Welcome to the ongoing serial of Scout and Marius! This is part one. To read more from this series, follow the link to the next installment:
Part Two
Marius swore as he skidded back down the crumbling retaining wall. “Helluva blast, but he’s still out there.” He kicked the half-empty grenade case. “I hate to waste these.”
“So much for hunting down the bastard.” I sank to the floor wearily. “I’ve killed us both.” Was my crusade against the usurper worth it now? Was regaining my family’s Territory worth it to find ourselves bloody and beaten in a dried-up canal, making a futile last stand? The realization settled into me like a millstone in my gut while the blasts beyond the banks continued.
“I’m sorry, Marius,” I whispered.
He spat, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and covered in smudges of crimson and ash. “Death be damned, I’m going to finish what I came here to do.”
My head jerked up sharply. “The hell you are. I got us into this mess. This is my fight. Run, Marius. Go.”
He chuckled, all crooked teeth and bloody lips. “I didn’t come here to be your waterboy. I came for glory. Who says an old man can’t have a little hubris?” His pale green eyes steady with sincerity sent a chill down my spine.
I started to shake my head. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Marius seized my shoulders and I winced in pain, biting back a curse for my already purple bruises. “One of us needs to make it out in one peice and it needs to be you. You’re the heir. Not me.”
Oh god. My knees threatened to buckle as weakness replaced resolve. “I won’t leave you here. I can’t leave you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he growled. A firestorm raged his eyes. “You’re gonna run like hell. I’ll hold him off. You’re gonna get as far away from here as you can.”
With grimy palms he held my face close to his. “I’m an old man, love. No. Shh, hush woman. Listen to me.” He quieted my protests with a withering glare. “I’m not going to win any wars here.” More debris ricocheted over the wall in a thundering blast. Still I heard every syllable. “But you will.”
“Marius!”
“Listen to me. Indulge an old man’s ego.” He stroked my hair, eyes squeezed shut like he wanted to memorize every strand and began again. “My whole life I’ve been safe. I own more books than bullets. It’s time for me to be dangerous.”
The ground shook with tremors of another blast, a reminder that time was running short. “Go.”
I squeezed his hand, meeting his gaze one last time. The blood smeared across the weathered lines of his face painted him with the promise of violence. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
I wanted to wail, to sob into his arms but to my amazement I found my feet obeying his order, one bloody limping step at a time.
As I fled I said a prayer for Maruis and his last stand.
See this Theme Thursday reddit thread here.