Page 25 of Brought to Light
Kaspar had dropped his satchel next to us, and I rummaged through it for something clean to bind the wound with. And if I knew him, there’d be some kind of healing salve in there, too. I might even have made it for him.
Seeming to read my mind, Oskar said, “If Kaspar has anything in there that’ll close my wound and keep it clean, it’ll be because of you and your recipes. That’s far from useless. And your worth isn’t dependent on how useful you are, anyway.” He paused. “Although if you could hurry up and find it and stop poking me on purpose, I’d like you a lot more than I do right now.”
I glanced up at him through my lashes and found him smiling at me, and it went a long way to soothing the ache in my chest. Oskar had always been like a brother to me, solid and dependable and loving. My life wasn’t worth the sacrifice of his, and I’d do my best, his counter-efforts aside, to prevent that from happening.
But it mattered that he didn’t agree with me. Maybe that was all the worth I needed to have in the world: my friendship giving someone as strong, honorable, and decent as Oskar enough joy that he’d be willing to sacrifice himself for me.
I finished salving and binding his leg in silence, trying to let that hard lump in my chest dissolve a little as I worked.
Footsteps and low voices reached my ears as I finished. Callum and Kaspar. I kept my head down. Oskar and Kaspar knew me and my limitations, and my talents, too, such as they were. To Callum, I wasn’t anything special. Just dead weight who couldn’t hold his own in a fight. A target, whether Evalt’s or Callum’s. A man like Callum would value the ability to fight more than anything, wouldn’t he? Despite their rocky start, he and Oskar had clearly learned to admire and respect one another. Maybe Callum preferred men like Oskar. They certainly had infinitely more in common, and who wouldn’t respect Oskar more than they respected me?
Kaspar dropped down next to Oskar and put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. He started a low-voiced explanation of what they’d learned from the wounded enemy. It sounded like not much at all, and my mood sank even lower.
And then Callum crouched next to me, not Oskar, so close that our shoulders brushed.
“Are you all right?” he asked in English, his voice as low as Kaspar’s. “I’m glad you stayed back. Thank you.”
It meant something that he’d spoken in a language he knew my friends couldn’t understand, that he wanted to speak just to me. But my temper flared, fed by all the self-doubt I’d been marinating in while I bound up Oskar’s wound. “For not getting in your way?” I asked bitterly. “This is my fight. I should’ve been fighting with you.”
He stayed silent for a moment. “Yeah, you’d have been in the way, but not how you mean.”
I sniffed, and realized in horror that I sounded exactly like my mother. “There’s only one way you could mean that.” I was so tired, so very, miserably tired. I’d been crouching too, but I gave up and slumped down onto the ground. A pebble poked me in the ass. Typical.
Callum sighed. “They were after you, Linden. If they’d seen you, they’d have gone for their primary target. And then you’d have been in my sights every time I tried to take a shot. In the dark, in unfamiliar terrain, with limited ammunition…you’d have been in the way, yeah. But so was Oskar, to an extent. If you’re the objective, it makes more sense to keep you in the background.”
Oskar looked up at the sound of his name. “If you’re going to talk shit about me, have the courtesy to do it in a language I understand,” he said.
Callum replied in our language, something teasing about how he’d never know enough languages to adequately describe how ugly Oskar was, but I barely paid attention. My mind whirled, trying to take in what Callum had said. He hadn’t sounded angry at all—or contemptuous, which would’ve been more what I’d have expected.
It was simply practical. I wasn’t one of Callum’s targets, so it made it easier to have me out of the way of his bullets.
And I’d have been lying if I pretended to myself that Callum wanting to protect me didn’t make me feel better.
Oskar started to insist he could walk, and we all levered ourselves off the ground, brushing off dirt and leaves. The night felt like it had already stretched on forever, an endless expanse of exhaustion and fear, with more yet to come. I wanted to curl up in a cozy bed and sleep for a week. I wanted my mother, safe and sound. I wanted some comfort, something, anything.
“We’ll choose some of the horses to take, and set the others free,” Kaspar said. “Go and get some sleep.”
I’d been staring into the trees, lost in thought, and it took me a moment to realize he expected an answer. “I can help with the horses.”
Kaspar shook his head. “Two of us will be enough. Oskar needs to choose a horse that can bear him, but any of them can carry you. And I want to go through the saddlebags and see if there’s anything useful.”
“We’ll find somewhere to get some shut-eye,” Callum said. “Over there.” He gestured to the left. “Upwind from the clearing. I’ll wake up at dawn, guaranteed.”
We were almost certainly going to die the following day. And now Callum was going to lead me into the woods, alone…that gave me ideas. Probably very bad ideas. But as soon as they’d taken root in my mind, they grew and grew despite my attempts to stifle them. I leaned down and snatched up the jar of salve I’d used for Oskar’s leg, stuffing it into my pocket as quickly as I could. And then I pulled Kaspar aside as Callum and Oskar exchanged a few words about the plan for the morning.
“Sleep somewhere else,” I whispered.
Kaspar stared at me. “You’re joking.”
“Sleep. Somewhere. Else. Sit on Oskar if you need to.” I couldn’t be certain in the dim light, but Kaspar…blushed? Yes, hewasblushing, his cheekbones stained dark like wine. And that…oh, I couldn’t even begin to tackle that at the moment. They were like brothers too, weren’t they? Had the implication simply embarrassed him? “Anyway, stay away until dawn.”
Kaspar gave me another exasperated look, but Oskar pulled him away, leaving Callum and me standing alone in the filtered moonlight, listening to their footsteps fading into nothing. Callum’s face held that same neutral, closed expression he’d worn all day, without a trace of emotion. If I hadn’t known he’d killed half a dozen men an hour before, I’d never have been able to tell.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” The words slipped out before I could restrain them. I couldn’t imagine killing and simply shrugging and walking away. And Callum…how could he be so gentle sometimes, but so brutal in a fight? “Spending so much of your life bringing death.”
Something passed across Callum’s hard face, and he couldn’t quite meet my eyes, looking over my shoulder. “No.” A pause. “Sometimes. But sometimes it’s—we should get some rest.”
“Sometimes it’s what?” I wasn’t going to let this go. He’d come so close to speaking to me like a person, not an adversary or an inconvenience or an oddity. I wanted him. I could admit that to myself, here in the near-dark with my own death looming so close I couldn’t even get a full picture of it, since it filled all my senses. But I didn’t know if I could go through with trying to get what I wanted if I didn’t know Callum sawme, Linden. If I didn’t know he could give me some little bit of himself.
