It seemed wrong to him, perverse, that it should be so easy to die, the easiest thing in the world. He realized, too, that he had been a fool to squander his life as he had, that he had not fully appreciated it and the lives of everyone else until he saw, up close, experienced on a personal level, how easily those lives might be snuffed out, with no more effort than a man might give putting out a candle.
Then, suddenly, the pressure eased, and the soldier was pulled back away from him. He saw that Maeve had gripped the man by his hair, jerking his head back, and he saw, too, the blade in her other hand. No, Matt thought, seeing what was going to happen, thinking, in that moment, that no life, not even that of the man who had meant to kill him, should be discarded so easily. “P-please,” he croaked, “wait—”
But Maeve did not wait. Instead, she brought her knife across the grunting soldier’s throat, and the blade ripped a deep furrow into the vulnerable flesh there. Blood spewed over him, and Matt gasped at the warm, tacky feel of it, unable to look away as he saw the light, the life, fade from the soldier’s eyes.
Then, when his weak struggles ceased, Maeve grunted, shoving the lifeless corpse unceremoniously to the side. The body landed on its stomach, the man’s face, his eyes, turned toward Matt, a look that seemed somehow accusing on his features. Matt could not pull his gaze away from that face, those features which, moments ago, had been full of life and now were nothing, pale and waxy like the features of a doll, no sign to show that life had ever existed there at all.
“Why?” he rasped. “You…you didn’t need to. We, we could have—”
“Could have what, boy?” Maeve demanded as she pulled him to shaky feet. “Tied him up? Carried him along with us hoping he’d be a good boy while we fought the rest of his friends and rescued those he and the others mean to burn alive?” She gave her head an angry shake, meeting his eyes. “The world is not a fairy-tale, boy, not a storybook. People die—it’s what we’re best at—and one mistake, one selfish decision, and those people might be your friends.”
Matt knew that she was right, knew that he had messed up, and that likely Chall was now dead because of it, so he said nothing. She watched him for a moment longer, then Priest walked up, the man covered in blood and displaying a slight limp. Maeve looked over at him then back at Matt. “How many need to get hurt, boy, how many need to die, before you learn that?”
Still, Matt said nothing, for there was nothing he could say, and she gave a disgusted shake of her head, turning away from him. “Come on—if we hurry, maybe we can at least die with those poor bastards in the inn.”
Matt followed silently behind the other two as they crept along the inn’s wall, Priest with an arrow already placed on his bow, Maeve with two blood-stained blades in her hands. But as much as he knew he should be focused on the present, for the gods alone knew how many soldiers were left stationed around the inn, he found himself instead thinking of the dead man, of the way his eyes had looked, of how quickly it had all happened. Alive one moment, breathing and thinking with hopes and dreams, perhaps a family, and the next, the man was dead, everything he was, everything he had been, come to nothing.
Matt had seen death before, of course. He’d attended several Sendings during his life in Brighton, most due to old age and some few to men or women who had gotten taken by the elements, by the frigid cold or the unexpected blizzards that sometimes arrived out of nowhere so far north. He had seen more of it in his time following Cutter, the Fey creature who had attacked him, the villagers in Ferrimore who had suffered at the hands of such creatures. But while he had seen death, he had never seen it so close, had never felt its breath on his neck, had never felt its hand in his as it considered tearing him away from the world of the living. But he felt it now, and in that feeling, he felt something else—change. He did not know the exact nature of that change, perhaps never would, knew only that he had been irrevocably altered by what he had witnessed, the guard’s death, and how close he had come to dying himself. He found himself wondering again at Cutter, at how the man could be so cold and so unfeeling in the face of such death.
They reached the door to the inn moments later. Two more dead men lay here, the arrows protruding from them proof that Priest had come upon them while Matt was stumbling through the mist or perhaps before he had foolishly abandoned Chall. He glanced at Maeve’s back, wondering if protecting the mage, protecting him, had not been the only reason she had ordered him to stay behind. He wondered if part of that reason had been so he would not see death so close, thought that probably it had been. He wished only that he had listened.
But it was too late now, for what was done could not be undone. Death had caught him in its gaze, he had felt it, and it was not a thing he would soon forget.
“Come on,” Maeve whispered to them. “We have to be quick now—Feledias might have left some on the inside.”
***
The smoke was roiling through the walls and into the inn, and what conversations they’d had, mostly revolving escape, had devolved into fits of coughing from everyone inside the common room. Several of the men were still trying to
