and betray us.”
“No, I won’t!”
“People will ask what happened here. Your oath to Galbatorix and the Empire won’t let you lie. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to release you from your bond, except...”
“Why are you doing this? You’re a monster!” screamed the man. With an expression of pure terror, he made an attempt to dash around Eragon and return to the road. Eragon overtook him in less than ten feet, and as the man was still crying and asking for clemency, Eragon wrapped his left hand around his neck and squeezed. When he relaxed his grip, the soldier fell across his feet, dead.
Bile coated Eragon’s tongue as he stared down at the man’s slack face.
“How is it,” asked Arya, “you could kill that man, but you could not bring yourself to lay a finger on Sloan?” She stood and faced him, her gaze frank.
Devoid of emotion, he shrugged. “He was a threat. Sloan wasn’t. Isn’t it obvious?”
Arya was quiet for a while. “It ought to be, but it isn’t... I am ashamed to be instructed in morality by one with so much less experience. Perhaps I have been too certain, too confident of my own choices.”
Eragon heard her speak, but the words meant nothing to him as his gaze drifted over the corpses.
“I understand how difficult this is,” said Arya. “Remember, Eragon, you have experienced only a small part of what it means to be a Dragon Rider. Eventually, this war will end, and you will see that your duties encompass more than violence. The Riders were not just warriors, they were teachers, healers, and scholars.”
His jaw muscles knotted for a moment. “Why are we fighting these men, Arya?”
“Because they stand between us and Galbatorix.”
“Then we should find a way to strike at Galbatorix directly.”
“None exist. We cannot march to Uru’baen until we defeat his forces. And we cannot enter his castle until we disarm almost a century’s worth of traps, magical and otherwise.”
“There has to be a way,” he muttered. He remained where he was as Arya strode forward and picked up a spear. But when she placed the tip of the spear under the chin of a slain soldier and thrust it into his skull, Eragon sprang toward her and pushed her away from the body. “What are you doing?” he shouted.
Anger flashed across Arya’s face. “I will forgive that only because you are distraught and not of your right mind. Think, Eragon! It is too late in the day for anyone to be coddling you. Why is this necessary?”
The answer presented itself to him, and he grudgingly said, “If we don’t, the Empire will notice that most of the men were killed by hand.”
“Exactly! The only ones capable of such a feat are elves, Riders, and Kull. And since even an imbecile could figure out a Kull was not responsible for this, they’ll soon know we are in the area, and in less than a day, Thorn and Murtagh will be flying overhead, searching for us.” There was a wet squelch as she pulled the spear out of the body. She held it out to him until he accepted it. “I find this as repulsive as you do, so you might as well make yourself useful and help.”
Eragon nodded. Then Arya scavenged a sword, and together they set out to make it appear as if a troop of ordinary warriors had killed the soldiers. It was grisly work, but it went quickly, for they both knew exactly what kinds of wounds the soldiers should have to ensure the success of the deception, and neither of them wished to linger. When they came to the man whose chest Eragon had destroyed, Arya said, “There’s little we can do to disguise an injury like that. We will have to leave it as is and hope people assume a horse stepped on him.” They moved on. The last soldier they dealt with was the commander of the patrol. His mustache was now limp and torn and had lost most of its former splendor.
After enlarging the pebble hole so it more closely resembled the triangular pit left by the spike of a war hammer, Eragon rested for a moment, contemplating the commander’s sad mustache, then said, “He was right, you know.”
“About what?”
“I need a weapon, a proper weapon. I need a sword.” Wiping his palms on the edge of his tunic, he surveyed the plain around them, counting the bodies. “That’s it, then, isn’t it? We’re done.” He went and collected his scattered armor, rewrapped it in cloth, and returned it to the bottom of his pack. Then he joined Arya on the low hillock she had climbed.
“We had best avoid the roads from now on,” she said. “We cannot risk another encounter with Galbatorix’s men.” Indicating his deformed right hand, which stained his tunic with blood, she said, “You should tend to that before we set forth.” She gave him no time to respond but grasped his paralyzed fingers and said, “Waise heill.”
An involuntary groan escaped him as his fingers popped back into their sockets, and as his abraded tendons and crushed cartilage regained the fullness of their proper shapes, and as the flaps of skin hanging from his knuckles again covered the raw flesh below. When the spell ended, he opened and closed his hand to confirm that it was fully cured. “Thank you,” he said. It surprised him that she had taken the initiative when he was perfectly capable of healing his own wounds.
Arya seemed embarrassed. Looking away, out over the plains, she said, “I am glad you were by my side today, Eragon.”
“And you by mine.”
She favored him with a quick, uncertain smile. They lingered on the hillock for another minute, neither of them eager to resume their journey. Then Arya sighed and said, “We should be off. The shadows lengthen, and someone else is bound to appear and raise a hue and cry when they discover this crows’ feast.”
Abandoning the hillock, they orientated themselves in a southwesterly direction, angling away from the road, and loped out across the uneven sea of grass. Behind them, the first of the carrion eaters dropped from the sky.
SHADOWS OF THE PAST
That night, Eragon sat staring at their meager fire, chewing on a dandelion leaf. Their dinner had consisted of an assortment of roots, seeds, and greens that Arya had gathered from the surrounding countryside. Eaten uncooked and unseasoned, they were hardly appetizing, but he had refrained from augmenting the meal with a bird or rabbit, of which there was an abundance in the immediate vicinity, for he did not wish Arya to regard him with disapproval. Moreover, after their fight with the soldiers, the thought of taking another life, even an animal’s, sickened him.
It was late, and they would have to get an early start the next morning, but he made no move to retire, nor did Arya. She was situated at right angles to him, her legs pulled up, with her arms wrapped around them and her chin resting on her knees. The skirt of her dress spread outward, like the wind-battered petals of a flower.
His chin sunk low against his chest, Eragon massaged his right hand with his left, trying to dispel a deep- seated ache.
