Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Seven Circles of Hell ❯ Dorchet (loyalty) ( Chapter 1 )

A/N: A little project I was struck by while procrastinating on my Harry Potter story. It's sad when your favourite characters don't get any love; it's worse when they die and still don't get any love. Here's for the forgotten ones- the guys in the background, the characters without background. Warnings for violence and death.

 

The First Circle

 

They had four main streets, a train once a week, some three-hundred people, and seventeen square miles of dust and scrub and bluegrass and sage all to themselves. The church's spire, whip-straight and thin as a sapling, was easily the tallest point for all those seventeen miles, though the train platform boasted more traffic (most of it cattle and crates of textiles). There was one cobblestone street, whose north and south corners boasted a general store and a brewster's, respectively. For a stocky, dark-haired boy named Dorchet, growing up there meant stealing a keg from the cellar every Saturday and repenting for it in church the next day, picking at the calluses on his hands while he made the right sounds and recited the right phrases, his eyes bleary and completely empty of any real contrition.

 

In a crappy backwater like theirs, there was little for the kids to do but divvy the land up and scrap over territories. Depended on how well a fellow could hold his own, see, or how big his inner circle was. All summer long they duked it out any way possible, engaging in battles fought with pebbles for buckshot and old wooden slats for swords. A body couldn't tell when he'd be set upon. Swimming in the warm, soupy dugout behind the church was grounds for an ambush, where they threw mud from the banks and dragged each other under the surface and swallowed pondwater by the lungful.

 

Anyplace that offered halfway decent shelter or entertainment was grounds for a territory: old woodsheds, logged-out clearings in the woods, velvety green stands of furze and tumbleweed, copses of saplings, mossy cairns of boulders ploughed up from fields that nobody had farmed in years, big craggy trees with branches for climbing. From a child's standpoint, there were some good territories, the ones that could change hands as often as twice a day or as little as twice a month. One in particular was the cause of more busted noses and turned ankles than any other: in the middle of a stand of young oaks, the thicket of raspberries and tiny summer strawberries, most never bigger than a kid's thumbnail because they were eaten so early in the season. A determined bunch could hold it, but more than one fellow only fought over the thicket for the sake of hard fighting, rather than actually wanting to put up with the mosquitoes and bees that droned through air thick with the scent of green earth and fermenting fruit underfoot.

 

There were two territories that nobody fought over, however much they were coveted: the general store and the brewery. Guess whose the latter was? Damn straight. Dorchet's folks owned the distillery. He'd practically been drinking the stuff since he left off sucking his mam's tit- actually, that was pretty close to true. He'd known hops, malts, and vintages since he could twist a spigot. A few nips while he checked the barrels and firkins in the cellar did absolutely nothing to Dorchet, not with his hardened constitution. He had the key to every lock in the shop and house, so it was never a problem for him to swipe a couple pints at the end of the week.

 

And sure, if all you wanted was mindless scrapping and tussling for weeks on end, then it was fine. Dorchet wanted more. In a town like his, though, you couldn't get more- that was all there was, anything else would have been found out years ago. So he put up with it, and made it his business to be the best there was as long as he was at it. 'Stead of resting content with the brewery, he dove headfirst into the wars, and soon found that a broken barrel stave whirled like lightning in his hands.

 

Dorchet took to cinching his belt a few notches too loose in the summer and stowing his 'sword' there. It hardly left his side except to crack a few skulls now and again, until inevitably fall came and the schoolmarm made him ditch the stick. She was sharper with her rod than he was with his, after all, and it wasn't like the cranky girl was playing for territory, was it? Sad thing was, Dorchet remembered when the schoolmarm was just so-and-so's older sister, studying martial law for a way out only to wind up teaching fractions and grammar to a cramped roomful of bored kids.

 

Dorchet wanted more. He wanted out, and he wasn't going to get caught in the town's fly-paper snare of the same old streets forever and ever.

