Scal had never taken joy in hunting. It was only a necessary thing, to keep himself alive, to keep alive those he protected. Like fighting, hunting was killing, and he had never truly had the spirit for it.
He enjoyed it even less when it was men he was hunting.
Vatri had told him what needed to be done, and as always, as ever, he would see to it. So he hid among the dense trees of the Forest Voro, listening to the soft sound of approaching voices, and his hand waited ready near the hilt of his sword. He had not drawn it yet. The fire would give him away, and he could not think Darkness at the flames, for Vatri would be watching.
The trees hid much, with only the faint moonlight between the shadows, dancing and twining upon the ground. In the depths of the forest, little enough snow had reached the ground, and spring was beginning to breathe through the trees. The first shaking gasps of warmth. There was only deadfall, and patchy brambles, and they were the same shade as the shadows.
Little to see, but he could hear their voices, hear their feet crunching upon the deadfall. Their sounds made them clear as sight, and in the darkness, Scal moved toward them on silent feet. He did not like to hunt, but there was an endless difference between liking a thing and being able to do it well.
There were four of them. One in chain armor that rattled with each step. One that kept a constant stream of muttering. The other two speaking softly to each other, too quiet to make out more than the worried tone. A fighter, and a witch, and two preachers. He knew how to deal with a fighter, for it was a language Scal spoke well. He knew how to deal with a witch, for he had known a mad witch and he knew the ways their minds and bodies worked. The preachers would likely be useless, and so he was not concerned.
Scal moved silent through the trees. Closer, until he could make out their conversation—a long journey, forced upon them, spread across the country—until he could make out the witch’s mumbling clear as speech. He let them pass, the fighter and then the preachers and then the witch, and then Scal stepped from the trees. Stepped to the witch’s shoulder, and he pulled his sword free. Fire along the edge, brighter than starlight, sudden as held breath. Scal let the draw carry forward, a low swing biting sideways, and it cleanly sheared the witch’s arm at the elbow and sank into his side. The fire sealed the arm—no blood.
He still did not know if that made it kinder. Certainly not to the witch, who let out a low wailing screech. It felt dishonest. To kill a man, there should be blood. Scal ripped the sword free and brought it back around higher. To take a life, he should be reminded of all he was stealing. Bathe in all the lost possibilities, walk away drenched in stolen moments. But the sword, fire-dancing, sealed, too, the wound it carved into the witch’s neck. He did not bleed, but he died all the same. Scal stepped from him spotless, untouched. Clean and clarified and shining.
Scal bore his scars like a written history. The tale of all his bloody lives, told across the fragile canvas of his skin. Beneath the scars were all the marks unseen, the bone-deep stains left by all the blood he had shed.
He stepped from the dead witch, and his skin was clean, and Scal did not think that he knew himself any longer.
The chain-mailed fighter had turned at the witch’s scream. Drew his sword as the witch’s cry gurgled to fiery silence. Stepped, now, as Scal stepped, and their swords met, and they shed fire and sparks where they clashed.
Scal and the fighter danced in the shadows and the flickering light. Dimly there were whispers in Scal’s mind, faint voices, the men who had shaped his past lives. One saying that violence was weakness. The other saying that a man fought with what he was given. But as Scal’s sword swung, one voice rose from the dusty whispers: We only do what we must, Vatri had said. All that we do, we do in the name of the Parents.
Scal kicked out his leg. His foot bounced against the fighter’s knee, and Scal felt the bone crack, and the fighter began to fall with a curse, with a wild swing of his blade. Like the witch, he did not bleed. Like the witch, he still died.
There was a line of fire along Scal’s forearm. In his sword’s light, he could see the blood welling from the thin slice there, where the fighter’s last swing had scored. Blood that was black in the moonlight, shimmering, and it spilled down his arm and over his fingers where they held the hilt of the sword. Scal drew in a breath that seared his lungs, that tasted of winter and faraway ice. He did not know himself half as well as when blood stained his hands, spattered his face.
The two preachers had tried to flee. Tripping over each other, wailing, stumbling against trees. They would have been smarter to separate, but fear made fools of all men. There was no joy in hunting, but it was a thing Scal could do well. There was little enough difference between a man and a deer, when fear chased, when blood boiled, when the trees rose shadowed and strangling.
