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Krylos felt numb from the moment he got the news. It wasn't a feeling he was used to. He was used to rage and anger and the fiery burn of battle in his blood, and now there was none or that. His wife was dead, his young son alone, and he couldn't feel anything but all encompassing grief.
He left the battlefront immediately, no thought to how his men would fare without him there to lead them. They would survive, or they would not, and he didn't have it in him to care anymore.
Dahvlan was angry about his decision to leave he knew, but he didn’t even care about the opinion of one of his oldest, closest friends. They’d been through so much together, the two of them and Scotiar. He thought Dahvlan should understand since he had a wife and a child back home too, but it was obvious he didn’t. That was fine. It didn’t matter.
⁂
The whole village was still a smouldering wreck when he arrived after a hard, exhausting day’s ride. A few people were there salvaging what they could, bandaged and wounded even if they still walked. Their eyes looked as blank and dead as Krylos was sure his were.
So much loss. So much death.
He found Chal-kra with a neighbor, an older woman who was now the only survivor of her household. He knew her husband had been killed in battle two years before, and now she had lost all three of her children as well. Her eyes were bright with tears, even from a distance, when she saw him coming down the dusty, empty road.
Chal-kra ran to him as he dismounted his horse, sobs rocking his small form as he clung to Krylos in the way of all small children who need comfort. Krylos did his best, arm around his son’s shoulders, but even still it was hard to feel anything though his own grief.
He thanked the woman for caring for Chal-kra, who had quickly cried himself to sleep at Krylos’s side, and she accepted the thanks without a word. She walked out through the village, back the way he’d come, and whether she went to find a new home or to let herself die out in the wild plains, he knew he would never see her again. There was nothing here for her now.
Krylos wasn’t sure there was anything for him either, but he had a responsibility to Chal-kra. And a responsibility to his wife, who even from death would not forgive him if he abandoned their son. He would do what he must to raise him well.
And to do that, he knew that his time on the battlefront was done. No fire burned within him anymore, not even the barest embers. As much as this village of ash was no place to raise a child, war was no place for a man without the righteous fury of a warrior. He was no longer that man.
No emotion stirred in Krylos as he pulled a length of white fabric from one of his saddlebags and began binding his sword, a legend in its own right after so many years of battles, to its scabbard. He bound it tight, vowing silently to himself that this was the end of its use as anything but a symbol. He was no longer a warrior, and only warriors had need of swords.
With Chal-kra’s exhausted, grief stricken form cradled in his arms, Krylos remounted and left the village for the last time, to find a new place for them. A farm, perhaps, many miles away from the memories and the grief that pervaded here. A blank slate for them both.
⁂
After so many years of pastoral life, Krylos hadn’t thought he’d find himself returning to the king’s court even once more, much less more than that. Things had changed, though, after two decades of peaceful, anonymous living.
Chal-kra was his entire world, and his safety Krylos’ primary concern. The realization of the betrayal of that responsibility sat heavy in his gut. That such a betrayal had come from one who had once been a close brother in arms to him only made it all the worse.
The sound of the fabric tearing was barely audible over the beating of blood in his ears, fast and loud and almost overwhelming after so long without the rush of imminent battle. Already he could feel himself slipping into that place he'd promised himself he'd never go again. Rage, red and bottomless, welled up. He let it take him over.
His sword slid free of its scabbard, decades old fabric binding flying uselessly away, and he attacked.