* * *
“Please,” the soldier gasped, blood pouring from his mouth, eyes glazing over. He tried to lift a hand but only managed to wriggle a few fingers. “Please.”
Azaiah felt the stir of compassion he always did when he saw them like this. Desperate for the easing of pain that came with crossing the river, but equally desperate to avoid the trip. The wild hope that maybe he would spare them, return the breath to their lungs, the feeling to their limbs.
Some did refuse him. Those miserable souls that lingered, turning into shadows of their former selves, shades drifting alone and cold through a world that could no longer perceive them. Eventually they would be unable to resist Azaiah’s call and would float like driftwood to him. All mortal souls returned to his river, in time.
This one wouldn’t fight, Azaiah didn’t think. He crouched down and touched his fingers to the man’s mouth. “Be at ease, soldier,” he whispered, while the battle raged around him. “Find your rest. Think of your home in the mountains, the way the rain glistened on the grass in the early mornings. You liked to walk with your mother to the well, even if the bucket was too heavy for you.”
“Mama,” the soldier whispered, beginning to fade. “Mama. The bucket spilled. I’m sorry.”
Azaiah took the soldier’s hand. It didn’t take long, and then he was there, hale and whole, standing beside Azaiah and staring impassively down at the lifeless husk that had been his body.
“Oh,” the spirit said. He laughed. “Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Thank you, Lord.”
Azaiah rose easily and nodded. “Of course. There, do you see the group walking toward the river?”
“There’s no river here— Oh, yes, there is! Of course there is.” The soldier gave one last look at his body, and Azaiah saw it happen, the severing of the spirit from the flesh it so recently vacated. “I don’t know why I was so afraid.”
“Because you lived, soldier. Go join the others. I see someone waving to you.”
“Barta!” The soldier cried out, joyful, to another whose soul Azaiah had taken from his lifeless body. He ran toward his companion, not noticing or simply uncaring that he was moving through the soldiers still alive to fight. One stopped and shivered at the touch of a spectral wind, then fell when his momentary lapse allowed another to run him through.
Azaiah moved to the fallen man, heedless of the living who were equally unaware of him. Well, that wasn’t true—they knew he was there; they were fighting him with every swing of their swords, every shield raised against a volley of arrows. Death was the true enemy here, the thing to be fought off with all one’s skill and cunning, even as they invoked his sibling’s might.
Speaking of Ares…
Azaiah saw them several times, as he always did when he walked a battlefield. Here they were on a horse, brandishing their sword and laughing as soldiers fell around them. There they were on the opposite side, dancing in the fall of arrows like a child playing in a rainstorm on a hot summer day. In their element, they were as beautiful as a bonfire, as the pyres that would soon be lit to burn the dead to ashes.
“Well met,” Ares said when Azaiah found them again, later that night. The fighting was ostensibly over, a commander dead and terms of surrender being delivered by a frightened messenger. The victorious army celebrated, bellowed songs of their martial prowess, thanked Azaiah’s sibling with their verses and drums, and then intoned solemn chants for the dead.
He could see Nyx in the camp, comforting those who had lost friends and comrades, tending to the injured and those who would join the ranks of the dead before the sun rose. Speaking calmly and with gentle, firm dominance to the soldiers whose job it was to retrieve their fallen brethren from the battlefield. They were anxious about those who were defeated coming out of hiding to ambush them, even without a chance of a victory, simply because they had lost.
Nyx’s friend, the woman Nadia, was there, too. She was speaking to a soldier immaculately attired in white armor, and it took Azaiah a moment to realize it was the emperor’s son, the one who spoke words to incite battle fervor, then retreated before he had to match his actions to his words. Azaiah turned from them and walked toward a group of men who were playing dice and laughing, drinking ale from earthenware mugs and celebrating the simple fact they had not fallen that day.
“Here’s to keeping the Lord of Storms at bay once more!” they sang, lifting their mugs, toasting Azaiah’s absence.
“May the Storm Lord hold his lightning back, at least until I fuck that pretty girl back home with the tits for days—”
The soldiers all laughed. Azaiah didn’t mind the song, or the sentiment, in the slightest. He understood that he was hardly ever wanted. Even those in the worst of pain shuddered, at first, when they beheld him.
“You mean your mother?” one asked, and they all laughed. The sound was tinged with the fading edges of battle lust, and Azaiah knew they would take to their beds later, drunk on ale and survival, and weep for those they’d lost that day. Or they would tremble beneath their blankets next to their dead comrade’s empty bedroll, glad it wasn’t them sleeping in the fires and guilty for feeling that way.
But for now it was the celebrating, the irreverence, and Azaiah was neither offended nor surprised when he beheld his sibling seated with them by the fire. He knew in the way of gods that Ares was visible to them—impossible for War not to be, when the soldiers on both sides of this conflict were essentially their worshippers—but that they looked like any other soldier, garbed in familiar armor, wearing their insignia.
Azaiah stood to the side, in the shadows where the light did not touch him. He saw Nyx across the camp, ducking into a tent, the flap closing behind him. The tent for the healers, probably, seeing once more to the injured.
“There you are. A good fight today, eh, Brother?” Ares was beside him, having stood and left the circle, the soldiers carrying on as if nothing had changed. “Many sang my songs and shed blood for me.”
“Mm,” Azaiah said, smiling. “Indeed they did.” He did not ask if it was enough. It never would be, not for Ares. “It grows quiet here, I think.” Focusing on the healers’ tent, he did not feel the call of the dying. Nyx’s army had powerful witches, strong healers. It would be a rare thing, not to lose any of the injured overnight. Perhaps there would be one or two, but Azaiah had ferrymen among the soldiers, and it seemed as if he could spend a few moments with his sibling.
“For now, yes. But some of the rebels survived. You know how this goes. They’ll go back to their homes, stir up resentment against the victors, and we’ll meet here again sooner rather than later.” Ares jerked their head toward a spot near the edge of the camp. “Come and speak with me, Brother.”
Azaiah followed him as Death always followed War, inevitable and close at heel. With the battle fervor dwindling and the dead already burning, Azaiah pushed his hood from his head, confident that he would not be seen. To his eyes, Ares was their usual self, with fire-tipped hair and eyes that burned like the hottest, whitest part of a flame.
“So,” Ares drawled, sitting on the ground and beginning to sharpen their blade. “I met someone of yours, today.”
“You met many of mine today,” Azaiah corrected, sitting cross-legged across from them. “All of them are mine.”
