(THOB) Chapter 85: Try As We May (Patreon)

A while later Ezril and his brothers were gathered, awaiting Noem’s words.

“Reinforcements will be coming once news reaches Lord Bilvion,” he told them. “I have already sent a man with word.”

“And the captives?” Darvi asked.

“They will be questioned when the scholar arrives.”

“Scholar?”

“Yes, Father Tenshaw. Scholar.” Noem regarded Darvi a moment. “I see you weren’t told of this.”

Darvi’s brows furrowed in mild annoyance. Still, he kept it from his voice when he replied. “We were not.”

Olufemi tapped Ezril. What happened? he signed, fingers working with more adeptness, his skill evolving with the passage of time. We kept some alive.

Ezril sighed and put his hands to work in secrecy, as his brother had. Something about a scholar who knows how to speak their language coming.

Olufemi nodded his head in understanding. He paused. Ezril could see the amount of thought his brother was putting into whatever he was going to sign next.

What’s a scholar?

Ezril mused, not certain how to explain it. A scribe.

…And what’s a scribe?

Ezril thought a while. An idea popped into place and he began signing. A polymath that is not a priest. He smiled at the understanding that crossed his brother’s face.

Now Olufemi frowned. You didn’t tell me, he signed. Darvi didn’t tell us.

Ezril remained ever so fascinated at how his brother never seemed to lay blame on him. As always, he slid the blame elsewhere. The Lord Commander told none of us, he signed back.

A secret? Olufemi seemed slightly perplexed. Why?

“Because he can.”

Olufemi hated it when he replied with the realm tongue and he frowned at it. Ezril ignored the frown and returned his attention to Noem.

Olufemi had never cared much for information, always being a man who needed only be pointed in the right direction. However, he handled it differently when he thought the information was kept from him on purpose.

“Humans should not keep secrets,” he’d said on one of the nights he’d spent awake with Ezril in the seminary. “It’s not very nice. They are already difficult to trust, so why should they make it harder.”

It was a few days after their run-in with the Venin guild. Ezril spent that night explaining to him that Olbi had done what he thought was best. What he thought was safest for his brothers.

It had taken a lot of convincing before Olufemi had let it lie. But Ezril always suspected he had never truly forgiven Olbi for it and had never grown to trust the brother, not that he had trusted any of their brothers to begin with.

“I can still trust you, can I not, brother?” It was a question to which Ezril had nodded to rather hesitantly. “And you will continue to trust me?” Olufemi had added, the innocence of his age present in his voice. Again, Ezril had responded with a nod however skeptical.

The Captain’s attention was turned to the rest of the field. To the west laid four piles of bodies, abounding upon each other, mountains in their existence, two for the realm’s dead, and two for the Merdendi. The captives watched their dead dragged off by foes they had not too long ago tried to slay. It was unceremonious and performed with unhidden disdain. This is war, Ezril told himself. The words were becoming something of a mantra or, perhaps, a justification for the things they did. The victors embellish their victory.

But it forgives nothing, a voice echoed in his head. The next words seemed more of a warning than a reminder. All actions will be accounted for one day.

Ezril shook his head, wishing he could do away with his observer. Some would refer to the voice as a conscience, something Father Thane had done well to teach them was a gift of Truth to guide the actions of men. But Ezril knew better than to believe it to be his conscience. If there was one thing his life had taught him, it was that he had none.

Refocusing on the captives, he answered. That day is not today.

The Merdendi were a strange bunch as captives, not that Ezril was familiar with what captives were meant to look like, save the occasional troublemakers rounded up in the underbelly and the members of the Venin guild who had been foolish enough to venture into the Umunna forest in chase of him and his brothers all those years ago.

However, the Merdendi sat too still in their place on the grass bound to each other by ropes, unmoving, not even at the slightest itch. Their position and stillness reminded Ezril of an array of statues he had come across once upon a time when he had broken into theGreen Horn Lord’s manor with the older kids when he was littler. They had almost been caught by a maid and had escaped by the skin of their teeth. Olnic had been more than generous with their punishment upon their return, his especially.

