CHAPTER TWELVE - LESSONS IN DEATH

When Krazoc fell to the other side of the tree, the battle suddenly seemed to come from very far away.

The sounds were muffled. The clatter of swords, screams, a bone breaking. To his ears it all seemed to come from the far end of a tunnel. Because in that moment Krazoc's eyes saw only one thing.

Broc.

The giant of a man lay face down. One arm was still locked around the haft of his mace. The other had stretched toward the place where the boy had been only moments ago. His body lay in the wide spread of his own blood.

Krazoc sank to his knees.

He said no word. No roar. No tears. For just a moment, nothing inside him moved. That White Void for an instant, went completely silent. Then, very slowly, very deep down, something pulled back.

A hand reached out and touched Broc's shoulder. He felt that the body was still warm. He had been alive moments ago. A few heartbeats ago.

Then he raised his head.

Alister.

The boy hung in a raider's arm at the far end of the wreckage. One of the man's hands was clamped over the boy's mouth, the other around his arms. Alister's eyes were huge, but he wasn't screaming, couldn't scream. He only stared at Krazoc. This time it wasn't a look of farewell. Something else.

Help me.

Krazoc rose.

The raider circling him hesitated for a moment. Because this man no longer walked like a man.

When he reached the first raider, his hand seized the man's throat and brought his chain down across his face. The man's skull cracked open like a melon in a single blow. Krazoc's hand drew back, drove into another body, drew back.

From the other side three men attacked at once. Krazoc didn't turn back. He only turned where he needed to turn. His chain whipped out. A bone broke, a face caved in, a sword shattered in the air.

The third man still stood there, sword raised, frozen. Then Krazoc's eyes met his, and the man began to flee.

Too late.

Krazoc's chain caught the back of his neck, and his head was flung several yards away.

The raider holding the boy was dragging him backward. Krazoc closed the distance. Three yards to the raider.

Two yards.

One.

Then a sharp whistle sounded from behind, and a needle of pain burst at the back of Krazoc's neck. Then another. Another. He turned, tried to find the source, but his field of vision rippled. Atop three trees, leather-masked figures were pulling blowpipes from their lips.

A drug, said the void inside him. They're trying to put me to sleep.

Krazoc forced his body. They had failed to understand one thing: Krazoc's body was already used to being forced into things. The drug began to move through his veins, but Krazoc took another step. Another step.

On the other side of the tree, Garrick was alone now.

He had brought down two of the three raiders. His left arm hung loose. A sword blow had severed the tendon. His right arm was bleeding. But he was still standing, and still holding his sword.

The enemy Herbalist stood five yards in front of him.. The man had raised his whip, about to bring down the final blow.

Garrick fixed his eyes on him. He didn't speak. He just ran.

The Herbalist's whip lashed out, opening a deep gash across Garrick's chest. The captain staggered but didn't fall. Three more steps. Two. One.

He drove his sword into the Herbalist's chest. To the hilt, forcing it between the bones.

The two men fell to their knees side by side.

The Herbalist's eyes went wide, then went out. Garrick slumped down beside his body, his sword still in the man's chest, and propped his back against the tree trunk.

From beyond the split part of the tree, he saw Krazoc struggling. The man under the drug, but still on his feet.

Garrick smiled. A bitter smile.

Then the last raider came up from behind. He pressed his sword to Garrick's throat.

Garrick's lips moved.

"The boy..."

The sword came down.

Vance, at the edge of the wreckage, had emptied his last vial.

Two raiders lay dead on the ground — one with a melting face, the other from a drop of acid Vance had landed by luck. But there was no more acid in Vance's hands.

He turned his bag upside down. Empty.

There was the sound of someone swallowing. He realized the one swallowing was himself.

"Wait," he said in a trembling voice. "Wait, I—"

A raider was coming toward him, with easy steps.

"I'm a healer! Don't you understand? From the Academy! I came from the Academy! I'll come with you, I'll teach you, I—"

The raider didn't stop.

"I have ten years of work! Remne Root formulas! I can be worth money! I can be worth money to you!"

Still he didn't stop.

Vance's voice broke, dropped to its lowest note. "Please. Please, I... I just wanted to go back to my books."

The raider's sword flashed.

Vance's notebook fell from the pocket of his cloak, into the blood. The pages fell open, those careful notes written in charcoal pencil — Anatomical observation of Essence of Being resistance in Quatl scales — dissolving into the blood.

Krazoc's steps had slowed.

When the third dart sank into his leg, his knees buckled. The fourth into his chest. The fifth into his neck.

But there were still four steps to Alister. Krazoc closing in, the raider trying to widen the distance with small steps.

