“What?” Hannuman was shocked. It was genuine, if Batanya was reading him right. “The beacon worked after all these years? How can that be?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Batanya caught the two brothers rounding on Perro, their eyes wide. “Yes,” she said loudly, to keep Hannuman’s attention. “We sent a rescue squad immediately. They are almost all dead because they answered the summons of your beacon. We three came to find the remaining bodies.”
Hannuman glared at her. “The hell you say!”
“I do.”
“Who are you?” Hannuman asked Vandler directly. Apparently, he was done talking to Batanya.
Batanya didn’t dare look at Clovache.
“I’m Vandler, a healer and destination mage from the Collective.”
Hannuman could not have looked blanker if Vandler had declared he was a monkey. “I am one of the great mages of my age,” Hannuman told them with calm certainty.
Vandler didn’t speak. He might have been struck wordless by the claim.
“Do they not still talk of me?” Hannuman said.
“From time to time,” Vandler answered carefully. “It’s been twenty years.”
Marla had backed away from her husband, but she was still on one knee. She was listening intently.
“Twenty years,” Hannuman said slowly. “That long. I lost track.”
All three of the sons had had birthdays, which surely they observed somehow or another. That should have marked the time clearly enough.
“I had long given up working on the beacon. Who repaired it and activated it?” Hannuman said, as if the Britlingens were sure to know.
Vandler shrugged. “There is no way to tell. The signal came in quite faintly. It took the techs some time to be sure they’d tracked it to the right location.”
The old man’s eyes swiveled to the three young men and he fixed his sons with a terrible glare. “Was it you, Bertol? Or you, Ronoldo? Or...Perro?” And Hannuman’s voice snapped on the last name.
It was a frightening glare if you were a kid with an overbearing and conceited father. Marla cringed, too.
Batanya hated bullies.
“Does it make any difference?” Batanya demanded. She wanted to skip this family drama and begin their exit from this place,with or without Hannuman. She had to accept that her team had died for an asshole. There was so much to do at the Collective. Relatives, if the mercs had any, had to be told. Bodies had to be committed to the fire. “We are here to take you back. Are you ready to go? What about your family?”
“Myfamily?” Hannuman looked as if he couldn’t understand the connection.
There was an appalled silence as they all realized that Hannuman had not even considered taking his wife and sons with him.
Marla went from cringing to furious. It was great. She was on her feet, eyes flashing, her plait of copper hair swinging. Her spear was in her hand in a throwing position.
“No, no, stop, please stop,” said Clovache in a monotone.
Batanya had to bite her lips to hide a smile.
In one violent motion, Marla broke her spear over her knee and tossed down the two pieces. “I divorce you!” she said in Britlingen, and then repeated it in Coturigan.
Her sons were frozen with astonishment. Suddenly, Perro grinned.
“Excuse me,” Vandler said loudly. “Hannuman, what is your intention? Will you stay here with these good people, your wife, your sons? Or do you intend to return to the Collective with us? And when you have answered that, maybe you will impress us with the story of how you came to be the only survivor of the mining company party.”
Hannuman skipped the hard questions for the easy one. “Because I popped on a shield to cover myself at the first sign of an attack. Everyone else was killed within minutes. But the local people saw what I had done, and that made them curious about me. They kept me alive to learn from me. Gradually they understood what I could do for them. I became their king.”
Vandler had popped a shield overallof them when they’d been attacked.
