Draka drew his sword and tossed the belt wrapped scabbard to the bed. His fingers fit into the grooves of the handle. He felt the ruby of his pommel brush his forearm as he adjusted his grip. The weight was pulling at something in his back as he stepped to the center of the open area between Adrian’s mat and the chairs pressed into the table. He winced.

  It had the marks of the oils running along the edges of the blade from sitting for too long. They glinted in the light of the hearth as he regarded it. This was the first time he had held it since that day. Since he faced the Baron in the fire that kissed his face, leaving the mark of a spiderweb that deformed the ridge of his ear. Since he had faced them all, the faces of his failures that had leapt at him, had pummeled him into submission. This sword, he had left sheathed beside his bed as something useless, something to be displayed, something that he didn’t even wipe the blood off of. That was something someone else did for him. It was something he should have done.

  Gritting his teeth against the lightning pulse of pain streaming through his muscles, through his veins, from his thumb and wrist to his shoulder blades, Draka lifted it into a single handed high guard stance. His fingers went numb. His eyes filled with water. He let his arm drop before he let go of the sword, his free hand leaping to press at what felt like a bulging rock under the skin, and he doubled over. It took a moment for him to steady his breathing. For the pain to subside. He rocked back and straightened. He tried again and again doubled over as his arm felt like it was being torn from his shoulder.

  He let the sword drop. How can he be needed so badly and be so weak? So vulnerable? So…useless. Not yet, the Holy Spirit had said to him. When? Will he be ready? He can’t hold his own sword. The symbol of his strength, of his righteousness in the eyes of all those who followed him into battle, all those who would never follow him again. Bracing on the table, he grabbed the sword again and pressed himself upright with it in hand.

  Draka moved his arm slowly, twisting his bent elbow, shifting his wrist, rolling his shoulder to get it as close to the high guard as he could while keeping the blade parallel to the ground. He fought against the tearing. He fought against the shock filling his veins. Fought to breathe by grinding his teeth with determination. And his fingers spread themselves and let the blade fall to the floor with a metallic chime.

  Draka took hold of the chair closest to him and chucked it at his bed with his other hand. It shattered to pieces over his bed. He pressed at the ache in his arm, fighting to make it fade, as it doubled him over the table. He hit the table with his balled fist. He needed to grip the sword. He needed to be able to wield his weapon. How can he protect them if he can’t even lift it into a simple stance?

  With his head on the table for balance, he tried to grab the sword again but his fingers rebelled against him. Another fist slammed on the table beside his planted forehead and he let his knees touch the ground. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He pressed on the ache in his shoulder, squeezed it, slammed his fist into it. Do what you’re supposed to, he thought as he reached again. Again, his fingers refused to close around the hilt. He sank into the floor.

  Lord God Almighty, please, if it is Your Will for me to fight, help me. I can’t protect them if I don’t. I can’t fight if I can’t do this. Please, Lord, give me strength and help me overcome. I plead the Blood of the Lamb. Amen.

  His fingers rebelled against him when he reached for it. Draka grabbed it with his right hand and carried it to the bed. The scabbard straightened as he slid the blade into it.

  His head hung. He combed the fingers of his right hand through his hair and leaned into his palm. His left rested on the scabbard, useless. Behind his closed eyes, he saw Maud’s face looking up into his, her hands stretched upward from the hatch in his floor with her smiling, ‘Up.’ He saw Aurie’s confused calm as he carried back to her home, wrapped in one of his pelts. He saw Balor’s frightened determination in his last breaths, ‘Take care of my girls.’

  Draka winced at himself. ‘They need you,’ Balor’s words ticked through his head as if he were whispering them into Draka’s ear. He shoved the sheathed sword away from him to bury his head in both palms. Useless. Purposeless.

  Not yet.

  When? Draka wanted to shout to the heavens. How?

  A brush of the bits of the chair off onto the floor and he lay on his side, eyeing those fingers of his left hand he had relied on for so long. He could still use his bow, but even that was a reach. He can pierce the coat of an elk, but armor? The pull would be worse than lifting the sword and he knew it. The spear is completely out of the question.

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  He’ll be like every other plump, entitled, overbearing king, pointing and expecting his men to listen only because he had been born to the right family and nothing else. He stared at those fingers. Maud’s gladness when she saw him lift the hatch after he had destroyed the altars. What would he be to her if he can’t defend them?

