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"The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
The merciless light of dawn breaking through the red canvas of the tent, spilling around the outline of a young man half-kneeling in the entrance. His head is backlit, face lost to shadow, but his hand is firm on Felix’s shoulder. “Come on, we’ve got to go. We’re only two hours out.”
It’s spring. It smells like spring: wet earth and green sap, and a frost that doesn’t quite take. The ground is soft underneath Felix’s bedroll. A horse whinnies somewhere to his left. It’s still quiet because it is barely dawn. Most of the camp is asleep, except for the squires.
The boy sits back, frowning as he glances over his shoulder. His hair is too short; it glows like a halo made of straw, almost transparent. A smattering of acne trails along his jaw where he had sweated into his collar during the eight-day ride from Fhirdiad. He is already dressed for battle: leather armor and breastplate buckled on, even though it’s awkward to hunch over it in the tent. His scabbard hangs empty at his hip.
Last night, he must have stayed up cleaning weapons by firelight; his knuckles are smudged with sword oil where he still clutches Felix’s shoulder.
Last night, Felix bedded down in the stables in a village near Remire. He had paid a gold coin, unasked for, and been promised breakfast. He hadn’t brought a tent or a bedroll because it is the month of the Ethereal Moon, and frost had come early this year. In the mountains, two hours south of Garreg Mach Monastery, the skies threatened snow. And dawn, when it comes, will peek shyly over the spine of the Oghma Range.
“Two hours?” Felix asks, a croak. “To what?”
The boy looks back to him and frowns harder.
Felix knows what he’s going to say even before he answers. It’s there in the curve of his cheek, still soft with youth; in that tent; in the light of the morning. It’s spring, and the horses are restless, and the camp of one hundred and fifty men – all cavalry, for faster travel – is waking up.
“Two hours to ride to Mateus,” says Dimitri. “To stop the rebellion.”
Felix does not pick up the sword. He does not saddle his horse, and he does not follow Dimitri. One of the older soldiers nods in greeting, tells him, “It might rain later,” and Felix wants to say, it won’t. But what’s the point? This isn’t real.
Instead, he walks in the direction of the treeline at the steady, casual pace of someone who’s only looking for a suitable bush in which to relieve himself. No one spares him a glance. Once out of sight, he keeps walking. He tries to remember how far he would have to walk to get to the sea. A day? Two days?
He left the sword at camp and his hip feels empty. It has been five years since he allowed a weapon to be farther from him than the length of a room.
No, not five years here. On this day, Felix is sixteen years old. Today is his first time holding a weapon that might slash at something other than a training dummy. Or - it would have been, if he had picked up his sword. If he had stayed. If he had -
Felix walks until nightfall. He stumbles, dizzy, and reaches out to steady himself against a tree. His throat is dry. He doesn’t know where he is. The sea is out of reach. The day is over. The nightmare is vanquished.
Dimitri must be finished with his killing by now.
Felix sinks to his knees. He presses his forehead to the rough bark of the tree. He retches, shoulders heaving. The earth is cool beneath his hands. He drops down further, presses his cheek to the ground.
An owl hoots overhead, but Felix keeps his eyes closed.
The merciless light of dawn breaking through the red canvas of the tent, spilling around the outline of a young man half-kneeling in the entrance. His head is backlit, face lost to shadow, but his hand is firm on Felix’s shoulder. “Come on, we’ve got to go. We’re only two hours out.”
Felix tries to say, no , but his voice fails him. He doesn’t make a sound. He tries it again. No. Please.
“Felix?” Dimitri is frowning again. He watches Felix’s mouth make the shape of the words. He says Felix’s name again, quieter.
Eventually Felix says, “Alright.” He gets up. He walks to the treeline.
The merciless light of dawn breaking through the red canvas of the tent, spilling around the outline of a young man half-kneeling in the entrance. His head is backlit, face lost to shadow, but his hand is firm on Felix’s shoulder. “Come on, we’ve got to go. We’re only two hours out.”
