Heir of the Gods

Ch. 13: Death's Shadow

Once more, Calix found himself wandering down to the training pits. His stomach was sour with hatred and guilt, and all he wanted was to wash away the stench of courtly intrigue with honest sweat.

He hadn't even bothered to shed the general's cloak hanging from his shoulders, only pausing long enough in his rooms to grab his sword, belting it around his waist as he'd moved through the castle. The cloak hissed along the ground as he stormed through the palace.

The princess' wounded eyes flashed in his memory—an expression he was sure none but he had noticed when he'd ignored her at that council table. He bared his teeth in a snarl, his fingers curling into fists. 

The worst part was that she hadn't been wrong. More spilled blood was not going to win Mortania. They'd have to slaughter every last man, woman and child, and the lands were useless without people there to work them.

Hardly a victory.

He had no love in him for the vicious warriors of the northern country, but he had met enough of their leaders to know them as a noble people. They wanted their freedom as any people might, he could not begrudge them that.

It changed nothing. Metus was a conquering empire and he was but a thread in  the grand tapestry.

The princess though... she was a weaver, one of those rare beings who might tug upon the threads and change the very world. What an insufferable fool her father was for not even attempting to send her, to see what she might do to bring Mortania into the fold.

"Hail, General!"

Calix slowed, the words yanking him out of his spiraling thoughts, his breath catching in his chest as he turned at the familiar voice. It had finally happened, this place had driven him mad. 

"Tarquin?" he breathed, not even daring to hope.

Before him stood a man only a year younger than himself with a serious air about him, his blue-black hair and dark, up-tilted eyes the only betrayal of his Sorvetian heritage. Dressed in a simple black shirt and trousers, a sword and dagger belted at his waist, his friend of nearly five years now stood like some sort of specter amid the grand halls of House Auralius.

"Calix?" Tarquinius Vestarin gaped in shock, first at Calix's face, then at the general's cloak he was currently wearing. "By the gods' questionable mercy. What the hell are you doing, wearing that?" 

The surprise instantly melted away into a joyous smile that lightened Calix's heart. Tarquin's laugh rang against the stones around them and he said, "You know they'll chuck you in the stocks for impersonating an officer, aye?"

"The cloak came with a commission, my friend."

The shock on Tarquin's face might have been offensive if Calix didn't still feel nearly the same thing.

Calix strode across the hall, grinning and offering a hand. Tarquin clasped his forearm, then dragged him into a rib-crushing hug that knocked the breath from him.

Beneath the sleeve of Tarquin's black shirt, he could feel a thick bandage on his upper arm, and another across his back. He'd been wounded. "Are you well, brother?" Calix muttered, already prepared for Tarquin to brush it off as nothing more than a scratch.

Instead, Tarquin said, "You've been missed."

Ice skittered down his spine at the grave tone and he pulled away, a hand on Tarquin's shoulder. "Who? Who has fallen?"

His dark eyes shuttered, then closed for a moment. His throat bobbed and he rasped, "Two weeks ago we met the Wolfclaw Clans on some frozen field a mere mile north of Grana."