Morgan Rice - An Oath of Brothers

She was amazed they were still walking, all of them, like the walking dead, refusing to die. It had been days more of marching since the great revolt, since half her people had risen up against her. Gwen took some assurance in knowing those close to her were still marching with her.

Or were they? She was too tired to turn and look, and she couldn’t remember the last time she did. And the red wind howled too loudly for her to hear anyone else—anyone but Krohn, who still walked by her feet, gasping, his fur on her ankles.

That was all that was left of the Ring, Gwen marveled. The once great and glorious country, with all its kings and queens and nobles and princes and Silver and Legion, with all of its ships and fleets and horses and armies—all reduced to this. Just this.

Gwen was amazed that any of them still followed her, that any of them still thought of her as Queen. She was a Queen without a kingdom, a queen without a people left to rule.

Krohn whined, and Gwen, out of reflex, reached down into the sack at her waist to give him of whatever food she had, as she had for days. And yet there was nothing left. It was empty.

I’m sorry, Krohn , she wanted to say. But she was too weak for the words to come out.

Krohn continued to walk alongside her, his fur brushing up against her leg, and she knew he would never leave her side—ever. She wished she had anything left to give him.

Gwen mustered all her remaining energy to glance up, at the horizon. She knew she shouldn’t do it, knew she would find nothing but more of the monotony. More of the Great Waste.

She was right. She was crushed to see nothingness, spread out before her in all its cruelty.

They had been right all along: the Great Waste was a suicide mission. Godfrey might be dead in Volusia, and Darius might be dead on the battlefield. But at least they had died quick, merciful deaths. Gwen and the others would die long and torturous deaths, left as food for insects, as skeletons in the desert. Finally, she realized she had been foolish to attempt this, to overreach, to search for the Second Ring. Clearly, it had never existed.

Gwen heard a baby’s weak cry, and she managed to turn and look over.

“Let me see my baby,” Gwen somehow managed to say.

Illepra, shuffling alongside her, came over and laid the baby in Gwen’s arms. The weight of her, as young as she was, was almost too much for Gwen to bear.

Gwen looked into the baby’s beautiful blue eyes, dim from hunger.

No one deserves to die in this world without a name, Gwen thought.

Gwen closed her eyes and laid her palm on the child’s forehead. Suddenly, it came to her. For some reason, she thought of her mother, how they had reconciled at the end, had even become close. And as she looked into this baby’s eyes, the look in her eyes, somehow it reminded her of her.

“Krea,” Gwen said, mustering the strength to speak one last word.

Illepra nodded back in satisfaction.

Gwen kept walking, clutching the baby, and as she looked out into the desert, she could have sworn she saw the face of her mother, beckoning her. The face of her father, waiting to greet her. She began to see the faces of everyone she had ever known and loved, most of them dead now.

Most of all, she saw the faces of Thorgrin, of Guwayne.

She closed her eyes as she marched now, her eyelids, caked down by the red dust, too heavy to keep open. As she marched she felt her thighs growing heavier, as if she were being dragged down to the center of the earth. She had nothing left now. All she had were these faces, these names, the names of all those who had loved her, and whom she had loved. And she realized that was worth more than any possession she’d ever had.

Gwen wanted to stop marching, to lie down a bit, just a bit. But she knew that the second she did, she would never rise again.

After how long she didn’t know, Gwendolyn felt her knees buckling, felt her legs giving way beneath her. She stumbled, and then she could not stop the fall.

Gwen dropped down to the desert floor in a cloud of dust, turning her body to take the fall instead of the baby. She expected Illepra to cry out, to rush to grab her, or any of the others to.

But as she lay there and looked over, she was shocked to see that no one else was there. She was alone. They must have, she realized, collapsed somewhere else, long ago. She had been marching all alone for she did not know how long. Even Krohn was no longer there. Now, finally, it was just her. Gwendolyn, Queen of the Ring, clutching a baby and left alone to die in the midst of nothingness.

Angel opened her eyes, shivering from the cold, to see the world rising up and down before her. She bobbed up and down slowly, gently rising and falling in the rolling waves of the ocean. She felt her body still immersed in the water, and she looked up to realize her head was just barely above water, and she was clinging to a piece of wood. Her entire body was freezing, immersed in the cold water, and as she looked up she saw the most beautiful sunrise she had ever seen, lighting up the ocean, spreading out over it like a blanket. She wondered how many days she had been floating here.

She rubbed the salty water from her eyes and tried to remember, and it all came rushing back to her in flashes: the ferocious storm, the tremendous waves, the sound of the wind and the crashing of the sea, the shouts of all the others in her ears. She remembered being thrown overboard, remembered the feeling of all that water crushing down on her, a feeling she would never forget. She felt as if her body were being split into a million pieces. She was sure she had died.

And then she remembered Thorgrin. She felt an icy cold grip around her waist, and she looked over and saw him, lying on the wood beside her, eyes closed, one arm draped over the piece of wood, the other still wrapped around her. He was unconscious, but still holding onto her, and she remembered his vow: that no matter what happened, he would never, ever let go of her.

Her heart rushed with gratitude now that she saw he had been good to his word. No one in her life had ever cared for her that much, had ever been good to their word. And yet there he lay, bobbing, unconscious, perhaps dead, she could not tell, and yet his hand was still clasped around her waist, helping to keep her afloat, making sure they never got separated.

“Thorgrin,” she said.

She reached over and shook him, and he did not respond.

Her heart sank. She looked closely and saw his chest was indeed rising and falling. She was relieved: that meant he was breathing. His face was out of the water, even if the rest of his body was in it, so he had not drowned. Had he slipped into a coma?

Angel looked all around, hoping to see signs of the others, of the wreckage—anything. She expected to see Reece and Selese, Elden and Indra, Matus and O’Connor, all floating nearby, all clutching to their own pieces of wood.

But as she looked around, her heart sank as she saw no sign of them. To her dismay, there was nothing but a vast and open sea, no debris, no sign of anyone or anything. That could only mean one thing: they had all died in the storm. She and Thorgrin were the only survivors.

“Look what the tide dragged in,” suddenly came a voice from somewhere behind her.

Angel’s heart lifted, relieved to hear another human voice, someone else alive in these rough seas. But then as she turned all the way around, she saw the source of the voice, and her heart fell: before her was a huge, black ship, gleaming in the sun, the most powerful ship she’d ever seen, flying the red and black banner of cutthroats. A sinister breed, making even pirates seem friendly. She saw their ugly faces, grinning down as if looking at prey, and her stomach fell. She remembered the stories the other lepers had told her, that her parents had been killed by cutthroats—and she’d always wanted vengeance. She wished the tides would take them away, anywhere but here.