A single tear trembles at the corner of his scarred eye, tangling in his long black lashes.
And I’m wrong. His gaze isn’t on the horizon.
It’s on the crops. He’s staring at the cultivated rows of plants, and if I didn’tknow better, I’d say he was regretting the loss as if he were the farmer who had nurtured it all—
The tear makes its escape and travels the slope of his cheek into the hollow underneath his hard jaw. He doesn’t brush it away, even as it slips down the side of his throat. He doesn’t seem to notice he’s crying any more than he does me or the horse.
The image of him staring out with such yearning over that which had been carefully tilled and tended should have been touching. Except he’s not a farmer. He’s dressed for war. And those plants have borne food that is now inedible because the people who should have harvested and consumed the vegetables are all dead.
So it’s a scene of sorrow and loss, a cautionary visual of what happens when violence enters a community.
“What ails you,” I say softly.
Merc wheels around, and for once, his hands don’t go for his weapons and he makes no aggressive response. He puts his arms up defensively, bracing for blows, and in the process, falls backward into one of the rows, crushing the shriveled leaves and rotten vegetables.
As he shrinks away from me, I almost meet his eyes—and for once, it’s not what I don’t want to know about a person that saves me. I want to afford him some privacy.
But it’s too late for that, isn’t it.
“I’m sorry.” I fan out my hands, and try to look unthreatening. Not much of a stretch, really. “I’m… I was just worried about you.”
All he does is stare over at me, like his mind is fighting the reality that’s just intruded on wherever he was.
Later, much, much later, I will reflect that this is where I started to fall in love with him. At the moment, I’m too concerned to think much about what I’m feeling. All I know with surety is I have suddenly seen that he and I have something in common: Underneath my cloak and his strength, we are not as dissimilar as I thought.
He, too, suffers in his own way.
“What are you doing here.” Merc’s voice cracks and now he scrubs at his face like he’s trying to get feeling back in it. “Why are you—”
“I saw that the horse was gone.”
“And you thought Julion is right about me and I took off.”
His head turns toward the field once more. When he doesn’t say anything, and makes no moves to get to his feet, I take a few steps in his direction.
“Talk to me, Merc.” As a strand of white hair waves into my face, I pull it away with impatience. “How can I help you.”
It’s a while before he answers: “I was a farmer, once.” He digs his hand into the soil again and clenches another fist full of the rich, dark crumble. “Before… I became something else.”
“You don’t have to live and die by the purchased sword.” There’s no response to that, so I press, “Can you not return to the north? Surely there is vacant land in the place I know you love. I heard the longing in your voice when you spoke of the mountains and the trees there.”
His reply, when it eventually comes, is low and carries a kind of defeat that I do not associate with his strength: “You know nothing of me.”
“You’re wrong.” When he shakes his head, I counter, “I’ve only been able to survive as I have by judging the people around me, especially the men. And you can decide where you go and what you do, more so than most people.”
“There is no going back for me.”
I think about what he said to me in the tunnel. “Then make a different forward.”
“I can’t.”
“Why.”
“Because of you.” He casts the soil aside, surges to his feet, and impatiently brushes his palm off on the seat of his britches. “I’ll meet you back at the house. We leave soonest, but the horse needs to eat more.”
Maybe that’s true. That’s not why he wants to stay out here alone, though.
“All right.”
