Legionnaire

It was dark when I woke.

So the sun had been setting, I thought.

I leaned over and checked on the woman. She was still breathing, but unconscious. I pressed two fingers against her neck and felt a pulse.

Alive.

Out cold, but alive.

I propped myself up on my elbows and froze.

Three or four hundred meters away, maybe more, six torches moved through the dark.

I watched them for a while.

Left to right. Up and down. Stopping. Moving again.

Checking bodies.

Or looting.

I couldn’t make out any detail at first. They were too far away, and the dark swallowed everything beyond the torchlight. But they were coming closer.

Then one of the torches drifted near another, and the light caught armor.

Red armor.

“Fuck,” I hissed.

They were slowly making their way toward us.

I didn’t know the rules of war here. I didn’t know if wounded enemies were taken prisoner, ransomed, executed, or gutted for fun. I didn’t know anything. But I knew black armor and red armor had been killing each other, and getting caught next to an unconscious black-armored woman by men in red seemed like a spectacularly bad idea.

I had to move us.

I rolled back over to the woman and started cutting strips from her muddy cloak. The dagger wasn’t sharp enough for easy work, and my hands were shaking, but I managed. I made a rough drag harness, wrapping the strips under her arms and behind her shoulders so I could pull without choking her.

I was about to start moving when I stopped.

Her shirt was still cut open from where I’d gotten to the wound.

“Yeah, no,” I muttered.

Last thing I needed was her waking up confused, half-dressed, with me dragging her through the mud, deciding I was the bad guy, and stabbing me again. Or yelling and bringing the red soldiers right to us.

I cut a few more strips from the cloak and wrapped them around her torso, enough to keep the torn shirt closed.

Then I grabbed the harness.

I took a few deep breaths.

“This is going to fucking hurt,” I whispered.

I pulled.

My knee screamed.

I gritted my teeth and dragged with everything I had.

We moved maybe a foot.

“Great,” I breathed. “Real great. At this rate they’ll catch us in fifteen minutes instead of five.”

I kept pulling anyway.

One foot. Stop. Breathe. Look back.

Another foot.

Then another.

I tried to make as little noise as possible, but the whole world was mud, armor, bodies, and pain. Every pull sent fire through my knee. Every shift made something grind or tear or threaten to. I kept swearing in my head because if I opened my mouth, I was afraid I’d scream.

We weren’t making good time.

Between my busted knee, the mud, and the bodies scattered everywhere, I knew we weren’t going to outrun them. Not really. The torches kept getting closer. Two hundred meters now, maybe less. If they hadn’t been making their own noise, they probably would have heard us already.

This wasn’t going to work.

I had to hide us.

About six feet to my right, I could just make out one of those huge lizard mount things lying dead in the mud. Its body was low, long, and bulky enough to break line of sight.

Good enough.

I dragged us toward it as fast as I could.

Every movement was slow. Every pull was agony. The soldiers were getting closer, and I was running out of time.

When my back finally hit the side of the dead creature, I let go of the harness and nearly folded in half. I was shaking, sweating, and fighting the urge to throw up.

But I couldn’t stop yet.

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Our lives might depend on how well I could hide us.

I cut off another piece of the cloak, wadded it up, and shoved it into my mouth. Mud and blood filled my tongue, and I had to fight not to gag.

Then I grabbed the harness again.

With both legs braced as best I could, I heaved.

Something in my knee tore.

White-hot pain exploded up my leg.

The rag barely muffled the sound that tried to come out of me.

I pulled anyway.

Somehow, I got us both over the side of the dead lizard and down into the mud on the other side. We collapsed in a tangle of limbs. Tears burned in my eyes, and for a few seconds, all I could do was lie there and shake.

I thought about the other potion.

For one desperate second, I almost used it.

Then I stopped myself.

I didn’t know how magic worked here. I’d read books where healing potions fixed everything. I’d read others where using one wrong could seal torn muscle in the wrong place or leave broken bone healed crooked. I didn’t know if it needed to be poured on the wound, swallowed, injected, prayed over, or blessed by the fucking Pope.

I couldn’t risk making my knee worse.

Not here.

Not wherever the hell here was.

I forced myself to move again.

I scraped mud away from under the belly of the dead creature, digging out a shallow depression with both hands. Then I peeked over its side.

The soldiers were almost on top of us.

Maybe forty feet away.

Torchlight swept across the bodies.

I pushed the woman into the depression and lowered myself over her as carefully as I could. Not enough to crush her. Just enough to break up our shape. I pulled mud over us with one hand, smearing it across her cloak, my arms, my face, anything that might catch the light.

Then I went still.

I barely dared to breathe.

The torchlight grew brighter.

I heard the soldiers talking among themselves. Quiet voices. Short words. None of it made sense. I couldn’t understand a damn thing they were saying.

One of the red-armored soldiers came around the side of the dead lizard.

