The Continent (The Continent #1)(91)

I have killed a man.

I drop to my knees, let the blade fall from my fingers, and vomit. All I can smell is blood, and the scent makes me retch harder. My muscles convulse.

I have killed a man.

Hysteria rattles my mind and body, like a frightened animal might rail against the bars of a cage. I’m sick, so sick, and the blood won’t come off my fingers, it only smears across my skin, slick and warm, drying in rusty brown streaks. I lean against the base of a tree, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

I have killed a man.

I stepped on a beetle once, many years ago in the Spire. For weeks, I could feel the crunch of its body reverberate beneath my bare foot, the oozing of its insides, wet and repulsive between my toes. Even now, I can recall the sensation, and an unpleasant shiver runs down my spine.

Today, I have made a new memory, one I’m sure I will be able to recall in vivid detail for the rest of my life, if my life were not to end today: the feel of my blade piercing the Topi’s throat, plunging through the skin, sliding across the flesh. The way the knife gave a split second of resistance before slicing through the rubbery artery that, once cut, would cause the man to bleed out.

I can feel it.

And I must do it again.

War is a convoluted thing: what is right is also wrong, and the things that must be done go against the very soul. To make war against a people who would be left alone—I see with clarity that this is wrong. To defend oneself against such an enemy—to kill, lest you be killed—it seems the only answer, but no less wrong. I cannot reconcile myself to any of it. But I cannot hide in the forest and pass the time with philosophy; I must return to the fighting. Now.

I make my way back to the battlefield. A mortally wounded Topi lies on the ground not fifteen feet from me, his intestines spread like fat blue worms across his belly. To kill him would be a mercy, whether he be an ally or an enemy. To leave him would be cruel. This time, the decision is easy.

I hurry toward him; he looks up at me with fear in his deep brown eyes, his mouth opening and closing. A man, just like any other, now afraid, now dying. I curse the war beneath my breath—not the Topi, the war—and whoever is leading it.

“Shush,” I say softly. “Close your eyes. Everything will be all right.”

I know he can’t understand me, but I hope my words can give him some measure of comfort. His hands wander over his gut as he tries to put himself back together. I cut his throat swiftly, feeling again that same tug of the knife through flesh. Before I am finished, his eyes are wide, staring—his original wounds having been enough to take his life.

I glance up to ensure that I haven’t been seen, and lock eyes with a slim, muscular Topi just a few feet away. Bile rises in my throat. The man wears yellow face paint, a boiled leather jerkin open at the sides, and carries an axe—a monstrous thing of wood and steel, smeared with blood from blade to tip.

He grins and steps toward me; I move back, matching his stride as though we are engaged in a deathly sort of dance. I reach for my belt and, with trembling hands, fling one of my knives at his face. It misses by several inches, but does buy me half a second to throw a second blade, then another in quick succession.

These two reach their mark. Both pierce the man’s torso—going deeper even than I’d hoped. He glances down at his chest and I turn to run. I hear nothing over the sound of battle, but I sense the warrior behind me, and before I reach the trees he grips me by the hair and jerks my head backward, so hard that my feet momentarily leave the ground. I reach for another knife and he slaps my face hard enough to make my ears ring. Stunned, I stand loosely on my feet, upright only because he still holds me by the hair.

My knives protrude from his chest like two push-pins marking locations on a map. The Topi snarls at me under his breath—then spits in my face. The spittle is warm, tinged with blood, and it slips down my cheeks as I start to laugh.

I laugh hysterically, crazily, because I always thought I would die as an old woman, I would die in my sleep in the midst of a lovely dream. I would die in the Spire, safe, peaceful, surrounded by friends and family.

Not so. I will die here, today, with spit on my face, in the filthy wet muck. Alone.

The Topi releases my hair only to wrap both of his hands around my throat. Whispering, he tightens his grip, the muscles in his face quivering with adrenaline, with fury. The pressure at my neck increases until I can no longer draw breath. The warrior bends me to the ground and shakes me like a rag doll as he squeezes the life from my body. I claw at his fingers, raking his skin with my nails, but he holds me in place as though time has been suspended, his eyes on mine, my eyes on his. The world grows dark. My hands fall away, only to graze against one of the knives still in my belt. I don’t want to die like this.

I grip the knife with my fingers, though I can scarcely feel it, and plunge it into his side, once, twice, again and again. The blade turns as it glances away from his ribs, and I stab him once more. I have become only this motion, this stabbing of the knife, this last act of desperation. My muscles are weakening, but I continue until the knife slips from my fingers.

I fought. I tried.

I feel myself slipping backward, my body sinking into the mud. I am a pinprick of light in a world of shadows, and time is the water in which I dance.

It is dark and quiet in the moment of my death.

In the void, in that black place where I am content to dwell, a searing pain intrudes. I try to move against it, to ignore its noisome beckoning, but it only grows stronger; I open my eyes and draw in a breath—a thing of blistering, excruciating pain. I gasp, cough, choke, taste blood in my mouth. Not dead. Perhaps I was, but no longer.