Page 117 of King's Warrior

Bodies lay everywhere, some Herixian and Glendoran, but mostly Craician.

“To me!” Cass shouted from somewhere to their left.

Rufe sprinted in that direction.

The empire’s forces had a group of Craicians in their center. Some of the enemy continued to fight, others huddled together, defeated.

A man with what might have been a captain’s insignia suddenly whirled, slashing his own soldier across the throat.Don’t let them take you alive.Rufe had heard the Craicians would rather die than surrender, but had doubted the tales until now.

The Craicians turned on each other. Hacking, stabbing, and dying too fast for anyone to intervene. When only the captain remained, he spat blood on the ground, staring at Cass, and drew his own blade across his throat.

Cass didn’t stop the carnage.

“What about questioning them?” Rufe asked.

“We’ve already taken plenty of prisoners. This is their way. They fought hard and deserved to die in the manner they chose.” Cass saluted the fallen captain. “We have soldiers combing the forest for stragglers, but with heavy snow falling, any who escape capture likely won’t survive long. Delletinian winters show no mercy. Come.”

The triumphant defenders trudged back to the city over the road, not through caves, Herixian soldiers chanting a spirited tune, the words of which Rufe couldn’t make out. “What of the dead and injured?” he asked.

Cass swept a hand out toward a group of soldiers wending their way through the trees. “We have a unit trained to triage the wounded and another to gather our dead.”

He fell into step beside Rufe, Draylon, and Vihaan. Rufe didn’t want to think about the dead they’d left behind.

Rufe sat on a cot in the barracks infirmary, holding his arm out for a grizzled old man with bushy gray brows. “It’s but a scratch,” Rufe complained, his tone one step away from a whine. Given his previous injuries, a sword graze hardly deserved notice.

The man applying ointment sneered. “That’s what they all say before the wound turns vile, and I have to hack the arm off.”

Rufe stopped complaining. He’d known too many soldiers who lost hands, arms, and legs. How many were lost, not to injury, but to infection?

Draylon approached sans armor, blood smeared on his face and hair. One look reminded Rufe of why the people of other kingdoms called Cormirans barbarians.

“If Yarif saw you now, he’d blame me,” Rufe said. Yarif tried so hard to make a civilized man of his husband. A lost cause, but Rufe had to give the guy credit for the effort.

“I’d blame you too.” Draylon gave a tired smile. “You’re so easy to blame.”

Rufe summoned the energy for a laugh. “Just because in the past I was responsible for about seventy-five percent of the messes we got into doesn’t mean I’m always the cause.” Speaking to Draylon diverted Rufe’s mind from other worries, like how Niam fared at the castle.

“Eighty-five, at least.”

Rufe tipped his head, side-eyeing the ceiling in a parody of thought. Draylon had a point. “All right, eighty-five.”

“At least,” Draylon reiterated.

True enough. “We lived to tell the tale. And now one more battle we emerged from, triumphant.”

Draylon plopped down on the cot beside Rufe. “All battles are the same, aren’t they?”

“Only the ones we win. I’ve never fought alongside sinkholes, snow, and avalanches as fellow warriors before, and I hope never to again.” Though, as king consort and a man of battle, could this be just the beginning, or would Cormira keep the kingdom safe? Rufe searched the crowded room filled with moaning soldiers and scolding healers. “Not that I expected him here, but have you heard anything of Niam?”

“No. Nothing from the castle, though I have found none capable of speaking more than Delletinian to ask properly. My language skills aren’t quite up to the task.”

Rufe nodded toward a bandage on Draylon’s arm. “Were you hurt?”

Draylon shrugged his massive shoulders, failing to hide a wince. “Like yours, simply a scratch.”

The healer finished cleaning Rufe’s wound and stepped back, uttering a curse.

“What?” Rufe demanded. Was he hurt worse than he thought? He stared at the gash bisecting his tattoo. Was the tattoo what set the man off?

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