Ezril smiled at the memory. His time there had been more than memorable. The memories had been good. Until they had been bad.

“A pity they will not receive a pyre worthy of their sacrifice,” Captain Noem said, a genuine sadness in his voice.

For all Ezril’s dislike for the man, he couldn’t discard the fact that the captain did care for his men. Noem’s gaze focused on a spot above Ezril’s shoulder with mild interest. “I hope the priestess would be willing to say the final rites for my dead.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Lenaria replied casually as she walked up to them. “I am a priestess of Truth, not a sister of the church,” she continued, her tone conversational, “I understand little of his love and less than a priest of his wrath. And your men died in battle, I’m fairly certain they would rather a priest who understands the life they lived to an extent administer their final rites.”

“Father Tenshaw,” Noem requested without grudge.

Darvi gave a single nod in affirmation. “Gladly.”

Darvi excised the final rites with a skill that seemed practiced. It was brief. The sun was at its peak through it. Truth be told, it was not Ezril’s first time witnessing the administration of the final rites of a man. He had seen a great many over the years. However, watching Darvi’s dredged up memories of Divine, his body resting motionless on the pyre, how his cloths had gone alight with the flames as the Monsignor had administered his rites.

Ezril frowned, annoyed at how most of his sorrows were born in the seminary but had scarcely been its fault. They may have led us to death, but they never wished it upon us.

Salem’s grip tightened on his poleaxe, knuckles white as Noem set the pile of bodies alight. Of all the brothers, death had been the most unfair to him, digging its fangs into his very existence and never letting go. Sometimes Ezril wondered if his brother thought of it like a limb long lost in battle. A phantom pain, the old doctor, Nixarv, called it. Still, his brother was part to blame for pain’s hold on him. Never willing to let go, he gave as much over to it as it took from him.

The bodies burned. Soon the air was tinged with the smell of burning hair and flesh. It was a smell Ezril learned early. He was more resistant to it than most, however. It always reminded him that he had smelled worse; that human flesh could burn and smell worse than this. It was a true pity that the men couldn’t have their own pyre. They would have to accept what was given to them, each body serving as a pyre for the next. Comradery even in death, a last service to each other. He wondered if they were aware of it beyond the threshold.

Perhaps they are.

The captives remained unmoving as the bodies burned and the soldiers set fire to their own dead. But there was a difference to their silence. It wasn’t one of reluctance, neither was it the same as when they had been captured. There was a sense of remorse in it. A solemnity for the loss of life. They, too, mourned in their silence, not just for their dead, but for thedead.

Amidst all these, there was the hint of a feeling Ezril couldn’t reconcile with the savages the realm had forever taught them to be: Respect. Whether it was simply for the dead or only those lost in battle, he couldn’t say. But one thing he could say for certain was savages didn’t show respect to their enemies, be they dead or alive. So what did that make them? If not savages, what are they?

“What troubles you, brother?”

Ezril turned, moved from his thoughts. Darvi was walking up to him, their brothers left behind to listen to whatever words Noem had for them. Whatever the man had felt towards them during the early hours of the morning seemed fairly abated.

The truth would be easy, he thought. However, a truth would be wiser. “We are being watched.”

His brother’s expression remained unfazed but when he spoke there was a worry to his voice.

“Merdendi?”

Ezril shook his head in uncertain disagreement. It was unlike the morning. Then it had been a certainty that could have had him chasing down their observer if he had wished to the moment he had noticed. This, however, was different. It was more a knowledge guided by instinct. A feeling akin to that of two cats fighting in an alley over the remains of a piece of fish perhaps days old while the bigger cat with a claim to the territory watched from its cover, unknown to them, its power well above theirs. At least they think theirs superior.

“Do we send brother Olufemi?” Darvi asked certain their brother would suffice.

Again, Ezril shook his head. The motion carried more certainty than the last. “It would prove pointless,” he replied. “Leave them be. They mean us no harm, and we cannot find them, try as we may.”