Chapter 39

Having a hero at the head of an army conveys all sorts of divine benefits. Nothing in this world is free, though. When the hero dies, the whole army knows. Panic inevitably follows. There’s a reason King Garus didn’t give the twit soldiers to command, just adventurers who were more loyal to his coin than their hero.

Kaze and I passed hundreds of soldiers as we picked our way through to the mayor’s mansion. Most of them didn’t bother trying to put up a fight. They were in full flight now, sprinting towards the exit. If they noticed us at all, they threw their weapons down, put their hands in the air, and kept running.

We didn’t bother them. There wasn’t much point. Without their hero, their will to fight was completely and utterly broken. Even if Lady Flir rounded them back up, only the strongest willed among them would be of any use to her again.

Ever now and again, a band of soldiers made of sterner stuff tried to stop us. Either Kaze killed the leader or I did. The result was the same either way. The survivors ran like hell.

Why wouldn’t they? The battle was lost. Everyone could feel it.

So why could we hear fighting coming from the mayor’s mansion?

“I don’t suppose you’ve got some elites who don’t give two shits about the divine?” I asked.

Kaze looked up at me, startled. Whatever was on her mind, it had her in a stranglehold.

“Sorry, what?”

“Sounds like some folks didn’t get the memo about the hero being dead,” I said.

“Oh. Um, right. That’ll be Flir’s elites. I noticed a company slipping through with the rest. There wasn’t time to warn you.”

“Think Degle will be okay?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“No. But there’s not much we can do to help her. This is her fight, the one she prayed for.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Why was that woman so obsessed with dying in battle?

“She lost someone,” Kaze said, answering my unasked question.

“You a mind reader now?”

“A little light reading never hurt anyone,” she said, smirking. Her smile was forced, painfully so.

“Bah.”

“No, I can’t read your mind. Just your face,” she said. “You’re worried. You like Degle.”

“She’s a badass,” I said. “What’s not to like?”

“That she is. She’s suffered, though. Her son was in the garrison at Galoch. She received word just before we arrived. With her husband long dead, he was the last thing tying her to this world.”

“That would explain it,” I said.

“They’re all like that. The ones who stayed, I mean,” she said. “They all have reasons they’d rather fight and die than run. Not suicidal, but…if they die here, they’ll die content. They’ll be at peace.”

She grasped my hand. I let her. She needed the physical touch at this moment, and so did I.

“Want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

“You can probably guess,” she said.

“Deela.”

“Deela,” she confirmed.

“The way you described her, I assumed she was hateful,” I said. “And I guess she was, but…as screwed up as it is, she loved you.”

“I know. That’s what sent me over the edge. I could never see it before. I was too blinded by…everything, I suppose. Rage, embarrassment, fear. I never saw her for what she truly was. I never hated her before, either.”

“It’s an awful thing,” I said.

“It is. You know what the worst part is?”

“What’s that?”

“A part of me wanted to comfort her,” she said. “I wanted to tell her it was all going to be okay, that I could heal her wounds, ease her suffering, something. I think that’s finally why I decided to hate her. It was either that, or forgive her.”

“Purut is good at his job,” I said. “He took your worst nightmare of over a decade and twisted her into something pitiable. He knew what he was doing, and he knew how you would react. If you still chose to kill her out of hate, you’d be killing a little bit of yourself, too.”

“That was the cleric’s work, then?”

“Aye. I’m not surprised to see he wasn’t here. Slimy bastard probably wormed his way into Flir’s good graces and kicked the hero to the curb.”

“They deserve each other, then,” she said. “I don’t regret telling you to kill her.”

“Good. I don’t regret doing it,” I said.

“I do regret that I couldn’t do it myself,” she said. “That’s what bothers me. Soeh teaches that killing to ease suffering is one of the purest acts of devotion. To end unendurable agony and shoulder the burden of taking a life, not from hate or fear, but from a place of love, is to truly shine a light into the darkness. Instead, I gave into my hate and created more darkness.”

“In my experience, the gods are all about unattainable standards of morality,” I said. “It’s all black and white to them. That’s the whole point. We’ll never reach those heights, not as mere mortals. We’re too complicated and messy. Their teachings are supposed to be aspirational. We try our best, and each time we’re put between a rock and a hard place, we do a little better. That’s all we can really hope for.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve met actual gods,” she said, shaking her head.

“No, but when you go around the sun as many times as I have, you learn a thing or two about how they think.”

The rest of our trek through the ruined city passed in silence, aside from the occasional shouted warning to retreating soldiers. We’d said everything we needed to. All that was left was to see if Degle finally got her prayer answered.

The steps of the mayor’s mansion, and the surrounding street, was littered with bodies. Hundreds of them. Not all of them were dead, either. Some were softly moaning. Others were doing their best to tend to their wounds, or to their fellows. Uniforms didn’t seem to matter at that point. Flir’s elites helped Degle’s defenders, and vice versa. The battle was over. They weren’t soldiers anymore, just scared, hurt people doing their best.

I would have been baffled, if not for the tableau that awaited us on the steps. That was enough to put the fear of the gods into anyone.

“Are those…statues?”

There was a mound of bodies. One might even say a mountain. They were all turned to stone. At the top stood a snarling woman, a spear driven through her chest. Evidently, she’d pulled herself along the spear to behead the wielder, triumphant in death.

“That’s Degle,” I said. “She got her mountain.”

I felt the pressure in the back of my mind again. Aethna was watching.

Without counting, I knew there were exactly fifty bodies buried beneath Degle, preserved in stone so that I’d see that her oath was fulfilled. The gods rarely act so brazenly. Either she was special, or this battlefield was. Maybe both.

“I hold Degle’s oath fulfilled,” I said aloud. “If it would please you, I would like to leave this mountain as a monument to her bravery, that all who come here will know of her deeds until the end of time.”

IT PLEASES ME. IT SHALL BE DONE.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere all at once, soft as a whisper and as loud as a clap of thunder. I dropped to my knees from the force of it, tears streaming from my eyes. Everyone who was still breathing turned to gaze in awe as the stone turned to brilliant iridescent metal, the features of every participant in Degle’s last stand preserved in exquisite, permanent detail.

“Is that silver?” Kaze asked, awestruck.

“No,” I said. “It’s iridium. Aethna’s making a point, I think.”

I heard laughter, triumphant and pleased, and the presence faded once more.

Let it never be said that the gods don’t have a sense of humor, even if they don’t let us in on the joke.