Quintillian had stopped shaking and, to his great surprise, had also stopped crying. Athas grasped him once more by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet.
“Perhaps now at least the two of you can talk as men, without all this carry-on” the sergeant said. “And now you need to stand up and straighten out. You’re one of the Grey Company and you need to act like one, or I’ll have to have Marco lash you.”
The lad managed a weak smile.
“I wonder if he knows how much damage he just did?” he said quietly.
Athas sighed.
“I wonder if you realise how much pain it causes him just to look at you?”
Chapter VI.
The sun beat down heavily on the baker’s dozen as they trudged along the road toward the coast. Now that late morning had arrived the heat was becoming unbearable and the dust from the mud and shale road was churned into throat-clogging clouds. The men sweated under their leather and steel armour, grateful only that the cart followed at the rear with the rest of the pack and gear aboard.
Quintillian plodded, his feet and his heart heavy as lead. He’d have refused to climb aboard the cart if they’d asked him, but no one had spoken to him as they’d set off once again on their route. Once in a while he’d raise his face and see the unit stretched out in front of him on the gravel road, chattering inanities as they marched. He’d tried hard to fall behind and bring up the rear of the column, but Marco had taken the position of rearguard with the cart and maintained a steady pace at the back of the unit. Quintillian occasionally turned to make sure that Marco was still there and the man winked at him every time. Far from being in a social frame of mind, Quintillian returned each wink with a scowl and faced front again. He shrugged and the leather tunic settled into place, distributing the weight better. He was starting to yearn for the days of simplicity on the island. Nothing had perturbed him there. People were learned; deferential to each other; calm.
On the island it’d been him and Darius. There had been no one else the same rough age, mostly ageing ex senators or bureaucrats or their young children or grandchildren, teaching and learning and farming to eke out a living. The island had once been a complex of palaces where the central power of the world was wielded. Now some of the palatial buildings had been converted into living, teaching and working areas and the once-proud gardens of the Imperial Palace were vegetable plots and pig pens. He and Darius had spent much of their time since reaching an age of truly conscious thought exploring the island and their own skills, interrupted by sessions of teaching and training and of hard, gruelling physical labour when the masters could actually find them. A horrible thought crossed his mind that the shattered and charred ruin where the two of them hid so often from the elders would have been the last place his uncle and the General had seen each other. Quintillian reflected that he’d never really grown up until he’d left the place, though Darius had seemed older and worldlier than he even when they were together and playing. When had the world…?
His train of thought shattered as he felt a hand on his shoulder. With a slight involuntary jump, he turned to see Marco grinning at him, a piece of roadside wild grass jutting from the corner of his mouth. He repeated his general scowl, but the infuriating man just scratched his chin absently and then grinned some more. Quintillian turned to face ahead once more.
Ah yes, the island. Darius…
“You really got to learn to relax, kid” said an easy voice from behind.
Quintillian spun around angrily, causing Marco to bump into him as the two oxen continued along the path, heedless of the lad’s obstruction. The olive-skinned mercenary hauled on the leather strap until the cart slowed and stopped. The smile had slipped from his face.
“I mean it” he said. “Relax. For fuck’s sake, you nearly got run over by a damn heavy cart.”
Quintillian shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably as he spoke.
“Don’t tell me to relax” he replied petulantly. “I’ll relax when I get back to the island and not until then.”
As the lad turned again and started to walk off after the group of men, Marco hauled on the strap and made the oxen begin their lumbering advance once more. He smiled again; this time a smile of sympathy, aimed at the back of the boy’s head. Marco would be the first to admit that he was probably the most innocent still of the Company and he could still remember what it felt like to have such a simple view of the world; such a simple view of oneself. He spoke softly, expecting no reply.
“Quintillian, you’ve had a shock. You’re disappointed. We all know that, and we do sympathise, but there’s two ways to get over it. Either you confront it, beat the shit out of your problems and come out the other side happy, or you surrender to it; let your emotions run their course and it’ll come out anyway it feels. Otherwise all you’re doing is moping and sulking and that does no good for you nor for nobody else. People’ll just treat you like a kid.”
The lad walked on ahead of him in silence. Well, Marco’d done all he could to convince him. Someone would have to. The Captain damn well wouldn’t make the first move and they all knew it.
He glanced up ahead. Being considerably shorter than some of his compatriots, all he could see was a mass of bodies in a haze of dust. Hauling on the side of the cart, he pulled himself up to where he was standing on the lower boards. The group was getting a little too strung out along the road, partially due to having to halt and restart the slow, lumbering oxen. Spying the Captain way ahead at the front, he dropped back to the gravel with a crunch and slapped the leather strap on the rump of the oxen to gee them up.
Kiva was already aware that he was further out ahead of the company than he should be, but the territory was fairly open and they’d be able to see anyone long before they became a threat. Besides, Clovis would be on point about half a mile ahead and would give plenty of warning. And he was still angry. Angry with the lad for refusing to drop a subject that he shouldn’t have known about. Those scenes from that last hellish year may visit the Captain with soul-shattering regularity in his sleep, but he’d managed for a long time now to keep the past locked away in his nocturnal journeys and the rest of the time had been devoted to keeping his men alive through another day. Now, thanks to the prying youth, the line had been blurred and he was being forced to confront his own personal demons around the clock.
Admittedly, he was just as angry with himself for having said it all. He could have talked his way round it and let it lie as unfortunate, but he’d suddenly found himself angrily pouring out the truth. He hadn’t spoken of these things for so long, he’d habitually lie or hedge around the subject and yet he’d revealed the cancer at the centre of his very soul to the one person in the entire world it would hurt most. Damn it.
The Captain had been pondering his outburst for the last two hours along the Serfium road and could not find a way to resolve the problems. There was nothing for it but to get as far as they could and then cut the boy loose. If they could get to Serfium, maybe they could pay a fisherman to carry him across the bay to the island. It’d be excruciatingly dangerous with all the hidden reefs and sandbanks, particularly coming from as far away as Serfium, but it would be just as dangerous, though for entirely different reasons, to go through Velutio. Perhaps he’d ask for fifty corona and leave the other fifty with the lad at the coast. Yes, that would probably be best. Cut him loose at Serfium and go their separate ways.
He glanced over his shoulder but could only see Athas and Mercurias at the head of the Company, stomping along, deep in conversation. Kiva growled. Without being able to overhear their talk, he knew damn well what they were discussing. Him. Or the kid. Or both of them. Athas would be fussing around them by tonight like a mother hen trying to resolve problems and force everyone to make friends. Problem was: Kiva didn’t want any more friends. All the friends he needed were already long-serving members of the company, along with the odd acquaintance from other units with whom he shared a certain bond due to their history of service in the Imperial army. More friends just meant more people to rely on you; more people you had to watch out for. Besides, a cursed man couldn’t afford friends, for their own good if not for his.
Still grumbling, Kiva pulled out his flask and took a quick swig. The mead warmed and sweetened his palate while the sharper aftertaste went to work on his nerves. Within moments relief swept through his system, down through his throat and past his lungs, easing the slight sting from the dust, into his gut, where it settled and numbed. The nagging pain just below his bottom rib gradually faded as the soothing drug deadened the flesh.
As soon as they got to Serfium he would…
Something sharp jabbed him in the calf. With a start, he glanced down and saw the dart protruding from his leg.
“Shit!”