 

The Second Circle

 

The year he turned fifteen, he swapped his barrel stave for the real thing. It was flat-bladed and long, the impressive length of folded steel tapering down to an angled, no-nonsense tip. Been in the display case in the general store for years, only nobody'd ever had a need for such a weapon, so they hardly noticed the blade when they passed their money over the counter above it. The sword had been a fixture in the store for so long that it almost didn't seem to be for sale. At first nobody really believed that Dorchet had bought the thing, least of all his parents. The blade was fine- sharp, even- though the sheath was cracked and bleached from sun exposure and no maintenance. Dorchet oiled the wood, laquered it anew, and bound it back together with twine and linen.

 

He taught himself to handle the blade the same way he'd learned his way into dominance with the stave: through long weeks of rough and tumble, bashed fingers, and bruises. Only difference was, when he was lazing in the berry thicket with a few pints in him, and, with the headstrong confidence of drunks everywhere, decided to swing the sword about a little, he got slices instead of splinters. Damn, if that wasn't a quick way to sober up.

 

In the spring, rains and fogs spawned all manner of insect life. Amidst the pale green haze of furled leaves and baby raspberry shoots, Dorchet took exception to the tiny curling worms that swagged the trees in glistening, half-visible silk. On sunny days, they parachuted from the upper branches in great clouds, their soft bodies seeming to swing and bob like pendulums in midair, gossamer silk threads visible only when sunlight hit them just so.

 

He hated them.

 

Standing dangerously poised before the worst-infested tree with his sword in hand, Dorchet slashed and stabbed at the worms, naked blade easily slicing the billowing threads. As he worked himself into a rage, sweat began to trickle down his ribs and spine. Practice honed his aim as an ache settled in his shoulders. Soon enough, Dorchet worked as delicately as a seamstress, sword snicking through the worms instead of their threads. Dozens of half-bodies dangled from the tree, while the rest of the worms littered the ground, their tiny greenish husks dotting the fertile soil like dewdrops.

 

Thereafter, Dorchet could be found at the forest's fringe, apparently hacking like a madman at nothing for hours on end. He washed sticky silk out of his hair three times a day, and cleaned the puke-coloured worm guts off his blade twice as often, but kept up the battle. He didn't dare take his sword into mock-battle over useless 'territory', and didn't want to, anyway. He was better than that. The worms were a hopeless enemy to fight, but that wasn't the point. How many other kids his age could take the head off a pin-sized target as it swung and writhed in midair, blown unpredictably to and fro by the wind?

 

The general store down the street from Dorchet's brewery belonged to a sandy-haired buck about his age, name of Jean Havoc, and if they'd been friends they could have had the run of the town between them. Problem was, there wasn't much town to run. Like always: four cobbly streets and two big bases that nobody could battle over. Jean and Dorchet never banded together, really, even though they couldn't help but know each other a bit in a town so small. They never argued, but mostly that was because the pair of them never brushed shoulders, let alone clashed. It was kind of nice, though, to know there was always another heavy-set farmboy in town to hold Dorchet's back without question if he needed it. In the later years, Jean took to sniping beer cans off stumps and fence posts for the applause of tittering girls with big busts, while Dorchet fenced with trees and blowing branches in solitude.

 

His shoulders grew thick with muscle, his hands hard with callus. His stride grew surer, the habits that he drilled into himself carrying over into everyday life. Scars tracked the length of Dorchet's arms, each a reminder and a motivator to train harder. Sinew strained along his ribs. Running, in addition to the swordplay, hardened his wind. Dorchet became a deadly drunk, reflexes too well set for alcohol to overcome them even when his brain was completely sodden.

 

Gangly Jean grew into his limbs, while Dorchet remained compact and steady, well-set. The taller one went blond, everything except his sandy bangs bleached by the summer sun, but the other kept his scruff of brown-black hair. One of them smoked, and the other drank, and they both cussed like soldiers.

