Those who surrendered were not killed.
They were put in front instead.
Cassian left the dueling ground with Simon as his shield.
Morheim archers stood on both sides of the snowfield.
Two hundred arrowheads pointed at Cassian's chest.
Not one was loosed.
Simon Bell walked three paces ahead of him.
His chains had been cut, but half still hung from his wrist.
He did not run.
Cassian did not put a sword to his throat.
There was no need.
The sight of a living male Bell walking before the enemy was enough to divide the archers' hands.
Half waited for Marchesa's order.
The other half waited for Simon to nod.
That hesitation was what Cassian wanted.
"Will you use me as a hostage?"
"I already am."
"Without even holding a sword on me?"
"Your blood reaches farther than a blade."
One archer lowered his bow.
The officer beside him struck him across the face.
Three other archers turned their arrows on the officer.
Not one order had been given.
The army was already splitting in two.
Without looking back, Simon said,
"My aunt knew this when she sent me."
"I know."
"And you accepted anyway."
"I wanted to see how rotten her army was."
"And?"
"Rotten enough."
Thoma let out a leaking breath behind them.
It was impossible to tell whether it was laughter or a cough.
Ria wrote the words down with her right hand.
"Was splitting a rotten army part of the surrender terms?" Adel asked.
The white sentence around Cassian's throat stirred.
`The surrendered Simon Bell shall be returned alive.`
One letter dug beneath his skin.
The contract had heard the question.
It waited for an answer.
"No."
The sentence went still.
"Does that mean he only has to be alive?"
"That is what it says."
"Even if he has lost his mind?"
"If he is alive."
"Even without his limbs?"
Simon slowed.
Cassian did not answer.
The sentence tightened again.
This time its letters opened the wound.
Blood ran from the black seam around his neck.
"Wrong."
A stranger rose from a heap of corpses by the road.
He wore a dead soldier's white coat inside out. Ice hung from his beard, and a fragment of a broken holy relic hung at his throat.
The archers drew.
The man raised both hands.
"Hassan Enoch. Interpreter of the old Crusade tongue."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"Do interpreters hide beneath corpses?" Cassian asked.
"The living ones usually do."
Hassan looked at the chain still hanging from Simon's wrist.
Then he read Cassian's throat.
His lips traced an ancient pronunciation.
The white sentences changed direction across Cassian's skin.
"That is not Imperial."
"You can see it."
"It is not even a sentence."
Hassan lifted the fragment at his neck.
The letters embedded in Cassian's throat leaned toward it.
"It is the condition as the witnesses remember it."
Ria stopped her pen.
"What's the difference?"
"Sentences leave loopholes. Memory remembers malice."
Hassan looked at Cassian.
"You could cut off his arms and return him alive. But no one who heard those terms would call that a return. If you do it, the sentence may remain whole, but the witnesses will break."
"Will they die?"
"Your name will go first."
One white letter fell from Cassian's skin.
It burned black before it touched the snow.
Ria wrote.
"A surrender contract follows the witnesses' meaning before its written words."
"In brief," Hassan said, stripping off the dead man's coat.
Beneath it were worn priestly robes and three scabbards.
"Try wordplay, and your neck goes first."
Cassian did not kill Hassan.
He was useful.
"Come with us."
"My price?"
"I'll find the original owner of the thing around your neck."
Hassan closed a hand around the relic fragment.
"That entire family is dead."
"The dead are not hard to find."
Hassan climbed fully free of the corpse pile.
"You have hired me."
The first northern gate came into view.
It was a low fortress of black stone.
Marchesa's banner hung above its gate.
Cassian put Simon in front of it.
"Open it."
"I do not command this fortress."
"They think you do."
Simon looked up at the wall.
A white-haired officer appeared on the battlement.
He recognized Simon.
He did not kneel.
He put a hand to his chest.
It was the old salute to royalty.
Half the soldiers on the wall followed him.
The rest leveled their spears.
"Opening the gate is treason!" a young officer shouted.
The white-haired officer answered,
"Leaving Bell blood outside the walls is treason."
"He is a prisoner Marchesa surrendered herself!"
"She is not a king."
The young officer's sword moved the instant the words ended.
The white-haired officer's ear fell.
All along the wall came the sound of swords being drawn against one another.
Simon did not close his eyes.
"Is this what you wanted to see?"
"No."
Cassian said,
"I wanted her to see it."
Thoma took out a signal table.
