Page 61 of A Drop of Corruption

The second attacker paused, intimidated by how quickly I’d felled his comrade, but the man coming behind him did not, hurling a short spear at me before moving in. A common tactic—and one I had trained in—and my body came alive, my memories filling my muscles with the movements of my training, and I batted the spear away with the flat of my blade.

Yet my strike was too slow—likely hampered by the warding helm—and the spear did not tumble to the side, but spun wildly and struck my warding helm, shifting it to the right so I could no longer see.

I staggered about, my environs turned to flickering shadows.

Should have trained in a helm,I thought.Should have practiced all this under the worst conditions.

My attacker moved in, trying to take advantage of my vulnerability. I barely glimpsed his stance through the glass of my helm, and saw the angle of his blade. My body responded—speedily, yet blindly.

I felt my green sword lick out and meet his blade at the expected angle; then I pushed, shifting, tilting my leverage against him and trapping his blade in my crossguard, the movement easy, familiar…

I could not stop myself. I felt the edge of my blade enter his neck, heard his garbled scream. The glass bulbs of my helm were splashed with blood, and he staggered away, and I could no longer see him.

I stumbled back through the trees, wiping at the bulbs of my helm and shoving the damned thing back into position. As I did I saw mythird attacker staring at me, his eyes blinking uncertainly, his sword held limply in his hand.

“Get on the ground!” I shouted at him.

He blinked again, slightly raising the sword. Then he coughed, cried aloud, and fell to his knees.

I stared at him but then saw it: an arrowhead had punched through his left breast, just beside his shoulder. Then he tumbled forward and was still.

I looked up and saw Malo wielding her bow, her green eyes triumphant behind her helm.

“Move,” she said. “Now.”

I sprinted forward through the trees and rejoined the fray.

—

It was quickwork after the first bout. It appeared that some small group of smugglers had been left destitute and stunned after the catastrophe at their camp, and had thought our boat would make an easy means of escape, yet the two wardens onboard had spotted them easily, hidden behind the boat’s armored walls, and fired arrows upon them, killing two and pinning down the rest. Then Malo and I and the rest of the wardens had come up behind them. It was such a pitiable spot for any force to be in that I felt quite bad for them.

When it was all done we found we had slain eleven and wounded four, though Tangis testified that most of the wounded would likely perish. The first man I’d felled had the best chances, he said, and together Malo and I helped carry him and a few other survivors back to the boat, where Tangis tended to him with his grafts and tinctures while we checked the rest of the fallen.

“What shall we do for the dead?” I asked Malo.

“Do? Nothing,” she said.

“It does not feel right to leave them to rot.”

“If we were to dig them graves, the forest would still spoil it,” she said. “Better to give them over to the trees and the vines. That is their world, anyway.”

I gazed back at the jungle and wiped the blood again from the eyepieces of my helmet. These were not the first people I’d killed, but they were the first I’d left to spoil under the sun. I made a silent prayer for them, picking one of the imperial gods at random—perhaps Davingli, goddess of wilderness and encampments—and boarded the boat.

Chapter 25

We did not talk aswe sailed away from the camp. We simply sat on the deck, the sun beating on our shoulders, the only sounds the biting flies, the lap of the waves, and the whimperings of our prisoners. No one moved but Malo, who steered, and Tangis, who set to mending the smugglers’ wounds.

“Can we question them?” I asked him.

“Not yet, sir,” said Tangis. “It will take at least an hour or two for my healing grafts to work.”

“You can question them all you like as we sail back to Yarrowdale,” said Malo, flicking the reins. “But you may not get to tell anyone. We shall be put under containment the instant we get close.”

“Because of what we’ve been exposed to,” I said.

“Indeed. We’ll be back to the city soon—easier to go downstream than up—and there we shall be examined and bathed in oils and reagents, and then examined again, and again. If we are lucky, it will not last more than a day or so.” She shuddered. “I hope I get a medikker with warm hands this time, and short fingers…”

I glanced back at the few survivors, lying prone on the deck of the boat with Tangis’s healing grafts foaming over their wounds. “And they’ll be taken from us, too, as they could be infected,” I said. “So this will be our only chance to question them for some time.” I grimaced and tapped at the glass bulbs on my helm again. “When can I take this damned thing off?”