Three steps.

Krazoc pitched forward. Not to the ground — forward. Half running, half falling. Two steps.

The raider holding the boy pulled back, holding Alister in front of him like a shield. Krazoc hesitated; there was the risk of harming the boy.

In that moment, a net dropped over him.

From above, from hidden places. Thick, heavy, like a fisherman's net but woven with metal rings. Krazoc turned once, and the net wrapped tighter. Once more, tighter still.

Then another net. Then a third.

Krazoc had fallen to the ground now, but he was still moving. From beneath the nets, he looked toward Alister.

The boy's eyes were locked on his.

Krazoc's hand reached out through a gap in the net. Into the emptiness, toward the boy, a hand that touched nothing.

Then the sixth dart sank into his back.

And the darkness came.

It was sounds that first reached Krazoc's ears.

Not words, but the spaces between words. A curse, low and tired. Another man's grunt. Footsteps. Iron on wood.

"...still can't figure out what they agreed to, with those damned sedatives. There's no insect in the world that could make the drugs we burned through."

A second voice, deeper: "Don't try to understand it. Count the money."

"Money?" The first voice cursed again, harder. "Compared to what we lost today, what they're offering is a handful of dirt. Soren's dead. Halvi's dead. One of the two Herbalists, that man nailed to the ground. I'm not even counting the other dead. And three horses— three horses, you understand? — got crushed. And in return, a few purses of gold."

"And you're telling me this?" the second voice asked, calmer. "When we get back, the leaders decide. Maybe this head doesn't go to the Capital."

There was a silence. Then the first voice, lower, almost a whisper: "This man isn't worth a handful of gold. This man is worth an army."

"Then wait and see. The leaders aren't fools."

Krazoc opened his eyes.

It was still dark night, but the sky was different. The stars had shifted position, the moon had set. It was near morning. He felt the weight of his body on the iron floor of a cage. A cage that sat atop a horse-drawn wagon. His chains were twice as thick, three times as heavy as before. His arms were joined behind him, his ankles chained to an iron bar.

Beside him, a small shadow. Alister. The boy was bound too, his back against Krazoc's back, the two of them fastened to the ends of a steel bar that held them at a measured distance from each other.

The cage wasn't moving yet.

Krazoc turned his head as far as he could. They were still near the camp. Scattered tents, scorched grass, the remains of the shattered wagon. And in the very center of the wreckage, on the bloodied earth, a man in a black robe had sunk to his knees.

The man's hands rested on Garrick's chest. Or rather, on what had been Garrick's chest only moments before. Because out of the captain's body, from beneath his skin, tiny blue-grey mushrooms were swelling up. First two. Then five. Then hundreds. Their stalks burst out through the skin, their caps opened and scattered their spores, and new spores birthed new mushrooms. Within a few minutes Garrick's body had become a cluster — the old human shape just an outline now, melting away beneath the mass of fungus.

Krazoc turned his gaze away. Another black-robed figure had crouched beside Broc's body. The same process. The giant body was rotting fast, the mushrooms pulling it inward.

Vance, the same. His notebook beside him, in the blood, mushrooms sprouting on the pages.

The shortcut this rotting world offered. The raiders sped up the decay of the corpses, ridding themselves of the evidence of the raid that had taken place here.

In that White Void inside Krazoc, something stirred. A witnessing. A record. The understanding — coming from one who didn't even know these men's names — that they would not even be left the manner of their own deaths.

They won't even leave you your corpses, said the voice inside him, not knowing whom it spoke to. What did you do, to be this dangerous?

Then he realized the question applied to himself too.

A command rang out. "Come on, get it moving!"

The horses strained. The cage swayed. And with a creak, the wagon lurched forward into motion.

Krazoc's world turned slowly. The road ahead a grey shadow between the mountains. The Brothers' Pass.

He saw the camp left behind one last time. Garrick's mound of mushrooms. Broc's mound of mushrooms. Vance's mound of mushrooms.

And there was still no fourth body. Somewhere in the depths of the forest, among the leaves, a young woman lay motionless — or perhaps she didn't. Krazoc couldn't know. He would never know.

Krazoc turned back as far as he could turn his head. He couldn't see the boy's face, but he could feel his touch. He was very warm. Very small.

Krazoc's chained hand reached back and found Alister's small hand. The boy's fingers locked around his.

Neither of them said anything.

There was nothing to say.

Only, very deep down, in that White Void inside Krazoc, Garrick's voice echoed. The sentence he hadn't been able to finish was finishing now.

"Teach the boy to live first."

Krazoc tightened his fingers.

Even if he couldn't teach him to live, he could teach him not to die.

For now, that could be enough.