Chapter 32
Basuin sits in front of the campfire, looking at the faces across from him through the wavering flames. The crackle and spit of the eaten embers blares through the campsite, blocking out any other sounds from the trees. He’s thought about standing, pacing around everyone in a large circle. But Bass is no captain here. No god, either. Right now, he’s just a man at war.
A man on the hunt for another. Basuin’s last murder will be Kensy’s. How bitter.
“I would ask one thing from you,” he says, voice bent of steel. Two sets of eyes stare at him, but those obsidian ones that always haunt him are kept to the ground. Ren’s knees are pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around them. “You will journey toward the forest that the legion has yet to reach.” He isn’t asking. “You’ll be safe there, until this is over.”
He’s lying. Bass doesn’t know if anyone will make it out of here alive. This forest may very well burn to the ground. But if he can give them the illusion of safety, in any way, he will. It simmers beneath his skin—an amalgam of guilt and anger.
There is no peace to be had here. No matter what Ren says.
Qia’s black ponytail whips around with her head in an instant. “What? Am-sa—”
“You’re going.” Ren’s words are sharp and cutting. “To the northwest.”
“No,” Qia begs. “I want to fight!”
Ren’s eyes close, a movement in her jaw that gives away the hurt she feels. “Hush,” she bites, and Qia’s mouth shuts.
“Yaelic will go with you,” Bass speaks up. And despite the wild look Yaelic gives him, desperate and crushed, he’s grown up too much in these last weeks. He can pitch a tent. Start a fire.
Yaelic looks between Bass and Qia, and then again, biting his lip like he can’t decide to agree or to fight. But ultimately, it’s Qia who shoots to her feet.
“I won’t!” she says, her eyes blazing with a heated anger. “I want to fight. For Hami and for Ko.” Her voice doesn’t sound so much like a child’s anymore, no matter how much it wavers with newfound confidence.
“I won’t go either,” Yaelic says, a firm nod to his head. He looks over the fire at Bass. “I bound myself to you. That won’t change. I’m not afraid.”
Bass’ hands tighten into fists. Yaelic sounds so grown already, though he is younger than Bass was when he went to war. “I can’t watch over you in the midst of battle,” he snaps, a growl on his lips. “You may not be afraid, but—”
But he is.
“Let them fight,” comes a voice from the edge of the woods. Haaman steps out from the darkness of the woods, face and arms covered with dirt. There are red, angry scratches lining their cheeks and forearms; weariness glosses over their eyes. “This is their home, too.”
These are the exact same words he overhead from Haaman’s tent long nights ago, where they swore their life for Ko’s. Gods can be so cruel.
But Kensy is not a god. He is simply a man.
Perhaps it’s time for Basuin to be cruel now, for he’s a god. This is his forest. Maybe it’s time to answer the legion’s cruelty—Kensy’s cruelty—with his own.
If there are to be battlefields in the land of gods, then let Basuin be the god to level them.
“Blood will be spilled,” Haaman says. “The forest has seen enough of it. But if we don’t fight back, then what are we?” They stare into the fire, eyes glazed by heat and grief. “I’m not a coward.”
They have nothing left, the wolf-man says from somewhere deep and dark inside of him, the cavity of his body. They fight for someone already dead. We go to battle for someone still living.
“Then we fight,” Bass says. He stands, wiping dirt from his hands on his trousers. “Are you afraid to die?”
Haaman stares at him. “Are you?”
The night doesn’t sleep. Every cicada is out in the dark singing a song of futility and loss. The anticipation is lead in his stomach, anxiety bleeding from him. His mind is rife with nightmares cemented in reality. Nightmares that chase him even while his eyes are open and sleep eludes him. He goes through his list once again.
First Sergeant Curk of Ferghit. Rough-hewn and merciless for anyone but his allies. Run through with a serrated blade and stuck under a snow bank. Recovered.
Second Sergeant Aless of Harker. Always diplomatic, always soft-spoken, but packed a punch no one would see coming. Beheaded. Body not recovered.
Third Sergeant Isaniel of Medeia. Bled out on the snow from a stab wound. Fuck, Isaniel. Gods, fuck. Partially recovered.
Fourth Sergeant Mekal of Altea. A silent body that could move through the thinnest of shadows. They had a daughter at home, left waiting. Shot through the stomach. Recovered.