 

Funny, that, because when they turned eighteen, the military cut in and drafted them both into the army, and they never saw each other again.

 

The Third Circle

 

Snipers weren't of much use down south, in the sweltering semi-tropical forests and swamps near Areugo. It was impossible for them to get a clear enough shot through the vines and lazy branches that arced down into soupy lagoons like horses thirsty for water, or for a sniper to even find a target amidst the steamy foliage. Havoc must have been sent somewhere else- east, maybe, to keep an eye on the rebellious Ishbalan faction. During his few weeks of basic training, though, Dorchet's superiors got an eyeful of his freakishly delicate, lightning-fast swordplay and packed him off to the southern border just in time for the war to start. Hand to hand was the only kind of fighting worth knowing down there, where warpainted enemies could drop out of the leafy canopy and slit a fellow's throat before he could get the safety off his gun, then vanish back into the jungle before the body fell.

 

The camp was a small tent city, canvas dewllings lit more often than not by sputtery candles. The wet climate wreaked havoc on anything metal or electric, and a power generator was both. By day the tents were torture, so stuffy and humid that shade made no difference. At night, steam rose in billows from the undergrowth, trapped in by the thick canopy above, and blanketed the whole camp in ghostly grey that had even the most logical mind racing. It was said that a guy could almost stand in the haze and take a shower- not that any of them wanted to strip naked and stand out in the jungle at midnight to test it out. Either way, though, the steam condensed on Dorchet's arms and back as he lay in his bunk, sleepless and stripped to his drawers, leaving almost-clean tracks where it dripped. His bunk, his bedroll, his spare clothing- none of it was dry. The very best he could hope for was damp. Mildew grew on the oiled canvas of their tents. Gunpowder was so fucking unreliable that most of the recruits learned not to rely on their pistols within days.

 

In short order, all the new recruits learned to look up and stay low, or lose their jugular. The upper canopy was as likely to conceal panthers or snakes as it was to hide enemies. Short, compact Dorchet, with strength in his shoulders where other guys had it in their biceps, could send body parts flying in two separate directions before feet ever touched the ground. He hewed his way through stands of trees and foemen with single-minded intensity, teeth bared so that he could breathe even in the choking humidity. Blood, sweat, swamp water and condensation all felt the same. Everyone trudged back to camp soaking wet at the end of the day, brackish red fluid staining them all over. Dorchet's uniform was a little redder then everyone else's, the filth a little thicker on his hands. Rare was the day when he didn't have to wade through knee-deep water or lay in the loamy undergrowth for hours on end, waiting for a target to happen by. Sapphire blue gaberdine went an ugly red-purple first, and then turned drab grey-brown, the colourless colour of too many shades being ground together.

 

Five months into the conflict, Dorchet's unit was ambushed as they were crossing a lagoon, waist deep in swamp and absolutely without cover. Weeds and churned-up silt made maneuvering next to impossible; all there was to do was shove body to body with the enemy and hit hard enough to throw him off his feet. Dorchet threw mud and splashed water and screamed bloody murder- anything to distract his opponents long enough to sink his sword into flesh. The lagoon was filthy long before the fighting was over: weeds torn up from the bottom, water thick and black with boiling clouds of mud, bodies floating on the surface, dropped weapons invisible and deadly underfoot.

 

Eight out of thirty made it back to camp; two of the injured men they'd dragged out of the lagoon died en route. Their general was lucky enough to be cut down in the fight, or he would have been court-martialed for certain, having led his unit into such a dangerous location. Later, Dorchet's commanding officer cited him for reckless conduct and heroism in the same report. One of his squadmates, Hakuro, got a battlefield promotion to First Lieutenant. Dorchet and three other survivors got handpicked out of the cannon fodder and inserted ten miles into enemy territory.