  He decided to gather the bits of the chair and toss it all into the shack. It was just past noon and there was a heaviness in the air. He could taste the moisture within it. It will rain before nightfall. Perhaps sooner.

  He left without a cloak, without one of his coats, only his shirt that the wind bled through. His eyes didn’t search the house down the hill from him for Maud or Aurie. His eyes didn’t look to the fort at the center of the lake or the sprawling village beyond it. He went for the field across from their house, where the wheat had been as tall as him until the week before the hunt when the laborers reaped it.

  They weren’t buried like Cathols. They weren’t given a resting place. He had watched the pyre from his porch. The flames licked the sky, laying claim to the two covered bodies within, while he had sat there, wishing that he could give them proper respect. Wishing he could be there for Maud and Aurie, who cried in each other’s arms, while the other villagers milled away. Hugo and his siblings were the only ones who didn’t leave them there. They stayed and, even though Draka saw the way both Maud and Aurie pushed them away when they tried, they grieved with them.

  Draka had carved their names into the stone slabs he had taken from the walls of his house with the hammer Balor left him and his sharpening stone. He buried the hammer in front of the one with Balor’s name. For Alden, he buried what was left of his spear. He may not have been one, but he died a warrior’s death, defending his family.

  Maud was sitting in front of them, hugging her knees, in one of her older, simpler dresses. Draka sank his shoulders. He didn’t want to bother her. He’ll come back.

  Maud sniveled and wiped at her eyes, “Hey you. How long have you been there?” She was almost frantic at wiping her eyes with elbows still hooked around her knees.

  Draka sat beside her. The letters on the stones were still as fresh as they were when he carved them. Two stones, side by side, not tall enough or flat enough to be gravestones, but marked with names he would never forget.

  “It doesn’t feel like months,” she folded her arms so that she could rest her nose on them, her eyes fixed on the letters. “It feels like a lifetime. And also, days. I can still hear them come home sometimes. And for a second, I will get excited. I’ll jump from my bed and it all comes back. And, I do this,” she motioned to her puffy, teary eyed face, “Sometimes for hours.”

  Draka rubbed her back. He didn’t know what else he could do. If he had been faster. If God had not decided. If he had been smarter. Been able to speak. To shout. If he had never come here…

  “I know you meant well,” Maud said, turning back to the stones. “I know you did. And I’m thankful for everything you’ve done for us.”

  Draka drew in another breath. He regarded the stones with his eyes and his shoulder with his thoughts. They were linked, intertwined together. One and the same. He should never have come to this village. How different would everything be if he had just…died in Heblem instead of fleeing with the relics?

  “But, I don’t want it,” Maud turned on him, letting her legs down. “I love you and I know you’re just trying to do everything you can to take care of me and Ma, but I’m not your daughter. I’m Balor Clevlan’s daughter. So, I’m not going to sign that paper. I want you to name Adrian instead or, for the love of all that is holy, get yourself a woman and stop throwing all your attention on us.”

  She didn’t need to push his hand away. He felt the air create a distance between them. His hand became something else to rest on the ground. He didn’t turn to her when he nodded.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Maud hesitated. “But I can’t. Please understand. I’m like Adrian, I guess. Another ward who cares deeply for you.”

  Draka nodded again. He had carved the ‘L’ in Balor’s name a little crooked. He noticed the grooves and how off they were. Some hits of the hammer were deeper than others.

  “I’m sorry,” Maud said finally. He didn’t feel her stand up or see her walk from him before she said that. It was her steps through the brush, fading from his ear the further she went, that he heard. That, he felt.

  Though his face didn’t move, though his eyes never turned away from those crudely carved names, the tears fell.

  I guess that answered one question, Draka let them fall, barely blinking as he stared at the discoloration of the chunks he had hammered away.

  He refused to look away from their names. She deserved better than this. Than him. He knew that. So, he was going to give her everything he had. But, just as he suspected, it would never be enough. Nothing would ever be enough to fill the emptiness of the loss these two names would leave in her life.

  He took a long, deep breath. This is becoming a new sort of nightmare. Why did he have to survive? Why did he always have to survive? Heblem, Damascus, Mosul, Okupniki, Kazan, Tomsk, Strasbourg.

  …Talkro.