"the sunshine lies"
Title: the sunshine lies [1/2]
Fandom: The Eagle.
Characters: Marcus&Esca.
Word Count: 4935
Rating: 15
Summary: “The fire rages on.” And they run, because they have to. Marcus/Esca.
Warnings: some graphic violence&injuries; minor character deaths.
Notes: A mixture of film and book canon. And I'm away for a bit, now, but I'll get the next part up as soon as. ♥
the sunshine lies
There’s something tickling Marcus’ neck.
He’s spread-eagled, flat on his back in the long grass that borders what passes for the paddock - and there’s an insect, something small and black and ugly, crawling up his throat, treading footprints in his blood. He blinks, slowly, eyelids heavy, and swats at the meddling bug. It buzzes angrily, flits away - and Marcus’ sluggish fingers swipe across his neck, coming away crimson.
His hand falls back to the grass, and his eyes flutter shut. He’s tired.
The sun is low in the sky, piercing through the wispy clouds with late summer’s heat, and it clatters down on his skin; pots and pans knocked from a shelf. He flops a bloody hand over his eyes, shading himself from the brightness, smearing fingerprinted red across his cheeks, and just lies in the peacefulness of softly-swaying grass.
It’s a quiet day, now.
Something’s burning. The smell of acrid smoke is suddenly sharp around him; dark tendrils snake across the sky, faint in the soft brightness of near-sunset. A frown creases Marcus’ bloody forehead, almost without his knowledge - he’s hardly in control of his own body, full of emptiness and skybright.
His heart pounds harder, and slowly, slowly, he starts to notice that, actually, there’s blood dripping from the side of his head, congealing in the grass. His face is sticky; his mouth tastes coppery, thick on his tongue. His hand falls away from his face, scrunching in the grass; dirt mixes with blood. He’s used to being wounded, that’s nothing new - but this, the confusion, the inability to follow thought with thought-
Marcus opens his eyes, parts his lips, lies frozen, just for a moment - and then he gasps, the warmth of the air almost hurting his throat. His fingers scratch at the dirt, filthying nails and palms, because he can’t move, can’t get up. His head, his head. It’s like he can hear the blood, pulsing through his temples and out, out. Arched in confusion, he jerks his hand up, away, up to his head - and he pushes at the rent in his skin, pushes dirt into the wound, pushes himself up and onto his feet.
The pain is biting; his vision blurs.
Marcus staggers forward, half a pace. He can barely stand; he feels sick. Somewhere in the back of his mind he registers that there are no horses in the paddock - but, right now, he’s distracted. Through the farmhouse door, open and vulnerable, only a handful of strides away, he can see flames, bright and red and angry, licking at the doorframe. Their home is on fire, ablaze.
“Oh,” he says, and pitches forward, empties his stomach into the grass.
The world blurs to blue and green. He forces himself forward, stumbling steps that slowly form themselves into a shambling run. It’s like he’s drunk too much, blood-wine staining his fingertips - and he almost crashes into the doorframe, the heat of the fire burning his face, legs shaking, head throbbing. He needs to put it out, run to the well, find water, quench - but he can’t, he can’t, because the blaze is too hot and his eyes are running with the smoke. The fire has its hold: the thick-legged oaken table is ash; the skins and books and rugs are nothing more than a memory.
Marcus chokes, falls back. Smoke stains his cheeks. He can barely keep his eyes open, barely think. He needs to sleep, just fall into bed, curl up with Esca at his side, sleep, dead to the world-
Esca.
The fire rages on.
Marcus presses a hand to his head, dizzy, bleeding, and croaks, “Esca.” Louder, “Esca.” He groans, staggers, and then bellows, “Esca!” - but all he can hear is the crackle of the fire, eating everything, eating his life.
And he runs, stumbles as best he can - because there’s smoke everywhere, now, stinging his eyes. Tears cut swathes in the blood. Esca can’t be inside, he can’t - he just can’t hear him over the crackle and whip of the flames; yes, that’s it.
“Esca,” Marcus bellows again, voice thick and hoarse.
His feet thump the ground in time with the pounding in his head, the blurring of his vision. And he knows every furrow and bump of the ground around their farmhouse, every hole the dogs have dug, every post the horses have kicked, but now he looks at the grass beneath his feet like he’s never tread it before, like it’s alien, new. It’s not, of course; it’s the same grass, but yet it’s different. It’s stained. There’s blood on the ground - and, for once, it’s not his.
Marcus stumbles to halt when he sees the body.
When they finally finished the farm, all those years ago, finally put up its walls and awkwardly planted the first seeds (Marcus peering at the tiny dark spots in bemusement - he never claimed to be a farmer), his uncle appeared on the doorstep one rainlashed morning, laughing as he picked his way around the muddy puddles, with a smile and an armful of pups. Two of them, brothers, plucked from their mother’s teats, one black, one white. Aquila, in his endless ingenuity, named them Melas and Leucos - and while Marcus fumbled with seeds and seedlings, Esca fussed over those dogs like they were his own children, carried them yipping in his pockets and the horses’ saddlebags until they started to scratch through the seams.
Leucos’ shock-white fur is stained, matted crimson. His eyes are dull.
For a moment, all Marcus can do is catalogue: it’s like he’s a soldier, all over again. The animal’s throat has been slit, clean and efficient. A quick death, blood gushing over the grass as the dog whimpered, pawed at the air. There’s dirt smeared across the back of his neck, stark against the whiteness: he was held in the air by his scruff, squirming and fighting and snarling, as his mother once hauled him around and licked him clean, and they raked a blade across his throat then tossed the body aside.
Marcus can’t stand anymore. He collapses to the ground, reaches out a trembling hand to touch Leucos’ cold skin. He can’t speak, can’t make a sound, even though all the while there’s that whisper in the back of his mind: find esca where’s esca please mithras don’t let him be dead.
There’s a crash from the house, and heat blazes out across the fields. Grass withers.
Marcus feels numb. He feels his skin reddening, heating, and he needs to get out of here - but he can’t leave him, can’t leave Leucos. He’s choking. Marcus clumsily gathers the body into his arms, holds him close, cradles him against his chest - and, oh, he used to lie like that, curled nose to tail on Marcus’ chest when he lay in front of the hearth-fire on cold winter nights, when the horses were huddled together in their stables against the cold and Esca lay at his side, Melas meticulously washing his tattooed arm in quick little licks.
