a sky full of smoke, pt. 5

He still doesn't trust me after dinner, but he believes I can win for him. It didn't take much--I showed him some scars, told some stories. There's not a proper soldier among the rest of the village, Briac worships soldiers. He's impressed, but I need him to mistrust me. So I keep saying we should wait, and each time I do he's more insistent that it must be now. It's all I can do to keep from smiling when he takes his son aside and asks him to kill me after the battle.

He gathers up his men--a sorry rabble if ever there was one, but brimming with confidence--and we march. Yannig's rabble comes out to greet ours, trembling with fear of the coming confrontation. The legend grows.

"Which one of you is Yannig?" I call, in a voice still raspy from the smoke. Their leader steps forward. "I'm leaving Briac's service," I continue. "He plans to kill me after the battle." I toss the gold back at Briac, grin at Yannig, and step aside. The two mobs inch towards each other, each as frightened of striking the first blow as they are of shedding the first blood.

Then the alarm bell rings and the gatekeeper comes running, crying, "The major-general's on his way!"

Yannig and Briac lock eyes, sheath their swords, shake hands. "Truce," says one, "or it'll be both our heads." They send their men into the town, crying the truce. Even to my outsider's ears, there's an implied threat there: act like everything's normal or there will be blood.

Kanna has hot soup for me when I return to the inn. "They were an inch away from destroying each other," I said. "I was so close."

 "I wish you'd leave," she tells me.