“I love you, son.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

****

As Zedock left Letho’s room, he wiped tears from the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief. It was time to visit his other son. How long had it been since they had visited with one another? But it had grown difficult to balance his time between the two, and in his heart he knew which one he favored the most. Since Letho had returned, it had been difficult to look at Saul the same way. Letho’s excellence in the way he treated others and his selfless courage only magnified Saul’s faults in those areas. Still, he loved Saul, and they had shared many good times together. The sort of time he wished he could have shared with Letho.

He stood at Saul’s door, stopping in his tracks at what he heard. Saul was speaking to someone whose voice he didn’t recognize, but for some reason seemed familiar.

Who would be in Saul’s room at this hour? It didn’t sound like Saul’s friend Johnny. Then he heard Saul say the name Alastor, and his aged heart clenched. He staggered, bracing himself against the wall.

No. It couldn’t be. Saul would never.

The door was locked, but Zedock forced it open using his administrator’s keycode.

And there he was on the screen. Alastor’s sinister eyes locked on Zedock.

“Greetings, Mr. Wartimer,” Alastor said.

“Dad!” Saul exclaimed.

“Really, now, Saul, I think you can dispense with that term of endearment. He has a son already, and it isn’t you.”

“You, Mendraga, shut up! I won’t have your foul words spoken in my home,” Zedock said.

“Well, it looks like it’s time for you to decide where your loyalties lie,” Alastor said to Saul, ignoring Zedock. “I will leave you to it then.”

The screen went blank, and Saul turned to face Zedock, whose face had gone a bright red, a look of mingled anger and confusion spread across it.

“Saul, how could you?” he said.

“How could I?” Saul shouted. “How could I not? This plan is foolish. I am trying to arrange a truce between Hastrom City and Haven. Alastor has agreed to stay his hand. He even wants to open up trade routes with us. It’s what we always wanted!”

Zedock clutched his chest, his face going even redder. He staggered, steadying himself with a hand against the wall. “And what was his price?” he gasped.

“Letho,” Saul said quietly.

Zedock sobbed at the sound of his son’s name. “You would trade my son in some bargain with the devil himself? You are stupid, stubborn, and willful, and you always have been. Alastor will not keep his end of the bargain. He will burn this place down. Mark my words.”

“Your son?” Saul shouted. “I’m your son. What about me? I was there with you all along. I helped you build this place! Shed blood to protect it!” He stepped toward Zedock, who continued to clutch his chest, gasping for air.

“Need help,” Zedock wheezed. “Medic.”

Saul stepped behind his father. He wrapped one arm around Zedock’s barrel chest and placed the other over his mouth and nostrils.

The old man was burly and strong, but he was no match for Saul’s strength. He struggled mightily, shaking his head, trying to free his nostrils so that he could breathe, trying to break Saul’s grip by thrashing. He stomped on Saul’s foot as hard as he could, but Saul did not relax his python grip.

At last Zedock went limp, and it was over.

Saul let his father’s body fall to the ground.

Zedock looked so frail, old, now that his life had been extinguished. A throaty, hoarse wail from the pit of Saul’s guts erupted, ejecting ropes of spittle and bringing with it a flood of tears.

“Help!” he shouted. “Help!”

****

When Letho arrived, there was already a group of onlookers gathered around Saul’s room. He felt the weight pressing down on him as the horrible truth dawned.

His body wanted to turn and walk away, in order to protect his mind from what it was about to see. He knew what lay inside the room, and he did not want to see. But he pressed forward. He was a man in a trance. He barely noticed how hard he shoved through the onlookers, causing one of them to crash against a nearby wall. He heard muted shouting as if from a great distance.

And then he saw him, and his world cracked.

Zedock. His father. His shirt torn open, his bare chest and large stomach revealed for all to see. So undignified. Medics were working on him. One had some hideous mask with a bulb attached to it that he was squeezing, trying to pump air into unresponsive lungs. They attached electro-nodes to his chest and fired off a charge. It caused his body to jolt and seize up.

Just stop. Leave him alone. He’s gone.

Letho wasn’t sure if he thought the words or said them aloud, for nothing made sense. His eyes felt like they were going to explode from the pressure of the tears flowing from them. They weren’t enough to expel the grief inside him. He moaned a shapeless roar like a feral human who had never heard another person speak. When the medics stood up to talk to him, he pushed them aside, this time conscious enough to not hurt them with his unnatural strength. He knelt, and seized the body of his father, held it in his arms. It was still warm, and the tracks of tears streamed from his lifeless eyes.

Letho’s body shook with seismic sobs, and his own tears were a hot, incessant flow that fell upon Zedock’s face, mingling with the dried tears that he had shed before death.

The onlookers began to disperse, at last realizing that they were intruders on a very intimate moment. Letho held the body for a long time, sobbing, his cheek pressed against Zedock’s. He moaned and sobbed in such a percussive, staccato manner that it sounded like mad laughter. His body began to ache, and at last he lay his father on the floor and collapsed, his own body exhausted from the expulsion of grief. In his stupor he was vaguely aware that Saul was standing over him.

Saul, his false brother. He felt nothing for him at the moment, but he did not protest when Saul knelt beside him and wrapped him in an embrace.

****

They buried Zedock that day in a small cemetery in the green sector, where the vegetables were grown and the pigs were raised. Every citizen of Haven came out and stood shoulder to shoulder as the body of Zedock Wartimer, wrapped in a linen shroud, was lowered into the freshly dug earth.

Saul was the first to speak. “My father was a great man. Through his vision, this place became Haven, a place where Eursans and Tarsi could live free from Abraxas’s cruelty. He laughed with us in good times, and cried with us in bad. Now he is gone, claimed by a failed heart. A heart that was big enough to hold enough love for all of us.” He turned to Letho. “Is there anything you wish to say?”

Letho nodded, stepping forward. “We have lost one of the greatest men I have ever known. But his work, what he dedicated his life to, it will live on even though he is no longer with us. We—”

He was cut off by a roar of support from the crowd. Beneath the Eursan cheers Letho could hear the dulcet tones of Tarsi song-speak.

Zedock Wartimer, Friend of the Tarsi. We will meet again in the halls of our forefathers, they sang.

Letho raised his hand, and the crowd ceased their shouting.

“We will take the fight to Abraxas! We will do what Zedock would have wanted. We will claim the city for Eursan and Tarsi alike. There will be no more living underground, hiding like animals in a burrow. The time has come to strike the heart of Hastrom City, so that it can be reborn as it was meant to be! Will you take arms and fight with me against Abraxas and his Mendraga?”

Rousing shouts in the affirmative filled the air.

FIFTEEN - The Storm

“Letho, you do realize that the chances of survival are relatively close to nil, correct?” Saladin asked.