In the split-second before he hit, Simus pulled his blow. Not all the way, but just enough, just enough to render...
His mace struck Yers’s head.
Yers slid down in a boneless pile.
In the silence that followed, Simus stood, heaving in gulps of air. Yers didn’t move, but he was still breathing.
Simus took a step forward, and stood over Yers’s body, mace and shield in hand. He gave the crowd around him a hard look. “I am the Warlord of this army,” he roared out in his anger and frustration. “Who would offer challenge? Who would rescind their oaths?”
He waited in the last light of the sun, the air thick with silence. Simus drew a breath, feeling the sting of sweat in his eye. He blinked to clear his vision and watched with satisfaction as the warriors around him knelt and bowed their heads until none were left standing except Elder Haya and Weaponsmaster Seo.
Haya stepped to his side. “Warlord,” she said, acknowledging his rank with a nod of her head. “No one will offer challenge. No one will rescind.”
Simus waited, looking over the bowed heads, waiting for a protest. “So be it,” he said. “Tsor, you are Second. See to Yers. Get him to the healer.”
Tsor rose to his feet. “I will see it done.”
Seo was at his other side. “Let me see to your weapons, Warlord.”
Simus glanced over, but Snowfall was talking to Elois, so he let Seo take his mace and shield from his hands. With Haya at his side, he stepped inside the tent, grateful for the dim coolness within. Simus stopped. It seemed like a fog surrounded his mind and body.
“Dea-mine,” Simus spoke, his voice sounding odd to his own ears. He blinked, trying to focus on Haya, but she was right by his side.
“Battle-fatigue.” Haya was brisk as she started unbuckling his armor. “Not a surprise, given your efforts this day. Let me see to you.”
Her words echoed, as if from a distance, just as it had when he’d been in her tents. That familiar sound meant ‘safe’ and ‘secure’, and Simus let himself relax into that reassurance.
And just as she had in the past, she stripped him down, bid him drink water as she wiped him down with cool cloths, and then chivied him into his pallet and under a blanket. “Sleep, Warlord,” she commanded, as only a thea could.
Simus gave in at that point, closing his eyes. For just a moment, he relished the pleasure of victory, but sleep was swift to claim its own.
Snowfall reached forSimus’s banner, her hands shaking. Tsor was stripping down Yers’s banner, and his own, his face a snarl of anger. She’d lower Simus’s, then hers, then follow them into the tent. Her heart was pounding in her throat even as she moved. It had been so close, the warrior with the cross-bow, then Yers. It was a wonder that—
Someone came up from behind her.
Snowfall spun, dagger in hand without thought, Simus’s banner in the other.
Elois stood there, grim in the dying sunlight. She glanced at Snowfall’s banner, still streaming from the pole, then fixed her gaze on Snowfall.
“I offer challenge, Snowfall of the warrior-priests, for Token-bearer.”
Simus woke, warmand relaxed, and then drew a breath as the memories hit him. He’d won.
At a price.
He lay there, letting it all sink in. Wyrik’s treachery. Yers’s betrayal.
Wyrik, he dismissed. That warrior had found his own death. But Yers...that struck deeper. Simus wondered if there had been anything he could have done to convince Yers otherwise.
Perhaps, and for that he regretted events deeply. But Yers had chosen a public display to rescind, and had then chosen to challenge, making his truths known. And that, Simus had to answer.
Relief swept through him. He’d survived the Trials. Now to face the Council and deal with the weapons they would wield.
With a laugh, he swept back the blankets, relishing the cool air on warm skin and—
—drew a sharp breath as his body reminded him of another truth.
He groaned and grit his teeth against the pain. Stiff and sore, the price of fighting so many over the course of a day.
