18. Fifteen

One third of the slaves were infected, and all of them had been exposed. There was no doubt in my mind it was purposeful, but it didn't matter now. The infection had begun to spread into the ranks as well, with twenty elves already showing symptoms. More would, no doubt, follow.

I gathered the commanders, Asgrim, and my new slave in the command tent to put the grim decision to them. My father's order would be to dispatch them all, slit their throats and burn them in a mass pyre. Those that showed symptoms would be given a blade and expected to do it themselves, die with some honor. Aryn's suggestion at the beginning had not been so different, though I didn't point that out. He didn't want to hear how much he was like the father that had disowned him for simply being born without a cock.

We could not progress to the longboats and let the Rot leave the shore. If King Michail of Ostovan hoped to deliver a death blow to D'thallanar with his treachery, he had failed. I would sooner leave us all to weather the winter in the hostile human land than risk spreading it to the capital.

That created a much more far-reaching problem. The more people died to the Rot, the smaller my future army would be. All the preparations I had made would be undone not by betrayals or better tactics on the field, but by disease. We had to stop the spread, and we had to save as many as we could in the process.

We grilled the slave extensively about the disease, learning that it spread through skin to skin contact and bodily fluids. That, at least, was something we could track. The first slave to die had been one of the bed slaves intended for the bannermen. Anyone who slept with him the first night or after needed to be found and assessed immediately.

I watched the slave as he answered Asgrim's questions succinctly and easily. If I were Michail, he was the first one I would choose to infect. It would make sense, then, that he was offered as a bed slave for Tarathiel. The slave could spread the Rot straight to the Primarch, and through the Primarch's harem, maybe through his whole bloodline.

Yet the slave had been stripped and washed multiple times and no one had found a spot on him. How, then, had the Ostovian king thought to ensure transmission if he was not infected? He would have done something smart. Infecting the slave directly might kill him before he could reach Tarathiel. Something that no one would touch for a day or two. Something that had been used ahead of its time, when it should have stayed sealed.

"We need to slaughter all the animals Ostovan sent," I said. "And burn their carcasses."

Ieduin frowned. "That's three months' worth of rations, Ruith."

"Potentially compromised rations," said Aryn, who must've agreed with me.

Katyr sighed. "You can't burn everyone and everything you think is compromised. You would soon have us immolating the entire camp."

"The longer we sit here and do nothing, the more damage this does." I leaned against the table, which was covered in reports I had yet to read. "People will lose faith. There will be panic as it spreads. Even if we are doing nothing, we must look like we are doing something." I looked at the slave. "What do your people do when death comes to your city?"

He arched an eyebrow and wrote a single word: "Pray."

I admired his honesty.

Asgrim snorted. "The gods won't be of any help to us here."

The slave started scribbling something else, erased it, and put the slate down. Instead of words, he drew two lines through the center of the slate, writing sick on one side.

"A quarantine camp." Asgrim knitted his brows together.

I stood and rubbed my fingers through the stubble gathering on my chin. Simply separating the sick from the well wouldn't be enough. We would still be stuck waiting for people to live or die. Snow would fall around us before this all came to an end. There was only one decision to make, and it was not a pretty one. Good decisions in times of tragedy rarely were.

"We will institute a quarantine immediately," I announced. "The sick and anyone showing symptoms—elf or human—will go immediately to the second camp. It will be set up with its own structure and chain of command. The rations from Ostovan will be given to the second camp. We will hold position for two more days, and anyone who shows a symptom in that time will be moved to the second camp. After that, we can delay no longer."

"You'd abandon them?" Katyr frowned.

I met his eyes, reading the disapproval there. "Any who survive can follow their commander to the longboats and meet back up with us at Homeshore."

We both knew that leaving them here was a death sentence. There would be no one to follow us to Homeshore. We were not making a sick camp and a well camp, but a dead camp and a live camp. It was amputating a limb with a glass shard. Messy, painful. Necessary.

The weight of other eyes settled on me, and I turned to find myself looking at the slave, his expression difficult to read. Did he approve of my decision? Did he hate me for it? Did it even matter what he thought? He was a slave, a human slave, and yet here he stood among my commanders, speaking with authority no one had given him.

"See that it's done," I commanded, and there was no argument.

My commanders all bowed, accepting their hand in the matter, and went with Asgrim from the tent. Only the nameless slave remained.

I watched him for a moment, the usual defiance in his eyes as he regarded me, his unspoken challenge clear.

The king says he is nothing.

A king wouldn't put such care into dispatching of nothing, especially a king as devious as Michail.

Who are you, little sun? Why do you burn so hot?He had tried to write his name for me once, but I had stopped him. Once I knew him, he would be a part of me forever, his name a brand on my mind, his death a weight on my soul. I had enough weight. Before I bore his, I needed to know his character, and not just his name.

I gave him my back and held out my arm. Any well-trained slave would have understood the order to come and attend me, but he was no slave. He was the sun, leashed unfairly to the moon in a tug of war neither of us might win. "Come. Undress me."

There was a moment of brief hesitation before the rug shifted, every step forward deliberately slow, every movement a protest, even as he did his duty. I understood all too well what it was like to be trapped between two unwanted consequences.