The merciless light of dawn breaking through the red canvas of the tent, spilling around the outline of a young man half-kneeling in the entrance.
The merciless light –
Eventually, Felix gets bored of walking in the woods. The truth is that it’s getting easier to find his way. The shock and horror have worn off. The day no longer passes in a haze as he hikes, without food or water or a weapon, away from the sight of Dimitri in that camp. The nightmare doesn’t end.
Now Felix gets angry. Now he thinks, if it’s not a nightmare, then it has to be real. And if it’s real, then what the fuck does that mean?
This time, he keeps his eyes closed and says, “Yeah, okay, I’m coming.”
Dimitri slips out of the tent. Felix gets up. He doesn’t head for the trees.
He finds his sword and inspects it with a critical eye. Good steel, good workmanship, but it’s too light in his hand. He only has one scabbard. These days – in the future – in the war, he keeps two swords strapped to his back and a throwing dagger at each hip. But this will do. The boots, the tunic, the armor – all of the gear is in excellent condition, well cared for but barely used because the Felix whose body he’s haunting is sixteen and in the middle of a growth spurt.
After days of walking, he’s getting used to the body. He’s skinnier and weaker, the energy used up by growing instead of war. But it’s not so bad. He’s been training for most of his life.
He’s missing about a dozen scars, give or take.
Saddling the horses is the easy part. The knights nod at him, impressed. It’s sort of funny, if he were in any mood to laugh. His fingers are missing the muscle memory but he hadn’t spent hours in the Monastery stables under Sylvain’s tender tutelage for nothing. It’ll chafe her side if you do it like that. Here, these two straps. Good.
Felix puts his hand on the mare’s warm side. Breathes. In and out. He allows himself to pretend, for a moment, that Sylvain is leaning over his shoulder, distracting as much as helping. A moment of weakness.
Everything about this is one long, unending moment of weakness.
“Felix?”
Felix’s hand spasms in the mare’s mane. Other than that first minute of wakefulness when this nightmare started, looking at Dimitri’s face has been impossible. He orders himself to turn around. Relax your fingers. Let go. First left foot, then right. Look him in the eyes. He’s still your friend. Here, at this moment, he hasn’t killed anyone yet.
Dimitri is watching him with that familiar serious frown. Felix snaps, “What?”
It’s harsher than he meant, but not harsher than he’s used to. Dimitri’s face twists with confused hurt. His mouth scrunches up. The Dimitri that Felix knows - the Dimitri that has been dead for five years – would barely blink at this tone. But now, he falters.
“I was just asking if you’re ready to ride out. Everyone’s saddled up.” Then, hesitating but earnest, “Are you nervous? It’s okay if you are. I am.”
Felix doesn’t know what he’s going to say until he’s saying it. “Nervous of what? What do you think will happen?”
He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears. He cradles his old, familiar fury to his chest. It feels good to have one thing that feels the same. It’s easy, suddenly, to look Dimitri in the face. He waits for Dimitri to lift his gaze and take this on the chin, like a cleanly thrown punch. Their old song and dance.
Dimitri’s jaw is tight. His mouth thins, like he’s struggling to say something or maybe keep something in, but it’s all in his eyes: they’re wide and blue, electric with some unholy hunger.
Felix had seen him like this only in flashes. On the battlefield with the Professor, sometimes, if the fight turned ugly; in Remire village. Facing his step-sister, hands too tight around his lance as though imagining that it were Edelgard’s throat instead. The sun is rising, chasing away the chill, but a shiver runs over Felix’s back. Has it always been there in Dimitri’s face before he learned to hide it?
When Felix saw it at Remire, it had brought a heavy satisfaction. There, see? I told you that he was a monster. Here, on Dimitri’s young face, it looks grotesque.