 

The Fourth Circle

 

Her name was Martel. She was small and blonde, sweet in the face, and slender enough in the waist to make up for her small tits. She was a dab hand at darts, flexible in ways most guys could only dream of, and she kicked like a cart horse. Before their first week on Areugon soil was up, Dorchet's balls had been informally introduced to her foot, and that was enough warning for any of them.

 

He had to hand it to the girl, though- she knew how to handle a squad of sex-starved soldier boys.

 

Dorchet heard no end of jeers for days. Until he stopped hobbling and gathered enough strength to crack skulls in retaliation, every comment directed to him was preceded by a jab at his already wounded manly pride. Bad enough that his comrades had to rag on him, but his superior officer wasn't exempt to tossing off a jest when Dorchet least expected it, either. Martel said nothing, and conducted herself in an emotionless and utterly militant manner.

 

If Dorchet had thought that the camp on the border was bad, then the special ops living conditions were worse. They carried no supplies except packaged rations and weapons. They wore whatever clothing was on their backs, and slept on the ground. Whenever they had a chance to rest for more than an hour at a stretch, the soldiers built shelters out of branches and mud and draped leaves on top. More often than not, however, they simply burrowed into the loam and spread leaf litter over themselves, concealing fair skin beneath mud and hiding the incongruent texture of fabric with leaves. In a rare fit of morbid humour, the squad dubbed themselves the Worms, and from then on even the commanding officer addressed them as such.

 

Although the only thing that really separated them Amestris from Areugo was an imaginary line on a map, Dorchet felt as if there were a tangible wall there. He knew where it was, and knew he'd crossed it. There was a difference. Now they were not the attacked, they were the attackers. Strongest of the strong, four soldiers and a Brigadier General against an army of jungle savages. Armed with two swords, a cutlass, a knife and a bolas, the Worms tore like vengeful wraiths through patrols of enemy soldiers, leaving behind nothing but body parts scattered on churned up soil. They raided encampments, poisoned supplies, slaughtered men and destroyed equipment. They were ghosts.

 

In the sweltering midnight hours, damp soil and waist-deep water silenced Dorchet's movements as he waded through a lagoon towards a camp of perhaps a dozen men. Their peat-fuelled fire glowed ember-red, a homing beacon in the swirling grey mist. He and his partner, Raul, took care of the canoes tethered in the water not ten feet from where the men sat. Their swords went easily and silently through the wooden hulls from underneath, perhaps a dozen times each. As the canoes wallowed lower and lower, filling soundlessly with water, Dorchet saw Martel's lithe figure appear in the branches of a tree on the other side of the encampment. Her partner, Claude, was a mere shadow at the tree's base. The soldiers waited in utter silence for a few moments, making sure their presence was unknown.

 

Around the fire, their enemies were huddled in a circle, talking in hushed voices. One of them voiced a wish to return home and see his wife. One laughed at an inaudible joke, low and shuddering and hollow. One made a nervous comment about the jungle's ghosts, Amestrian soldiers that hunted like panthers and reaped chaos in absolute, inhuman silence. Monsters, another murmured softly. Absolute monsters.

 

Claude raised a finger.

 

The monsters killed them all.

 

The Fifth Circle

 

Rivulets of sweat ran down Dorchet's cheeks, mingling with the tears that squeezed from the corners of his clenched eyelids. Little whimpers of agony escaped him as he wheezed for breath through gritted teeth. Each time the truck bounced along the rutted dirt road, his jaw tightened a little more. Finally the vehicle lurched into a mud puddle, sliding and lurching violently through the mire. The four people in the canvas-covered interior were slammed against the crates and coils they shared their space with. Dorchet screamed.

 

Above him, Martel's lips were twisted into a harsh grimace of pain and distress. She pressed harder on the bandage that covered what had been Dorchet's left side, trying desperately to stem the bleeding. The few scraps of white linen bandage had long ago gone black and crusty, and because they had no more, she had torn the sleeves off her shirt and tied off the wound with them. Muscles rippled along her arms, deltoids bunched and biceps flexed. She was breathing hard and trying to sway in time with the truck's motion in order to keep an even pressure on Dorchet's injury.

