An Oath of Brothers by Morgan Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

surreal quality. Even seeing it with his own eyes, he could not believe what had just happened. They had defeated the Empire. He, alone, with a few hundred villagers, without any real weapons—and with the help of Gwendolyn’s few hundred men—had defeated this professional army of hundreds of Empire soldiers. They had donned the finest armor, had wielded the finest weapons, had had zertas at their disposal. And he, Darius, barely armed, had led the battle that had defeated them all, the first victory against the Empire in history.
    Here, in this place, where he had expected to die defending Loti’s honor, he now stood victorious.
    A conqueror.
    As Darius surveyed the field, he saw intermingled with the Empire corpses the bodies of scores of his own villagers, dozens dead, and his joy was tampered with sorrow. He flexed his muscles and felt fresh wounds himself, sword slashes in his biceps and thighs, and felt the sting of the lashes still on his back. He thought of the retaliation to come and knew their victory had come at a price.
    But then again, he mused, all freedom did.
    Darius sensed motion and he turned to see approaching him his friends, Raj and Desmond, wounded but, he was relieved to see, alive. He could see in their eyes that they looked at him differently—that all of his people now looked at him differently. They looked at him with respect—more than respect, with awe. Like a living legend. They had all seen what he had done, standing up to the Empire alone. And defeating them all.
    They no longer looked to him as a boy. They now looked to him as a leader. A warrior. It was a look he had never expected to see in these older boys’ eyes, in the villagers’ eyes. He had always been the one overlooked, the one that no one had expected anything from.
    Coming up alongside him, joining Raj and Desmond, were dozens of his brothers in arms, boys  whom he had trained and sparred with day after day, perhaps fifty of them, brushing off their wounds, rising to their feet, and congregating around him. They all looked to him, standing there, holding his steel sword, covered in wounds, with awe. And with hope.
    Raj stepped forward and embraced him, and one at a time, his other brothers in arms embraced him as well.
    “That was reckless,” Raj said with a smile. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
    “I thought for sure you would surrender,” Desmond said.
    “I can hardly believe we are all standing here,” said Luzi.
    They looked about in wonder, surveying the landscape, as if they all had been dropped down on a foreign planet. Darius looked at all the dead bodies, at all the fine armor and weaponry glistening in the sun; he heard birds cawing, and looked up to see the vultures already circling.
    “Gather their weapons,” Darius heard himself command, taking charge. It was a deep voice, a deeper one than he had ever used, and it carried an air of authority he had never recognized in himself. “And bury our dead.”
    His men listened, all of them fanning out, going soldier to soldier, scavenging them, each of them choosing the finest weapons: some took swords, others maces, flails, daggers, axes, and war hammers. Darius held up the sword in his hand, the one he had taken from the commander, and admired it in the sun. He admired its weight, its elaborate shaft and blade. Real steel. Something he thought he would never have a chance to hold in his lifetime. Darius intended to put it to good use, to use it to kill as many Empire men as he could.
     “Darius!” came a voice he knew well.
    He turned to see Loti burst through the crowd, tears in her eyes, rushing toward him past all the men. She rushed forward and embraced him, holding him tight, her hot tears pouring down his neck.
    He embraced her back, as she clung to him.
    “I shall never forget,” she said, between tears, leaning in close and whispering in his ear. “I shall never forget what you have done this day.”
    She kissed him, and he kissed