Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

“I… that is-”

“No?” Braylar kept his back to me. “I thought not. Away with you then.”

Perhaps I should have heeded his warning. But I suddenly had so many questions swirling I couldn’t contain them all. “When Rusejenna tried to fell you and failed, you were immune, protected somehow, weren’t you? By Bloodsounder?”

He finally turned and faced me, his left hand on the haft of the flail, face lost in shadow but eyes hot. “That is what you want to speak to me about? How I survived unscathed when so many of my men did not?”

I changed tack as quickly as I could. “You knew that we were going to be betrayed, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t want Skeelana or your sister to know about Bloodsounder, or the scrolls, or-”

“Of course I knew we would be betrayed.”

“Before we left this morning, did Bloodsounder-?”

“Betrayal was inevitable, you fool. Because of who we are. Just as we hoped to betray Cynead and rethrone Thumaar. We are Syldoon. It is our nature.” He glared at me, voice suddenly hoarse, anger and frustration and bile borne on each word. “And that is precisely why I would rather have died than hand over Bloodsounder or anything else we uncovered to the Emperor. I believed we might have had the key to Cynead’s defeat in our hands. That is why I gave the order to let no Memoridon into my head. That is why I wanted to strike you and Mulldoos and the rest down for failing to heed me. The fact that it was that little bitch Skeelana and not my own blood is immaterial-betrayal was inevitable, if our secrets were known. And not simply my life in the balance, but those of my men.”

The captain took two steps toward me, and I had to force myself not to step away, as he seemed barely able to check his fury. “Every single one of my men who died like a dog today fleeing their city, and those who will likely die tomorrow and the next. All of us, my Tower, my commander, on a precipice now, because you and my officers ignored my explicit orders and saved me in that forsaken plague village.”

There was nothing I could say to that. I couldn’t even stammer. Braylar shook his head, turned away again, and slowly released his grip on Bloodsounder. “Back to the wagon with you, archivist. Disturb me again at your peril.”

He stalked off into the darkness, leaving me with my thoughts, my fears, and my remorse. Sparing the Hornman in the grass, sparing the captain’s own life in the village of the dead-each time, I considered them compassionate acts, simply the right thing to do. I never imagined they could lead to tragedy and greater loss, compounded death and devastation.

That was a drastic failure of imagination.