As the crowd flowed away, Finnvid noticed a small cluster of boys, wearing the leather tunics of young recruits, trying not to be washed away with the men. He noticed the one in front, a bit smaller than the others, but with a way of standing, a fierce, stubborn expression on his face . . . Finnvid nudged Theos, and pointed his chin in the boy’s direction.
Theos stiffened, then relaxed. “I suppose he’s old enough,” he muttered, and he linked his fingers with Finnvid’s, then walked them both across the ground toward the boys. One of his sleeves was dark with slowly drying blood and there was more gore splashed all over him; most of the boys shrank back at his approach, but not the little one in front.
“Damios,” Theos said, and the boy nodded seriously. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to welcome you to the barracks.”
“You were on a mission,” the boy said with clear pride. It seemed that having a father on a mission was even better than having a father greet him in his new home.
“I was. And it was important. But I wish I could have been two places at once.”
The boy shrugged, then let his eyes wander to the blood on Theos’s sleeve. “Are you hurt?”
Theos shook his head. “That’s not mine.”
“That’s what I thought.” And finally, Damios’s face broke into a grin, wild and real and so much like his father’s that Finnvid’s chest tightened. “They didn’t eventouchyou! That was good fighting! I’m going to fight like that someday, right?”
Theos glanced at Finnvid, then returned his attention to the boy. “Maybe. If you want to, I can help you learn. But if you want to do something else . . . maybe you could do that, instead.”
The boy frowned. “What elseisthere?”
Another look at Finnvid, and this time Theos held his gaze. “There’s trees and bugs, as I understand it, and probably a few other things too. I don’t really know; I’m just learning about it all myself. But it’s pretty interesting. I think, well, I can’t say what Windthorn is going to do. We’ll have to have elections as soon as we can and see what the new people in charge want. For me, though? I think I’m going to try to learn about some new things.”
“And stop fighting?” one of the other boys asked, disbelieving.
“No,” Theos said quickly. “We’re Torian. We never stop fighting. But maybe, sometimes, we can do other things too.”
The boys seemed mostly satisfied with that answer, and Theos squeezed his son’s shoulder with his less bloody hand and then sent the group back to the barracks.
Theos turned slowly to Finnvid. “I’m always going to fight,” he said. Clearly he’d meant his earlier words as much for Finnvid as for the boys. There was a concession in them, but not a surrender.
“I know,” Finnvid said. It wasn’t as if he could change anything. And maybe he didn’t want to. Would Theos still be Theos without a blade in his hand? He stepped forward and reached out for Theos’s bloody arm. When Theos tried to wipe it off on his tunic, Finnvid caught him, and slid his clean white fingers between Theos’s red-and-brown ones. “Iknow,” he repeated.
It took a while for Theos to drop his head into a nod. “You know,” he finally agreed.
And they stood there, together, as the bodies were carted away and the reeve came out to scold them about the violence and badger them about the next steps, and the wind was cold and Finnvid had no home and no belongings and no real idea about his future. But he gripped Theos’s hand tight, and he was content.
***
“You need to decide!” Andros stood up and braced his hands on the table as he leaned over toward Theos. “Now. No more delays.”
“Fine. I won’t run.” Theos smiled. “There, that was easy. Let’s go find Finnvid and get dinner.”
“No, you rust-stained simpleton, you need to decide the other way! You need to declare yourself a candidate! You’re the one who said we should have an interim leader until a new warlord and captain can be chosen, and people like the idea. They likeyouridea, so you should be the one to follow up.”
“That’s terrible logic. And I’m not good at that sort of thing; I’m not a politician.”
“That’s why we need you. This shouldn’t be about politics, or sneaking around.” Xeno sounded confident, and the other men at the table, a mix of Sacrati and trusted Torian regulars, nodded in agreement. “We need a leader. And you can lead.”
“I wouldn’t know what direction to lead usin. I have no idea what the answers are to any of this.”
“That’s the best part,” Andros said. “You haven’t got your own agenda, so you won’t be trying to push us in any specific direction. You’ll just help us set up the rules for discussion, and then you’ll make damn sure the rules are followed.”
Put that way, the job did seem like something Theos could manage. But he knew there was more to it than Andros was admitting. “Spring’s not far off. We’ll have to sort out a plan for dealing with the Elkati and the other valleys.”
“Aye, we will. And we should do it after lots of talk, and the talk should follow the rules that you set up for it.”
Theos sighed. It had been six days since the Sacrati had pulled Andros out of his cell and pushed the warlord into it, and Andros seemed to have spent every moment of his freedom investigating and planning and working. Zenain had been tracked down and imprisoned, the Torian soldiers who’d been under his command had been questioned, and still there was so much more to do.
“Don’t you just want to—to eat and drink and have a soak and a fuck?” Theos knew he sounded like a petulant recruit, but he didn’t care. “Do we have to be sobusyall the time?”