“Esca,” Marcus breathes, and staggers to his feet - but Leucos is a dead weight in his arms, his head limp, tongue lolling lifelessly from his jaws. He’s heavy, too heavy. Marcus can’t carry him - he’s too weak. He kneels, slowly, staggers to the ground. Lays Leucos down, nothing but a sad scrap of meat and fur in the dirt. He feels numb - and he can’t remember what happened, can’t remember anything-ah, his head-but he gets up, keeps going, stumbles on. The world spins around him; heat and blood.
It never crosses his mind to ask why all this is happening.
His stride is steadying, now; maybe his head is clearing. His feet slip on the grass, but he doesn’t fall; steadies himself, feels the memory of Leucos’ fur slide against his hands. Fire blazes in the corner of his vision, but he doesn’t look at it, doesn’t lose himself in the mesmerising danger of the quivering heat. The sun smiles benignly overhead.
There, curled into himself in the fresh-ploughed earth.
“Esca,” Marcus croaks, and then, “Esca.”
He crashes to his knees in the dirt, hands frantic - rolls him over, feels bile rise in his stomach, because Esca’s face is a mess of blood and bruises, lips split and eyes black and swollen. His ear is bloody; the tip is missing. He flinches as Marcus pulls him onto his back-his hands are cradled against his chest, fingers bent and snapped-and his eyes can barely open through the bruising. His eyes gleam absent - and he whispers, “Marcus,” with blood running from his lips into his mouth. “Marcus, run.”
Marcus can barely think - but it’s not because he’s absent, now, with his head spinning and his vision blurred; no, it’s because he’s angry, because someone did this to Esca, beat him and trampled him down, and then just left him to die. Esca’s eyes are shut, eyelashes matted. His breathing is shallow.
“Esca,” Marcus says, winds his fingers into his sweat-darkened hair - but he gets no response, because he’s unconscious, now, mouth slack and battered.
Marcus, run.
Breath catches in Marcus’ throat.
Maybe it’s a good thing that Esca’s unconscious, now, because Marcus swears he can almost feel the familiar irregularity of broken bones beneath the skin of his chest - and as he drags him up from the ground, heaves him to a mockery of a standing position, hanging against Marcus with his arm draped around his neck, Marcus knows that it will hurt. Right now, when he left couldn’t even carry Leucos to a decent burial, he can’t let Esca go. They have to run. They have to leave - but, for a moment, he can’t move, because they built a life here.
Fire blazes, hot and fierce.
Esca’s head sags against his chest. They have to leave, because whoever did this, whoever decided that their lives were worth nothing more than ash, could come back, any moment. Clean up their mess. There are woods, not far from here; Marcus can make it, they can hide. He stumbles away, Esca’s feet dragging ruts in the ground. Blood drips in his eyes; he blinks it away, and his gaze sweeps the ground, absent and so-alert. There are tracks everywhere: bootprints and hoofprints, laid on top of one another. The hoofprints are stamped into the earth, like the horses didn’t want to go; the bootprints are light, like they had no need to run.
They took the horses, and left Esca for dead.
Marcus stumbles on, Esca’s weight dragging him down - but he can see woods on the horizon, and they can hide, there, because months in Caledonia (all those years ago) and barefoot hunting with Esca in the forests, Briton-style, taught him how to hide, and how to hide well. In the legion, they never hid. Rather, they blazoned themselves across the face of the world, and look how well that turned out.
The sun sets, dips below the horizon.
When Marcus makes it to the border of the trees, their home still ablaze behind them, stars are glimmering in the sky - and Esca isn’t awake, but he smells like death. Marcus turns his back on the flames, slips beneath the trees. If he’d stayed looking back, kept his gaze on the dancing blaze for half a second longer, he’d’ve seen dark shapes. Men, silhouetted against the brightness. Esca was right. Marcus, run.
It’s a blessing, Marcus reflects, that the night’s warm. He finds a sheltered spot, between the trees, shrouded by undergrowth and darkness, and crouches there, on his haunches, Esca curled and slack at his feet. His flesh is sticky, eyelids tacking to skin as he blinks, and he’s silent, listening. Animals rustle the bushes, nightbirds hoot overhead - but he can’t hear footsteps, can’t hear them coming. He knows they’re there, though, they have to be - and, for a moment, he feels like a soldier again. His hands grasp for the sword that’s not there.
Esca stirs. His face is a mess of angry bruising; his eyes are bright. “Marcus?” he asks, hoarse in the darkness.
“Don’t move,” Marcus says, softly. “You’re hurt.” The undergrowth whispers its paeans around them. Starlight hardly makes its way through the treetops. It’s pitch black - and so Marcus doesn’t have to school his face into straightness when he hears Esca almost whimper. He reaches out, fumbles - feels the softness of Esca’s hair beneath his fingers. “I said don’t move,” he repeats, and kneels in the dirt.
He can almost make out the movement of Esca’s lips in the darkness. “They took the horses,” he says, hoarse and tight. Marcus can hear blood in that voice. “I tried to stop them.”
“Who were they?” Marcus asks, listens to the wind.
Esca’s face twists. Marcus thinks about that whimper, hates the memory. “My people,” he answers, after a moment. “Raiders.” And he laughs, almost, the sound choked and painful. “A Roman, cut off from his people, with nothing more than a traitor to protect him.”
Traitor. That’s a word that cuts a chill through Marcus’ heart. “This is my fault,” he says, and his head throbs, throbs.
Esca laughs, again, low and thick. “No,” he says, and there’s that familiar tone in his voice. “No.” Don’t argue with me; don’t blame yourself, you bastard.
Marcus won’t, not now.
Esca moves, mangled hands scraping prints across the forest floor. He pushes himself up, hisses out his pain. Marcus comes to his aid in a flash, leaning him against the oak’s bole - and Esca’s breath rushes against his cheek, warm with pain. Marcus lingers, palm resting on Esca’s stomach. He leans forward, just a fraction, and they gravitate together, as always. “They killed the dogs,” Esca whispers. “Ripped Melas’ throat open, tossed him into the house. Then set it on fire.”
“I know,” Marcus says, aching, and then whispers, “Can you walk?”
Esca’s eyes are bright. “Stamped on my hands ‘til they snapped,” he murmurs, as if to himself, as if to a memory. “Kicked me, beat me. Sliced half my ear off, since I’m such a good slave. Their words.” He laughs, again, gurglingly low, spits blood, and finally presses his forehead to Marcus’, eyes half-lidded. “Yes,” he answers, “I can walk.”
“In that case,” Marcus says, and brushes his touch just that fraction harder to Esca’s tensed (damp?) stomach, “we should move. Take advantage of the dark. It’s ten leagues to Calleva. We’ll be-”
But Esca’s expression is rigid, and his jagged hands knock at Marcus’ sides. “Quiet,” he breathes, in a whisper of command, and then, “Listen.”