 

Between strangled cries of pain, he told her to take off the bandages and let him bleed. His voice was harsh and thick, alien to his own ears and barely audible to Martel's. Metal rattled on the truck's undercarriage, cutting a staccato counterpoint to the blood pounding in Dorchet's ears. He was drowning in himself, hands and face and chest covered in blood, welling hot and sluggish from a gaping tatter of charred skin and shrapnel and gritty soot and and wet red muscle. Bits of bone jagged from the wound, the remains of his ribcage. If Dorchet lifted his head a little- or hell, just let the truck's motion bounce it enough- he could see his guts. Not a sight most people got to have while they were alive, but there his were, threatening to fall out, slippery and raw and visceral.

 

Martel refused him, and tugged the bandages tighter. He cursed and screamed with unfettered misery as one of her hands slipped, fingers accidentally sliding over slick bloody flesh into the tattered edge of the grenade wound. She went absolutely ashen under the grime that streaked her pretty face, jerking her hand out of his body. Dorchet whined deep in his throat, lungs locked too tightly to howl, spine arching reflexively, and gave into the primal urge to twist into a ball and die. Raul lunged at him from the other side of the truck and pinned Dorchet flat to the floor, baring his injury to Martel's care.

 

Broken by agony and nausea and sheer unrelenting terror, Dorchet sobbed as loudly as he fucking wanted, each hacking breath too shallow for comfort. He was fucking dying in the back of a truck as it lumbered through the fucking jungle that had killed him. They'd never get to a field hospital in time, but they were going to slam his mauled body around on a goddamn juggernaut until he bled out all over the floor because it would fucking hurt more that way. Goddamn it, Dorchet wanted to die alone and in the mud, as long as it meant he could lay still and let the earth swallow him to stop the pain that consumed his body like acid. He didn't care if they threw him into a swamp or onto the forest floor. Either way, the rain and slime and decaying body parts of people who'd died before would suffocate him more quickly than the grenade hole blasted into his side would.

 

Stop it stop it stopitstopitstopstopstopstopfuckingstop-

 

Hard hands gripped his hair and forced something hard and thin between his teeth. Dorchet's tortured cried were muffled by the gag. He bit down frantically, the grate of his teeth scraping across Martel's knife sheath a welcome distraction. Teeth scarring the leather irrevocably, Dorchet reached a trembling hand up and grabbed Martel's wrist desperately. Her angry, stony eyes softened. Recognizing that she couldn't do any more for his wound than was already done, Martel edged closer and pulled Dorchet's head onto her lap, stroking his hair, wiping sweat and grime and tears off his face, doing her best to comfort him despite the deep slash along her thigh that bled heavily, untended.

 

She always dealt with horny squadmates the same way, Martel told Dorchet, as the truck slewed to a stop outside a field camp's hospital tent. And she always had a soft spot for the one she had to hurt.

 

The Sixth Circle

 

Mouth bitter with the lingering taste of the tranquilizer he'd been dosed with in the hospital, Dorchet woke up shivering and weak. He was burning hot with fever, skin clammy and bloodless, yet the chill seeping into his bones through the concrete he was laying on made his teeth chatter. Stripped almost naked in the cage, but for the faded papery medical scrubs with 156 stamped on them, he lay curled into a ball for a long time, trying to make his muscles stop twitching for long enough to roll over. Maybe four by five feet of space, tall enough to sit up in, but not stand. Flaky brownish stains covered the cage's floor, torn tufts of hair stuck to whatever fluids remained, and something like salt had crystallized on the bars in one corner. When Dorchet finally rolled onto his back, gingerly fingering the huge square of gauze taped to his left side, he was met with a message carved into wood, the jagged scars of fingernails forming the despairing words, I will die. Someone must remember me. Owen Moore. Other claws had raked the wood, deep animalistic furrows that all but obliterated the words. Eulogy for a stranger, dead and rotting by then.

