War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(120)

“I can do it.”

The horseman stills, eyeing me. After a moment, he nods and lets me go around to his back.

There are three more arrows still embedded in his armor and skin. I start with the one near his shoulder, grabbing it by the base. “This might hurt.”

I think I hear him grunt out a laugh, but maybe that’s just my imagination.

I wrap my hand around the arrowhead, give it a tug, and … nothing happens.

Now War does laugh. “Very painful, wife, I appreciate the warning—”

This time I throw my weight into the action and, with a wet noise, the arrow comes free.

I drop the bloody thing and place my hand over the wound. “I can’t heal it like you can.”

“That’s alright, wife,” War says, his voice disarmingly gentle.

I pull out the next arrow and then the last one, yanking hard on each one. Once I’m finished, the horseman turns around and gives me an odd look.

“What?” I say, wiping my hands off on my jeans.

“No one has ever taken care of me.” His voice sounds strange.

I meet his eyes. He looks like something out of a fairytale in his red armor, his black hair adorned with gold pieces.

“I care about you, War. I don’t want you to hurt. Ever.”

War stares at me for a long time. “That’s an odd sentiment for me to hear when part of what I am is pain. But I cannot tell you how moved I am by your words, nonetheless.

“You have made me mortal in the worst way, Miriam, and I am forever grateful for it.”

After the incident in Maghaghah, War’s zombies begin to precede us on our travels, and so every city I pass through is scattered with dead bodies from the fighting that must’ve ensued. Things look worse, not better, than they did weeks ago.

But.

But the horseman’s dead are not attacking these towns we move through, they’re defending themselves. So there are survivors. It’s still a lot to take in, and as more people are informed of the horseman’s arrival, the attacks on the army become more frequent and brutal, and there are more casualties lost from it.

I have to ride through the corpses with the horseman, their blood still dripping from their wounds. I think this is the way things are going to be.

But then, something drastic changes.





Chapter 51


I sit with Zara near the center of camp we’ve erected just outside Luxor. The kid in me is desperate to catch sight of ancient Egyptian ruins, but the pragmatist knows that’s never going to happen. Not during a battle campaign. So I settle for enjoying the sight of the palm trees that hug the bank of the Nile.

Next to me, my friend is trying—and failing—to weave a basket.

Aside from the distant sound of children’s laughter and a few murmured conversations, camp is utterly quiet. War and his army rode out long ago, leaving only a few of us behind.

“Fuck this,” Zara finally says, chucking her lumpy basket in front of her. “I can’t do it.”

It rolls away like a tumbleweed.

“I thought it looked okay,” I lie. Because sometimes encouragement is better than the cold hard truth.

Zara snorts. “You’d have to be blind to—”

The sound of hoof beats interrupts us.

I glance towards the edge of camp. I can’t see past the few cream colored tents in the way, but the longer I listen, the louder the hoof beats become.

For once, War and his riders don’t gallop into camp at full speed. Instead, War appears first, Deimos sauntering almost leisurely into the clearing. Several more riders and their war horses follow, each moving sedately. It’s only after the first few of them pass that I see the children.

There are hundreds of them being herded into camp, their faces dirty and tear-streaked. They range in age from young teenagers to infants.

I rise to my feet, staring at them all in shock.

Zara stands up next to me. “What on earth … ?”

War and his riders came back from battle with captured children.

No, not captured.

Spared.

There was a time when it was a miracle to get War to save a single child. Now he has nearly a city’s worth of them.

My horseman whistles to Zara. “I have more children for you to tend to.” War doesn’t bother speaking in tongues. He hasn’t for the last two cities we’ve camped nearby. Now his mind and words are as open as they’ve ever been—much to the shock of the remaining humans that live here.

Zara points to herself, her eyes wide. “Me?”

War gives a nod.

I raise my eyebrows at her. “I guess you’re now the unofficial caretaker of kids.”

She gives me a beseeching look before she approaches the line of children. There are so, so many of them.

Zara corrals them, calling over other individuals to help out. Together they move the kids off to the side of the clearing, where dinner is already prepared.

Let’s hope it’s enough food.

War comes over to me on Deimos, his form obscuring the sun behind him.

“You saved them,” I say.

He stares at me for a long moment, then squints into the distance. “It is … not so easy to destroy them, knowing that they could’ve been mine,” he says, his eyes dropping to my stomach.