Legionnaire

About ten minutes later, I saw the rest of the group jogging back down the road.

Minus Tovan.

I bolted toward them.

“One of the prisoners!” I yelled. “He was stabbed!”

They went from a jog to a run.

I turned and ran back, meeting them at the cart.

Dain got there first.

“What happ—”

He stopped when he saw the two dead gnolls in the dirt.

His eyes moved from one body to the other, then to me.

“You killed both of them?”

“Yes,” I said. “But there’s a guy bleeding to death. Can we talk about that later?”

“Oh, we will,” Dain said.

He dug a key from his belt and unlocked the cart door.

The rest of the prisoners backed away fast. Mira stepped to the side and drew an arrow, the point aimed through the bars, ready to put it through the first man who did something stupid.

Dain climbed inside and grabbed the bleeding prisoner under the arm.

The man cried out.

Dain ignored it and dragged him toward the door.

He never turned his back on the others.

A few seconds later, the prisoner was on the ground outside the cart, teeth clenched, blood on his hands, shirt stuck to his skin.

Sella was already kneeling beside him.

“Move,” she snapped.

I moved.

She cut his shirt open with a small knife and peeled the fabric away.

The wound was ugly. Jagged. More torn than sliced, like the blade had gone in through force more than sharpness. Blood welled from it, and a small loop of something wet and pink pushed against the opening.

I knew enough to know that was bad.

The prisoner looked down between his blood-covered hands.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Am I gonna die? Fuck. I’m gonna die.”

“Shut up,” Sella said.

She placed one hand over the wound and pressed down.

He screamed.

She muttered something under her breath.

Her hand began to glow.

Bright.

Too bright.

I had to look away. It was like staring at the sun too long, white and sharp enough to burn through my eyelids.

Then it was gone.

I looked back.

The wound was still there, but different. Smaller. Closed enough that it looked more like a nasty cut than a stab wound. The blood had slowed to a seep instead of a spill.

The man was still breathing.

Still pale.

But alive.

“Stabilizing sigil,” Sella said. “You’ll live.”

The prisoner blinked at her, breathing hard.

“That is the best I can do for you magically,” she said. “The rest is your body’s work. I will clean it, pack it with poultice, and bind it. You will be sore for some time.”

“Well done, Wade,” Vale said.

I turned.

The old man had appeared beside me without making a sound.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

I looked down at the prisoner lying on the ground beside the cart.

“What do we do with him?”

“Back in the cart,” Dain said.

“That’s it?” I asked. “Just like that?”

Dain looked at me.

“He serves.”

“He saved my life.”

I explained what happened with the second gnoll. How it had me pinned against the cart. How the prisoner grabbed it through the bars and yanked it back. How the thing stabbed him, and he still held on long enough for me to kill it.

Dain listened without interrupting.

When I finished, he looked down at the prisoner.

“Be that as it may,” he said. “He serves.”

“Yes,” Vale said, stepping closer. “But I wonder what crime earned him that service.”

Dain’s eyes shifted to Vale.

Vale ignored it and lowered himself slightly, looking at the man on the ground.

“What is your name, son?”

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The prisoner swallowed hard. His face was pale and slick with sweat.

“Joryn Hale.”

“And what did you do, Joryn Hale?”

The man looked from Vale to Dain, then down at the bandage wrapped around his side.

“I stole medicine,” he said. “I hurt a guard when I tried to get away. He’s alive. I just hit him.”

“You’re shitting me,” I said.

Joryn shook his head.

“No. I did it.”

“Not what I meant.”

I pointed at him, then stopped before I said anything else.

A thought hit me.

“What kind of medicine?” I asked. “Something you can use to get high or something?”

Joryn looked offended.

“Fuck no,” he said. “I stole it for my daughter. She had lung fever.”

I stared at him.

For a second, nobody said anything.

Dain reached into his coat and pulled out a folded paper. He opened it, glanced over the page, then looked back at Joryn.

