protecting him. But at that moment Sara wasn’t thinking of the logical conclusion of her pleas. She was thinking she would do anything to keep him moving one step further, including begging, bribery or outright threats.

Sara’s eyes flicked away from Ezekiel’s to take in the unforgiving swamp around them. The land was a verdant green—a tangle of moss, vines, and more mysterious vegetation erupting everywhere. The vines hung from the tree branches high above and crept around the thick trunks like snakes. In fact, the vines were so large and so well-mimicked by the cold-eyed reptiles of the swamp that sometimes she missed the subtle difference between ropy vines and thick coils of camouflaged muscles. They lay so still for moments, like a disguise, but eventually their creeping movements gave them up as living animals and not the flora they mimicked. This swamp was a treacherous place. Venomous creatures seemed to lurk behind every tree stump and in the deceptively still waters of the deep bogs. Sara turned her calculating orange eyes back onto her only friend in the company, and she became uncomfortable at what the left side of his face presented. The formerly normal features now looked as if they were slowly melting off like wax in the hot sun. Sara didn’t flinch for two reasons. The first was the fact that although Ezekiel’s face was an uncomfortable visage, it wasn’t a scary one. The second reason was that Sara was familiar with the effects that paralysis could have on a person’s body.

She remembered face of a former gladiator that she had known from childhood. His features, too, had looked like melting wax. But it had been much more severe, in Sara’s opinion. Severe and permanent. For as long as she had known him, the man had not been able to move his left arm or leg, and he spoke with a heavy speech impediment. But that hadn’t stopped him from being who he was. A kind man. A sane man. And a determined warrior. But he used his learned warrior skills in other ways after his ‘accident’, which had happened long before Sara was born. He couldn’t speak without long pauses and confusing enunciation, but his right hand had worked just fine. So he had drawn maps of the entire empire for her father and tutored Sara in the geography of the Algardis Empire, in addition to earning his keep at her father’s villa as a weapons sharpener.

That last task he had
insisted
on. In his slow and mangled speech, Sara remembered his explanation to her as to why, when being a mapmaker was just as good and steady a trade—an even better one, actually.

“My mind is sharp, girl, but my weapons must be sharper. I may not wield the sword anymore, but your father does, and those weapons must be sharp,” he said in a long speech that took twice as long for him to say as it would her or anyone else, “Ready to pierce a rib cage and cleave a skull. I know these blades like I knew my own. Therefore, I’ll prepare them for war and for combat.”

He had pinned her with a fierce glare then.

She had gulped and nodded, not really understanding the determination back then. He could have just set one of the squires to the task, after all. But she didn’t question him. Instead, she fetched the extra polish he had wanted for the metal and got back to the chore she had been punished with—shining two dozen swords until they gleamed.

Sara grimaced. She couldn’t remember what she’d
done
to deserve the punishment usually given to her father’s squires, but she knew whatever she had done to be assigned the task had to have been a troublesome quarrel. Luckily for her, she’d gotten to spend time with the monstrous man she’d stared at around corners from afar. She had also come to learn that perhaps he wasn’t so monstrous as his melting face made him seem.

After she had watched him silently sharpen the weapons using an ingenious foot-powered whetstone wheel for over half an hour, she had been so fascinated that she spent the morning half-polishing the swords and half-nicking herself with the blades because her eyes weren’t focused on her own task. There had been something fascinating, then and now, about the tiny bit of machinery crafted by the arms smiths that made its owner someone much more admirable than an ordinary warrior. He was
different
. Sara wanted to be different.

Sara had ended that day with enough cuts to her hands that she’d had to have them wrapped in salve and gauze that night under the watchful and glaring eyes of her mother, the dark-skinned Anna Beth, with eyes like the moon and a pinched brow. Her father had taken one look at her mother—with her arms crossed and a look of fury on her face—and hastily tried to explain why her only child had hands that looked like she lost a fight with a clawed cat. He had quickly lost that battle before the first sentence had issued forth from his lips and been banished from the healing room.

Her mother had explained, “I’ll deal with your father tonight.
You
I want answers from now! What in the gods’ names were you doing with those swords, Sara? Juggling them?”

Sara still remembered her righteous indignation as a child. She had tried explaining about the amazing knife sharpener-cum-mapmaker with his one hand that etched out landscapes as fast as her eyes could watch. She had done so with all the eagerness of a thirteen-year-old girl who had just discovered a new hero.

Her mother had relented with amusement flashing in her eyes. “Well, did you at least speak with him, or just spend your time gaping like a fish?”

Sara had hastily assured her that they had made introductions.

“He even told me why he is the way he is!” she had said in excitement.

Anna Beth’s eyebrows had raised as she listened attentively. Sara had been so eager to share her story that she hadn’t noticed as her mother wrapped another layer of gauze over her wounds.

“And why is that?” Her mother’s voice had been patient.

Sara had launched into the story of how the man had protected her father’s life in the arena and how he had come to live in their villa, as if her mother didn’t already know the story herself. But to a child, first-hand knowledge of an event was everything. Anna Beth hadn’t gainsaid her and had let her tell it with the enthusiasm befitting a youngster’s new tale.

The short form of the history between her father and the monstrous man was that they had been warriors together in the gladiatorial arena. When another gladiator had swung out a studded shield to catch her father in the side and knock him down to finish him off, the older man had stepped in the way. He had fought off her father’s opponent but had taken a strike directly to his spine. A blow from which he had never recovered.

He had had to be dragged out of the arena by slaves, half of his body useless and his sword fallen from his hand to lay in the sand, his enemy’s blood glimmering on the blade.