One white beacon rose beside the fortress.
`Simon Bell lives.`
A second beacon.
`Under the protection of Cassian Crow.`
Thoma added the third on his own.
`The claimant to the northern throne returns.`
Simon turned.
"He was not ordered to send that."
"Our relationship is transactional."
Cassian looked at Thoma's throat.
Thoma spoke hoarsely.
"I raised the price."
The third beacon spread faster than the first.
Answering smoke rose from five neighboring fortresses.
Two sent Marchesa's red smoke.
Three sent the white smoke of the Bell royal house.
Cassian had not put a single wound on Simon's body.
His mere existence cracked five points in the northern line.
Adel came to Cassian's side.
The skin was torn from the backs of the hands that had gripped the dueling cage.
"Keeping someone alive and letting them live are different things."
"They breathe the same."
"Someone you let live has a tomorrow."
"That is what makes it troublesome."
"And you always pass that trouble to someone else."
Adel looked at Simon.
"This time it is tied around your neck."
Cassian did not answer.
The gate opened.
Inside, Morheim soldiers were killing one another.
The white-haired officer's faction against the young officer's.
The same uniforms fell beneath two banners.
Cassian did not enter.
The road he wanted was already open.
If he took the fortress, he would have to feed its soldiers.
Treat its wounded.
Bury its dead.
He needed only the gate.
"Close it."
At Cassian's word, Thoma gave the signal.
The gate shut again.
The stone walls smothered the screams of the soldiers left inside.
Simon asked,
"You started the fight, and now you abandon them?"
"The gate opened."
"And the people?"
"They are not part of my terms."
The letters carved around Cassian's throat did not move.
It was the correct answer.
Adel's face did move.
It was disgust.
That, too, was correct.
Simon did not turn his back on the gate.
He counted the sounds of blades behind the stone.
Seven. Twelve. Nineteen.
Only then did the noise stop.
Simon struck the gate with the half-chain at his wrist.
Two short blows. One long.
Hassan raised his head.
"The royal retreat signal for defeated soldiers."
"Who is he ordering to retreat?"
The answer came from beneath the wall.
A drain buried in snow opened.
A bloodied hand and a broken spear shaft emerged first.
Nineteen soldiers crawled out after them.
They carried neither white nor red beacons.
They had come out because they wanted to die for neither side.
The last soldier knelt before Simon.
"Command us."
"I am not your commander."
Hope drained from their faces.
Simon added,
"So you have no reason to die before me."
He unwound the chain from his wrist and wrapped it around the soldier's.
"Show this at a Black Feather relief station. They will give you carts."
Thoma frowned.
"My carts."
"Collect payment from Cassian Crow."
Simon saved the people Cassian had cast aside with his own name.
He merely passed the cost back to Cassian.
"We leave," Cassian said.
Thoma did not move.
"When those nineteen are still alive tomorrow, we leave."
Cassian crouched before a soldier clutching his belly.
His right arm would not rise, and his left hand was slow.
It was a useful body for disguising the fact that he did not want to carry anyone.
The soldier climbed onto his back.
Blood cold as ice soaked through it.
Adel checked the soldier's pulse first.
Then she shoved Cassian's shoulder back into place.
Cassian did not groan.
The soldier on his back groaned for him.
The surrender sentence around his throat moved like a heartbeat.
There was one more person he had to bring back alive.
Simon had named his price.
That price breathed on Cassian's back.
The party crossed the frozen river below the fortress.
At sunset, they reached the prisoner return point.
Marchesa's cavalry waited across a collapsed bridge.
Marchesa wore no helmet.
The white nail in her heart glimmered beneath the broken scales of her armor.
Cassian pushed Simon from behind.
"Go."
Simon did not move a step.
"You agreed to return him," Ria said, reading the original terms.
"Alive."
"You're alive. Walk."
"No."
The white sentence tightened around Cassian's breath.
Marchesa's cavalry drew their swords.
Simon looked across the bridge.
There was no joy at recovering family in the officers' eyes.
There was the greed of men receiving a king.
"I consented to return," Simon said, lifting the half-chain at his wrist.
"And now I withdraw that consent."
"If I return now, I become the cause for war."
He knelt at the broken end of the bridge.
This time, with his back to Cassian.
"So if you want to return me," Simon said,
"drag me across yourself."
Cassian looked down at the back of a man he could not kill.
Returning him alive had become harder than killing him.