He concentrated on breathing slowly, hand moving to the arrow shaft extending from his side. Too low to puncture a lung but deep enough to penetrate other vital organs. It proved the most painful, trapping him on his opposite side and positioned in such a way that every twitch made the arrowhead bite even deeper into him.
The archer who shot him knew where to aim and where to hit, their accuracy admirable. The arrow shafts, crafted of animal bone, were far too strong for a man to break with his bare hands. But Malachus wasn’t an ordinary man. He gripped the base of the arrow shaft where it sank into his chest and used his other hand to bend its length. His hands were numb, fingers struggling to obey his mind’s command to curl around the shaft and grip. A low groan escaped his clenched teeth despite his best efforts to hold it in.
Voices, speaking in furtive whispers, drew closer. Malachus let his arms fall, closed his eyes, and relaxed his jaw so that his mouth fell partially open. He slowed his breathing, hoping his clothing and position made it difficult to discern the minute rise and fall of his chest. Part of him prayed whoever approached got close enough for him to take his vengeance, though he wondered if he could even lift his head now. Pain and nausea made it hard for him to stay silent, stay still.
“Is he dead?”
“Looks like it to me.”
Malachus didn’t recognize the voices, but the language he knew. These men were Winosian, like him. He’d tracked them across kingdoms and a sea, the latest “owners” of his mother-bond, who’d either bought or stolen it from the previous thief who’d absconded with it.
“I told you we shoulda never taken the bone from that old seer. And that ball sack Gedamon lied through his teeth. He was supposed to poison this fucker for us. At least enough to slow him down and give us a chance to get out of here.”
“Shut it, Plunk,” the other voice replied. “It don’t matter now. He looks like crow bait to me.”
“Maybe we should check him to make sure.”
Yes, Malachus thought, staring through slitted eyes at the blurry outlines of the two men standing nearby. Come a little closer.
A gravid pause followed Plunk’s suggestion before his companion replied in withering tones. “Feel free to walk over there, shithead, and check him yourself. I’ll stay here and keep an eye out.”
Plunk, obviously the less intelligent of the two, huffed. “Fine, I will, and if I come across his coin stash, the money is mine.”
Malachus adopted a limp facade, becoming deadweight that Plunk shoved around, which forced Malachus to bite his cheek to suppress his shrieks until blood filled his mouth and trickled from one corner. The effect had an unforeseen and fortunate result. It, more than Malachus’s limp body, convinced not only Plunk he was dead, but his companion as well, who now crouched beside him to scavenge his corpse.
It was then that Malachus struck.
The poison had seized his muscles, slowing him down so that every movement felt like swimming through mud, but he was fast enough to take the two men by surprise. He first attacked the one crouched closest to his head and with a bow slung across his back. Malachus jerked the knife the man held out of his hand, turned the blade, and rammed it through the archer’s throat. He’d barely tumbled away with a soft gurgle before Malachus twisted, adrenaline and draga rage pumping through his veins along with the poison, so that for a moment he didn’t feel the pain of the arrow wounds or the poison’s effects. He scissored his legs over Plunk’s shoulders to clamp his neck between his knees and twisted again. A dull snap sounded, and Plunk’s full weight fell on Malachus, narrowly missing crushing the arrow embedded in his side and pinning him to the ground from the waist down.
Contorted in a way that threatened to crack his spine in six places and losing the range of his vision to a fuzzy darkness, Malachus shut his eyes against the battering of sunlight on his lids. The incapacitating numbness had spread so that he no longer felt the pressure of Plunk’s dead body draped across him. Something scuttled across his cheek and over his brow, a spider maybe, or a water beetle deciding whether or not he was dead enough yet to feast on.
A thought drifted through his mind. The mother-bond’s beckoning had come from the camp in front of him, not from his attackers, who’d sneaked up on him. They didn’t have the mother-bond when they shot him. Someone else did. He spat out the blood in his mouth, a sluggish effort that managed to spill most of it down his chin.
Darkness swamped his senses, blotting out the last glows of sunlight filtering past his closed lids, drowning his vaporous musings of gray eyes and lightning, even smothering the mother-bond’s infinite call to him. He was dying, and not in the way he’d feared—immolated or torn asunder by his heritage. Instead, he lay sprawled on wet ground, kept company in death by the murderous, the larcenous, and the treacherous. Had the poison not robbed him of the ability, Malachus would have laughed.