Clumsy fingers sought out the tie high on my neck first, picking it apart before moving to the next with efficiency. Hatred and heat radiated from him, threatening to scorch me, but he kept his eyes down, and did his work.

I caught his hand as he reached for the last tie, and still he didn't look up at me. "Nearly a hundred of your people will die because of the counsel you gave. Perhaps more."

A muscle in his jaw feathered. Stern brown eyes lifted, met mine.

"Just as many of mine will be dead with them," I continued. "I suppose hungry graves don't care whether men or elves fill them. We are all food for worms in the end."

I let him go, and he went back to work, the silence gaining weight with every careful brush of his hands over the fabric he was removing from my body. I shrugged off the shirt, and he took it, placing it in the basket to be washed tomorrow.

"Would your king have given the same order?" I asked him.

His jaw clenched harder, and he shook his head. This one had no love for his king, and rightly so. The bastard had treated him worse than a slave.

I cupped the slave's cheek and lifted his face, letting him look at me freely. It was forbidden, this sort of intimacy with slaves. We could fuck them, beat them, use them as we pleased, but looking upon them and letting them look at us was taboo. Eyes were windows to the soul, and when souls met, there was always a price. I surrendered a piece of myself to him every time.

"Do you have family in Ostovan? Lovers?" I didn't know why I asked it. It didn't matter, and the less I knew about him, the easier it would be.

He shook his head, but there was a grievous weight to it, as if he were still mourning the loss.

"I'm sorry," I said and pulled my hand away. The apology was genuine, even if I was not the cause. Losing family was not easy.

He shook off the apology like a dog shedding water from his fur and furiously threw himself into completing the task at hand. Red faced and furious, he reached for the clasp that held my pants in place.

I stopped him. "Remove your clothes and lie face down on the bed."

The slave's face hardened with silent disobedience.

"You and I have already shared the bed for several nights while your back healed," I pointed out. "I don't intend to take you by force, or I would have done so already."

Fresh rage lit up behind his eyes and he looked at me, once again breaking the taboo. I thought of him tied to the post, bearing his lashing with forced silence. I hated to do it to him, but it was necessary. One day, he would see. He would hate me still, but he would see. They would all see. I was only a monster because someone had to be. Sometimes killing monsters meant walking a fine line between salvation and damnation.

The slave did as he was told, however begrudgingly, because he thought he had no choice. He did, even if it was a choice between two painful things.

Gingerly, he pulled his tunic over his head, revealing the angry red lines I had carved across his back. Muscle moved beneath pale skin, shifting in such a way to emphasize his broad shoulders and trim waist. He was well-built, the slave, with too much muscle to have been some pampered noble. Ostovan had no army, but they had guards. Had he commanded the guard? Trained them? He knew his way around a sword.

With his back to me, he lowered his pants. It wasn't meant to be sensual, the way he let the fabric slide slowly over the curve of his ass. He was only slow because it hurt to move. Still, no one could blame me for noticing the way the skin clung taut to muscle, and the shapely build of him. A steadier diet would make him more pleasing to the eye, but he was not unattractive now.

Scarred, but not broken, I thought. Aryn was right. I didn't think I would ever break this one, but he was learning to bend when enough pressure was applied.

Naked, he went to the bed and deposited himself face down, as he had been for days, only this time he was stiff and buzzing with nerves. There was a side of me that wanted to make his worst fears a reality. No one would blame me for giving in to the flicker of desire. It was a long campaign, and I hadn't taken anyone to my bed since he'd arrived. No one would blame me for pushing apart those powerful thighs and crawling between them, or for taking pleasure where I could. He was mine, after all. A lesser elf would have claimed him already.

But he was no willing bed slave. I half believed if I put my cock in his ass, he would find some way to wrench it off me. Perhaps the slave had teeth between his cheeks and venom in his balls. Why not? It came out of every other orifice, even though he couldn't speak.

With a small sigh, I retrieved the ointment Asgrim had left and sat on the bed. The slave stiffened at the first touch of my fingers to his back.

"Be still," I ordered. "This will sting."

He bore the treatment with his usual sullen silence, not that he had any other choice, given the collar around his neck. I touched ointment coated fingers to the most grievous scar, which ran from his left shoulder nearly to the hip. He took a sharp breath, and the muscles of his buttocks flexed, the only outward signs that he was in pain.

He twisted to look at me. Fingers fisted the sheets, fire in his eyes.

"I know you think I hate you, but I don't. I can't afford hate. I…admire your courage, even if I must punish you for it. It will serve you well in the days to come."

The slave's eyes widened briefly with shock before he closed them in an attempt to hide it and turned away from me.

It occurred to me that, somehow, our roles had reversed unintentionally. Here he was, lying comfortably on the bed while I attended to him when it should have been the other way around. This nameless slave had me in his thrall, and there was little I could do about it. It wasn't desire that drew me to him, nor curiosity, nor the need for a master to subdue his subordinate. It was gravity. We were circling each other, our orbits slowly tightening. One day soon, we would crash together and either destroy each other, or else find some way to co-exist as something new.

In some last-ditch effort to wrench back the control he'd unknowingly stolen from me, I commanded, "Sleep."

But he was already there, breathing softly in his enemy's bed without fear.