The man's breath was heavy with alcohol, his accent stained by the
tongue of Those-We-Raid. He raised a hammer high. He spat. He said,
“This is what we do with rebels.” The hammer fell. The shoulder
broke.
He woke up, sweating. Long hair tangled in his face, blinded, but he
could feel the pain shoot up and down his useless arm again. The
bedroll stank of urine. The young'uns said Varro wet himself from
fear, in his nightmares. The truth was more prosaic; age. His bladder
played tricks on him, had been for a few years now. Probably some
sickness he'd caught in his youth... back in the slave days. Back
when they broke his shoulder.
He couldn't sleep. Rolling out of the cloth, he climbed to his feet
with his good arm, grunting as he went. The camp was silent.
Except, of course, for the newcomers. They were sleeping nearby. He
wondered if Harkon knew about it, the way he spoke in his sleep. His
tongue was thick and strange, the language of the Far West, where a
mighty Empress had a fleet of a thousand ships. Varro didn't speak
it, not a lick, but he understood the feelings well enough. Was it a
greater shame to piss or to weep in one's sleep? Varro didn't know,
and he was too old to let shame rule him.
The old man had lost his clan. Let him sleep and not feel shame.
There would come a time when he'd weep while awake, not giving a damn
who saw.
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