Fraul

Fraul felt Raru beside him, felt his body heat and smelled him. He smelled like whiskey. He had been drinking again.

Fraul registered this with one side of his mind; with the other side, he fought. His sword clanged against other blades and he stabbed with his ringed fingers into the openings. His hands were lethal, sheathed in rings as sharp as his sword and made of the same steel.

His shoulder brushed Raru’s and he felt the jump of electric current between them, and Raru glanced over and blocked a blade that had been coming down over Fraul. Fraul smiled.

“I would have seen that,” he said breathlessly, and Raru smiled.

“Sure, sir,” he called, and Fraul loved him. He was like a rabid dog, in war–swiping this way and that with the sword, lips pulled back from the teeth, snarling, guarding the space around Fraul. The captain should not have been on the front lines, anyway, but he would not dare allow Ire to go alone.

“Watch out, Lieutenant,” he said lightly, and ran a man through with his sword. Raru, who had been holding still while Fraul did so, kicked the body off his captain’s blade and lunged into the space created. Fraul followed him, sticking close, breathing the sweat around him and lifting his head to see above the ranks.

They were gaining ground.

Fraul guarded both Ire’s back and his own as the lieutenant pushed forward, hollering, beating his chest, stabbing at Oreians who were falling on his comrades.

Raru turned back to Fraul, smiling, and Fraul blocked a blade around the side of them. The man fell onto Fraul’s willowy form, and Raru leapt on his back and slit his throat with one rip of the sword.

He pushed the Oreian off and Fraul was already on his feet, breathless, bloody, with a light, “Thank you, dear.”

Raru grinned. Fraul only called him dear when he was starting to have fun. For his part, Raru was dancing in the space around his captain like a rooster. He focused before he made any mistakes. Fraul’s gaze sharpened on something behind him and Raru turned, seeing an absolute giant of a man who was knocking soldiers on their sides with one sweep of his claymore.

The soldiers saw their lieutenant and captain rolling up to the back of the giant. Fraul saw Raru’s canines gleaming in his wolfish smile, and so Fraul sheathed his sword and adjusted the rings on his fingers. He nodded to show he was ready; Raru dropped to one knee and made a shelf with his back, and Fraul–lightweight, tall and reedlike–stepped onto the strong girdle of Raru’s hips and Raru thrust him into the air with a single push. Fraul landed on the back of the giant and made to slit the man’s throat with his thumb ring, while Raru cut with the sword.

The rest was a blur. The giant turned, enraged, and Fraul clung to his back and smiled as he saw the fountain of artery blood. He liked this part. He had always been called vicious, and from another soldier, that was a compliment.

The giant saw Raru, and felt a man on his back. Raru was backing up, not wanting to draw their enemy into the ranks of soldiers, but also not wanting to be squashed himself. He was not a fast man; Fraul watched in slow motion as the claymore clipped him. Then the giant went down face-first, and Fraul leapt from his back and landed beside Raru, grabbing him by the shoulder, pulling him up.

“Lieutenant,” he said, and Raru cleared his throat and gained his feet.

“M’good,” he said, smiling, and Fraul looked at the blood pooling in his boot and felt fear.

He cast his gaze around for Heath, who was both captain and healer. He pulled Raru beside him, but the lieutenant hadn’t gone three steps when he resisted, his boots catching dirt.

“Sir–hold on,” he said, looking down at himself. That was a lot of blood. He couldn’t tell which was his and which was theirs. Fraul grabbed him and threw him over his own shoulders, carrying him to the back of the line despite his weak protests. Grunting, Fraul put the younger man down on his back and straightened, yelling for Heath, for Tere, for any one of them who could heal better than he could. He grabbed a flag off the ground and stuffed it into the artery, the inner leg from which all the blood was flowing.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” he swore in his own language, and Raru smiled a goofy smile and reached out to calm him down.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, but his voice wavered and he blinked to keep himself conscious. Fraul ran his hands through his hair, looked at the younger man, knew exactly what he needed to do but didn’t want to do it.

He raised his head and called for Heath again, snarling, “Where is he?”

The Oreians were closing in on them. Fraul could not defend Raru alone. He sheathed his sword and put his hands up.

“Surrender!” he screamed. “Take me to your general. I am the captain here. I surrender. I surrender.”

The soldiers paused. Fraul remembered the word in their language and said it, just as they were raising their blades. They huffed in disappointment and, as they grabbed him by the shoulder, Fraul saw Heath’s face in the crowd. Raru’s brow was creased, confused, but he was the only one on the ground and Heath zeroed in on him immediately. Fraul breathed a sigh of relief. Heath would know what to do for him. He’d be all right.

Fraul stopped resisting the enemy soldiers beside him and allowed them to bear him swiftly along the current of battle, to the general at the back of their line. They had a rope around his wrists before he had time to resist. He looked back for Raru, but couldn’t see him, and so he breathed to calm himself and reasoned that it would be all right, it would all be all right.