CHAPTER FIVE
The gods were kind to put Azarion and Gilene in our path those months ago.” Hamod raised his cup of mare’s milk in a toast to the pair where they sat together in spots reserved for the ataman and his favored guests. The tent, or qara as the Savatar called it, was crowded with clansmen and free traders. All raised their cups in response to the toast and cheered their chieftain and his consort in loud voices.
Halani hid her wry smile behind her cup. The previous evening Hamod had sung an altogether different tune when she’d delivered Azarion’s message to him. Her uncle’s features had darkened with a thundercloud of temper.
“That lying whoreson.” He practically snarled the words. “I knew I recognized him. That fool’s story of being the son of an Empire woman and Nunari soldier always made me wonder. He was the Gladius Prime!”
Halani had blinked at him, confused. Everyone in the Empire had heard of the Gladius Prime, though most had never seen him up close.
She finally interrupted his hour-long tirade. “Uncle, he was a valuable slave who’d escaped his masters. Once they realized he was gone, they’d have likely set soldiers, bounty hunters, and dogs on his scent to recapture him. Can you blame Azarion for lying to us about who he was? For the bounty he’d fetch, his own mother would’ve turned him over to his pursuers.” She had no doubt Hamod wouldn’t have thought twice about doing the same.
Hamod’s scowl hadn’t lessened. “It doesn’t matter. When he lied to us and took advantage of our charity, he put all of us—you, Asil, everyone in this caravan—in jeopardy. Can you imagine what his masters might have done to us had they discovered we sheltered their most valuable property?”
He had a point. She knew very little of Azarion’s past. A slave fighter who faced the bloodbath of Kraelag’s infamous Pit—not once but many times—he’d found a way to break his shackles and flee. Halani applauded him for it and still didn’t regret helping him and Gilene. Sometimes one took a stand for mercy, even when it involved risk to oneself. In this, she and her uncle differed vastly in their philosophies.
His resentment over Azarion’s deception blunted a little after they’d arrived in the Savatar encampment, where Azarion, Gilene, and Azarion’s clansmen hailed the free traders as heroes. Hamod had even cracked a pleased smile when Azarion showered their group with a mountain of gifts as thanks for bringing Gilene safely back to him, even if her return had merely been part of a fortuitous decision on Hamod’s part to attend the Goban market and take advantage of the fact that the Golden Serpent was no longer restricted only to the Guild traders.
Reclined against a soft pillow placed on the qara’s carpeted floor, with her drink in hand and the remains of a sumptuous supper in front of her, Halani watched the Savatar repeatedly approach Gilene with small offerings and tokens to be blessed, their bows deep, their faces almost glowing with a reverence reserved for a devotee’s worship. Gilene wore the look of the desperate: part cringe, part uneasy smile, as she graciously offered a few words to each person while gripping Azarion’s knee with a white-knuckled hand.
A Savatar clansman sent to fetch Gilene’s belongings had enlightened Halani regarding her friend’s abilities. Hamod had nearly foamed at the mouth with the newest revelations. “An escaped gladiator slave and a fire witch among us?” He’d thrown aside the tack he’d been repairing and stomped to the new cask of ale they’d just purchased and had delivered to the camp. He downed two goblets full before speaking again, cheeks flushed with drink and fury. “I don’t care if it’s a gaggle of one-legged orphans begging us for a ride to the next town, that’s the last time we offer succor to any more road travelers.”
Halani wondered if he still felt the same after the generous munificence Azarion and his clan had just bestowed on them. They’d have to purchase another three provender wagons just to transport all the wealth bestowed by the clan chief.
Beside Halani, Asil popped a candied nut into her mouth and rolled her eyes in ecstasy. “I could eat an entire barrel of these, Hali. They’re so good.”
Halani slid the tray of sweets out of her mother’s reach. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You already ate plenty of the cakes Telkak gave us this morning. You’re going to make yourself sick.”
Asil stuck her lip out and huffed. “I bet Malachus would let me have another cake,” she whined.
“Considering he wouldn’t be the one to help clean you after you got sick, I’m sure he’d be most generous.” Halani passed Asil a platter of bread to dunk in her refilled cup of salty milk tea. “Eat this. It’s good.”
Asil groused under her breath but accepted the food and was soon back to her jovial self, regaling Halani with everything she noted in the expansive qara, from the garb the Savatar wore and the way they dressed their hair to the interesting carvings etched into the birch poles that made up the tent’s rigid framework.
Halani listened with half an ear, her attention split between watching Gilene and recalling the man who’d introduced himself as Malachus.