Scal caught them, and he sent one to join the others in death. But the second preacher he held, arm tight around the man’s neck, denying him air. The preacher clawed at Scal’s arm, and his legs kicked where they hung off the ground. I have so many questions, Vatri had said, with the fires in her eyes, and so Scal held the preacher tight against his chest. Waiting for his breath-starved body to still, waiting for the fight to flow from his limbs. Scal thought that he could almost see the man’s blood flowing beneath his skin. That he could feel his heartbeat, like a caged thing through his ribs, pounding against the calm thud of Scal’s own heart. His left hand curled around the back of the preacher’s head. He had touched Vatri, touched things that were not weapons, and they had not burst with flames or with ice. He had not willed them to.
His fingers buried in the man’s hair, arm tight around his neck, Scal wondered what would happen if he willed the ice to flow from his fingers. No blood. No questions. If the end was the same, it could hardly matter what means.
I have so many questions. Vatri would ask them at the point of Scal’s blade. And when it was done, whether she got her answers or not, it would end the same.
Branches rustled, brambles snapping beneath soft feet. Scal did not turn. Only held tighter to the preacher as his limbs went slack, breath washing over Scal’s arm, fingers slipping from the furrows they had carved in flesh. More scars, that would make him whole, make him himself.
“That was neatly done,” Vatri said at his shoulder. Scal opened his arm. Let the preacher fall boneless to the ground. He did not open his mouth, because he did not know what would come out of it.
He leaned down and tied the unconscious preacher’s wrists together behind his back, tied his ankles together for good measure. He propped the man up against the trunk of a tree, and then Scal stepped away, back, letting the shadows swallow him. He might have gone farther, if he could.
Vatri crouched before the preacher, and she reached out to roughly pat his cheek. Bleary, slow-blinking, the preacher woke. He made a strangled noise when his eyes fixed on her scarred face. A monster escaped from the realm of nightmares.
“Where were you going?” Vatri asked.
The preacher said nothing, pressing his lips together tight. Anger and pride and faith flickering in his gaze.
“Where are the Twins?”
Silence.
Vatri was undeterred. “What have your leaders told you to do?”
“What have you done to the mages?”
“Where are the Twins?”
The preacher twisted his shoulders, rested more comfortably back against the trunk of the tree. There was almost a smile on his lips. A tilt to his head that seemed to say, You can waste as much of your breath as you would like.
“What will be the Fallen’s next move?”
“Where are the Twins?”
“Scal.”
He came forward, obedient as a dog. Stepped to Vatri’s side and he drew the sword once more, right hand around the worn grip so that the flames danced bright along its edge, and the preacher’s eyes flickered with fear. Scal stretched the blade out until its tip almost rested against the preacher’s throat. Scal did not will it to burn, but the preacher’s neck and cheek reddened with the heat.
Scal’s hand had never shaken, holding a blade. It did not now either, but he almost wished it would. That, somehow, someone might see a piece of the quaking within him. That someone might see his jaw, held as tight as the preacher’s.
“I give you one last chance,” Vatri said, voice steady and even. Pleasant. “Where are the Twins?”
The preacher swallowed hard, throat bobbing closer to the sword. There was sweat on his brow, on his upper lip, and the fear was growing more wild in his eyes. He stared at the tip of the blade, and his eyes flicked to Vatri, to Scal, to the blade, and rested finally on Vatri. There was no less fear in his eyes when he said, “I won’t tell you anything.”
Vatri sighed as though the words truly made her sad, but Scal could see the fire of his sword matched in her gaze. “Then you’re choosing your own fate. Scal.”
There was a cry trapped behind Scal’s teeth. A screech like the witch had made, dying, or like the wails of the fleeing preachers. A cry that would carry endless, and shake the roots of the trees, and make the stars tremble in the sky, and shatter the world in half. Shatter Scal in half.
He kept his teeth pressed tight together, and he drove the sword forward. There was fire, and there was no blood, and the scream clung to the roof of his mouth. Fighting, fighting to break free.
“May the Parents watch over your soul,” Vatri intoned. It sounded almost like she meant the words. She rose from the dead man’s side, said, “There will be others,” and then she made her way through the trees. Shadows fluttering like moths’ wings across her scarred flesh, the darkness pulling her deeper into the forest.
Scal, obedient, loyal, followed.