Page 5 of Fought it Through the Teeth

It has never been spoken, and it doesn't need to be. Eskil and Bohdi grew up together, two boys forged in the same fires, tested by the same winters, blooded in the same campaigns. Bohdi knows Eskil's weight, his balance, his edge, where he will bend and where he will break. That trust covers leading his men and guarding his borders and executing the decisions that have to be made in the dark where the king's hands can't reach. Above all, it covers Morgan: keeping the prince safe, keeping him out of trouble, standing between him and anything that might do him harm.

Bohdi would sooner take his own arm off at the shoulder than piss on that.

It doesn't mean he doesn't think about it.

He thinks about it now, riding a length behind Morgan on the last stretch of road before the Wolfe stronghold, watching the prince shift in the saddle with a wince he is trying to hide. Morgan's thighs are still giving him grief. The long ride has done exactly what Bohdi expected it to do to a man who has never ridden further than the outer villages, and Morgan has borne it with a stubbornness that Bohdi grudgingly admires and finds attractive in equal measure. He hasn't complained. He's wanted to, but he hasn't, and the restraint is costing him, and Bohdi can see the cost in the rigid set of his jaw and the careful way he holds himself.

Morgan swears under his breath, quietly and not meant for Bohdi's ears, but Bohdi's ears are very good and the road is very quiet and the oath is spectacularly vulgar for a man of Morgan's station.

"Careful, your highness," Bohdi calls out, letting the grin into his voice. "Language like that'll make the horses blush."

Morgan does not turn around. "The horses have heard worse."

"From you?"

"From you, Bohdi. Constantly. I've been listening to you swear at the terrain for three days."

"The terrain deserved it. That hill yesterday was a personal insult."

Morgan's shoulders twitch as he suppresses a laugh and resents himself for it, and Bohdi feels the familiar, reckless warmth in his chest and looks away from it.

Making him laugh is safe. Looking at him isn't.

The stronghold is growing in the gap between the trees now, its palisade walls dark against the gray sky, and Bohdi can see the gatehouse and the watchtowers and the thin threads of smoke rising from within. He catalogs it out of habit: the height of the walls, the number of visible sentries, the terrain around the approach. There are two hundred yards of open ground before the gate with no cover, a killing field if someone wants it to be.

He shifts his weight and feels the axe settle against his spine, a familiar pressure, a promise.

The gates are ahead.

He looks at the back of Morgan's head and he thinks, with the calm certainty that precedes every fight he has ever walked into:

I will keep you safe, whatever it costs, and I will bring you home.

He does not say it. He has never said it. He has been saying it silently for ten years and he will say it silently until the day he takes his last breath.

The gates open.

Bohdi straightens in the saddle, settles his grin into place, and rides through.

Chapter 3

Morgan

They are let through the front gates without much hassle.

Morgan is identifiable at a bowshot as Eskil's blood, and the guards at the gate take one look at him and wave them through, clearly told to expect a prince and relieved to find one that matches the description. There is a brief exchange in Wolfe dialect between the gate captain and one of his men, too fast for Morgan to follow, and then they are inside the walls and moving through a wide courtyard of packed earth toward the Keep itself.

Morgan takes it in. He can't help it — the habit is too deeply ingrained and the instinct to assess is entirely automatic. The Wolfe stronghold is larger than he expected. The palisade walls are thick, reinforced with stone at the base, and the buildings inside are arranged in concentric rings around a central keep of dark timber that rises four stories above the yard. The courtyard is busy and the whole place has the purposeful, well-maintained air of a settlement that takes its defenses seriously.

The warriors are what hold his eye.

They are tall and thick-boned, dressed in boiled leather and wool, with face paint in patterns that Morgan does not recognize. There are dark lines across cheekbones and brows, geometric designs that vary from person to person but share a common visual language. Morgan assumes they are clan markings, symbols of allegiance, of rank, of devotion to whatever gods the Wolfe people swear by.

He regards the paint with careful diplomatic neutrality.

In his head, he is considerably less charitable.

In Rengara, a warrior earns tattoos from their first battle. They are permanent marks, driven into the skin with needle and ink, a testament to devotion to the god of war that cannot be removed, cannot be faked, cannot be walked back from. The tattoos tell a story. They say I have bled. They say I have killed. They say I stood in the field and did not run, and I carry the proof of it in my skin for the rest of my life. Morgan is respectful of other cultures but he is also distinctly aware that a display of dedication which can be removed with soap and warm water pales considerably beside Bohdi, who is covered head to foot in his loyalty, down to the fine lines inked along his cheekbones, and cannot wash a single line of it away.