He stepped on a half-buried shield, slipped, and caught himself with a sharp hiss. The tone told me enough.

Probably a swear.

I couldn’t see the others. Just him.

He stood there for a second, torch raised, looking over the ground.

I did not move.

He leaned down and shoved over the body of another soldier. Checked it. Moved on.

Closer.

He kicked at something in the mud, then bent to search another corpse.

Closer.

The torchlight crawled over the dead lizard’s side.

I pressed my face into the mud and held my breath.

I could feel the heat from the torch near my face.

I held my breath for what felt like forever.

Then the soldier choked.

Something hot and wet poured across my face.

My body betrayed me. A twitch ran through my shoulder before I could stop it.

I opened my eyes.

Too late.

He had to have seen me move.

The red-armored soldier was on his knees, staring right at us. His hands were wrapped around his own throat, and an arrowhead protruded from the front of his neck.

For half a second, none of us moved.

Then more arrows hissed through the dark.

They came fast, almost invisible except for the brief flashes where torchlight caught them. Men shouted. Bodies jerked. One of the red soldiers spun and dropped face-first into the mud.

Then black armor rushed into the light.

Swords drawn.

No warning. No shouted speech. No dramatic charge.

Just violence.

The black-armored soldiers hit the remaining red soldiers like a door being kicked in. Steel rang. Someone screamed. A torch hit the mud and hissed. It wasn’t even a fight. The red soldiers were outnumbered, surprised, and standing in the open with their backs to a field full of corpses.

They died fast.

I raised both hands.

It was only a matter of time before someone saw me, and I didn’t need to get stabbed because I surprised the wrong guy.

One of the black-armored soldiers noticed me and turned. He came over with his sword held low, point forward, ready to drive it straight through me if I so much as twitched.

I used one hand and my head to gesture behind me, toward the woman.

“She needs help,” I said. “Help her.”

The soldier didn’t understand. Or didn’t care.

A hand like iron clamped around my raised wrist.

I was dragged backward over the dead lizard, growling through my teeth as my knee exploded again. I hit the mud on the other side and rolled onto my back.

Three black-armored soldiers stood over me.

I couldn’t see their faces behind the helmets. Just dark metal, narrow visors, and the points of three swords resting near my throat.

They spoke quietly to one another. I didn’t understand a word, but tone was tone. One of them hissed something at the others, sharp and angry. He sounded like he wanted to kill me and be done with it.

Then another soldier walked up.

The others shifted the moment he arrived.

He wore the same black armor, but something about him was different. He moved like the rest of them were already supposed to be listening.

He barked an order.

His voice was deep. Hard. Commanding.

The three soldiers immediately pulled their blades away and sheathed them.

Two of them grabbed me and hauled me upright.

My hands were yanked behind my back and tied before I could do anything about it. Not that I could have done much. I could barely stand.

One of the soldiers shoved me forward and said something.

“Moutive.”

Or something like that.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.

Another shove hit my back.

My right leg folded instantly.

I collapsed into the mud, my knee completely unable to hold my weight.

One of the soldiers kicked me in the ribs.

Air blasted out of my lungs. I rolled onto my side, gasping like a fish on a dock.

When I finally caught a breath, they dragged me back to my feet.

The soldier in front of me barked the same word again.

I guessed he wanted me to move.

“I can’t fucking walk,” I growled.

I jerked my head down toward my knee.

Even in the dark, they couldn’t miss it. The thing was damn near three times the size of a normal knee.

Another shove hit my back.

Again, I fell.

This time I landed right on my knees.

I strangled the scream before it could fully come out, but barely. Pain shot through me so hard my vision broke apart at the edges.

The deep-voiced soldier came back.

He said something sharp.

The soldier who’d shoved me froze.

Then the deep-voiced one pushed me onto my side with his boot. Not gently, but not like the others either. More like he was moving an object he needed to inspect.

He pulled out a small stone about the size of a marble.

It lit up.

Magic rock.

Any other time, that might have been worth a reaction.

Right then, I was in too much pain to care.

For the first time since the fall, I could actually see my knee.

It was bad.

The whole thing was swollen huge, black and blue and purple all over, with a nasty cut packed full of mud and muck. It looked less like a knee and more like someone had shoved a cantaloupe under my skin.

The light vanished almost as fast as it appeared.

The deep-voiced soldier barked another order.

The next thing I knew, I was being lifted.

One of the soldiers threw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Not gently. Not carefully. Just up and over like I was a sack of feed.

My ribs hit armor. My knee swung loose. I bit down hard enough to taste blood.

They carried me through the dark.

The motion jostled every injury I had. My head hung down, my hands still tied behind my back, mud dripping from my face. I caught broken glimpses of the battlefield as we moved. Torches. Bodies. Black armor. Red armor. The dead lizard mount disappearing behind us.

I tried to stay awake.

I tried to keep track of where they were taking me.

But the night, the pain, and the exhaustion finally won.

For the second time in one day, I passed out.