“I don’t know, Felix,” this Dimitri says, and just like that it’s gone. Just his face left, round cheeked and terribly pale. A trick of the light. He steps closer and puts his hand on the horse next to Felix’s. He’s close enough that Felix sees the sunburn on the tips of his ears because his fucking hair is too short. He smells like he’s been on the road for a week. He asks, quietly, “What do you think is going to happen?” Like he genuinely wants to know.
Did this happen when it was real? What had Felix said? He can’t remember. He can’t do anything other than clutch at the horse so that Dimitri won’t see his hands shake. He could tell Dimitri the truth. Dimitri won’t believe him, but that’s not Felix’s problem. He tries on the words for size: I’m stuck here. I’ve been reliving this day and I don’t know how to make it stop. Yes, I know what’s going to happen.
Or, maybe, he can change it.
Maybe that’s the point. He was sent here for a reason, for a purpose. Unthinkable that he should be here out of the caprice of some cruel fate or magic. Stop Dimitri from turning into the boar prince, save lives, stop the cycle.
Felix tries to keep his voice even. “I think it’s going to be bad. It’s –” Words fail him. How to explain? How to change Dimitri’s mind? Again, Felix wishes that Sylvain were here. The man can sell water to a well; convincing their oldest friend not to slaughter defenseless opponents should be easy.
Dimitri is still looking at him. “You think it’s going to be a difficult fight?” he asks, doubtful.
“No. I think it’s going to be easy.” Careful. “Maybe too easy.” It’s no good. Felix gives up and says, rough: “Look. What if it’s a bloodbath? What if it’s hard to – stop. There is no justice in that.”
“Felix, they killed my parents.” Dimitri’s voice doesn’t shake. He’s had two years to learn how to make it sound like that, simple and bloodless. “They killed Glenn. Of course we’re bringing justice.” Those wide, clear eyes. Felix was wrong. Dimitri hasn’t been hiding this at all. It has always been written all over his face. Felix just refused to read it until it was too late.
It’s on the tip of his tongue. We don’t even know for sure that they were involved. He’s never even said it to the older Dimitri when they were at Garreg Mach. It doesn’t matter. The rebellion must be put down. They had never disagreed on that point. They had simply balanced Glenn’s life on different scales. To Felix, his brother’s ghost weighs a handful of souls. To Dimitri, no number is too high.
Felix finds, to his horror, that he doesn’t know what to say, how to convince Dimitri. He doesn’t recognize this boy, doesn’t know him. If he had any memories of Dimitri at this age, they have been papered over by the version of Dimitri that has blood on his hands.
On that first day at Garreg Mach, Felix had caught one glimpse of Dimitri for the first time in two years and shut himself away in the training hall, which is where Ingrid found him. She stood there, silently watching until Felix finally dropped the training sword and said, “I’m fine. I can handle it.”
It was the only time in recent memory that she had managed to wait him out. Usually this was his game.
“Right,” she said. She sounded worried. Felix hated it. It made him feel like he was ten years old and crying uselessly over Sylvain’s broken arm after he’d fallen from the tree in search of walnuts that Felix had asked for. Ingrid had wrung her hands, furious with the two of them, and Sylvain had let Felix wipe his snotty nose on his good shoulder as he sat there, pale with pain but unrepentant. Dimitri was the one who put together a makeshift splint until they could half-carry Sylvain to a healer.
“Felix, he just wants to be your friend again.”
Dropping the sword was a mistake. Now Felix had nothing in his hands to hurl against the wall. “He’s not,” he snarled. The depth of that sentiment is bottomless, impossible to explain. A wailing, gaping despair. “My friend has been gone for two years, and that thing in there,” a violent jab in the direction of the reception hall, “is not fooling anyone. If I have to see him, fine. But I will not pretend.”
He marched to put the sword back on the rack so that Ingrid couldn’t get a good look at his face. He had missed Dimitri so desperately that it made him sick with anger. At Dimitri, for turning into a monster. At himself, for wishing that the monster would let him turn back. Just for a minute , he used to beg in his mind. Let me have him just for a minute, and let it be true. As though Felix had anything to barter with that was worth that kind of miracle.
