Page 49

Eskil surges out of the stream bed and up the bank and through the brush. His hip screams at him and he does not hear it. He can see the shape of him now, small and quick and stumbling over roots in the dark, moving toward the noise rather than away from it. Toward the Rengaran voices. Toward him. His hair is shorn close to his head and his clothes are a mess and his face in the moonlight coming through the trees is bruised and bloody and the most beautiful thing Eskil has ever seen.

One of his warriors charges across the ground ahead of Eskil, intercepting a Jakadi man who had been coming from the south with a sword in each hand. The clash of their blades is close enough to make Indrie flinch and stumble. Eskil sheaths his longsword. The thought is not a thought. It is the removal of an obstacle between his hands and the man running toward him, and the sword enters the scabbard and his hands are free.

Indrie throws himself forward and Eskil catches him and goes to his knees.

He gets both arms around him and pulls him in and holds on, one hand pressing against the back of his head, the short rough strands under his fingers both steadying and infuriating. Indrie buries his face in his neck. His hands are fisted in Eskil's shirt and his whole body is shaking, not from cold, not from exertion. It is from three days of holding himself together by force, and somebody has finally given him leave to stop.

"I have you," Eskil says. His mouth is against Indrie's temple and his voice is low and rough and the words are the only ones he has. "I have you, Indrie."

Indrie is crying. The sobs wrack through him in waves, pressed into Eskil's shoulder, muffled and wrenching, and Eskil holds him through every one and does not let go and does not look up. The sounds of the camp are receding. His warriors are finishing the work. Somewhere to the east a horse screams and falls silent, and closer by there are Rengaran voices calling to each other in the coded shorthand of men confirming a perimeter.

There is snow falling. The first snow of the season, fine and light, catching in the firelight from the burning camp. It settles on Indrie's shorn hair and on the back of Eskil's hands and on the ground around them, and neither of them moves.

Eskil's arms tighten. He presses his mouth to the crown of Indrie's head and breathes him in and the smell of him underneath the dirt and the smoke and the fear is still there, still his, still the thing that Eskil has been reaching for across every mile between Valen and this forest. He holds him and the world goes on without him and he does not care.

He does not care about the Jakadi or the camp or the dead men in the stream. He does not care about the council or the border or the Wolfe clan or the intelligence he has gained or the intelligence he has not. He cares about the weight of this man in his arms and the feel of his heartbeat through both their shirts and the fact that he is alive and here and holding on with everything he has.

Eskil has built a kingdom on violence and pragmatism and the absolute refusal to let anyone take what is his. He has burned villages and broken men and made decisions that would keep better men awake for the rest of their lives, and he has slept soundly through all of it. He has never once apologized for what he is.

And what he is, on his knees in the dirt with snow in his hair and a battle behind him, is in love with this man.

16

ESKIL

Indrie pulls back just far enough to hold Eskil's face in both hands.

His fingers are freezing and raw from the bindings, the skin at his wrists abraded to a red that Eskil can see even in the low light. His face is bruised along one cheekbone and his lower lip is split where somebody hit him and his hair is gone, cropped close to his skull in a ragged, graceless cut. He is filthy and bleeding and shivering and looking up at Eskil with an expression that has no business being as steady as it is.

"I knew you'd come," Indrie says.

Eskil turns his head and kisses the palm pressed against his cheek. His eyes are already moving, the way they have moved across wounded men on battlefields for so many years. The bruise is two days old, maybe three, layered over an older yellow at the edges. The split lip is fresher. The wrists are the worst of the visible damage, rubbed raw to the point of weeping, and Eskil looks at them and the thing that moves through him is not rage. Rage is too small and too simple for what this is. This is older and colder and it lives in the part of him that makes decisions without consulting the rest.

"I'm sorry it took so long," he says, and then, voice low and measured and dangerous in a way he cannot smooth out and does not try to, "They hurt you."

Indrie shakes his head. He leans forward and presses his lips to Eskil's forehead. The gesture is so incongruously tender, so perfectly Indrie, this man blessing him in the middle of a battlefield, that Eskil has to close his eyes against it.

"It's just bruises and scrapes," Indrie says. "I'll be fine."

Nothing will be fine until this entire fucking camp is wiped out. Eskil is already moving to stand. He has a ledger in his head that he is adding faces and names to and he will not be satisfied until it is full. He can see his men working through the rest of the trees, and his sword arm is aching to tear through whatever is left standing in them.

Indrie's hands tighten on his face and pull him back.

"Eskil, listen to me." The firmness in his voice is the voice that runs the clinic, the one that tells soldiers to sit down and be still, the one that does not ask twice. "I found Fenris. He protected me."

Eskil inhales sharply. The name lands on him with a force that rearranges the entire shape of the night, because they came here for Indrie and Indrie alone. The heir they sent Morgan and Bohdi riding east to find in a farming village was here, in this camp, the whole time, and it is a twist of fortune so savage that Eskil almost cannot credit it.

"You found him? He's with the Jakadi?"

Indrie nods, and then pulls back enough to let Eskil help them both to their feet. He is unsteady for a moment, adrenaline giving way, and Eskil keeps a hand on his arm until he finds his balance.

"They took him from his adopted family when he was a boy," Indrie says. "He's been moving around with them ever since."

Eskil curses and looks off in the direction his warriors went.

"Damned useless fucking," he says, and does not finish it, because there is no sentence adequate to the scope of what the Jakadi have done with Ivan's discarded son. The incomplete obscenity will have to serve. He takes Indrie's hand and starts toward the camp, and Indrie works to keep up with his longer stride, holding on tightly. "What am I supposed to do with a Jakadi raised heir?"

"It's not like that." Indrie shakes his head. "He's not loyal to the Jakadi. He's been biding his time to get revenge on Ivan."