 

A lot of what happened in the cage was blank for Dorchet. He vaguely remembered Claude sitting huddled in a cage across from him, and vomiting in terror as Raul shrieked his death throes. Martel said later that Dorchet had gone mad with stress and rage, the emotional pain of losing his dignity and freedom driving him to near insanity. He'd repressed the memories out of pure, biological survival instinct, locked them away in vaults which Dorchet had no wish to ever crack. Funny, he didn't remember Martel being caged. Those bits he did recall were of his own fury, his words burning like cattle brands into flesh. Am I your dog? he screamed after the scientist, walking away with his clipboard and his thin-lipped disgust and his fucking heartless contempt. Am I your dog, you bastard? Am I an animal? Why, goddammit? I hate you- get BACK HERE! I'll fucking rip your throat out, I'll cut you into pieces, I'll- I'll kill you, you monster! I'll kill you with my hands.

 

So they made him a dog.

 

Remembering, even then, how Raul had died convulsing and howling in the array, Dorchet fought tooth and nail to avoid it. He ripped open the stitches that held his guts in. His fists fell without effect on the armour-suited guards that held him, bloody knuckles smashing into plate mail, denting it with the brute force of his panic. The adrenaline in his blood stampeded right over the tranquilizers they gave him, stabbing needles crookedly into his bicep one after another until finally the world abruptly decided to careen sideways without warning. Drugged out of his mind, Dorchet lay drunkenly in the circle as it flared molten orange.

 

Crippling pain wracked his whole body like acid as the light faded away, reducing the world to a torturous now, where Dorchet had no conception of then and prayed with every fibre of his being that there wouldn't be a soon. The alchemists left him in the array for the first few minutes, naked and utterly exposed from every angle to their scrutiny. He vomited and wept and clawed bloody slashes in his own arms, crying out wordlessly until his throat was torn and raw, his lungs empty of breath, his vocal chords wrung so tightly they'd locked. Unable to do anything more than snuffle and whimper miserably, limbs seizuring, some part of Dorchet was pathetically relieved when they finally dragged him back into the cage and locked it. Sheer exhaustion and blood loss hit him like a blackjack to the head.

 

In the days that followed, Dorchet learned hate more vicious than any he'd ever known. The alchemist whose face he'd never forget, contemptible and cruel and icy cold, hove in and out of his hazy waking hours. A face with a starchy, chemical-scented lab coat, fabric harsh on Dorchet's skin- that's what the scientist was, and he called Dorchet a good dog, a good puppy, a nice mutt. The words were kind even when the voice was mocking and dripping with malice. Although a cringing, grovelling part of Dorchet adored it, the human pride which he clung to above all else was sick with misery. Sobbing bitterly and unable to resist the awful instincts of the dog in his blood, Dorchet pressed up against the cage's bars, needy and desperate, into the hand that scratched behind his ears. Fleeting affections and words stripped him helpless to resist- stripped him of his dignity, his pride, his rights and his humanity, and that, above all else, was what Dorchet hated.

 

The Seventh Circle

 