Well, now he’s got him. Go ahead, drink it in: that smile, that sincerity, that terrible sadness that used to make Felix want to do something stupid like hold his hand all the time. This young man that Felix doesn’t know how to convince of anything.
At least when he’d faced the boar, the boar had understood him.
The ride to Mateus is two hours, unless you’ve got blood to spill. Then no one wastes any time. They ride the horses too hard, but it won’t matter when they’re inside the city gates with blades drawn. No one needs a fresh horse in a fight on narrow cobbled roads; they just need a barricade.
Whatever could be scraped together of Mateus city guard meets them on the road three hundred yards out of the city edge. Felix remembers this much; the best fighters went first, then the slaughter really started. Only some of them are on horses. Most of them are wearing proper armor, but not all.
They rush forward. Felix doesn’t think, because that’s the point of training before battle, so that you don’t have to think. He doesn’t fight on horseback but he knows how to hold the line. Knows how to ride up to the opponent, palms out, magic already gathering in the joints of his fingers. Throw his arms in front of him and watch the first few enemies buckle as lighting races through them, stumbling, hands blistering on their weapons. Enough time to vault off the saddle and pull his swords. Get to work.
It had not been easy to learn that particular trick. The Professor had watched him at the drill, as his Crest struggled to do a single fucking thing, and said nothing. Felix was not good at being bad at things. His face felt like it was on fire with frustration. He wanted to demand a sword in his hands, petulant, and it was only stubbornness that kept his mouth shut. He wouldn’t complain. The Professor, impassive, said, “Again.” So Felix did it again.
Felix bends his elbows, feels the abrupt, confused jerk of his Crest. His useless hands hang in front of his face instead of where they should be, which is on the pommel of his sword. The lighting that should be bursting from his fingertips is boiling his blood instead.
A lance pierces his kidney and comes out through his spine. The man on the other end of it gapes, eyes wide as Felix convulses and tips over, as though he hadn’t expected it to go in either. Felix slides further down the lance. Pain like nothing he'd ever felt; the pain of a mortal wound. His hands are still empty. He didn’t even get his sword out.
Somewhere, someone is screaming. It sounds familiar.
Of course it does. It’s Dimitri, howling Felix’s name.
The merciless light of dawn breaking through the red canvas of the tent, spilling around the outline of someone half-kneeling in the entrance.
Felix puts a hand low on his stomach and vomits.
He tries the woods again. This time he plans. He grabs a light knapsack and fills it with dried jerky and water. He straps on his sword. He skirts the camp past the horses, away from the soldier’s tents, and takes a side path. He wishes he had a map, but there is no time to go looking for one. He doesn’t like hunting but he can tell direction alright, so he navigates by the sun. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but there’s got to be somewhere.
He stops for a short rest when the sun sets. His eyes feel heavy. He gets up.
When he reaches the town, it is high noon the next day and Felix feels dead on his feet. His eyes burn but closing them briefly brings no relief. If he sits down, then sleep will come.
If he sleeps, he will have to wake up.
He refills the water skins from the well in town and keeps going. The ground turns hard beneath his feet, rock and sand packed down. Small, hardy yellow flowers fight their way through the soil. A grove of scraggly cypress stretches along the dirt path that Felix had been following for the past three hours.
He only stops for a second. Just long enough to sit and eat the rest of his jerky. His head is so heavy. He rests his forehead on his knees. One moment of darkness.
The merciless light of dawn –
The next time, Felix keeps his hand on the fucking sword.
When this happened for real, he was a shadow to Dimitri on the battlefield. They trained together under the same tutors. They sparred together for years. Dimitri was almost as good with a sword as he was with a lance. So when they went to their first battle, they had fought side by side.
That’s how Felix was close enough to see the thrill in Dimitri’s face when he spilled all that blood.
