Sara watched as the captain looked at her face. Once he saw how serious she looked, he turned away from the canyon fully and said, “I’m listening.”
Sara almost commented on how much more put together he sounded now, as if all it took was someone listening to him to make him feel better, but she didn’t. Although she did wonder if any of her guilt would be assuaged by telling what she’d done now.
She guessed she’d find out soon enough. Although she couldn’t mention how much better he looked while doing it. That wouldn’t be appropriate, and besides, he probably wouldn’t want anything to do with her once she told him what she had done.
Nevertheless, Sara had to give him an explanation, and so she did. She tried to never shirk away from her duties, and telling the truth, in this case, was one of them.
So she took a deep breath and spelled out exactly how she’d brought down her shield dome and several dozen others alongside it. When she was done, he was silent. Contemplative. She let him think while she reassured herself that she’d done the right thing by speaking up. After all, what if he had done something so heinous in retaliation that she could never forgive herself? Besides, she wasn’t the only one who knew what had happened. She was just the first to report.
When she was getting so antsy that she couldn’t take waiting anymore, Sara said, “Sir?”
One word. But a loaded question.
He let out a deep sigh and put his hands behind his back.
“Sir, I’d understand if you want me gone,” she said quietly, shoulders hunched.
Forget her mission to find her father’s journals—she had managed to kill an entire army of her own people. There was nothing for her here now.
“Gone?” asked Barthis.
“I killed so many of our people with…with impetuousness,” Sara blurted out. “I didn’t think of what the Kades would do in retaliation. I just acted. I swung my swords, and in doing so, I condemned so many lives that I can’t even fathom the numbers lost.”
“Did you do it in maliciousness?” he asked.
Sara frowned. “You mean when I killed the Kades?”
“No,” he said, staring at her. “When you decided to kill those shield mages.”
“No,” she said. “I wasn’t even doing it for vengeance. Not really. I knew they were the key—” She paused.
“The key?” her captain asked. “To what, Mercenary Fairchild?”
Her voice caught in her throat as she looked out and back down into the canyon. So many lives lost.
But she answered him in a steady voice. “To the shields. We needed them to come down. So that we could help each other. So that we could turn back the tide against the Kades, now, instead of when they decided to vanish into the night again.”
Captain Barthis nodded. “And why do you think that was wrong?”
“Because actions have consequences,” she said, looking at him in disbelief, amazed that he didn’t realize this himself.
“Yes, they do,” her captain replied with a twitch of his lips. “But so does inaction. You do realize, had you left them alone, the Kades would have killed us all, slowly but surely. Like a massive snake constricts the air out of the windpipes of its victims, the Kades would have gone dome by dome and eviscerated us all with glee.”
Sara bit her lip. “That doesn’t change the fact that I initiated the actions that made the Kades retaliate so harshly.”
“I suppose you did,” said Barthis. “You and those other mages you spoke of.”
“No,” said Sara as she took a step back and put a hand on her weapon at her waist. “This isn’t their fault. They were only following orders and trying to save us all.”
Barthis stepped forward and said fiercely into her face, “And what I’m telling you is so did you, Sara Fairchild, so did you. Not only did you accomplish that, but you also freed us all.”
“Yes, but at what cost?”
He swallowed heavily as he nodded. “That’s a cross we’ll all have to bear.”
“Me more than anyone else.”
A small smile flickered on his face at the defiance in her voice.
“I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that matter,” the captain said.
“I guess so,” Sara said, her head held high.
“Always the firebrand, Mercenary Fairchild,” he said with a chuckle.
Sara was practically wavering on her feet with exhaustion, but she managed to stand tall as she said, “Always and forever, sir. And I’ll take whatever punishment you deem fit. I’ve earned it this time.”
“As opposed to the others?” he said dryly.
She flashed him an irate look and opened her mouth to defend her former actions.
He quickly said, “Never mind. Now isn’t the time. Just know that I don’t want you gone, mercenary, but I must do something with you, I admit.”
Sara nodded, glum but resolute. “And I await your decision.”
She was imagining imprisonment, even whipping. The thought of enduring what Nissa Sardonien had made her flinch. But at the same time, Sara was starting to understand the darkness of the steps he’d taken to get information out of the captured mage. After the battle she’d endured from darkness till sunrise, she would have done just about anything to prevent it. The bloodshed, the heartache, the slain friends.
It was those friends and the comrades she didn’t even know that she thought of as she accepted Captain Barthis’s judgment. She was lucky to have emerged relatively unscathed from the front. Others lay dead in ditches, and Sara couldn’t help but feel despondent about that. Without the battle mage gifts she’d been born with, she too would be lying in those fallow fields. So she didn’t say a word to convince the captain of the lack of need to punish her. She just waited for his next orders. To her surprise, they weren’t a punishment, but rather ones she readily was eager to obey.
“Get some rest, mercenary,” Captain Barthis said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Sara didn’t see any censure or mockery in his eyes, just sincerity, so she proudly saluted and marched off to do just that. She was too tired to argue anything else, and besides—her case was clearly set. She was guilty, and that was all there was to be said.