Footsteps. In the grass.
Esca’s eyes are sharp, and his lips part. They’re so close Marcus can count the suck of his breaths - faster, now, fearful, because those steps can’t be more than a few metres away, pacing through the undergrowth with the slow steadiness of someone on the hunt. Marcus can feel the prickle at the back of his neck that must be the lot of the prey. He’s rigid; unbidden, his fingers knot in the weave of Esca’s tunic. Birds whistle overhead, and the footsteps pause. Marcus closes his eyes, forces himself to breathe slowly. Those steps are less than three paces away - he can make it: throw himself out of the bushes, bring him down. Snap his neck before he can cry out - and then he’ll have a weapon, have something to defend himself, he won’t be so helpless-
Esca’s broken touch falls heavy on Marcus’ cheek, fingers smearing blood across his skin. His eyes are dark, and he shakes his head, just slightly. Don’t.
Moments pass in silence. Esca’s breath shudders against Marcus’ lips.
The steps pad on, slowly fading into the distance.
“Mithras,” Marcus breathes.
Esca huffs out a near-silent laugh, and his battered hand slips to the back of Marcus’ neck. “Thank him for me,” he says, so soft, and kisses him - and Marcus is shocked, just for a moment, because this is hardly the time for what Esca describes as his favourite Roman custom, but then he doesn’t even think about it anymore, and it’s a kiss full of lips and teeth and tongue. A gesture of relief, of thanks, of i thought you were dead and it scared me so much. Things they don’t say.
They run, as best they can, as quiet as they can keep. Esca can’t put weight on his right leg, they swiftly discover (they go to stand and he collapses, biting through his lower lip to stop himself crying out with the pain), and so they hobble together. Marcus’ head is throbbing again, and he can’t tell who the blood on his hands belongs to, anymore: him, Esca? Leucos, broken and glass-eyed?
It feels like a dream, all this, like a nightmare of what once was. Running through moors and rivers, wounds aching, bleeding. Esca half-carrying him, wild and savage. No eagle cradled to his chest, though, not this time - now, Esca’s breaths are tight and fast, and they don’t so much run as they do stumble, endlessly. They might be lost-Marcus doesn’t know, the woods look different in the dark-but it’s not like he’s got much choice - and he can half-see the stars, twinkling through the treetops. He can navigate, mostly. Esca taught him that, too.
It’s lightening, slowly. Summer nights are hardly long.
“Marcus,” Esca rasps. “Marcus, stop.”
He stops, legs shaking. “Esca?” he says, not afraid, refusing to be afraid, and tips his fingers to Esca’s cheek, weather-beaten skin a bloody mess.
Esca’s sweaty, shaking. He’s faint, and there’s a growing bloodstain across his tunic, highlighted by the rising sun. “Marcus,” he says, shakily, and nothing else.
Marcus’ mind is racing. The wounds he can see aren’t that bad-painful, yes, but not to the tune of painful enough to pass out-but Esca’s sagging against him, faintness in his eyes, and that’s not Esca; Esca isn’t weak. He’s wounded, somewhere - and Marcus is no surgeon, but he’s seen bloodloss before. “Esca,” he says, softly, “lie down.”
Esca doesn’t answer. His eyes are closed.
Marcus forces himself to stay calm. He lays Esca down, kneels beside him, strips back his tunic - and, oh. His belly is slashed, deep and oozing; Marcus’ hands slip in the blood. He should panic. He should have shaking hands and vacant eyes - he’s not a soldier, not anymore; he no longer looks at seeds like he missed his initiation into their mysteries. But, at the same time, he’s still on the front line, red-gold shield hefted and ready.
He rips Esca’s tunic, bandages him with the rags. He knows that the wound needs to be cleaned, stitched, fixed - but he couldn’t even if he was in Asclepius’ temple. He needs to get Esca to Calleva, out of danger.
Blood seeps through Marcus’ attempt at bandages. “Why didn’t you say?” he asks, voice quiet against the rising sun.
Esca’s eyes are lidded. “No time for your fussing,” he answers, voice flat.
Marcus wants to say and there’s time for you dying?, but there’s no time for that, either - and abruptly there’s rustling, nearby; the sound of movement through foliage. They’re not sheltered, there’s no cover here, out in the open, with Esca shredded and Marcus’ head a-spin. And now there’s no time for thinking, either, because there’s a man padding through the forest, spear hefted easily at his shoulder, blue tattoos shrouding his flesh in ink. Now, Esca’s in danger. Marcus doesn’t have a choice.
Silent as a cat-or, at least, a cat with a headwound-Marcus launches himself through the trees, and he’d love to be able to say that he was quick enough to catch the hunter unawares, but he’s not. The man hears him, turns, and his spear’s half-raised by the time Marcus barrels into him, crashes him to the ground. He might be a farmer, now, but he’s lost none of his strength - and now that’s coming in handy, because this Briton is as slenderly muscled as Esca is, with the same sinewy strength, but he’s no match for the brute force that Marcus has behind his bulk. He pins him to the ground, amidst the summer blooms, knocks the spear away; presses his hands over his face, covering mouth and nose, pinching, suffocating.
Absently, he thinks, i’m killing him.
The hunter fights for a while, body spasming under Marcus’ strength, but he goes limp, eventually. Blood pounds in Marcus’ temples. His hands slacken; he sits back on his haunches. He can hear Esca’s breathing.
He hides the body, hauls it into the bushes. Tugs branches to cover what used to be a man. Retrieves the spear. His head is swimming.
Marcus returns to Esca’s side, leans against the nearest tree trunk, bends over, retches (there’s nothing left in his stomach but bile). He killed a pony with a broken back last spring, put her down with a twist and a snap of the neck, then sat and ran his fingers through her mane until her flesh was cold. He hasn’t killed a man in years. He’s forgotten how it feels.
Esca hauls himself up, broken hands clinging to his half-bandaged stomach. “We have to go,” he wheezes.
Marcus wipes his lips. He wants to sleep. “I know,” he says.
They find their way out of the trees, eventually. There’s an old cart-track, worn down the years by wheel-ruts, Roman and Briton alike, and they stumble upon it, in the end. It leads to a farmhouse, Marcus knows, half a league down the road-another Roman gone half-native, living among horses and pups, unsuspecting-but they don’t take that path. They keep going: cross the path, move through the fields, boots smeared with mud and blood.
“Can you smell that?” Marcus asks lowly.
Esca’s head lolls against his shoulder. “Smell what?” he whispers, half-audible.
Marcus thinks he can smell smoke on the breeze. Another home ablaze.
