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“Stay you!” Hamnet hisses through the darkness, so fiercely that Mareth obeys, reaching out a hand to steady himself against the invisible wall. “You will only injure yourself further.”
“I know,” Mareth replies, staring into the black, listening to Hamnet’s footsteps on the stone.
“The fliers will not be able to carry you home if you cannot walk to meet them,” Hamnet whispers urgently, as if he has not heard. His voice is closer now.
Mareth snorts, sending a flare of agony across his chest. “I can walk,” he whispers back.
Flickering torchlight appears out of nowhere, and then Hamnet is there, his face streaked with blood and grime. The relief that passes over his features is so apparent that Mareth cannot help smiling at him. In return, Hamnet purses his lips. “Why are you standing? Sit down and let me see.”
Letting out a hiss of pain, Mareth eases himself to the rough floor of the tunnel. “You might have acted this concerned when the gnawers first appeared,” he says as he stretches out his injured leg.
Hamnet kneels before him, propping the torch against a boulder so that the flames lick brightly upward. “And you,” he replies, “might have stopped to think before fighting them when only one of us has light.” He rips away the torn fabric from Mareth’s leg and frowns down at the gash in his calf that runs from ankle to knee.
The sight of it is not particularly shocking to Mareth, but he seems to feel the pain more intensely as he gazes at it. He tilts his head back against the wall and closes his eyes, trying to breathe evenly despite his bruised ribs.
“Oh, this is nothing,” Hamnet says softly. “I do not know how you got to be a soldier when you let a little thing like this fell you.”
Even without seeing his face, Mareth can hear Hamnet’s dismay beneath the words. “Then I have fooled even you,” Mareth tells him. He opens his eyes and grins.
Hamnet rolls his eyes and begins tearing a strip of cloth from the bottom of his tunic with quick, sure movements. “It will leave a mark,” he warns wryly.
“All the best heroes have scars.”
“All the best heroes die young,” Hamnet counters, and then flinches, glancing up at Mareth. He hastens to add, “And all are better fighters than you, so do not get any ideas about—”
Mareth reaches out and covers Hamnet’s hand with one of his own, and Hamnet falls silent. “Less talking,” he says, “or there will be more rats, and you will have to fend them all off on your own.”
Hamnet holds his gaze a moment, seeming hardly to breathe. Beneath the filth, beneath the reddish light, his face is pale. Then he nods once, firmly, and begins to wrap Mareth’s leg with the cloth. Though Mareth holds still and bites down on his tongue, he cannot keep from making small noises when the fabric tugs at the wound, and each time Hamnet murmurs, “Sorry, I am sorry.” But he does not stop, for which Mareth is grateful.
He guesses the rats found them by the noise of their passage, for they had disguised their scent with muck when they entered the tunnels. The journey to the other side, where Andromeda and Astria will meet them, is only a few hours, but it is the core of their mission from Solovet: to map the tunnels as well as they can and note any weakness in the caves that might be used in an attack, any attack. Only the attack had come to them, in the end, when they had gone the greater part of the distance and felt themselves nearly safe.
And they will be safe, Mareth tells himself. Solovet would not send her son on a mission she did not expect him to survive, and if he can only stand and walk, as quietly as he is able, Andromeda will be able to carry him back to Regalia. Two hours’ flight and then all will be well.
Hamnet finishes binding the wound, tucking in the edge of the fabric. “Can you walk?” he asks, rising halfway and offering Mareth his arms to lean on.
Mareth nods. He braces himself and pushes up off the floor, and though he can get his legs under him, the sudden rush of dizziness is such that he collapses again immediately with a groan. “A moment,” he gasps, hunching forward, as Hamnet crouches down before him. “Only a moment.”
Hamnet leans in and pulls Mareth’s arm away from where he has curled it across himself. Despite Mareth’s protestations, he tugs the rent leather padding aside. For several heartbeats he stares at the cloth underneath, which glistens wetly in the torchlight, and then he looks up at Mareth. His eyes are wide. “Why did you not say something?”
Already he is moving, tossing aside his own armor and yanking off his tunic. “Do not,” Mareth begins helplessly as Hamnet wads up the fabric and presses it over the wound. He looks—and is—so vulnerable, pale and half-naked in the dark. “We have no time for this,” Mareth says. “And it does not affect my legs.”
“Mareth—” With an exasperated huff of breath, Hamnet seizes his hand and places it over the cloth so that Mareth is holding it against his own side. With a little shove, as if to ensure he does as he is bid, Hamnet lets go and begins to pull his armor back on.
“I will be fine in a moment,” Mareth says. “I will, only let me—” He breaks off at the raw terror in Hamnet’s eyes, crouched there with his bare arms and boiled armor, a torch all that is between them and certain death. Yet he doubts it is the dark that Hamnet fears most. “Worry not,” Mareth tells him. “I do not plan to die here. I will be around to nettle you until we are both old men.”
Hamnet laughs, then, soft and breathless. The sound echoes strangely through the tunnel. He leans in and presses a kiss to Mareth’s lips, brushes one hand through his hair. “We must go now,” he whispers. “Lean on me.”
Together they get to their feet, Mareth breathing through gritted teeth, his hand clamped over Hamnet’s ruined tunic. His leg is on fire, his ribs are in agony, and his head swirls; but Hamnet, at his side, is solid and warm. As they hobble as quickly as they can through the tunnel, the torch flame deepens the shadows and catches on crystals within the stone, sending back tiny flashes of light, swallowed by the darkness that comes again behind them.