Valley of the Dead by Kim Paffenroth Read Free Book Online Page B

long time to pack and reassemble, and sometimes they break and have to be fixed. Never mind if the army camp is attacked by the dead and they have to fight them off before moving on to the next village. So I kept trying to reason with them, until they were actually ready to light the fire around her. That’s when I drew my sword and thought enough is enough. I’d rather fight them than let them do this. I left the army, and could be killed for it. How could I just let these people do worse than the army was doing? At least the soldiers just kill people. They don’t torture anyone.” He cast a sideways look at Dante. It was not quite as accusatory and condemning as that of the woman with the candlestick, but nearly so, and with more petulant, prideful hurt behind it. “That’s when you showed up. You might have done more, you know.”
    Dante wondered how much more blame he would find in this strange land, where so far he had done little else beside try to help people. “I know. I’m sorry. Really, I am.”
    “We’d all be dead if he had,” Bogdana said coldly. “And we nearly died again, just now, because you had to try to do more than you can.”
    The petulance flared up into real vindictiveness now. “I wasn’t talking to you, woman.”
    Dante pulled on the reins. “Don’t use that tone with her. If you want to make up for destroying her village, fine, but stop insulting her.” Even with women who rode astride a stranger’s horse, and beat men to death like they were pounding the wash on a stone next to the river, there were still rules of what things a man was not to tolerate being done or said to them.
    “Oh, enough!” Bogdana said. She slid off Dante’s horse, landing awkwardly then falling. She got up and brushed herself off as she took a couple steps away from them, into the woods. “Stop it, both of you, or I’ll take my chances by myself. I really don’t need to hear which of you is more of a man, or who defends helpless women better! Stop with all your morality and honor and shame and guilt. We’re way past those, all right? Can we just agree to work together to stay alive?”
    Dante was much more taken aback that a woman would refuse an offer of protecting her honor than he was that a man might insult her. But, as usual, this half-wild woman made more sense in the given situation than the rules he had been raised to follow. He glanced back to Radovan, who gazed at Bogdana, looking just as shocked as Dante had been. The soldier looked warily at him.
    “I want her to stay alive,” Dante said. “If there are other people who aren’t trying to kill us, I will try to help them too, but my first obligation is to her. I promised her.”
    Radovan nodded. “I will help you two survive. You have my word.” He looked at Bogdana. “I am sorry, Miss. I have hurt you enough by what I did before. I will help you now in any way I can.”
    “Thank you,” she said as she let Dante help her back up on to the horse. “You two seem like good men. Don’t let all your rules get in the way of doing what’s right.”
    They moved westward along the road. “I suppose we should keep heading west and try to stay ahead of the army,” Radovan said. “Get to the mountains and try to get over them. Do you have any plan other than that?”
    “No,” Dante answered. “It was all we had come up with as well.”
    “Sometimes simple plans are the best,” Radovan agreed. Dante thought optimism might come more naturally to him than it did to other people, and this seemed to him a good thing at the moment.

Chapter 8

    And ready are they to pass o’er the river,
    Because celestial Justice spurs them on,
    So that their fear is turned into desire.
    Dante, Inferno , 3.124-26

    It was the middle of the afternoon when they reached the banks of a broad river. The road turned and they followed the river upstream. The water looked too deep, and the current too strong, for them to cross on their own. Dante wondered if