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The sun was sloping well into the waning afternoon, another day starting to melt away before his eyes and too much to do before dusk.
Time. Time was something Coen was becoming far, far too aware of. He shielded his eyes with a hand, nearly missing the approaching figures in the glare of the lowering sun.
One was larger, carrying a hefty barrel atop barrelled shoulders. Blood, no doubt.
Coen veered slightly to the side of the road, stooping a little lower, automatically.
“More blood transports,” he murmured, and the man in his head gave a little noise, contrite, not needing to say something on this occasion for Coen to know what he meant.
Not my doing anymore, Ambrus didn't say.
Coen instinctively lifted his finger to his lips as he took a few more steps; the nick of the blade he'd caught on his forefinger earlier not quite yet healed whilst the sun was overhead - and tasted the iron on his tongue. He didn't know why he'd done that.
Did he stay on the road, and greet them as he ought to, or hide and let them pass? He'd had to cut through the trees to avoid a gathering of Brencis’ soldiers already - felling one of his Boyars had led to new blockades on the road - the further he pushed, the more Brencis would push back.
He let his hand fall from his lips to the hilt of his blade, when as if summoned by Coen's thoughts of him his passenger spoke up in his mind.
“Our blood,” Ambrus said, contemplating, “it tastes exquisite to our kind. Or so I hear, I never got a taste.”
That last bit sounded a little sad; like Ambrus was lamenting one of the many experiences he'd now never have.
Coen felt a tinge of sympathy for it, before he remembered who was talking, and that they were talking about the idea of drinking the blood of another of their kind.
“Although, I suppose, you have,” Ambrus added, needling.
Indeed Coen had. Just once, of course, but it was that very act that -
How had it tasted, to drink from Ambrus? In the moment he knew how it felt - triumphant, furious, a gruelling and challenging battle that had taken so much from him that he'd not been able to stop the ravenous, desperate hunger from seeking to devour his opponent in his victory.
Instinct, not thought, had led him to sink his teeth into the Boyar's throat.
It had felt incredible, a rush of adrenaline like nothing he'd ever felt before, and evoking the memory of it was making his heart hurry again distractingly, his mouth salivate, his chest tighten.
The flavour, however, he could hardly remember.
“Was it, Coen? Exquisite?” Ambrus asked, tone sliding from grim resignation to … something else.
Coen shifted, remaining silent a moment.
This shipment was getting closer - and Coen kept his eyes trained on the approaching figures, hand gripping the hilt of his blade now. He'd need to decide soon.
There was a feeling, stirring somewhere in his spine, of anticipation. Of waiting that was more than just his own whirring gut as he watched their approach.
Ambrus was waiting for his response.
“I'm not sure I’d say exquisite,” Coen said, crouching a little lower, using a nearby rocky outcrop to keep out of sight and buy himself time, “good, maybe.”
“‘Good’?”
He sounded offended, which almost brought a smile to Coen's lips in spite of himself.
“Yeah, ‘good’,” he said, "with the surprise aftertaste of you in my head, I suppose.”
Ambrus made a sort of ‘hrm’ sound, which sounded less offended and more thoughtful.
“I doubt you consider that part good,” he said.
Coen felt his shoulders locking up a bit; he was trying to focus on the figures ahead, and on trying not to let his body give more away than he wanted to, which was challenging with a passenger in it who could see everything he did.
There hadn't been much pause to interrogate the circumstances of this new arrangement, and it wasn't a priority, but in this moment he found himself wondering - could he feel some of what he felt, too? Had it been the taste of iron on Coen's lips that had prompted him to speak of their blood?
He could ignore him again, let those words hang in the air between them like a boulder. Go back to letting Ambrus chatter away like invading thoughts or an unwanted memory.
Except Ambrus was neither thing, and having started replying to him he'd somewhat unintentionally made this situation into something more like a conversation, with expectations of further replies.
… and he remembered what Ambrus had said before, the first time he'd slipped and spoken back, about how Coen responding had made him feel like he still…
“I don't know what I consider it to be yet,” Coen said, brushing over these thoughts before they took more root, “but at times it's useful, I suppose, to have another pair of eyes.”
Back on track.
“How complimentary, Coen! Well, I've not much else to do but be useful to you, now.”
“Speaking of being useful-” Coen jutted his chin towards the approaching figures, hoping Ambrus would understand what he was asking for.
“That lunatic Bakir’s men, and a half contingent, to lure you out. There's likely four more at least in the trees.”
Coen had suspected the first part, but not the second.
“You could take them, but it won't be quiet, and you are not far enough from the check point we skirted past. It will draw more heat, and you've got plenty of that already.”
He could almost feel Ambrus's words tugging his eyes to follow a different line of sight, like Ambrus was looking through his eyes a moment, and saw the flickering movement amongst the treeline that told him Ambrus’s assessment of the situation was right.
He'd been a soldier once, hadn't he? Or a mercenary? Stripped of all the showmanship of performing for his men, in these smaller moments of caution, he certainly spoke like one.
