with Sonya, a mass of shouting townspeople at their backs.
“I mean, no offense,” said Sonya. “But once the fighting begins, you’d just be a hindrance. Blaine and I wouldn’t be able to focus completely on what we’d be doing because we’d always have to make sure you were okay.”
“Yes, I suppose that… makes sense.”
“But here’s what I want to ask, and it’s something I think only you can do.”
“What is it?”
“From the way you talk about her, it sounds like you get along pretty well with my mom. If people know she’s been associating with Vittorio and my brother, they might… misunderstand, you know? Think she’s with the imperials. So I was hoping that you could convince her to stay safe at Roskosh Manor with you until things settle back down.”
Galina was surprised by Sonya’s concern for her mother, whom she had not even attempted to contact since her arrival. Perhaps beneath her ludicrous swagger and beastly deformities, there was a young woman who, not unlike herself, loved her mother deeply, yet struggled to relate to her in any meaningful way.
Galina smiled and pressed her hand to Sonya’s cheek. “Sofyushka, it will be my distinct honor to look after your mother during this conflict.”
Sonya gave her a big toothy smile, which Galina found unnerving, and embraced her.
“Maybe once I beat some sense into that brother of mine, he can still marry you,” Sonya whispered into her ear. “I like giving you a hard time, but you seem all right for a noble. I guess I wouldn’t mind having a sister like you around.”
Galina did not know how to respond to the sudden expression of candid affection. When Sonya released her from the excessively strong embrace, Galina stood there dumbly for a moment before summoning a warm smile.
“The feeling is mutual,” she lied.
63
Now and then Jorge felt he was able to step back and truly appreciate a particularly evocative moment in his life. This, he decided, was one to remember. A quiet beauty before the storm.
He sat on a stump beside a crackling campfire, surrounded by a vast field that was starting to show patches of grass through the snow. In the distance rose the austere Cherny Mountains, still completely covered in white. The Otchayaniye Falls spilled down the side of the mountains in a long, elegant waterfall, kicking up a fine mist that glittered like a curtain of gems in the sunlight. The falls fed into the Sestra River, which then wound through the field as it made its way south toward Gogoleth.
That natural perfection was somewhat marred by the large rafts on the riverbank that were already packed with slough gorta. The undead stood patient and motionless, their yellow milky eyes gazing at nothing.
The living members of the Uaine army were gathered nearby, kneeling on the cold, wet ground with their hands clasped before them as if in supplication. The necromancers walked slowly from one to the next, offering a bleeding wrist to each. If an Uaine warrior still had the blood of a necromancer in their stomach when they died, they would immediately rise as a sluagh gorta and continue fighting. The necromancers performed this blood ritual before every battle, ensuring that even as the ranks of the living shrank, those of the sluagh gorta grew.
This contrast of natural beauty and unnerving blood ritual seemed so striking and surreal to Jorge, he wanted to capture the moment so that he would never forget it. He thought, not for the first time, that he should begin a journal to chronicle his strange adventures with Sonya. Maybe once they had liberated Izmoroz and things settled down, he would.
At last, every warrior had partaken of necromancer blood. Bhuidseach Rowena trudged over to the fire almost as if she were sleepwalking. He quickly stood and offered his stump. She smiled wanly and sank down onto it. It would have been impossible for her to look any paler, but the toll of losing so much blood was evident in her sluggish movements and unfocused gaze.
He held out a small glass vial filled with a restorative liquid. “This should help,” he said.
“Thank ye.” She took the vial and drank the bitter draught down in one go, then let her bloody arm drop.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t…” He took a bandage from his pack and knelt down next to her, then carefully wrapped the self-inflicted cut on her wrist. He still found the thin, raised scars left behind from previous rituals that peppered her slender white arm