As soon as the first clang of steel meeting steel echoes across the battlefield, Felix is off his horse and bolting for the nearest city guard. Dimitri will cut a path down the center of the enemy ranks like always, so Felix slips to the edges of the battle. Fighting in his teenage body feels like his skin is three sizes too small, but he grits his teeth and parries through sheer determination. He wasn’t bad at this age. His muscles know what to do. He still wishes he had his other sword.
He doesn’t look at Dimitri, even when the screaming starts.
Felix fights. He delivers incapacitating injuries when he can; finishes it off quickly when he can’t. He can barely see five feet in front of his face. All he thinks about is Dimitri on the other side of the battlefield. A glimpse of gold as they push past the gates and into town proper, sunlight glinting in Dimitri's hair as he disappears down the road.
The streets are thick with fear when the fighting dwindles down. The rebellion took barely an hour to subdue. No sight of Dimitri in all that time. The absence feels like a weight around Felix’s neck.
A knight comes over to clap Felix on the shoulder and say something about his first battle, well fought. She’s not much taller than Felix himself, with close-cropped red hair that reminds him of Leoni. Felix used to know her name, probably. He makes himself nod. The last thing he wants is congratulations. But the knight isn’t done yet. Her gauntlets dig into his shoulder, painful even through leather.
Felix is very familiar with the look on her face. He has seen every version of it. The terror in the street takes on a new meaning. The hushed whispers, the barely constrained silence.
“You should go with the body,” she tells him. “They’re wrapping him now. You should be there.”
It hangs between them: you should have been there all this time. Why send the Crown Prince’s friend and sparring partner along to his first battle? They were supposed to be together. Dimitri isn’t used to fighting alone. He isn’t used to really fighting at all. Not yet.
Dimitri’s knights bring the body to the Mateus noble keep. They lay it out on a featherbed in the first room they find that’s big enough to hold all of them. Their eyes dart between Felix and their dead prince, inscrutable. No one tells him that it’s his fault. No one has to.
It’s funny – Felix should think that it’s funny, that he was so stupid to believe that there was nothing he couldn’t withstand. Dimitri had done the worst possible thing. Dimitri had disappeared, lost to the boar, and left Felix adrift in his grief. And Felix had survived it.
For months afterward, Felix dreamt of blood. He saw Dimitri in every face that twisted even slightly in anger. He had wept helplessly; no other word for it. He imagined how it could have been different: what if they hadn’t been sent to Mateus, what if there wasn’t a rebellion at all, what if Glenn were alive.
He had hated Dimitri so much, but he failed to consider the simplest, most elegant alternative: what if Dimitri had died before the boar got to him.
Dimitri looks so young in death. His eyes are closed, his jaw tightly clenched as though in pain. His hair is crusted with blood. The killing blow came to the back of his skull. Laid on his back, with only the grime of battle splattered on his trousers, he looks like he could be lost in fitful sleep.
So this is what Glenn died to avoid. This is what’s on the other end of that choice.
For the first time, the cycle of the nightmare feels like a blessing.
The merciless light of dawn breaking through the red canvas of the tent, and Felix wakes up choking on tears. Dimitri is there in an instant, reaching for Felix, alarmed but trying so hard to be comforting. “What’s wrong?” he whispers, and lets Felix pull him down to the bedroll. “Shh. Bad dream?”
Felix couldn’t answer even if he’d tried. Dimitri’s breastplate is an uncomfortable wedge between them, but at least he isn’t wearing his gauntlets. Felix buries his nose in Dimitri’s neck and lets himself howl. He should be embarrassed to be making this much noise; he’s not a child. But what does it matter what the soldiers think of him, when the slate will be wiped clean tomorrow?
So he lets himself cry. He’d never done this, even when they were little. He had run to Sylvain’s arms, or his brother's, when emotions felt too big for his body. The truth was that with Dimitri, he was shy. Sylvain’s kindness was easier to swallow. He would whisper jokes in Felix’s ear, tell him stories. Sylvain was the perfect harbor from the world.
