Where Gods Were Born by Swyft Nick

Author:Swyft, Nick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2016-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17 – The Princesses

Sparus had volunteered for late-night guard duty to the amusement of his comrades. He’d never really fitted in with the men on this century. They’d always picked on him, made fun of him. It had got to the point where it seemed he could do nothing right, and taking that watch was simply another of his ‘eccentricities’ to them.

“Reckon he’s meeting a girl,” he heard one of them say.

“Nah, it’ll be a goat!”

Wasn’t that funny?

Doing late guard duty meant that when he left them he would have no one to dodge past, but himself.

Desertion was a serious matter but he knew right from wrong, whatever the others thought, and killing children was never right. He’d questioned Memmius – asked the question several times in different ways, almost pleaded with him – but the man was like an automaton. In the end the centurion had demanded to know if he should do it himself. So with no choice Sparus had killed them quickly and professionally, but they’d still known what he was going to do. They’d still been terrified, and as they died they cried out. He’d never forget that sound.

After that he’d seen himself as even more of an outsider. The other men seemed to have no difficulty, and they always obeyed their commander to the letter, even though that commander was, he now realised, a monster.

He’d tried. He’d tried to understand the thinking, tried to assimilate. Why, squeezing that prisoner’s tits was pretty much expected of him, wasn’t it? Didn’t all the men do that kind of thing? Yet even that had been wrong in Memmius’ eyes. It even seemed that since he’d done that, the man had taken a special dislike to him, protecting the girl as if she was his wife or something, and he should have known. So he was capricious too, but that wasn’t the point. He had to be stopped, and Sparus didn’t care what happened in the process. Killing children was wrong and if he died a slow death for destroying Memmius, at least it would go some way towards his own absolution. Not all the way. He would never forget those cries.

And so once he was sure that the guard he’d relieved was sleeping soundly, he took one last look over the camp. The tents of his former comrades glowed as they reflected the dying flames of the camp fires that kept the beasts of the night away. A few hundred yards off lay the enemy lines. At sunrise they would all prepare to approach them under a flag of truce to deliver the ransom demand. He would not be with them.

He started moving off. The alarm would be raised in a few hours, but no one would come looking. There was a job to be done and they were going behind enemy lines. Everyone would be focused on that. Men would not be available to look for a renegade grunt. By the time they did anything about it, it would be too late.

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