He nodded. “For the whole nine months. Never saw anyone else until the captain called us back together. How about you?”
Things were making sense now. The Kimisar had been trapped on the wrong side of the mountains, so they’d dispersed and hidden in the general population. “I wandered a bit. Wintered in the valley. Didn’t see much of anyone else, either.” Alex leaned back on the tent pole and pointed to the man’s side. “What happened to you?” His clothes had been rinsed some, but they’d obviously been soaked with blood.
“Happened when they caught me,” the Kimisar said bleakly. “Hurts like hell, but the bleeding finally stopped.”
“May I see?” Alex scooted closer, and the man shrugged and opened his jacket and raised his shirt. A sickly sweet smell came from the oozing wound in his side. Alex shook his head. “Looks bad. I think it’s infected.”
The man shrugged apathetically and dropped the clothing back over it.
“Have you showed the Casmuni?” Alex pressed. “They treated me.”
“And you let them?” The man looked disgusted.
“I was unconscious most of the time.” Alex shifted from what had become a dangerous topic. “What’s your name?”
“Gispan Brazco. You?”
“Armand Dolan.” The first was a common Kimisar name, and the second was a town in Tasmet.
They talked into the night, and Alex learned more of what the Kimisar had been doing for the past year. Waiting, for the most part. Their captain, a man named Malkim Huzar, had taken command of them after last year’s failed action in Tasmet and ordered them to hide until things calmed down. When the Norsari had been formed, Huzar decided they had no more time left and called the Kimisar together.
“Were you with him when he left the false trail south last year?” asked Gispan, yawning widely. His words were coming slower and slower.
Alex shook his head, not wanting to risk giving incorrect details. “No, but I heard it confused the hell out of the Demorans.”
“It did, though that’s not hard, is it?” Gispan laughed, then winced and breathed deeply, his hand over his side. His red-rimmed eyes closed. “I will say one thing in their favor—their girls are pretty. Least the ones that aren’t wanting to kill you.”
Alex didn’t have a chance to ask about the story behind that statement. Gispan was asleep.
71
SAGE AND NICHOLAS made their way back from the lake, wearing fresh clothes and feeling cleaner than they had in months, despite not being allowed to use soap in the water everyone drank from. She and Banneth had been trying to convince Nicholas to venture with them into deeper water when a messenger appeared and called the king away. Sage gave up coaxing Nicholas and floated on her back, working dirt and sand out of her hair while the prince scrubbed himself with a rough cloth in the shallows.
Two guards stood outside the tent, which told her Banneth was inside. They didn’t try to stop the Demorans from entering, so either the message was delivered, or it wasn’t anything they couldn’t know about. The king sat alone at the low table, studying a map. Nicholas gave him a quick bow and went straight to their sleeping area.
“Is everything well, Palandret?” she asked in Casmuni. “You left so quickly.”
Banneth glanced up. “Yes, it is well. The last patrol returned, and I received their report.”
Sage held her breath for several heartbeats. “Did they find anything of concern, My King?”
“Nothing you need worry about,” said Banneth. He looked back to the map. “You should get some rest. We leave in the morning.”
72
ALEX WAS ROUGHLY awakened at sunrise and handed a bowl of porridge. He sat up and started shoveling it into his mouth before he was fully awake. The Casmuni guard had a little more trouble with Gispan, but eventually he woke. As the Kimisar moved, Alex caught the smell coming from his wound. It wasn’t just festering, it was actively rotting.
The guard wrinkled his nose, so he must have also caught a whiff of it. He looked unconcerned, though. “My friend needs help,” Alex tried to tell him.
The man didn’t seem to understand him, and Alex pointed to Gispan’s clothing, which was wet from the seeping wound.
“Let me be,” said Gispan, bringing the spoon to his mouth. Alex remembered how the Kimisar didn’t like that he’d accepted treatment.
“But you’ll die,” Alex insisted. He might even die if he was treated.
“You think I don’t know that?” Gispan took two more bites and held out the bowl to Alex. “I’m not hungry.”
“Do you think less of me for wanting to live?” Alex asked, taking the bowl.
“No,” said Gispan. “I have nothing to go home to. Most of my family died in the famine, and the rest in the wildfires on the plains last year. That’s why I volunteered to go into Tasmet. You obviously have a reason to live.”
After breakfast the tent was taken down around them, and Alex could now see the entire camp was breaking. Horses were being loaded, but Alex saw no wagons. He and Gispan would either ride or walk. Alex suspected the latter, and he was correct. They were chained to a heavily burdened nag near the end of the caravan. Alex watched Gispan warily. He wasn’t sure the Kimisar would last long.
Just before they started moving, a Casmuni approached, carrying Alex’s canteen and a waterskin for Gispan. Rather than hand them to the prisoners, the man dropped them on the ground in front of them and walked off. After that first day, the Casmuni had been strangely distant when they gave him water, and Alex wondered if there was some kind of message in that. He picked up both, thinking Gispan didn’t need anything to weigh him down.
The Kimisar was talkative as he limped along, telling Alex all about his home and family, about the girl he’d set his eye on in Demora, and his love of woodcarving. Most people might assume he was merely lonely after days with no one to talk to, but Alex recognized it for what it was: a dying man realizing all his experiences and thoughts and feelings would die with him. Gispan would feel better if he knew his memories would live on with another person, and so Alex listened.
When Gispan collapsed in the late afternoon, despite having drunk all his water and most of Alex’s, the Casmuni paused to redistribute the nag’s load on other horses, then slung him over the animal’s back. It had to be a painful position, but fortunately the Kimisar was unconscious.
They reached a small oasis in late afternoon, and a few tents went up, including the large one, but most men opted to sleep outside. Alex sipped from his refilled canteen as he sat next to Gispan and watched the stars. Funny how the sky was the same as at home, only shifted. The Northern Wheel sat lower on the horizon, but the stars turned around it just the same.
When the Kimisar woke, Alex tried to get him to drink, but he refused, saying he probably wouldn’t be able to keep it down. The entire side of Gispan’s clothing was wet and crusted with blood and fluid from his gangrenous wound. Alex didn’t dare try to pull anything away to look—he knew what he’d see, and there was no reason to cause additional pain.
Exhausted as he was, Alex stayed up all night, listening to Gispan’s labored breathing. A few times the sound stopped but then continued several seconds later. As the sky began to lighten in the east, the Kimisar suddenly opened his eyes. Alex scooted closer so Gispan could see him. “Do you want some water?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gispan rasped through parched lips, and Alex gently poured a little into his mouth. “Thank you, my friend,” he whispered.
“I will not forget you,” Alex said, giving the man the last reassurance he needed.
Gispan turned his face up to the fading stars. “I wish they’d just let that woman kill me,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t have had to spend my last days walking through hell.”
Alex sat straight up. “What woman?” The Kimisar didn’t respond, and Alex swung his feet around and stood on his knees over Gispan to shake his shoulders. “What woman, Gispan? When?”
Gispan never answered.
*