Come with me

It was dawn when Dragan woke her, and Freya stretched her aching back before she tried to sit. Lying near a failing fire with little to keep her from the stony ground, she wished for her tub of steaming water and the small luxuries of the citadel. When she did rise, scratching at her scalp and yawning, he put a mug of steaming tea and some bread from the soldiers' rations before her. It took a moment to realize Paske was gone.

"Where is he?" Her pulse kicked up, but she was willing to hear Dragan speak before she jumped to any conclusions. In the state he was in he was unlikely to have run away.

"Dead."

Two of the horses were saddled, and a selection of gear collected from the various packs lay across the fire from where she sat. "Bastard," she grinned. "I wanted to keep him around a bit longer."

"Eat," he said; "—and let's move."

Freya pushed herself to her feet and climbed a small outcrop of rock, looking along the crest they had gained and down into a small hollow running due south. Beyond the dip, the pass between peaks was clearly visible and the route looked straight forward enough. "Easier in daylight," she said half to herself. "We can cross the range there and then start moving east."

She accepted his silence as agreement. Riders might be closing by now, and the easy way had to be the best way. They needed to cover some ground. Returning to her tea and bread, she lifted the document cylinder and noted its weight. "Where are they?" She held up the empty case and frowned at him.

"Burnt."

"Why?" She dropped the cylinder and followed him as he carried packs to the horses and tied them in place. "What have we got to show the men, now?"

"Nothing. We don't need anything." He was keeping his back to her and it set her nerves on edge. He always hid his eyes when he had secrets to keep. Without looking up, he pushed back past her to the fire and began to stamp it out.

"No? Paske is dead and you burned the only other evidence I had of what he told me. It wasn't much but it would have shown them at least that the administrative officers are lying about the war to the people in the cities. No one is going to want to believe this; I hope you can explain it all when we get there."

"We're not going to the front." He was still keeping his face down, intent on small duties, speaking as if the decision was his to make and of no importance to her.

Damn it all, damn it, damn it; all her irritation whined in her throat and she stamped across the ground behind him. "We are! I told you. I am, whether you come with me or not." Running just to match his stride, she circled, tried to block the way toward the gear he was loading. Of course he'd caved too easily the night before, and she cursed the sun and moon and every instinct in her body that should have warned her this would come.

"I'm not. There's no point. The front's east, home's west."

"You can't go home, Dragan. You can't just go and not tell the men we've fought beside for fifteen long years that this is all for naught. Don't you want to stop this? Isn't it you who says there's nothing for men to fight and die over but someone else's gold?"

"I've said it before. Didn't stop anyone then." He ducked past her, reaching for a blanket roll and gathering it under his arm. As she stepped forward, he moved again to lift a half full food pack.

"But now we know it's true. Now we've heard it from the serpent's mouth. We can stop the fighting. Centuries of war, and we can put an end to it today!" She rushed to follow again as he moved to the horses.

"We have to move," he said, buckling the straps of the food pack to his saddle, handing the reins of her mount to her, and striding off toward the line of spare horses. "Those riders will be close behind by now."

"So that's it? That's the end of it all? I'm riding east to do my duty to my comrades, and you're going west to go home?" She was still trying to run, hobbling over tussocks and lichen-loose stones. When he stopped and turned she slipped in his tracks.

"What duty? You don't even know it's true, but if it is, if, then you don't have a duty to this empire or its war. You and I don't owe a single thing to anyone, except ourselves. We owe ourselves some peace. We've paid for it in blood."

"And the others? They don't deserve the same freedom?" She was going back. The fates had spun their wheel and after all she'd cursed and wailed she was at last going back. "I'm going back. This is my life; this is how it is supposed to be. They know me. The men who fight out there know me, and I won't be remembered as a coward who ran away from the fight. I will be the one who gave them all the freedom they earned with blood." He would not take away her glory. Not again.

"If it's true!" he bellowed. "If there is a single word he said that counts as more than bigoted spite." Coiling the horses' lead rope as he freed it, Dragan raised his arms; "Yah! Yah!" The startled horses jumped back, spun on their haunches and gathered to rush along the southward crest and over the valley toward the distant pass.

"If it's true." He spoke more quietly, but when he stepped in closer there was fire and fury in his eyes. "If. And if you go to those men, the ones you are so determined to be loved by; if you tell them everything you think you know, what then? Oh, you'll be their hero as always. You'll be the one that took away their purpose, and took away their pride, and gave them all the fiercest anger ever lit in any man." He straightened, pulling his mount in closer as he finished. "You'll be the one that turned them back from fighting on the mountainsides to fighting all across the empire, turning back to get their revenge on anyone who made them nothing." He stepped up onto his horse, looking down on her like she was a wretched urchin cowering in his shadow. "You'll be the one who turned them from a war with Verdan, to a slaughterhouse in the cities of their own kind."