Ten leagues to Calleva, from their little slice of the land. Ten leagues. It’s nothing to Marcus, the legionnaire, nothing to Esca, the chieftain’s son. Right now, though, it’s a distance half-insurmountable, because Marcus’ mind is abstracted into fragments, and Esca can barely move without his lips tightening in pain. They’re quite thoroughly broken, really; scared by the rustle of a rabbit through weeds, catching mouthfuls of water from streams when they can muster the courage to stop for even half a second.
When day drags through to evening, Marcus finds something that might pass for shelter (the branches of a low-hanging tree, brushing the ground with their leaf-laden weight), because while they should take advantage of the darkness of the night, to move, to run, he knows they can’t. They need to sleep, need to rest. Esca shouldn’t be moving, anyway, because Marcus knows that every time he moves he tugs that gash, that rend even further open - knows because he can feel it; blood, pulsing against his fingers.
Marcus curls up in the leaves, and Esca passes out at his side.
It rains, that night; warm summer rain that patters through the treetops and glistens in Esca’s hair. Marcus doesn’t sleep, not really - he’s in and out, dozing, but dozing with dreams full of sadness. Dogs with shock-black fur and dead eyes; shadows in the windows at night. His head hurts, even if the blood’s dry, now. Esca twitches in his sleep, lips twisted in what might almost be a snarl - and Marcus watches, absent, as raindrops bead on his lips.
He wants to rest, so badly - but he knows, somehow, that if he goes to sleep right now nothing good will come of it. The last time he closed his eyes, he woke up to smoke and death. Not again, never again - because it’s his fault that Esca’s eyelids flutter in feverish heat as he sleeps, his fault that there’s nothing left of the place they made their home. His fault, as always; he’s pathetic, and he knows it.
Marcus curls into himself, presses his hands to his temples. He waits for morning.
When the sun finally drags itself over the horizon, lazy in its lateness, Esca’s skin is pale, beaded with sweat. His breath comes in shallow pants, and when Marcus peels back the almost-bandages around his stomach, there’s a putridity to the wound that he can’t ignore. Infection; disease. They have to hurry - and they’re nearing civilisation, now, so maybe they’ll be people there to help- But no, because there’s no telling who they can trust. They never thought their life would go up in smoke, did they? No one to trust, no one to rely on except each other.
Except Esca won’t wake.
Marcus tries. Shakes him by the shoulders; whispers his name (can’t risk anything louder). Esca doesn’t respond, not even to crease his forehead and mutter i’m asleep with an alertness that says he’s anything but - and Marcus feels his heart pound in his ears, so horribly loud, because he doesn’t even have the strength to carry a dog.
He crouches beneath the dripping branches, and his fingertips touch the heat of Esca’s brow. He will carry him because he has to, but it doesn’t change the fact that his vision still blurs, on occasion, and his head pounds, blood throbbing in his temples - and he can’t carry Esca over his shoulder, can’t sling him onto his back like he’s nothing more than junk. He has enough blood on his clothes. He kneels, hefts Esca into his arm; his muscles tremble at the weight, and he pants sharply, startled.
Esca’s expression is slack, empty. Right now, Marcus wants nothing more in the world than to hear his voice.
He leaves.
After a while, everything seems to zero in on this one little point in the world: stumbling through fields and moorland, feet rubbed raw, nothingness in Marcus’ eyes. He loses track of how far they’ve come, of how far they have to go, but, somehow, he always knows in which direction to push. Later, he might wonder whether it was Mithras himself, hearing his servant’s prayers; right now, all he can think is don’t let esca die don’t let him bleed to death don’t let him leave.
Marcus’ head is bowed. Esca’s cheek is pressed to the roughness of his tunic.
Suddenly, head ablaze with pain and confusion, Marcus comes to a halt - because he can smell something, something familiar, something that whispers of life and home and Caledonia, sweeping away beneath his feet. “Esca,” he murmurs, “do you…” - and he trails off, not because he knows Esca won’t answer, but rather because he can see horses, grazing in a fenced-off paddock, ears pricked up in the sun. There’s a beast with a patchily brown coat watching them, no fear in the arch of her neck, only curiosity.
Marcus almost smiles.
At first, at the smell of blood, the animal shies away, nostrils flaring - but Marcus goes slowly, reaches out, touches her cheek, smoothes his bloody palm down her neck. She tosses her head, but takes a step towards him, slowly - and, unbidden, Marcus doesn’t feel the tear that slips down his cheek. He is so tired. She allows him to tangle his fingers in her mane, snorts her agreement against his palm, licks away the blood - follows him quietly out of the paddock’s gate, noses at Esca’s battered body. She whinnies, as if she cares - and Marcus leans against her, for a moment, feels his knees tremble.
Of her own accord, almost, she kneels, folding gangly legs under her. It’s been a long time since Marcus rode without a saddle, but it’ll be okay. It has to be. He settles himself astride her back, Esca curled against his chest. Winds his fingers into her wind-swept mane - and she stands, slowly. Marcus’ thighs grip her sides.
“Take us home,” Marcus whispers, and she starts to move, trotting quietly across the grass, almost as if she understands. She doesn’t, of course; she’s just a dumb animal. Marcus doesn’t even know her name. It doesn’t even cross his mind that he’s just stolen someone else’s property - now, they’re the ones who’ve taken horses.
He’s ridden the path to Calleva a hundred times, more, but it barely registers, now. Maybe some corner of his mind whispers that, okay, he recognises this corner of the world, but he can’t hear it. His head isn’t working. All he can focus on is not falling, not letting Esca go.
Time doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It plays tricks, twists itself into spirals.
Marcus chokes out a whisper. His head falls forward, chin brushing Esca’s shoulder - and he can feel Esca’s cheek against his, flushed with fever, with infection; blood against blood. His eyes flutter shut, eyelids heavy as sleep, as death. Is there any difference?
Marcus is unconscious, now, drained through blood and pain and damage, throbbing in his skull. The stolen mare whinnies as his fingers lose their grip on her mane, and she comes to a halt, at the side of the broad road that leads into Calleva’s heart. She snorts, stamps a hoof - and folds herself to her knees. Esca slips first, lifeless body sliding into the grassy verge with a soft thud. His broken hands smear blood down her flanks. Marcus follows soon after, curling in his unconsciousness against Esca’s back - and the mare heaves herself to her feet, turns around, noses at Marcus’ face, licks at Esca’s neck.
She understands better than Marcus might think.
The mare kneels beside them, lies down, closes her eyes. She’s tired, too.
to be continued
next: [ Marcus wakes to sunlight, warm on his cheeks.]