“A fight for another time then,” Coen said, darting instead off through the brush towards the opposing treeline towards the rushing river, adding despite himself in a low mutter, “which you keep reminding me I don't have much of.”
He heard a little chuckle in his mind, amused.
“You’re taking my advice, for a change?” Ambrus asked.
“I wouldn't get used to it, not all of it is good,” Coen countered, which only made Ambrus laugh again.
“First you reply to me, now you're listening to me - why Coen, soon enough we might start to seem like we could be friends.”
Coen pulled a face, making sure not to reply this time, as he picked his way deeper into the trees.
–
Coen peeled a piece of what was most probably splattered, mutated kobold from his bracers with a wince, feeling his stomach turn at the sight of it; a fresh lick of disgust rippling through him.
It had been a whole night down there.
With the first of the dawn’s early light on his face as he padded his through the snow towards the valley, he realised how little he welcomed the additions of his vrakhiri senses to the limitations of his human stomach for such sights.
When he’d ripped through those things and helped Lacra tear what was left of an ancient vrakhiri from the wall the potent stench of blood and rot had been different, somehow, to how he felt now.
He felt a little sick, and a little numb. He pulled a bottle from his pack, unstoppering it and throwing down the liquid. Not water. Wine - and wine that had turned, perhaps, it was acrid and unpleasant, not much better than the taste of rising bile. He didn’t spit it out, however, but forced it down.
A little heady wave hit his mind quickly - but it dissipated just as fast. Another part of his new nature?
He’d never been much for drinking.
“So much for that,” Coen said aloud, “I suppose those aren't the kinds of horrors that wine can do much for, anyway.”
The mountain had no response. Just falling snow.
He stoppered the bottle, and, with that numbness lingering in him, carried on down the path in silence.
–
Looking down at sun bleached bones, buried in the snow, Coen thought for a moment about being forgotten.
This place was quiet; the frozen ground crunched beneath his feet, the tree branches creaked and cracked. The wind carried flakes that caught his cheek and dissolved.
He couldn't even hear the distant sounds of wolves, for once, circling lonely prey.
He'd strayed too far off the trail, lost his way somewhere on this path and this body was too long dead to tell him anything other than that this was a place where someone could die and never be found.
In the ice, in silence.
The dark pit in his stomach, in his heart, was starting to pull him down. Memories would follow it. Memories he couldn't -
He gripped his fingernails into his palm, and felt another instinct, to reach for something.
“Ambrus?”
There was a pause, and he felt his heart beat that bit harder for a moment as it stretched on, and he waited for an answer.
“Yes, Coen?” Ambrus replied, sounding unsure.
He hadn’t expected to be addressed, let alone called upon.
Coen straightened, ignoring the small beat of relief in his chest, turning from the bones and looking down upon the mountainside for his bearings once more.
“You've been quiet,” he said, “I thought maybe you'd gone somewhere.”
There was another pause before Ambrus spoke again.
“Heaven forbid I give you a little privacy, Coen,” Ambrus said.
Coen wondered if that was true.
Ambrus had barely said a word as he and Lacra had descended to find Isbrand, only a few sharp words of worry and warning, and nothing since he'd emerged. He'd let Coen take this wrong turn without comment.
“Can you?” Coen asked, “I mean - can you… go away somewhere?”
“No, not really,” Ambrus admitted.
Had it been just a few days ago, Coen might’ve found that answer frustrating - upsetting, even.
He didn’t now, alone in the snow. He wasn’t sure why. He started padding back down the path, retracing his own footsteps as his trail.
“I didn't think so,” he said, as he walked, “I thought perhaps you were just interested in what she had to say. Lacra. You’d been looking for her, after all.”
Why am I making conversation?
“I was,” Ambrus said, and then added wryly, “as were you - did I feel your heart beat a little faster back there, Coen?”
Coen ignored the tease. Instead, the question that had bubbled up before was on his mind again.
“You can feel it?” Coen asked instead.
“A little,” Ambrus replied. “The things I was most conscious of when I was alive are strongest still. The flow of blood. Scent. Your surroundings. Your … physical responses to things.”
What had he sensed earlier, when he’d asked him about the taste of his own blood?
“As much as that,” Coen said quietly. He took a breath, finding himself stopped in his tracks.
“Back there it felt - you, felt...” Ambrus trailed off, “you needed a moment. Believe me or not, I am trying to respect … this. What you’ve done for me. Your body is all that I have left, Coen, without my own.”
For a moment, Coen had nothing to say. He held a hand up, catching a snowflake upon his fingertip - small nick healed over now - and watched it melt into the skin.
What had Lacra said, about death to their kind? How rare it was?
“Is that why you keep saying my name?” Coen asked, “to keep it separate? To remind yourself?”
“Maybe,” Ambrus replied, thoughtful, but then added in a lighter tone, “or you're giving me too much credit.”
“Perhaps I just want to get your attention, and your name seems the best way to do so. Especially when you’d been responding so rarely, even though you're quite content to talk to yourself about any old shit whilst you get us lost.”
Coen rolled his eyes, but a smile had managed to catch his lips, and it lingered a moment longer as he continued to walk - the snow giving way to grass beneath his feet.