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I huff. “Please?”
He crooks a finger at me, and I reluctantly lean down closer to him. He kisses me hard on the lips. “Don’t ever get taken again, do you hear me?” he growls.
“Like I had a choice,” I grumble, watching him go for the key.
When Kata and I are free, I hold the trembling girl while Ion and Noé go off into the trees on horseback in search of the two missing men and Luka gets the story in fits and bursts from the rest of us. It seems one of Rionnon’s friends, all of whom are members of Bron’s little band, heard whispers this morning of a plan to take someone from the stronghold. They’d gathered their group together and followed when the men departed, only to find out I was the intended target. Half of them went back to warn Bron and the others stayed with the men.
A few minutes later, through the trees, comes muffled bellowing. I tense, but Luka puts a hand on my shoulder as, in a break in the noise, a distinctive bird call sounds. “It’s Noé.”
He then directs the children to find some rocks to make a small fire pit.A fire pit?
My brows pull down in question and he gives me a wink. “On occasion, my little raven has been known to thirst for vengeance.”
His meaning dawns on me in small, incremental lurches that leave me breathless . . . and grappling with the idea of inflicting that kind of pain on someone even if it is Mattice Dulat. I’m still reeling when Noé and Ion ride up, both with men laid across their pommels. It’s clear that Ion’s cargo is dead when he pushes the body to the ground, revealing a gaping chest wound.
“Took it a bit too far?” Luka asks wryly.
Ion shrugs. “He wasn’t willing to surrender. Unlike that one.” He gestures at Dulat, who’s bound and gagged, bleeding from the arrow wound I gave him. “That one surrendered right away.”
Luka grabs Dulat’s collar and pulls him to the ground. He lands with a thump on his arms which are tied behind his back, starting up a litany of muffled screeches.
“Shut up,” Luka growls, kicking him in the ribs. “Ion, we’re going to need a fire.”
Ion doesn’t even bat an eyelash, just dismounts and starts rummaging for what he needs in the saddle bags of the horse he’s riding.
I crouch down beside Dulat and study him. He’s awash in terror, and I imagine I must have worn much the same expression when he came at me with that glowing blade almost two years ago. The coward struggles against his bindings and tries to communicate something through the gag, but all I can do is stare.
“A’Deve?”
Next to me, Rionnon bends over, his hands on his knees.
“Yes?”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
Returning my gaze to Dulat, I say, “I’m not sure yet.” Am I really going to torture this man as he did me? Maybe I should try to scrounge together some compassion, to focus on forgiveness instead of revenge. That is the Mother’s way after all. Isn’t it my responsibility to model virtue over wickedness? If not for myself, then for these children?
Maybe. But I’m not going to.
Mattice Dulat showed me no compassion, and he will now reap what he sowed.
Luka calls Rionnon away from me, telling him Yvette will expect her mule – that’s still tied in the middle of the road – to be back in its pen before she gets home.
“Yes, my deve,” he says, laying a comforting hand on my shoulder.
I grab on to his hand, holding him there with me. “Thank you,” I tell the boy. “You will make a great warrior one day.”
He brightens at that and there’s a notable skip to his step as he and his friends go for the mule before heading home.
I push to my feet and watch Luka place the blade of a dagger into the crackling flames of the newly-lit fire. The weight of the situation really begins to bear down on me.
Noé pulls his own dagger from its sheath and proceeds to cut away Dulat’s clothing until he’s left naked and moaning with dread. My stomach turns. I should be cherry-picking my targets, but all I can think about in the face of the man’s pale, fleshy body is my own suffering; the searing pain, the smell of my burning skin, the sound of my piercing screams.
To escape the nausea it causes, I move to Luka’s side as he returns from hoisting one of the corpses into the wagon. He picks up on my turmoil immediately, lifting one of his arms to tuck me against his side.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“You wouldn’t think less of me?” I ask quietly.