Fandom: The Eagle.
Characters: Marcus&Esca.
Word Count: 4935
Rating: 15
Summary: “The fire rages on.” And they run, because they have to. Marcus/Esca.
Warnings: some graphic violence&injuries; minor character deaths.
Notes: A mixture of film and book canon. And I'm away for a bit, now, but I'll get the next part up as soon as. ♥
the sunshine lies
There’s something tickling Marcus’ neck.
He’s spread-eagled, flat on his back in the long grass that borders what passes for the paddock - and there’s an insect, something small and black and ugly, crawling up his throat, treading footprints in his blood. He blinks, slowly, eyelids heavy, and swats at the meddling bug. It buzzes angrily, flits away - and Marcus’ sluggish fingers swipe across his neck, coming away crimson.
His hand falls back to the grass, and his eyes flutter shut. He’s tired.
The sun is low in the sky, piercing through the wispy clouds with late summer’s heat, and it clatters down on his skin; pots and pans knocked from a shelf. He flops a bloody hand over his eyes, shading himself from the brightness, smearing fingerprinted red across his cheeks, and just lies in the peacefulness of softly-swaying grass.
It’s a quiet day, now.
Something’s burning. The smell of acrid smoke is suddenly sharp around him; dark tendrils snake across the sky, faint in the soft brightness of near-sunset. A frown creases Marcus’ bloody forehead, almost without his knowledge - he’s hardly in control of his own body, full of emptiness and skybright.
His heart pounds harder, and slowly, slowly, he starts to notice that, actually, there’s blood dripping from the side of his head, congealing in the grass. His face is sticky; his mouth tastes coppery, thick on his tongue. His hand falls away from his face, scrunching in the grass; dirt mixes with blood. He’s used to being wounded, that’s nothing new - but this, the confusion, the inability to follow thought with thought-
Marcus opens his eyes, parts his lips, lies frozen, just for a moment - and then he gasps, the warmth of the air almost hurting his throat. His fingers scratch at the dirt, filthying nails and palms, because he can’t move, can’t get up. His head, his head. It’s like he can hear the blood, pulsing through his temples and out, out. Arched in confusion, he jerks his hand up, away, up to his head - and he pushes at the rent in his skin, pushes dirt into the wound, pushes himself up and onto his feet.
The pain is biting; his vision blurs.
Marcus staggers forward, half a pace. He can barely stand; he feels sick. Somewhere in the back of his mind he registers that there are no horses in the paddock - but, right now, he’s distracted. Through the farmhouse door, open and vulnerable, only a handful of strides away, he can see flames, bright and red and angry, licking at the doorframe. Their home is on fire, ablaze.
“Oh,” he says, and pitches forward, empties his stomach into the grass.
The world blurs to blue and green. He forces himself forward, stumbling steps that slowly form themselves into a shambling run. It’s like he’s drunk too much, blood-wine staining his fingertips - and he almost crashes into the doorframe, the heat of the fire burning his face, legs shaking, head throbbing. He needs to put it out, run to the well, find water, quench - but he can’t, he can’t, because the blaze is too hot and his eyes are running with the smoke. The fire has its hold: the thick-legged oaken table is ash; the skins and books and rugs are nothing more than a memory.
Marcus chokes, falls back. Smoke stains his cheeks. He can barely keep his eyes open, barely think. He needs to sleep, just fall into bed, curl up with Esca at his side, sleep, dead to the world-
Esca.
The fire rages on.
Marcus presses a hand to his head, dizzy, bleeding, and croaks, “Esca.” Louder, “Esca.” He groans, staggers, and then bellows, “Esca!” - but all he can hear is the crackle of the fire, eating everything, eating his life.
And he runs, stumbles as best he can - because there’s smoke everywhere, now, stinging his eyes. Tears cut swathes in the blood. Esca can’t be inside, he can’t - he just can’t hear him over the crackle and whip of the flames; yes, that’s it.
“Esca,” Marcus bellows again, voice thick and hoarse.
His feet thump the ground in time with the pounding in his head, the blurring of his vision. And he knows every furrow and bump of the ground around their farmhouse, every hole the dogs have dug, every post the horses have kicked, but now he looks at the grass beneath his feet like he’s never tread it before, like it’s alien, new. It’s not, of course; it’s the same grass, but yet it’s different. It’s stained. There’s blood on the ground - and, for once, it’s not his.
Marcus stumbles to halt when he sees the body.
When they finally finished the farm, all those years ago, finally put up its walls and awkwardly planted the first seeds (Marcus peering at the tiny dark spots in bemusement - he never claimed to be a farmer), his uncle appeared on the doorstep one rainlashed morning, laughing as he picked his way around the muddy puddles, with a smile and an armful of pups. Two of them, brothers, plucked from their mother’s teats, one black, one white. Aquila, in his endless ingenuity, named them Melas and Leucos - and while Marcus fumbled with seeds and seedlings, Esca fussed over those dogs like they were his own children, carried them yipping in his pockets and the horses’ saddlebags until they started to scratch through the seams.
Leucos’ shock-white fur is stained, matted crimson. His eyes are dull.
For a moment, all Marcus can do is catalogue: it’s like he’s a soldier, all over again. The animal’s throat has been slit, clean and efficient. A quick death, blood gushing over the grass as the dog whimpered, pawed at the air. There’s dirt smeared across the back of his neck, stark against the whiteness: he was held in the air by his scruff, squirming and fighting and snarling, as his mother once hauled him around and licked him clean, and they raked a blade across his throat then tossed the body aside.
Marcus can’t stand anymore. He collapses to the ground, reaches out a trembling hand to touch Leucos’ cold skin. He can’t speak, can’t make a sound, even though all the while there’s that whisper in the back of his mind: find esca where’s esca please mithras don’t let him be dead.
There’s a crash from the house, and heat blazes out across the fields. Grass withers.
Marcus feels numb. He feels his skin reddening, heating, and he needs to get out of here - but he can’t leave him, can’t leave Leucos. He’s choking. Marcus clumsily gathers the body into his arms, holds him close, cradles him against his chest - and, oh, he used to lie like that, curled nose to tail on Marcus’ chest when he lay in front of the hearth-fire on cold winter nights, when the horses were huddled together in their stables against the cold and Esca lay at his side, Melas meticulously washing his tattooed arm in quick little licks.
