Free What Was Forgotten by Tim Mathias

check the maps with his lieutenants. With everything turned to mud, it was nearly impossible to tell what path they should be on.
    “You’re the driest one of the whole lot,” Zayd said as he climbed up into the back of the carriage. “Remind me to put Barrett in a stranglehold next time it looks like it’s going to rain.” Gavras did not smile at the jape.
    “I thought he was going to kill you,” Gavras said.
    Zayd nodded. His bottom lip was still swollen and red. His cheek had needed to be stitched by one of Areagus’ half-trained lieutenants. “He wanted to.”
    Gavras shook his head. “I know there is a history between you… but he didn’t behave this way during the siege. Why now?”
    Many possibilities sprung up in Zayd’s mind. They had not been in such close proximity during the siege, and there was a lesser chance for a reprimand in this environment. But in truth Zayd thought it was not the history between them, but the after-effects of the siege itself. Enduring such prolonged violence and inhumanity made people inhumane.
    “Fools need no reason,” Zayd said.
    Gavras leaned forward. “I have a family, vahr . Has Areagus said…”
    Zayd shook his head. “He won’t. Not for something so minor. He only had you restrained as a show of authority to us, and to the Trueborn. He’ll anger them if he’s lenient with us, but he also knows that he must still be fair with us.”
    “Why would he think that?” Gavras asked. “He doesn’t need to be fair with us when all of our families are one writ away from death. We’re hostages. All of us.”
    Zayd clenched his teeth, sending a sharp, hot pain through them. Gavras was right of course, but Zayd needed to play politic as much as the commander did. Despondency needed to be kept at bay like any other disease. “Because who else will guard them as they sleep? We only need to complete this task. Then you’ll have a new deployment. With the war at an end, it will be something mercifully uneventful, and you may even get a leave before that. Do you hear me? See this through, then see your family.”
    Gavras remained silent, but eventually nodded in agreement. “If the commander gives the writ—”
    “He won’t,” Zayd interrupted. “He won’t.”
    Another long silence. Another nod.
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
     
     
     
    The Dramandi had been tracking the enemy for days. It was chance that brought them onto their trail, though some said it was the will of Aulvennic, the Guiding Star. Perhaps. But it was chance that they had not yet been spotted by the sentries. Not the nasci , those that called themselves Trueborn. These sentries were shorter, lithe, and muscular. They traversed the terrain effortlessly, like water spiders on a still pond. And their eyes – black as the night itself. Sera Naiat remembered seeing them from the walls of Yasri before she had fled the city. “They are not true Ryferians,” Cohvass had said.
    “They are the Empire’s whelps. Subservient,” Sera had told him. She knew of the distant land of Tauth which rested to the north of Dramand beyond the Thalliar Mountains, but had never seen one of its children until a year into the war with Ryferia. “If they do not kill us all, that will be our fate. They will force us to abandon Aulvennic, they will force us to adopt their man-god, and they will force us to fight in their army against others like us.”
    Cohvass sneered. “How can a god be mortal? Aulvennic carved his own place in the sky itself. No mortal could claim to do that.” That was at the beginning of the siege. Their armies were defeated, their soldiers were few, but the city was strong. They prayed and hoped, and in the first few weeks of the siege, it had seemed as though the Guiding Star would bless them with a victory.
    But in one night they had lost thirty soldiers to the whelps. A handful of them had scaled one of the walls and stalked the ramparts like ghosts, killing fifteen before