Dimitri was so serious, so earnest. He didn’t want to make Felix laugh. He wanted Felix to know that he wasn’t alone. Felix had always felt too much when he was around Dimitri, like Dimitri was a magnifier for every blizzard in Felix’s chest. A lightning rod. No safety, only devastation, and the promise that Dimitri would help him pick up the pieces after the storm had passed.
The shape of him is different than Felix remembers. The last time they had been this close, Felix had a sword at Dimitri’s neck and his thighs on either side of Dimitri’s arms, keeping them trapped against his body. Dimitri’s face was perfectly blank. He said, “I yield.” Felix didn’t move.
Half the class was watching them. Felix pushed the sword harder against Dimitri’s throat, just to see what would happen. Dimitri lifted his chin as though to let him, as though taking this barely sheathed violence as his due. He wasn’t even really looking at Felix anymore, just staring at the ceiling like he didn’t care what happened next.
The Professor’s hand came down on Felix’s shoulder, and he dropped the sword. He stumbled to his feet. She said something to Dimitri that Felix didn’t hear over the harsh sound of his own breathing. On the other end of the room, Ingrid was muttering furiously to Sylvain as he shook his head, his attention on the spectacle. He caught Felix’s gaze, the question bare on his face: are you okay? Felix scowled.
A week later, Edelgard declared war.
In the tent, Dimitri doesn’t say anything at all. He moves his hand over the knobs of Felix’s spine, up and down as far as he can reach, like he can do this forever and not slow down or get tired. His collar is practically drenched where Felix rubbed his face near Dimitri's throat. The breastplate is going to leave a mark on Felix’s cheek, but neither of them move.
“Whatever it is, it wasn’t real,” Dimitri says at last. His fingers are on Felix’s nape, tangling in his hair. “Just a dream.”
Felix doesn’t have the energy to laugh. It feels nice to be held. Dimitri is a sweet boy, and a good friend. If Felix were sixteen, if this were real, it would be the best feeling in the world. Maybe he’d lift his head, say thank you, press his chapped lips to Dimitri’s cheek. Have something good for just a few hours.
Instead, he gives in to another moment of weakness. He lets himself imagine that the hands on his neck belong to a different version of Dimitri. He knows how those hands feel when they push him back in a sparring exercise. He remembers the shoulders, broader after a few years, coiling to thrust a lance squarely at the target.
He lets himself think it, just once: he would rather have the boar’s hands on him in violence than this young Dimitri’s hands on him in tenderness.
The thought slips through his mind like an unwanted relative that’s finally gained entrance. Then it’s gone. Nothing’s changed. Dimitri is still dead. Felix is still trapped here. There is no way he will ever see the boar again.
He opens his eyes. It’s long past dawn. They’re late for their duties, late for their scheduled march to Mateus. Someone calls out, “Your Highness!” and doesn’t hide his irritation well enough. Dimitri barely stirs, still looking at Felix with his soul in his eyes.
There is one way.
Mateus city guard before the gates. Felix stays on his horse, sword drawn, and cuts them down. On his left, Dimitri spurs his own horse onward and cleaves through the battle like an anvil. He rides a beautiful chestnut mare, a birthday gift from the Regent. Felix sees the back of his neck, the tips of his ears, as Dimitri grips his lance and pierces the throat of a swordsman in Mateus colors. It’s like skewering meat for grilling. Blood gurgles out of the wound when Dimitri withdraws, spills down the soldier's chest.
Felix’s horse jerks, barely avoiding a jab from a man who looks older than Felix’s father, and Felix doesn’t think as he twists his sword to block the next blow. Focus. Feint to the right, then a single strike from overhead. He can’t protect Dimitri if he dies first. He has to live just a few hours longer.
Then they’re through the gates and in the city. Familiar screams. The rebels don’t stop coming, but few of them are wearing armor. They carry weapons, though. That’s all that matters.