Then there was Greed, waltzing into the lab in the middle of the night and taking the lot of them right back out. No fuss, no muss, and one two three guards with their necks snapped when they tried to stop Greed. There was a euphoric maelstrom of rain, grassy knolls, roads that lead to anywhere, high-ceilinged skies, hot food, strong liquor, and trains that took Dorchet where he wanted to go for the first time in years. For all of them- strong, reliable Martel, thunderous Loa, darkly savage Reaper, loyal Bido, nervous and skinny Zak, fatalistic Eli, quiet Irina, big, quick-tempered Brady, careful Douglas- there was no question where their roads lead to: Dublith. Separate after the lab? Never. Leave their saviour and his offer of safety? Like hell. And day by day, whether at Greed's side or in his bed (or anyone else's bed, really) Dorchet learned to like himself again. He begged for scratchies with a lopsided grin and joked about needing a tail to wag; he made it clear that Greed was alpha and didn't dice around when it came to his pack; he immediately won the trust of every dog he saw, mastered the urge to chase cats even if sometimes he growled a little, and made himself stop pissing with one leg up (except when he was sleepy or drunk or too mad to bother). At least in public, anyway. There came a time, not so very long after escaping the lab, when Dorchet started to feel like he hadn't in years: his belly was comfortably swollen with food, his arms and shoulders were strong as steel cables, and his teeth flashed easily and often in grinning. He slept long and woke easily, elevated laziness to an art form, loved the bar like it was his own and worked it like a pro.

 

That was why, when suddenly after so many years, the tromp of steel-toed boots echoing down a sewer reeking of waste and slime made him bristle, caught off guard and unawares and so awfully vulnerable. That goddamned smell- it was gunpowder and starched cotton and sweat and bootpolish and cold cold metal, so sharp to Dorchet's canine nose. No. Can't be. Fucking hell, how's they find us? I'll kill them- kill them all.

 

He was down from the start, a prize fighter on a losing streak. Still, Dorchet's sword went through flesh and bone like Death's own rapier, and he was back in Areugo, hacking his way through fetid jungle and marsh, streaked with mud and blood and boiling with such adrenaline it could only be battle fever. The Nest was his home, more than the crappy little eastern backwater ever had been. Dorchet's family was dying in the streets, his beloved bar littered with corpses leaking blood and uglier things, his master cornered, his privacy and humanity and fucking life violated by every closed door that steel-capped boots kicked in. So when Dorchet saw blue gaberdine, he hewed the false shell of duty open and stained it black-purple without hesitating. These weren't his countrymen, maybe companions in the war or bucks like Jean. These were monsters, and Dorchet slaughtered them as such, without remorse or compassion, only glacial burning fury.

 

And then something slid between his ribs, back to front. Surprised at the needle of heat that lanced through him, Dorchet half-turned to see the glint of steel and a gloved hand and the long, muscular arm that had stabbed him. He blinked, and as many things occurred to him in that single split second of epiphany, foremost among them was this: I will die. Strangely, it didn't bother Dorchet terribly, because mostly he was worried about the utter calm that pervaded his mind. Raul had once told him something which, until he stood quietly with a skewer through his guts, Dorchet had forgotten. Pain is good. Pain means you're alive. And now there was no pain, only pressure where the blade entered his back and a trickle of foreign warmth inside his belly.

 

The blade had gone through him so neatly, like razor steel through milky green worms, and he realized with vague amusement that the bloodless slit was almost in the dead center of the starburst of scar tissue from the grenade wound. And the warmth, as of hot water edged delicately with searing fire- Dorchet knew suddenly what that was. At least it was some consolation that he had been struck down by an expert swordsman: the wound was an arrow-straight through and though, skin fitting snugly around the blade that jutted from his belly so that no blood escaped. No, the blood was on the inside, flooding from sliced capillaries and veins in a hot wave that was just as lethal as any grenade blast. An acidic scent reached Dorchet's flaring nostrils. His stomach, then, bile poisoning him from the inside out. There was irony in that, somewhere, Dorchet was sure of it except that his head was spinning. Two little punctures wouldn't have killed him- he'd die from within, slain by his own blood and bile.

 

His eyes were flickering. Just before the warmth in his belly turned to a searing blaze, Dorchet caught a glimpse of a hateful face. He felt his pupils dilate with rage, too late. His throat had closed. His vision was failing. His lungs were tight, his muscles slack, his mouth gaping as he struggled in vain to draw breath enough to scream. Shallow gasps of accusation escaped him, furious and hurt and strangely betrayed despite everything.

 

The sword withdrew cleanly, and Dorchet fell.