Page 12 of Ensii
“We’ll wait for Breida to finish.” Ashek shifted, adjusting the sword at his side. “Then we need to go.”
They’d already lost plenty of time. And by now, Nehemian would know they had survived.
“Will you come back, Papa?” ask the twin clinging to Gilsazi’s hip.
“Of course,” Gilsazi answered, ruffling his son’s hair. “Don’t I always?”
“But lots of the other papas didn’t come back,” the other boy replied, clinging to Gilsazi’s horns tighter.
Gilsazi exhaled through his nose, eyes closing as if in pain. “I’m not lots of other papas. Here.” The tavrosi knelt, peeling each of his boys off in turn and bringing them around to stand in front of him. He spoke lowly, a hand on the shoulder of each.
Talitha had never spent much time with the boys, simply because she spent so much of her time with the army, the city, the court, the counting house…there simply was never enough time. But with that thought came a waver of guilt. Should she have gotten to know them?
At last, the word she’d thought would never come arrived.
“We’re ready,” Breida said, folding her arms across her chest. “None of us are pleased, but if we die, then the gods will know it was in service to our liege lords.”
“Are we ready, then?” Ashek shouted.
“Yes, my lord!” Kurzik cried from beside the bonfire. “We’re ready!
“Finally,” Shaza muttered, the hints of a smile on his lips. “Now we get to bring the devil hell.”