“Esca,” Marcus breathes, and staggers to his feet - but Leucos is a dead weight in his arms, his head limp, tongue lolling lifelessly from his jaws. He’s heavy, too heavy. Marcus can’t carry him - he’s too weak. He kneels, slowly, staggers to the ground. Lays Leucos down, nothing but a sad scrap of meat and fur in the dirt. He feels numb - and he can’t remember what happened, can’t remember anything-ah, his head-but he gets up, keeps going, stumbles on. The world spins around him; heat and blood.
It never crosses his mind to ask why all this is happening.
His stride is steadying, now; maybe his head is clearing. His feet slip on the grass, but he doesn’t fall; steadies himself, feels the memory of Leucos’ fur slide against his hands. Fire blazes in the corner of his vision, but he doesn’t look at it, doesn’t lose himself in the mesmerising danger of the quivering heat. The sun smiles benignly overhead.
There, curled into himself in the fresh-ploughed earth.
“Esca,” Marcus croaks, and then, “Esca.”
He crashes to his knees in the dirt, hands frantic - rolls him over, feels bile rise in his stomach, because Esca’s face is a mess of blood and bruises, lips split and eyes black and swollen. His ear is bloody; the tip is missing. He flinches as Marcus pulls him onto his back-his hands are cradled against his chest, fingers bent and snapped-and his eyes can barely open through the bruising. His eyes gleam absent - and he whispers, “Marcus,” with blood running from his lips into his mouth. “Marcus, run.”
Marcus can barely think - but it’s not because he’s absent, now, with his head spinning and his vision blurred; no, it’s because he’s angry, because someone did this to Esca, beat him and trampled him down, and then just left him to die. Esca’s eyes are shut, eyelashes matted. His breathing is shallow.
“Esca,” Marcus says, winds his fingers into his sweat-darkened hair - but he gets no response, because he’s unconscious, now, mouth slack and battered.
Marcus, run.
Breath catches in Marcus’ throat.
Maybe it’s a good thing that Esca’s unconscious, now, because Marcus swears he can almost feel the familiar irregularity of broken bones beneath the skin of his chest - and as he drags him up from the ground, heaves him to a mockery of a standing position, hanging against Marcus with his arm draped around his neck, Marcus knows that it will hurt. Right now, when he left couldn’t even carry Leucos to a decent burial, he can’t let Esca go. They have to run. They have to leave - but, for a moment, he can’t move, because they built a life here.
Fire blazes, hot and fierce.
Esca’s head sags against his chest. They have to leave, because whoever did this, whoever decided that their lives were worth nothing more than ash, could come back, any moment. Clean up their mess. There are woods, not far from here; Marcus can make it, they can hide. He stumbles away, Esca’s feet dragging ruts in the ground. Blood drips in his eyes; he blinks it away, and his gaze sweeps the ground, absent and so-alert. There are tracks everywhere: bootprints and hoofprints, laid on top of one another. The hoofprints are stamped into the earth, like the horses didn’t want to go; the bootprints are light, like they had no need to run.
They took the horses, and left Esca for dead.
Marcus stumbles on, Esca’s weight dragging him down - but he can see woods on the horizon, and they can hide, there, because months in Caledonia (all those years ago) and barefoot hunting with Esca in the forests, Briton-style, taught him how to hide, and how to hide well. In the legion, they never hid. Rather, they blazoned themselves across the face of the world, and look how well that turned out.
The sun sets, dips below the horizon.
When Marcus makes it to the border of the trees, their home still ablaze behind them, stars are glimmering in the sky - and Esca isn’t awake, but he smells like death. Marcus turns his back on the flames, slips beneath the trees. If he’d stayed looking back, kept his gaze on the dancing blaze for half a second longer, he’d’ve seen dark shapes. Men, silhouetted against the brightness. Esca was right. Marcus, run.
It’s a blessing, Marcus reflects, that the night’s warm. He finds a sheltered spot, between the trees, shrouded by undergrowth and darkness, and crouches there, on his haunches, Esca curled and slack at his feet. His flesh is sticky, eyelids tacking to skin as he blinks, and he’s silent, listening. Animals rustle the bushes, nightbirds hoot overhead - but he can’t hear footsteps, can’t hear them coming. He knows they’re there, though, they have to be - and, for a moment, he feels like a soldier again. His hands grasp for the sword that’s not there.
Esca stirs. His face is a mess of angry bruising; his eyes are bright. “Marcus?” he asks, hoarse in the darkness.
“Don’t move,” Marcus says, softly. “You’re hurt.” The undergrowth whispers its paeans around them. Starlight hardly makes its way through the treetops. It’s pitch black - and so Marcus doesn’t have to school his face into straightness when he hears Esca almost whimper. He reaches out, fumbles - feels the softness of Esca’s hair beneath his fingers. “I said don’t move,” he repeats, and kneels in the dirt.
He can almost make out the movement of Esca’s lips in the darkness. “They took the horses,” he says, hoarse and tight. Marcus can hear blood in that voice. “I tried to stop them.”
“Who were they?” Marcus asks, listens to the wind.
Esca’s face twists. Marcus thinks about that whimper, hates the memory. “My people,” he answers, after a moment. “Raiders.” And he laughs, almost, the sound choked and painful. “A Roman, cut off from his people, with nothing more than a traitor to protect him.”
Traitor. That’s a word that cuts a chill through Marcus’ heart. “This is my fault,” he says, and his head throbs, throbs.
Esca laughs, again, low and thick. “No,” he says, and there’s that familiar tone in his voice. “No.” Don’t argue with me; don’t blame yourself, you bastard.
Marcus won’t, not now.
Esca moves, mangled hands scraping prints across the forest floor. He pushes himself up, hisses out his pain. Marcus comes to his aid in a flash, leaning him against the oak’s bole - and Esca’s breath rushes against his cheek, warm with pain. Marcus lingers, palm resting on Esca’s stomach. He leans forward, just a fraction, and they gravitate together, as always. “They killed the dogs,” Esca whispers. “Ripped Melas’ throat open, tossed him into the house. Then set it on fire.”
“I know,” Marcus says, aching, and then whispers, “Can you walk?”
Esca’s eyes are bright. “Stamped on my hands ‘til they snapped,” he murmurs, as if to himself, as if to a memory. “Kicked me, beat me. Sliced half my ear off, since I’m such a good slave. Their words.” He laughs, again, gurglingly low, spits blood, and finally presses his forehead to Marcus’, eyes half-lidded. “Yes,” he answers, “I can walk.”
“In that case,” Marcus says, and brushes his touch just that fraction harder to Esca’s tensed (damp?) stomach, “we should move. Take advantage of the dark. It’s ten leagues to Calleva. We’ll be-”
But Esca’s expression is rigid, and his jagged hands knock at Marcus’ sides. “Quiet,” he breathes, in a whisper of command, and then, “Listen.”
