It pains him that Yaelic would even ask that. He’s a child. Children do not fight in wars. Basuin will not allow that. He walks away, content to not think of this anymore, but Yaelic runs after him.
“The army is far! Our camp isn’t in danger. I want to come with you.”
“I said no.”
Yaelic runs around him, trying to cut him off, and Basuin stops. “Why not? I can fight—I want to.” His eyes are steeled with determination, small fists curled up at his sides. But Yaelic is so small still. A child, not reaching past Basuin’s hip. And so skinny; collarbones severe where they peek out of his robe and chicken legs all thin out the hem of it.
Basuin bends, crouching to Yaelic’s height, eyes narrowed in a glare. “What do you know of fighting?”
It doesn’t shake him at all. “I’ll learn. You can teach me.”
“Absolutely not.” Basuin reaches out and shoves Yaelic’s shoulder—not hard, but enough to make the boy go reeling back. “You’d get hurt. Worse, dead.”
A flash of Hami’s broken body slams into him, knocks the air out of him. The image of Yaelic’s hair—white-golden and soaked with blood—crawls across his mind and he can’t force it out.
Yaelic wears a look of hurt. Upset and betrayed. “I want to fight.” He looks away, emerald eyes beginning to well up with tears.
“Why?” Basuin asks, though he’s never been able to answer that himself. Never once did he wish for someone to save him from the devastation and death when he signed his name away to the legion. He always wanted to fight. He wanted to keep his mother alive, and if fighting promised that, then Basuin would fight.
“I want to protect them,” Yaelic whispers, a hitch in his voice. “All the people I love.”
And now, Basuin fights to keep Ren alive, too. What a cycle life is.
Basuin’s knees creak as he rises again. “No,” he answers still. “You won’t be made a soldier.” Not like he was forced to.
When he looks back—and he shouldn’t have looked back—Yaelic is crying into the sleeve of his robe. Grief is so hard. Children shouldn’t have to bear it.
In the woods, dagger in hand, Haaman sheathes the blade to loop their skein over their hip. Traces of sorrow crease folds at the corner of their eyes, and Bass pretends not to notice. Haaman looks to where Yaelic sits, still crying, and then glances back at Bass. But Bass refuses an answer.
“Ready?” he asks, giving Haaman a chance to back out. A door to leave through.
But Haaman gives him a curt nod. “Let’s go, before day breaks.”
And before day breaks, Bass runs his blade through the last soldier, blood from the wound trickling down his hand and dripping from his wrist as his boot shoves the body to the ground. He gulps down air. He feels like he’s back in the past. Years ago, older than Yaelic is, when his hair was shorn on the sides and he wore his locks pulled back in a wolf’s tail.
When he loved his sergeant, a man with bony hands and a slender form—a man he shouldn’t have loved, but he did anyway.
Gods, Bass always loves people he shouldn’t.
Haaman brings a dirty rag they found amidst the legion’s supplies to the river near camp, wiping the blood from their arms before it begins to dry. They offer it to Bass, who does the same. He’ll need a good wash in the river still, to rinse the smoke and blood from his hair, before—
“You have to stop.” Yaelic finds them at the bank, eyes glazed over as he looks at all the blood Bass and Haaman wear. Bass wants to cover his emerald eyes with his bloodied hands. “Before Am-sa finds out.”
—Ren finds out. Basuin needs to wash up in the river before Ren finds the blood trickling from his brow.
He runs the ratty cloth over his blade carefully before sheathing it on his back. Then, he crouches down, looking up to Yaelic.
“If you won’t stop,” Yaelic says, “then you have to bring me with you.”
“This will be the last,” he promises. And he means it. The blood has stained all the scars and creases of his hands. “We’ve bought ourselves some time.” What an excuse for his bloodshed. Basuin acts as if he’s done this to keep the army off their trail, rather than in return for how they’ve hurt Ren.
“And Am-sa will heal?” Yaelic asks, his eyes full of sadness. More than anything, there’s trust in him when he looks at Bass. That much trust could kill him. That much trust could make Bass forget who he is. A god, this time. But a soldier, once.
But Bass nods. “She will,” he answers, though he doesn’t know if it’s true.
Yaelic’s sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. “What about the army?”
Something in him feels like death. Bass swallows, apple of his throat jumping, because no fucking boy should wonder that. Not even him, when he was a boy too, wondering if his father would come home. Wondering how he would take care of his mother after his father’s shield was returned, body left on a battlefield.