“Stolen healing draught,” Dain said. “Guild storehouse. Assault on a guild guard during escape.”

Joryn closed his eyes.

Dain kept reading.

“The guard lived,” he said. “But will never hold a shield again.”

I looked from Dain to Joryn.

“He was saving his kid.”

“I know,” Dain said.

He did not sound angry.

That almost made it worse.

Sella sat back on her heels beside Joryn, wiping blood from her hands with a rag.

“I am not saying I do not understand why he did it,” she said. “I am saying it was still a serious crime.”

Dain folded the paper.

“People have died for less.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “That makes me feel better.”

“It is not meant to,” Dain said.

I looked down at Joryn.

He was still pale. Still sweating. Still breathing. Sella’s bandage was wrapped tight around his side, already dark in places but holding.

“So we just throw him back in the cart and not care what happens to him?” I asked.

“The law says he serves,” Dain said.

“That is the mercy,” Sella said.

I stared at her.

“The mercy?”

“Yes,” she said. “The guard he injured had a family too. The guild wanted his hand. The magistrate chose service instead.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again.

That was the problem.

They weren’t evil. They weren’t laughing about it. They weren’t happy he was in chains.

They just accepted it.

And that pissed me off more than if they had been cruel.

“He saved my life,” I said.

“He did,” Dain said.

“And his daughter’s.”

No one answered right away.

I looked from Dain to Sella to Vale.

“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, “that if someone you loved was dying, and you didn’t have the money, and the medicine was right there, you wouldn’t take it?”

Still no answer.

“If any of you say no, I’ll stand here and call you a liar.”

The road was quiet for a moment.

Dain’s jaw worked once, but he didn’t say anything.

Vale watched me with that unreadable old-man look.

Sella held my stare.

“I did not say I would not do it,” she said. “I said I would pay for it after.”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

“The law says he serves,” Vale said. “It does not specifically say where.”

Dain looked at him.

“What are you thinking?”

Vale’s eyes stayed on Joryn.

“I am thinking this man has shown certain qualities.”

Joryn looked like he wanted to say something, but pain kept him quiet.

Vale continued.

“He risked himself for his daughter. Foolishly, perhaps. Criminally, certainly. But he did it. And today, he risked himself again for a stranger.”

“He is still sentenced,” Dain said.

“Yes,” Vale said. “To service.”

Dain’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“You want to send him to selection.”

“I want to give him the chance to choose it.”

That made everyone quiet for a second.

Joryn stared up at Vale like he wasn’t sure he had heard him right.

Vale glanced at Dain.

“If he fails, he goes to the standing army as originally sentenced. Nothing changes except the road he takes to get there.”

“And if he passes?” Dain asked.

“Then he serves in the Legion.”

Dain looked down at Joryn.

“He is wounded.”

“He will heal,” Sella said.

Dain looked at her.

She shrugged.

“He will hurt. He will limp for a few days. But he will heal.”

I looked at Vale.

“You can do that?”

Vale folded his hands over the top of his walking stick.

“I can recommend it. I can argue it. And I can make sure the proper people hear that he saved a candidate’s life during an attack by gnolls.”

Dain gave a short breath through his nose.

“That is not nothing.”

“No,” Vale said. “It is not.”

Joryn swallowed.

“I would still be chained?”

“For now,” Dain said.

Vale nodded.

“You are still under sentence. Do not mistake opportunity for pardon.”

Joryn looked from Vale to Dain, then to me.

I didn’t say anything.

This wasn’t my choice.

Vale lowered his eyes to him.

“Joryn Hale,” he said. “Would you attempt selection, knowing that failure returns you to the standing army?”

Joryn lay there, pale and sweating, with blood drying on his hands.

Then he gave one weak nod.

“Yes,” he said. “I would.”

“Then it is done,” Vale said. “I will see to it.”

Dain did not look happy.