It was no more than ten minutes later that she was directed to a very bare-bones wash station, little more than a pump with water and a screen of reeds to cover the person washing themselves, but she didn’t complain. Once she’d scrubbed herself raw, she sought a clean cot and a warm bed. Which she fell into like a person who hadn’t slept in a week.
When she woke two days later, it was like waking from a never-ending dream. She noted it because it had been a pleasant dream, and also because she was one who rarely dreamt. She also rarely slept long hours. So waking from this cocoon of warmth and blankets was even more jolting when she thought about the headache of a nightmare that had been interspersed throughout her slumber. She had dreamt of clashing swords, blood spurting from necks, flaming dragons, and a full night-and-day’s battle that had only ended a few days before.
When she sat up and stood with a yawn and a stretch of her arms above her head, she chuckled. “That was some dream.”
Someone behind her said loudly, “What were you dreaming about?”
Sara froze. She spoke without turning around, hoping that this too was a dream. “That I slept for more than a day,” she said. “And I was safe.”
“Well, you did and you are.”
Sara groaned. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the person that the voice belonged to. Instead it was the fact that by having the voice here, in her non-dream, it meant that the rest of her dream—specifically the endless killing part—hadn’t been just the fuel of her nightmares. No, it had been real, and this too was real.
“Well, that’s no way to greet a friend.”
Sara rolled her eyes, because that voice belonged to none other than Karn, and Karn wasn’t assigned to her lodgings. Why was he here, and where was Ezekiel? Because they always lodged together. Always. She turned around tensely.
She thought about questioning if he was an apparition, but even she knew as she stared at him, looking from one cot over, that he was all too real. She punched her pillow in frustration as she growled and shook her head.
“You’re in some mood. Do you always wake up this foul-tempered?” asked Karn, eyeing her. He kept tossing his half-eaten apple up in the air.
Sara swallowed harshly and shook her head to dispel the irritation. It didn’t work. In fact, other body parts jumped in to complain, namely her stomach. She’d taken cleanliness over a meal when she’d fallen into her deep slumber. Now her body was ready to make her pay.
“Everything that happened,” Sara said. “It was real?”
“Yes,” he said, sitting up on the left side of the cot.
“And the people who died?” she asked. “Our friends?”
“Still dead,” he replied.
Sara froze. “The Kade invasion by night? The shield walls?”
“All down, thanks to us,” he said with a satisfied smirk.
She let her shoulders relax. At least some good had come out of that hellish night-and-day.
Sara took a deep breath and reached under her pillow for the one thing she never forgot, no matter where she slept. Her knife grip readily met her hand, and she exhaled a sigh of relief.
Noting that Karn was still staring, Sara snapped, “What are you looking at?”
He gave a grin. “Nothing. You’ve got nice underwear, is all.”
Sara looked down and saw that all she was wearing was a pale white undershirt that was skintight and some knickers that could have extended past her upper thighs but didn’t.
Growling, Sara grabbed her pillow and threw it at him—hard. He was lucky that was all she threw at him.
“Stop looking, you creep,” she said as she placed her knife blade facing outward on the bed in front of her and searched for some pants. She didn’t have to look long; she found a full outfit kit neatly folded underneath the cot.
As she ducked down to put on her shirt after pulling up the pants, Sara asked grumpily, “How long have I been out? It feels like more than two days. I’m starving.”
“Two and a half,” she heard Karn say through the fabric.
“Where’s everyone else?” Sara said as her head popped back up through the main hole in the tunic.
“Dispersed among what’s left of our illustrious warfront,” Karn said.
Sara turned around slowly. “What does that mean?”
“It means we lost hundreds of good people in one night and they needed more bodies,” Karn said as he stood up and handed her a belt.
She took it gratefully and asked, “And why are you here?”
“You think our ragtag group wanted to leave you alone?” Karn said.
Sara raised a brow. “I can defend myself.”
“You were unconscious,” he said. “Besides, wasn’t it you that said ‘no man left behind’?”
Sara snorted. “To enemy forces.”
She belted on her swords then, both of them.
Karn looked away and then looked back. “Considering how cavalierly our previous leadership treated your safety and health, I’d say we can’t be sure which enemy we should be wary of.”
Sara paused. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No,” said Karn as he gently pushed her toward the door. “But there is something you should see.”
There wasn’t much more time to talk, because then he tore back the tent flap and she saw exactly what he meant. It hadn’t been a dream…any of it. It was clear that the Kades had wreaked devastation across the imperial encampments. Bodies were still flung everywhere. Those that weren’t in the canyon, that was. As she stared around, Sara was shocked. Everywhere she looked, there were remains.
Hanging off overturned wagons like rag dolls, crushed in the earth where it was clear a creature—perhaps a dragon—had squashed it, and more soldiers—these ones were alive—were crying and screaming out for help.
She didn’t know how she’d slept through it all, but it was clear they had far more wounded than they had healer mages left alive. It made sense now seeing where the healers’ station had been placed in the encampment and where the Kades had struck with their bombardment, but it certainly wasn’t helping them now.
It was chaos.