From the moment Sara had relayed that story to her mother, she had resolved with vigor that she would never again refer to him in her head as a monster for the facial features he couldn’t control and the arm and leg that lay useless by his side. When she had thought to speak to her father about the matter afterward, he had made sure to educate her on the realities of the world and that there were people far more monstrous out there, both physically and mentally, than the man she fondly referred to as Sir.

Staring into Ezekiel’s brown and spectacled eyes, she smiled at the memory, because despite the deadly situation, it made her remember a time when paralyzed features didn’t mean a bleak outcome was inevitably coming for them.

Ezekiel, however, wasn’t feeling so optimistic. The right side of his mouth, the only side he could use, was turned down in a frown. “I’m slowing you down.”

Sara snapped out of her reverie.

He spoke in a slur, as he couldn’t move the lips on the left side either. In fact, the entire left side of his body lay still and droopy, as if his body had been painted out and the artist had smeared the left just before he had finished his work. She couldn’t even see his left eye as the eyelid above had flickered down into a half-closed position.

“You’re not slowing me down,” she replied tersely.

He glared.

She raised an eyebrow as she kept her right arm wrapped securely around his waist and jerked her chin towards their compatriots in front of them. A long line stretched as far as she could see of mercenaries walking, carrying, and dragging fallen warriors. Warriors affected by the damned creatures’ venom but not dead yet.

The mercenaries’ guild had a motto that she knew, or at least she
thought
she knew, they took very seriously.
Never leave a man behind
.

Ha,
Sara thought to herself wryly,
I wonder if the captain ever got that memo. Division Three certainly deserted the other divisions of their guard fast enough.

Outwardly, she said, “Look around you. No one’s getting anywhere too fast. Now shut your trap and put your right foot forward, and then put it forward again.”

He stared at her.

“And I’ll handle your left.”

He gave a small laugh. “Do I have a choice?”

“No,” she said flatly as she jerked him closer so that his paralyzed left side once more aligned seamlessly with her right and she could force his left leg to lift alongside the movements of her right leg.

It had been twenty minutes since the lizard had taken a bite out of him and they realized the dire straits that were coming. One of the only two healers still alive had confirmed with a tired look that the venom was one they had no chance of fighting. It had taken seven dead mercenaries within a four-hour period before the healers had tersely admitted that they couldn’t combat the invasive poison traveling through their patients’ bodies with their powers, nor could they provide an herbal remedy to ease the process and halt it from spreading. Sara had remembered one healer laughing bitterly as she said, “We might be able to concoct an antivenom if you catch one of the blasted creatures.
Alive.”

Another leader in the guard, her patient actually, had looked up at that healer with bloodshot eyes from where he sat up on his elbows and looked at his paralyzed legs that were decaying before his very eyes. “Do you not think we’ve tried? Staying alive is an issue, much less capturing the blasted thing.” Then he had chuckled and laid down on his pallet to die. “
Might,
she says. Might my ass.”

Sara had quickly walked past him. Not because she was unsympathetic to his agony, but because the morose attitude about their ability to combat the creatures was one she knew was widespread. Hell, the bite not only paralyzed you—while piercing armor—but eventually it caused your muscles to putrefy at an accelerated rate.

“I wonder why?” Ezekiel had said next to her. That had been a short hour before he had received his bite.

“Why what?” Sara had muttered absentmindedly.

“Why the putrefaction? We’re already paralyzed and waiting for them to come for us.”

Sara had been cleaning her weapons as they walked. All the mud and wet was wreaking havoc on her leather and blades. There was nothing to be done for it but continue to shine them and move on.

“The smell,” she had said.

Ezekiel had prodded her. “And?”

Sara had sighed and turned her head to look at him with an irritated gaze. When she saw the eager eyes of an intellectual just wanting one more tidbit of information, she snapped her blade back into its sheath with a click and said, “The smell of the rotting bodies probably leads them to their prey.”

“Oh,” Ezekiel had said thoughtfully.

“Yes, oh,” she had said flatly. It was a horrible way to die. Well...more horrible than suffocating to death. In most cases, those who were bitten had lost control of their lungs and suffocated shortly after. A few horribly unlucky souls, though, had become fully paralyzed while still taking in breath. Those ones were left to starve or wait for the creature put them out of their misery. Sara and the survivors didn’t wait to find out which.

“They’re supposed to lay there like victims,” Sara had said, “But if there’s anything true about a band of mercenaries, it’s that they’re no victims.”

Ezekiel had looked at her uncomprehending until she glanced back at the fallen leader and so did he—only to see a healer swiftly lean over and cut the man’s throat. He had been too far gone to save or drag through the swamp for aid. So they had done the only thing they could—given him a merciful death.

Ezekiel had shuddered and paled. “Promise me something, Sara.”

She had looked over at him.

“Promise me you won’t leave me to die, nor slit my throat like a carcass before the slaughter.”

Sara had frowned as she switched to polishing her long blade. “That was an honorable death. More honorable than being eaten alive.”

Ezekiel’s desperate gaze had caught her own. “Promise me.”

Sara had narrowed her eyes. “Think you’re too good for an honest death?”

He had wet his lips nervously. “I think there’s much left for me to do in this world.”

Sara had chuckled and her gaze had swept over dead and dying bodies all around them. They had briefly stopped on a semi-dry mound in the swamp to care for their wounded. “Don’t we all?”

Ezekiel’s gaze had stayed determined.

“Fine,” she grouched, “But I want a promise in return.”

He nodded.

“A clean death. Don’t drag me half a mile, don’t let my insides putrefy, and don’t let me die face down in the mud while a creature straddles my back for a bite.”