A man, barrel-chested and surprisingly quick on his feet, lunges out of the window and onto the banister of a building that looks like a trading house. The dagger in his hands glints in the tall afternoon light. Dimitri is jerking his lance out of another soldier’s stomach, teeth bared. He doesn’t see the danger.
Felix stands straight in the stirrups, rides forward, and guts the man like a fish with his sword. The would-be attacker howls in pain and plunges to the ground, blood spurting from his belly. Half of it ends up on Felix, warm and sticky. He can taste it where it splattered over his mouth.
Dimitri glances up, once. Felix meets his eyes.
The boar looks back.
The boar prince cuts down another rebel. They don’t stop coming, and they don’t stop dying. Again and again. Felix follows at his side, just like they practiced. He thinks about what Dimitri said. They killed Glenn. Of course we’re bringing justice.
The prince's horse neighs in pain and buckles, front legs scrambling for purchase. The boar slips from her back. Another body falls at his feet, not yet dead but bleeding heavily from a wound in the shoulder. He stares down, frozen for just a moment, his expression like a mask he forgot he was wearing. He’s looking at something dangling from the man’s neck. A necklace, maybe.
Stop, Felix tries to say. No more.
Gorge rises in his throat. He knows, finally, the shape of the real trap. On one side, Dimitri, young and unspoiled, belonging to a version of Felix that could never exist again. On the other side, the boar. Make your choice.
Good thing the boar is dead and gone. You’ve lived with it for five years now. What’s the rest of your life?
The air is cold, even in the stables. It smells of hay and something sweet – the clean, thin scent of the mountains. The single window is filthy from the rain and snow, blocking most of the weak morning light.
Someone knocks on the door; it must be what woke him up. The hinges creak. The face of Felix’s temporary hostess is creased with worry. Her name is Elena, he remembers. She lives alone with her daughter, her husband gone at war. She hadn’t mentioned for which side, and Felix hadn’t asked.
“I’ve brought breakfast,” she says, not quite meeting his eyes. He has a particular reputation, especially here. “But you should know – it snowed overnight. Might be a longer trek to Garreg Mach than you expected.”
Felix says nothing. His hands are numb. He’s glad that the woman doesn’t look at his face; he doesn’t know what she would see there.
“There is a camp of thieves, five miles north,” she continues in an even meeker voice when he fails to respond. “Something happened last night and – fighting broke out, we think – that is, I don’t know. But.” She wrings her hands. “Someone was heading there, to clear the camp. A man and a woman. So. Be careful, please.”
Finally, Felix manages, “Thank you.”
He gets to his feet. He checks his swords and straps them to his back. He eats the breakfast – hard rolls and milk, a luxury at this time of year. He doesn’t realize that his hands are shaking until he tries to open the latch on the door and it slips through his fingers.
After the battle, it was just like that first time. The boar wiped the guts from his lance and looked at Felix with those wild, impenetrable eyes. A lucky swipe of an ax had managed to tear into his calf, but he barely seemed to notice. It dripped a steady stream of blood into his boot. The only thing he said was, “It’s done,” like he finished a particularly bothersome chore.
Felix told him, “This isn’t justice. This is slaughter.” Words he’d said a thousand times before. But this was the boar’s first time hearing it, here.
Something cracked in the boar’s face. Like the surface of a lake in winter. He said, “And what of the slaughter they’ve committed?” Like a little boy wailing, it isn’t fair. If I hurt, then they have to hurt, too. An orphan's justice.
Felix went to the keep, to the room where they had put Dimitri’s body in another lifetime, and sobbed until the darkness took him, the featherbed soft under his cheek.
Elena was right. Snow had fallen heavily overnight, packing the roads. It won’t be an easy hike to the Monastery.
Felix looks north, to the path that must lead to the thieves’ camp. It curves around a boulder and disappears into the trees. It’s not too far out of the way. He has time.
He begins to walk.