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“You still want me for your lieutenant?” Sorak asked wryly.
“Well, it will make things interesting,” Kieran replied with a smile. “I was getting bored in retirement, anyway.”
“Well make a preserver of you yet,” Ryana said with a grin, punching him in the shoulder.
“We should all live so long, my lady,” Kieran said. “I have no magic blade, and your friend here just threw his away.”
“I did that once before,” said Sorak, “but there are some responsibilities one simply can’t avoid.” Kieran’s eyes grew wide as Sorak reached down and drew Galdra from his belt. He held the broken blade up before him, and it sparkled with a faint blue aura.
“Now that was a neat trick,” said Kieran.
Sorak smiled. “Just don’t ask me how it’s done,” he said. “A moment ago, it wasn’t there. And then I felt it pressing against my side. It seems no matter what I do, I cannot get rid of it.”
“What else does it do?” asked Kieran.
Sorak shrugged. “It makes me wish I had been born someone else. In fact, I used to be someone else every now and then.”
Kieran frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a long story,” Sorak said. “But we still have about a day’s ride ahead. I’ll tell you all about it on the way to Altaruk.”
“Well then, let’s ride,” said Kieran. “I’d like to see just what’s waiting for us when we get there.”
“It’s me they’re waiting for,” said Sorak. “You do not need to involve yourself.”
“In case you have forgotten,” Kieran said, “you’ve saved my life twice, and my caravan once. The way I see it, I’m involved.”
“I did what I chose to do,” said Sorak. “You are under no obligation to me, Kieran.”
“That’s not the way I see it. And I will brook no arguments. I am still your superior officer, if you’ll recall.”
Sorak smiled. “Whatever you say, Captain.”
“I say we’ve wasted enough time,” Kieran replied. “Mount up.”
Chapter Eleven
It was, Matullus thought, a truly lousy way to start the day. His weak stomach notwithstanding, he had somehow managed to hold his gorge down when he walked into the room and saw the carnage. Perhaps he was getting used to it. And that was bad enough in itself.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. The bodies had been dead only a few hours, but in the desert, the morning temperatures rose quickly, and they were already stinking. And the blood. It was splattered everywhere. Its coppery smell commingled with the stench of bowels that had released at the moment of death. Matullus was still young and had never fought in a full-fledged campaign. He had never seen a war. But this morning, he finally understood what the old veterans meant when they said that a battlefield smelled like human waste.
Bad enough to be murdered, he thought, but to be found like this, mangled and begrimed with feces… if this was any indication of what it was like to die in battle, he could see no glory in it. Better to die old in bed, he thought, of a ruptured heart, wrapped in the arms of a young woman. That was a sort of glory he could understand.
The sound of flies buzzing in the room was almost as oppressive as the stench. He covered the lower half of his face with the free end of his turban and looked around.
“Gith’s blood!” said one of his men behind him, clapping his hand over his mouth and nose as he came in. “What kind of animal would do a thing like this?”
“The kind that walks on two legs,” Matullus said grimly. He stepped around and over the corpses, looking down at each one and giving it a cursory examination. “This one was stabbed in the stomach, disemboweled. This one had his throat slashed from ear to ear. Look at that stroke. It practically decapitated him. And this one had his back broken. This one had his neck snapped. The head was almost twisted right off the spinal column. This one was stabbed straight in the heart. The blade smashed right through the ribs. And this one was strangled. See the bruises on the neck? Look at this…” He laid his hand across the discolorations, matching his fingers to the marks. “The killer did it with just one hand.”
“Look at the white veils dropped on the bodies,” I one of the men said. “Just like with the last one.”
“A calling card, perhaps?” Matullus asked rhetorically. “Did the Veiled Alliance kill these men, or are we supposed to believe they were killed because they were in the Alliance, themselves?”
“Lord Ankhor isn’t going to like this,” one of the men said.
“No, he certainly will not,” Matullus agreed. “And Lord Jhamri will like it even less. This sort of thing is bad for business.”
“What are we going to do, sir?” one of the younger guards asked.
