An Autumn War(140)

The horse archers fled as Sinja finished the two remaining men. He brushed the snow from a stone and sat, his breath ragged and hard, pluming white. When he had his wind back, he laughed until he wept.

Nayiit, still lying by his cart, called out weakly. lie wasn't dead. Sinja limped over quickly. The man's face was white and waxy. His lips pale.

"What happened?"

"I'm not sure yet. Something. We're safe for the moment."

"[anat..."

"Don't worry about him. I'll find the boy."

"I promised. Keep safe."

"And you've done it," Sinja said. "You did a fine job. Now let's see how much it's cost you, shall we? I've seen a lot of belly wounds. Some are worse than others, but they're all tender to prod at, so expect this to hurt."

Nayiit nodded and screwed up his face, readying himself for the pain. Sinja opened his robes and looked at the cut. Even as such things go, this one was bad. Eustin's blade had gone into the boy just below his navel, and cut to the left as it came out. Blood soaked the boy's robes, freezing them to the stones lie lay on. Skin on white fat. "There were soft, worm-shaped loops of gut exposed to the air. Sinja laid a hand on the boy's chest and knelt over the wound, sniffing at it. If it only smelled of blood, there might he a chance. But amid the iron and meat, there was the scent of fresh shit. Eustin had cut the boy's bowels. That was it, then. The boy was dead.

"How bad?"

"Not good," Sinja said.

"Hurts."

"I'd imagine."

"Is it ..."

"It's deep. And it's thorough," Sinja said. "If you wanted something passed on to someone, this would he a good time to say it."

The boy wasn't thinking well. Like a drunkard, it took time for him to understand what Sinja had said, and another breath to think what it had meant. He swallowed. Fear widened his eyes, but that was all.

"Tell them. 'Fell them I died well. That I fought well."

They were small enough lies, and Sinja could tell the boy knew it.

"I'll tell them you died protecting the Khai's son," Sinja said. "I'll tell them you faced down a dozen men, knowing you'd he killed, but choosing that over surrendering him to the Galts."

"You make me sound like a good man." Nayiit smiled, then groaned, twisting to the side. His hand hovered above his wound, the impulse to cradle the hurt balanced by the pain his touch would cause. Sinja took the man's hand.

"Nayiit-cha," Sinja said. "I know something that can stop the pain."

"Yes," Nayiit hissed.

"It'll he worse for a moment."

"Yes," he repeated.

"All right then," Sinja said, as much to himself as the man lying hefore him. "You did a man's job of it. Rest well."

He snapped the boy's neck and sat with him, cradling his head as he finished dying. It was quick this way. There wouldn't be the pain or the fever. There wouldn't be the torture of trekking back to the city just to have the physicians fill him with poppy and leave him to dream himself away. It was a better death than those. Sinja told himself it was a better death than those.

The blood stopped flowing from the wound, and still Sinja sat. A terrible weariness crept into him, and he told himself it was only the cold. It wasn't that he'd traveled a season with men he'd come to respect and still been willing to kill. It wasn't watching some young idiot die badly in the snow with only a habitual traitor to care for him. It wasn't the sickness that came over him sometimes after battles. It was only the cold. He gently put Nayiit's head on the ground, and pushed himself up. Between the chill and his wounds, his body was starting to stiffen. The chill and his wounds and age. War and death and glory were younger men's games. But he still had work to do.

He heard the cry before he saw the child. It was a small sound, like the squeak of a hinge. Sinja turned. Either Danat had snuck back, preferring a known danger to an uncertain world, or else he'd never gone out of sight of the cart. His hair was wet from melted snow, plastered back against his head. His lips were pulled back, baring teeth in horror as he stared at Nayiit's motionless body. Sinja tried to think how old he'd been when he saw his first man die by violence. Older than this.

I)anat's shocked, empty eyes turned to him, and the child took a step hack, as if to flee. Sinja only looked at him, waiting, until the boy's weight shifted forward again. Then Sinja raised his sword, pommel to the sky, blade toward the ground in a mercenary's salute.

"Welcome to the world, Danat-cha," Sinja said. "I wish it were a better place."

The boy didn't speak, but slowly his hands rose to take a pose that accepted the greeting. It was the training of some court nurse. Nothing more than that. And still, Sinja thought he saw a sorrow in the child's eyes and a depth of understanding greater than anyone so small should have to bear. Sinja sheathed his sword.