Footsteps. In the grass.
Esca’s eyes are sharp, and his lips part. They’re so close Marcus can count the suck of his breaths - faster, now, fearful, because those steps can’t be more than a few metres away, pacing through the undergrowth with the slow steadiness of someone on the hunt. Marcus can feel the prickle at the back of his neck that must be the lot of the prey. He’s rigid; unbidden, his fingers knot in the weave of Esca’s tunic. Birds whistle overhead, and the footsteps pause. Marcus closes his eyes, forces himself to breathe slowly. Those steps are less than three paces away - he can make it: throw himself out of the bushes, bring him down. Snap his neck before he can cry out - and then he’ll have a weapon, have something to defend himself, he won’t be so helpless-
Esca’s broken touch falls heavy on Marcus’ cheek, fingers smearing blood across his skin. His eyes are dark, and he shakes his head, just slightly. Don’t.
Moments pass in silence. Esca’s breath shudders against Marcus’ lips.
The steps pad on, slowly fading into the distance.
“Mithras,” Marcus breathes.
Esca huffs out a near-silent laugh, and his battered hand slips to the back of Marcus’ neck. “Thank him for me,” he says, so soft, and kisses him - and Marcus is shocked, just for a moment, because this is hardly the time for what Esca describes as his favourite Roman custom, but then he doesn’t even think about it anymore, and it’s a kiss full of lips and teeth and tongue. A gesture of relief, of thanks, of i thought you were dead and it scared me so much. Things they don’t say.
They run, as best they can, as quiet as they can keep. Esca can’t put weight on his right leg, they swiftly discover (they go to stand and he collapses, biting through his lower lip to stop himself crying out with the pain), and so they hobble together. Marcus’ head is throbbing again, and he can’t tell who the blood on his hands belongs to, anymore: him, Esca? Leucos, broken and glass-eyed?
It feels like a dream, all this, like a nightmare of what once was. Running through moors and rivers, wounds aching, bleeding. Esca half-carrying him, wild and savage. No eagle cradled to his chest, though, not this time - now, Esca’s breaths are tight and fast, and they don’t so much run as they do stumble, endlessly. They might be lost-Marcus doesn’t know, the woods look different in the dark-but it’s not like he’s got much choice - and he can half-see the stars, twinkling through the treetops. He can navigate, mostly. Esca taught him that, too.
It’s lightening, slowly. Summer nights are hardly long.
“Marcus,” Esca rasps. “Marcus, stop.”
He stops, legs shaking. “Esca?” he says, not afraid, refusing to be afraid, and tips his fingers to Esca’s cheek, weather-beaten skin a bloody mess.
Esca’s sweaty, shaking. He’s faint, and there’s a growing bloodstain across his tunic, highlighted by the rising sun. “Marcus,” he says, shakily, and nothing else.
Marcus’ mind is racing. The wounds he can see aren’t that bad-painful, yes, but not to the tune of painful enough to pass out-but Esca’s sagging against him, faintness in his eyes, and that’s not Esca; Esca isn’t weak. He’s wounded, somewhere - and Marcus is no surgeon, but he’s seen bloodloss before. “Esca,” he says, softly, “lie down.”
Esca doesn’t answer. His eyes are closed.
Marcus forces himself to stay calm. He lays Esca down, kneels beside him, strips back his tunic - and, oh. His belly is slashed, deep and oozing; Marcus’ hands slip in the blood. He should panic. He should have shaking hands and vacant eyes - he’s not a soldier, not anymore; he no longer looks at seeds like he missed his initiation into their mysteries. But, at the same time, he’s still on the front line, red-gold shield hefted and ready.
He rips Esca’s tunic, bandages him with the rags. He knows that the wound needs to be cleaned, stitched, fixed - but he couldn’t even if he was in Asclepius’ temple. He needs to get Esca to Calleva, out of danger.
Blood seeps through Marcus’ attempt at bandages. “Why didn’t you say?” he asks, voice quiet against the rising sun.
Esca’s eyes are lidded. “No time for your fussing,” he answers, voice flat.
Marcus wants to say and there’s time for you dying?, but there’s no time for that, either - and abruptly there’s rustling, nearby; the sound of movement through foliage. They’re not sheltered, there’s no cover here, out in the open, with Esca shredded and Marcus’ head a-spin. And now there’s no time for thinking, either, because there’s a man padding through the forest, spear hefted easily at his shoulder, blue tattoos shrouding his flesh in ink. Now, Esca’s in danger. Marcus doesn’t have a choice.
Silent as a cat-or, at least, a cat with a headwound-Marcus launches himself through the trees, and he’d love to be able to say that he was quick enough to catch the hunter unawares, but he’s not. The man hears him, turns, and his spear’s half-raised by the time Marcus barrels into him, crashes him to the ground. He might be a farmer, now, but he’s lost none of his strength - and now that’s coming in handy, because this Briton is as slenderly muscled as Esca is, with the same sinewy strength, but he’s no match for the brute force that Marcus has behind his bulk. He pins him to the ground, amidst the summer blooms, knocks the spear away; presses his hands over his face, covering mouth and nose, pinching, suffocating.
Absently, he thinks, i’m killing him.
The hunter fights for a while, body spasming under Marcus’ strength, but he goes limp, eventually. Blood pounds in Marcus’ temples. His hands slacken; he sits back on his haunches. He can hear Esca’s breathing.
He hides the body, hauls it into the bushes. Tugs branches to cover what used to be a man. Retrieves the spear. His head is swimming.
Marcus returns to Esca’s side, leans against the nearest tree trunk, bends over, retches (there’s nothing left in his stomach but bile). He killed a pony with a broken back last spring, put her down with a twist and a snap of the neck, then sat and ran his fingers through her mane until her flesh was cold. He hasn’t killed a man in years. He’s forgotten how it feels.
Esca hauls himself up, broken hands clinging to his half-bandaged stomach. “We have to go,” he wheezes.
Marcus wipes his lips. He wants to sleep. “I know,” he says.
They find their way out of the trees, eventually. There’s an old cart-track, worn down the years by wheel-ruts, Roman and Briton alike, and they stumble upon it, in the end. It leads to a farmhouse, Marcus knows, half a league down the road-another Roman gone half-native, living among horses and pups, unsuspecting-but they don’t take that path. They keep going: cross the path, move through the fields, boots smeared with mud and blood.
“Can you smell that?” Marcus asks lowly.
Esca’s head lolls against his shoulder. “Smell what?” he whispers, half-audible.
Marcus thinks he can smell smoke on the breeze. Another home ablaze.