* * * * *

He had one more jibe, and only one, and if she gave him cause to use it, it might be the one that broke his heart. Already he could see the cost of every word he'd said. The shadows in her cheeks and eyes had darkened, and a death mask glared up at him, shocked and silent. Every word had cut her, stripped away the fantasy she valued more than simple life or death, and left her with a stark reality he hoped she could not deflect.

"You're leaving me?" Her words were so small they barely crossed the cold space between them, but they struck him like ice picks. All the hours between midnight and dawn had not been enough to breed confidence. No conviction, no determination that there was no other way to play the hand he held, could suffice against the image of her, hurt and alone.

"We're both leaving. I'm going west." He was glad of the saddle and the strength of the horse under him. If he had to stand close enough to say the words he'd settled on, she'd have seen the fear that twisted in his stomach and trembled behind his knees. It was hot, rolling like eels in a bag; like a slimy black knot of betrayal. She'd have called his bluff. She still might. "Which way are you going to go?"

"Come with me," she begged.

She had no other way to argue, he could see it. Her arms reached, her shoulders slumped and her chest hollowed over the need. It was pleading from the core of who she was and what she believed. But what she believed would kill her. She was small and grey in the shadows of morning, frail and childlike. There was nothing of her to throw against the machinations of power, nothing but broken flesh and bone.

"Dragan, please. Come with me. This is how my life is supposed to be. I don't want peaceful freedom; I can't survive that." She jogged back, as fast on her feet as ever, but the lift into her saddle pulled on torn muscle and bone. She couldn't hide it, even though she made no sound. The pain flashed across her features like a flare. She nudged her horse closer. "We can do it this way, you and I. We survive, don't we? Everything. No matter what. We always make it through. We always have."

"I'm going home." It wasn't enough to say it. He wanted to beg too, as he'd done before, but the choice he had made for her then had been wrong. Even if it was the only one he could make, it had hurt her more than he had planned. He had hoped she would find some middle ground and some pride, but he couldn't have known the days in the citadel would take so much of her strength.

He pushed his horse forward, moving along the southward ridge, trying to focus on the terrain ahead as if finding the best way down was all that mattered. Four steps along and she hadn't followed. Five. Six. Seven. How many could he stand? How far could he go before he broke and turned back to plead?

"Dragan."

Reflex jerked the rein but he made his heel press the flank. He had to keep moving. Eight. Nine. Ten.

"Dragan, stop." She kicked her mount to follow and relief leaked from his lips like a prayer. He kept moving, and she kept following. "I tried. I gave it my best and it didn't work out, and here I am. Look at me. This is where I belong. And you belong with me, out here, in the mountains."

"No I don't." This was cause to stop. With this argument he could look her in the eye and speak from the heart. "I've had all I can stomach of this life. I've had enough of blood and enough of cold and enough of wondering if each day will be the last. I belong with you, but that's the end of it. Not out here. Not over the mountains. I have my life planned, I have had for years, and now I can see it, I can feel it. I can take hold of it, if you will just let go of this absurd fascination with fighting and come with me. Haven't you had enough?"

"No, I guess not." She even tried a small smile, but it didn't convince either of them and she let it go. "I miss it. I want to feel like me; like I'm alive."

He knew that was true. He'd seen the light of mania shine in her eyes; he knew the heat that rose in her flesh, the thrill and the laughter that burst from her lips when the risk was all or nothing.

There were other thrills. She would find new joy. Babies.

An image of Lenka pleading, begging for the chance to be a mother, came to mind and he nodded to himself. All Freya needed was the chance, too. If she could just find the peace within herself, she would know the longing every woman felt. She would be content. He knew it.

What she needed was safety. A place she could relax and let go of all the fears that she had lived with. A haven. A nest. And he had made that place for her, if only he could get her there. If only the rest of the world could be made to stay away.

Injured, with or without him, she would return to the field to die. There was no doubting it. But looking at her pain, at her longing, he could not bring himself to tell her that single damning truth. She was not what she wanted to be. Time and pain had cut away the edge she'd relied upon. That he'd relied upon, as well. But he could not say it. He could not twist that one last knife to cut her free from her dreams.

Her voice became a whisper, a desperate plea. "We can at least tell the men the truth. We can leave after that. We can leave them to fight, or to rebel, or to get drunk in celebration, but don't we owe them that? Can't you give me just that one concession? Please?"

No, he couldn't. If they rode down the mountain together, they would die there. Her injury would damn them both to death and there was no need for it. Everything he'd ever wanted was waiting for them just beyond the forest, in the foothills and pastures around the Iultea River. He couldn't tell her the truth, and he'd never lied to her. But now, there was too much at stake to quibble over details.

"It isn't true." The words burst from his lips. There was no chance now to consider truth and lies and the ethics of right and wrong. It was as simple as choosing to live. It was his only choice. "Nothing Paske said to you is true. He told me. Last night." The sudden darkness that flooded her eyes almost gave him pause. His words had hit their mark. He'd found the one lie that might keep her from martyrdom. There was only one more nail to drive home, and she would be held. "He's already branded you a coward. If you return to Orlik, or if you go to the front, you'll be flayed as a deserter."