Page 132 of Cursed Shadows 5

There is a sense down there, a supressed urgency that’s thrumming beneath the surface. Warriors shift their weight too much, from boot to boot; low murmurs hum not unlike wasps circling their own nest; some have inched out of formation, chinslifted, and their gazes aimed at the spanning darkness of the fields and the forests surrounding them.

There is no family out here to greet them, no towns nor villages nearby to see, no matter how focused their stares might be.

But the excitement of returning home, it warps reality, distorts rationale, and can turn so quickly into agitation.

“Let them line up for the ravens,” Daxeel decides. “It will ease them—give them something to do right now.”

Cad’s jaw tightens as, slowly, he turns a look up at General Agnar, dismounted and standing at the mouth of the stronghold with a half-dozen officials. “If he allows it.”

“So take parchment and quills down to them now, let them sit, ponder, and write.”

“Distract them, you mean,” Cad says. “Before they realise the inevitable.”

Daxeel turns a blank, patient look on him.

“We lost too many,” Cad scoffs, “and with the litalves out there in the dark, with what they did,accomplished… I doubt we will be leaving this stronghold and returning to our families this phase.”

This stronghold will be their home for the next few phases, at least.

Daxeel won’t write.

Not until his last, final hour here, in a fortress planted in the seams between fields and forests; a two-hour trek from the bridge that arches into the nearest settlement of the Blood Court.

It is a wild area. The stronghold is all the structure that manages to survive. Homes once built out here, villages dared to stand for a moment, so the ground sank them into the earth and swallowed them whole.

It remains wild, so it is forever remote.

If Daxeel writes to Nari on his final phase here, it will take him a full phase to reach the Midlands—and that is supposing she is still there.

A whole year to him might only have been three months to her… But three months is too much time to have left her alone in her misery.

He said he would write to her upon his return, and that he hoped she would come to meet him.

It was a foolish hope.

Cad considers him for a moment before, “The quicker we start, the sooner we are out of here. And you can finally stop moping over that bracelet of hers.”

Daxeel grunts a disturbed sound, his hand instinctively reaching down to the thigh pocket of his leathers. There, the bracelet is nestled, safe.

Without a word, he shoves into harsh, punishing steps—and makes for the congested crowd of shivering, cowering kuris. Their faces are unrecognisable as human at all beneath the dirt and grime and, in some cases, blood.

There are many kuri deaths to account for in the paperwork, many causes to explain. But it isn’t a total loss.

These kuris who shrink back at his advance, unable to flee as they are surrounded by armed guards, are more in numbers than they ever expected.

Each unit was estimated to snare a dozen kuris, but at least thirty cower away from him as he comes to a stop next to a red-haired guard, and he starts to count them off, one by one.

Lower officials come out of the stronghold with cloth collars, numbers painted onto them, and those are then fastened around the necks of the kuris.

Daxeel works through the monotony of this duty, and it takes him more than an hour before the kuris are locked, weeping, in the cage.

He could steal a moment to join the foot-warriors, those who sit and lounge on the dirt, share the last of the supplies from overripe wines and dehydrated meat strips, as they write out their messages.

It was a good distraction.

But not one for himself.

Daxeel told her he would write when he is returned, and that if she still considered choosing him, even a little, she should come and meet him.

---