Ten leagues to Calleva, from their little slice of the land. Ten leagues. It’s nothing to Marcus, the legionnaire, nothing to Esca, the chieftain’s son. Right now, though, it’s a distance half-insurmountable, because Marcus’ mind is abstracted into fragments, and Esca can barely move without his lips tightening in pain. They’re quite thoroughly broken, really; scared by the rustle of a rabbit through weeds, catching mouthfuls of water from streams when they can muster the courage to stop for even half a second.
When day drags through to evening, Marcus finds something that might pass for shelter (the branches of a low-hanging tree, brushing the ground with their leaf-laden weight), because while they should take advantage of the darkness of the night, to move, to run, he knows they can’t. They need to sleep, need to rest. Esca shouldn’t be moving, anyway, because Marcus knows that every time he moves he tugs that gash, that rend even further open - knows because he can feel it; blood, pulsing against his fingers.
Marcus curls up in the leaves, and Esca passes out at his side.
It rains, that night; warm summer rain that patters through the treetops and glistens in Esca’s hair. Marcus doesn’t sleep, not really - he’s in and out, dozing, but dozing with dreams full of sadness. Dogs with shock-black fur and dead eyes; shadows in the windows at night. His head hurts, even if the blood’s dry, now. Esca twitches in his sleep, lips twisted in what might almost be a snarl - and Marcus watches, absent, as raindrops bead on his lips.
He wants to rest, so badly - but he knows, somehow, that if he goes to sleep right now nothing good will come of it. The last time he closed his eyes, he woke up to smoke and death. Not again, never again - because it’s his fault that Esca’s eyelids flutter in feverish heat as he sleeps, his fault that there’s nothing left of the place they made their home. His fault, as always; he’s pathetic, and he knows it.
Marcus curls into himself, presses his hands to his temples. He waits for morning.
When the sun finally drags itself over the horizon, lazy in its lateness, Esca’s skin is pale, beaded with sweat. His breath comes in shallow pants, and when Marcus peels back the almost-bandages around his stomach, there’s a putridity to the wound that he can’t ignore. Infection; disease. They have to hurry - and they’re nearing civilisation, now, so maybe they’ll be people there to help- But no, because there’s no telling who they can trust. They never thought their life would go up in smoke, did they? No one to trust, no one to rely on except each other.
Except Esca won’t wake.
Marcus tries. Shakes him by the shoulders; whispers his name (can’t risk anything louder). Esca doesn’t respond, not even to crease his forehead and mutter i’m asleep with an alertness that says he’s anything but - and Marcus feels his heart pound in his ears, so horribly loud, because he doesn’t even have the strength to carry a dog.
He crouches beneath the dripping branches, and his fingertips touch the heat of Esca’s brow. He will carry him because he has to, but it doesn’t change the fact that his vision still blurs, on occasion, and his head pounds, blood throbbing in his temples - and he can’t carry Esca over his shoulder, can’t sling him onto his back like he’s nothing more than junk. He has enough blood on his clothes. He kneels, hefts Esca into his arm; his muscles tremble at the weight, and he pants sharply, startled.
Esca’s expression is slack, empty. Right now, Marcus wants nothing more in the world than to hear his voice.
He leaves.
After a while, everything seems to zero in on this one little point in the world: stumbling through fields and moorland, feet rubbed raw, nothingness in Marcus’ eyes. He loses track of how far they’ve come, of how far they have to go, but, somehow, he always knows in which direction to push. Later, he might wonder whether it was Mithras himself, hearing his servant’s prayers; right now, all he can think is don’t let esca die don’t let him bleed to death don’t let him leave.
Marcus’ head is bowed. Esca’s cheek is pressed to the roughness of his tunic.
Suddenly, head ablaze with pain and confusion, Marcus comes to a halt - because he can smell something, something familiar, something that whispers of life and home and Caledonia, sweeping away beneath his feet. “Esca,” he murmurs, “do you…” - and he trails off, not because he knows Esca won’t answer, but rather because he can see horses, grazing in a fenced-off paddock, ears pricked up in the sun. There’s a beast with a patchily brown coat watching them, no fear in the arch of her neck, only curiosity.
Marcus almost smiles.
At first, at the smell of blood, the animal shies away, nostrils flaring - but Marcus goes slowly, reaches out, touches her cheek, smoothes his bloody palm down her neck. She tosses her head, but takes a step towards him, slowly - and, unbidden, Marcus doesn’t feel the tear that slips down his cheek. He is so tired. She allows him to tangle his fingers in her mane, snorts her agreement against his palm, licks away the blood - follows him quietly out of the paddock’s gate, noses at Esca’s battered body. She whinnies, as if she cares - and Marcus leans against her, for a moment, feels his knees tremble.
Of her own accord, almost, she kneels, folding gangly legs under her. It’s been a long time since Marcus rode without a saddle, but it’ll be okay. It has to be. He settles himself astride her back, Esca curled against his chest. Winds his fingers into her wind-swept mane - and she stands, slowly. Marcus’ thighs grip her sides.
“Take us home,” Marcus whispers, and she starts to move, trotting quietly across the grass, almost as if she understands. She doesn’t, of course; she’s just a dumb animal. Marcus doesn’t even know her name. It doesn’t even cross his mind that he’s just stolen someone else’s property - now, they’re the ones who’ve taken horses.
He’s ridden the path to Calleva a hundred times, more, but it barely registers, now. Maybe some corner of his mind whispers that, okay, he recognises this corner of the world, but he can’t hear it. His head isn’t working. All he can focus on is not falling, not letting Esca go.
Time doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It plays tricks, twists itself into spirals.
Marcus chokes out a whisper. His head falls forward, chin brushing Esca’s shoulder - and he can feel Esca’s cheek against his, flushed with fever, with infection; blood against blood. His eyes flutter shut, eyelids heavy as sleep, as death. Is there any difference?
Marcus is unconscious, now, drained through blood and pain and damage, throbbing in his skull. The stolen mare whinnies as his fingers lose their grip on her mane, and she comes to a halt, at the side of the broad road that leads into Calleva’s heart. She snorts, stamps a hoof - and folds herself to her knees. Esca slips first, lifeless body sliding into the grassy verge with a soft thud. His broken hands smear blood down her flanks. Marcus follows soon after, curling in his unconsciousness against Esca’s back - and the mare heaves herself to her feet, turns around, noses at Marcus’ face, licks at Esca’s neck.
She understands better than Marcus might think.
The mare kneels beside them, lies down, closes her eyes. She’s tired, too.
to be continued
next: [ Marcus wakes to sunlight, warm on his cheeks.]