He leaned over and deposited another shingle onto the fire. It had fully caught now and was flapping away west, snapping and popping like a gunfight. Into its flickering and flaring the longhorn descended, his horns and his nosering underlit like falling satellites. His bleak eyes passing from Orc to Mym. "It's your company now," he said.

  Orc turned to him. "Time for you to leave."

  The longhorn feigned a bow. “As you wish my captain,” he said, and he departed.

  He looked at the dwarf. “You ought to be going too.”

  “I can stay.”

  “No. Go be with your friends.”

  “Want me te come out after?”

  “No.”

  “Ye don’t have te do this alone.”

  “I’m not alone.”

  She took a step toward him. He raised his head. He did not hide his pain.

  “Ye need anythin ye just call out.”

  She left.

  He came to sit beside the sow. Her eyes were closed, her hand yet held the knife. He whispered to her as if in warning and he laid his palm on her forehead. He felt the sweat there. She had thrown half the bearskin aside, had climbed halfway out of her harness. The flaps of manskin too close to the fire, their prized hair curling and reeking. Knowing naught else to do he began to hum a rhyme of the brigadier’s. He wet her lips with water from the river. He pressed the malachite against her cheek, against her breast. The hair fluttered in the air. The sparks rocketed forth and winked out. He crawled under the bearskin. It was an oven from her fever. He held her. His hand on her wrist. The malachite pressed against her forehead. He knew it didn’t work that way. He knew naught else what to do.

  They lay together that last time as all of us must someday. The malachite rolled off her shivering frame now he brushed his fingers through her hair. Perhaps she knew it was him who was there.

  “Just get on with it,” she rasped through the fluid building in her chest and her throat.

  He looked at her. Her eyes were still closed. She lay just as she had. As if nothing had been said.

  “If I could lift my arm I’d cut you open,” she said.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “Then it’s a good thing you can’t.”

  He looked out over the water. Something flickering up in the heights of a capitoline spire. Perhaps the first reflection of the coming moonrise. They were nearing conjunction again. When he looked back at her she was weeping.

  “You aren’t done yet,” he said.

  “Just end it.”

  “If anyone can pull through it’s you.”

  Her head tilted. She was looking off upcountry. Searching for something she’d never quite found. “You hear it?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Listen.”

  He stared up at the impossibly dark sky. The sparks racing thence and the underside of smoke piling up in its own shadow and fading to black. He closed his eyes. He listened. Past the crackling fire, the whispering wind, the ringing in his ears.

  “I don’t hear anything,” he said.

  He didn’t want to spend this time playing at her games. He needed to talk to her. She needed him to keep her awake, to keep her fighting. He opened his eyes.

  “What do you hear?” he said.

  He turned his face to hers.

  “Tulula?”

  He reached for her. The sweat standing on her face now cold. He sat up, found the malachite, pressed it there a last time.

  ***

  When he came inside Mym was the last one awake. At his appearance she immediately stood up from where she had been sitting against the wall and she looked at him and then at the doorway as if someone else might enter behind him.

  “How’s she doin?” she said.

  “She’s dead.”

  Her head lowered as the air went out of her, but still she watched him. “Oy Orc. How about ye? Ye need anythin?”

  He looked at the malachite in his hand. A year ago he would’ve told her that he was alright. That he’d been awash in death for most of his life. But he had changed. He had unlearned the lessons taught by the brigadier and the bookmaker’s pit. It was not, after all, him versus the world.

  “I could use your help,” he said.

  “Aye. Anythin.”

  He nodded at the canoe. “Help me with carry.”

  They carried the boat to where she lay rolled up in the bearskin. They lay it on the sand and with his boot he scattered the coals of the fire as she watched. Together they lifted the boat onto the coals and then lifted the bearskin and its burden into the boat. As flames began to lick up the hull he reached into the bearskin and he unwrapped the barbed campwire from the wrist and he threw back the flap and laid her face bare to the night sky. He stood back and watched the fire engulf the boat, the body within it. As it turned to smoke and ash he felt the dwarf come beside him. He felt her hand on his back. He looked down at the campwire in his hand. He cuffed it around his offhand wrist and there he would wear it for the rest of his days.

  The pyre had grown in heat and luminescence. Mym stepped back from it but he would endure. He would take up as much of her heat as she could offer and after it all died away he would draw his finger through the ashes and coat them upon the inside of his lower lip, making that part of her forever a part of him.

  At the greatest extent of the cremation the flames stood taller than his head. His shirt was soaked through and if it weren’t for the fire it would have chilled him to death. He turned in place and looked upon Mym, her face firelit, her pupils huge and the fire dancing twice within them.

  “There’s something else I need from you,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Help me take your oath of vengeance.”