Vale looked down at Joryn.

“I would recommend we not put him back in the prison cart.”

Dain’s eyes narrowed.

“Why?”

“I have seen other prisoners petty enough to maim or cripple men with more favored sentences,” Vale said. “Keep him chained, by all means. But I say leave him out.”

Dain growled low in his throat.

“Fine. I do not like it, but he is your responsibility, Senior Vale.”

Vale nodded.

“I understand.”

“I would not do this for anyone other than you,” Dain said. “So we are clear.”

“Quite clear.”

Dain turned.

“Rusk.”

The older man looked over from near the carts.

“Circle the carts,” Dain said. “We are camping here for now. Once they are set, help get this Joryn near Wade’s fire.”

Rusk looked at Joryn, then at me, then spat into the dirt.

“Course we are.”

He started toward the lead cart, already yelling at the karroks like they were the reason for all of this.

I looked around.

“Where’s Tovan?”

“Collecting cores,” Dain said flatly. “Something you will be getting a lesson in as soon as he gets back.”

I did not like the sound of that.

I liked it even less later that evening.

Core collecting was not what I expected.

Honestly, I thought it would be like a game. Somewhere in a pocket. Underneath the creature. Some glowing little prize sitting there waiting to be picked up like loot.

No.

Of course not.

When Tovan got back, he took one look at the two gnolls I had killed, then went to the supply cart and came back with a short curved knife and a leather roll of tools.

“Come on,” he said.

I followed him over.

The bodies already smelled worse than they had when they were alive. Blood, wet fur, shit, and whatever rotten meat was caught in their teeth. Flies had started to find them, and the sun had not even been down that long.

Tovan knelt beside the first one and rolled it onto its back.

“Cores are not dropped,” he said. “They are harvested.”

“Of course they are,” I muttered.

He glanced at me.

“You killed it. You should know how to claim it.”

Then he cut into the gnoll.

Not wild. Not savage. Nothing like that. More like gutting a deer.

That was what I told myself anyway.

He worked under the ribs and up toward the chest, careful with the blade, using his free hand to hold back fur and muscle. I had field dressed animals before. This should not have been that different.

It was different.

Maybe because it had worn armor.

Maybe because its hands looked too close to hands.

Maybe because I had looked it in the eyes while it tried to kill me.

Tovan kept working like none of that mattered.

“The core is usually near the heart,” he said. “Not always, but most of the time. That is where the creature’s mana gathers after death. Like blood settling in the low side of a body, but cleaner.”

“Cleaner,” I said, watching him pull something slick and dark from inside the gnoll’s chest.

He held it up between two bloody fingers.

It was about the size of a large marble, dull red under the blood, with a faint glow buried deep inside it.

“That is one,” he said.

He wiped it with a rag and handed it to me.

It was warm.

We did the second gnoll after that.

This time, Tovan made me do more of it myself. He talked me through where to cut, where not to cut, and how deep to go. I nicked something that smelled bad enough to make my eyes water, and Tovan laughed at me like an asshole.

Eventually, I found the second core.

Smaller than the first. More brown than red. Still faintly glowing once I wiped it clean.

I tried to hand both of them to Tovan.

He shook his head.

“Those are yours.”

“With us,” he said, seeing the look on my face, “your kill, your prize. Adventurer custom. Legion can be different depending on commander, but with us, you keep what you kill.”

I looked down at the two bloody little stones in my palm.

“They’ll be good for you,” he said. “Low grade, but good. Especially where you are.”

I did not ask what he meant by that.

I already knew.

My numbers were not exactly impressive.

I do not know why I thought almost dying would get me out of training that night.

It did not.

If anything, hearing about the second gnoll made Tovan decide I needed to train harder.

“You froze after the first kill,” he said.

“I had just killed a monster.”

“And then nearly died because you stopped watching.”

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

He was right.

I hated that.

So we trained.

Again.