The Summer of the Swordsman

Chapter XXIV

I'll never forget that ship. She carried us for almost a week across the North Sea toward Timras manned by a crew of landlubbers half‑dead with fatigue and seasickness. She weathered the storm and never lost her smile, a nimble, dancing lady.

I won't forget that journey, either. I pray I'll never have another like it. Every day there were more men dead, more to be consigned to the sharks with nothing but a few prayers mumbled over them before they were tossed into the ocean. Bessus, the herald, was first, followed by our armorer. Anakreon lingered against all my expectations, and while he didn't show much improvement during our voyage, neither did he get any worse.

I led that ailing, dying troop day by day. I was harsh and stingy with rations, and I verbally flayed those who showed signs of despairing. I wanted to bring them to life if only to hate me. If I couldn't make my men wish to live for love of me and loyalty to the troop and life's sweetness, then I was content to let anger do the job. There would be a reckoning later but I wasn't afraid of it. Exhaustion unhinges the mind; the men would, and did, follow me gladly when they were safe in a calm harbor.

The Swordsman was invaluable during those times. He treated the wounded men and lent teeth to my commands with his glacial stare and his softly spoken instructions. He might have been even more useful if he hadn't been wounded, but I didn't let him overextend himself. You don't ride a fine horse to death. Still less do you allow a friend to kill himself with exhaustion.

Mourner rested and recovered and he doctored the troop as much as I let him. And yet, though I didn't let him exhaust himself, he seemed to grow more and more troubled even as he gained strength, as though whatever grief had gripped him that summer were preying on his mind.

I tried to speak to him of it, concerned as much for the welfare of the troop as for his own good, but he put me off. I respected his silence for the time being, but not forever. There would be a reckoning from him, as well.

Kenui was alive during all this time, but barely. He slipped into a coma after a day filled with terrible suffering. It was just as well, since our treatment would only have caused him agony. The wound to his bowels was suppurating, and he would have known of his impending death as well as his pain. As for us, his friends, day by day for four days we watched him sink toward death, watched flesh melt from his face, watched his eyes sink into their sockets and his temples and cheeks fall in against his skull.

On the fifth day, as I strained my eyes trying to find the outline of the North Islands to the southwest, marking the boundary of the sovereignty of Prince Hethra of Timras, Quinquius came to me and said, "He's awake." The sudden glint of hope in his eyes made it unnecessary for me to ask who he meant.

I said, "He's awake now?"

"Awake and sane as any of us, and as cantankerous as ever," Quinquius said, the bristle of his five day's beard split by a white grin. "He wants to talk to you."

I called for Lendis‑‑he was always ready to take over‑‑and followed Quinquius down into the hold of the ship, to the bright cabin he shared with Anakreon.

Kenui was awake and aware as we came in, but to me, who hadn't been sitting beside him at every possible moment, he looked dead already. His eyes were even more circled and sunken into the hollows of their sockets, and his skin looked waxen, save for the twin patches of red that rode high on his cheekbones. I could see the erratic rise and fall of his breathing; the pain in his abdomen was too great to allow him to draw breath normally.

But he smiled when he saw me, a tightening of his mouth that showed his white teeth. He said my name.

I hurried to him, knelt and took his hand. It was wasted and thin, no longer the short, stubby paw I had known. The fingers were hot and dry, dry as dead leaves. They were still surprisingly strong as they gripped mine.