Chương 63: Uncle Alex

He heard the kids before he saw them, which was how it always went with the kids. The noise came from a patch of open ground near the central fire, under a cluster of rune lights on tall posts, the good bright spot of the camp where the children had claimed territory by the simple method of never leaving it. A dozen of them, give or take, mostly the newer ones from the absorbed groups, and in the middle of the swarm the two Alex would have picked out of a crowd of a thousand. John was up front, of course.

John was always up front, a nine-year-old built entirely out of momentum, brandishing a stick he'd clearly decided was a sword and issuing orders to a loose army of children who obeyed him about half the time. He had the loud confidence of a kid who'd never once doubted he was in charge, and he was currently leading a charge against a lone adult with all the tactical genius of a thrown rock. Jake hung a step back, the way Jake did.

Quieter, watchful, holding his own stick like he was thinking about it rather than swinging it, and Alex felt the small pull in his chest that he always felt looking at Jake, the sensitive one, the one who noticed things, the one who'd asked Ivory if his uncle was angry with him. Jake studied the fight before he joined it. John had already joined three fights while Jake was still deciding. And the adult they were swarming was a man Alex didn't know well.

He was maybe twenty-five, average in the specific way that made a face hard to hold onto, medium height, medium build, a little softer than a fighter, some define to his arms but nothing that would worry anyone. He was down on one knee in the dirt letting the children beat him with sticks, and he was laughing, and he was extremely bad at defending himself in a way that was obviously on purpose, taking hits he could have blocked, staggering theatrically when a six-year-old bonked his shoulder.

Alex placed him after a second. Carl. One of the newer mages, a decent one by report, the kind of quiet friendly presence that turned up around the camp and got on with everyone and left no particular impression. Alex stood at the edge of the light and watched for a minute before anyone noticed him. It was a good thing to watch.

Carl went down under a coordinated assault, three kids at once, and rolled onto his back in the dirt with his stick held up in mock surrender, and the children shrieked their victory and climbed on him, and he let them, wheezing out a laugh and telling them they'd bested him fair and square. He was good with them. Patient in the specific way that couldn't be faked, the way that meant he actually liked it and wasn't just tolerating it to seem nice. Then Jake saw him.

"Uncle Alex." It came out small and disbelieving, and then John's head whipped around, and then both of them were coming at him at a dead sprint, sticks abandoned, and the whole army of children turned to see what had pulled their two ringleaders away, and Alex crouched down and caught both boys as they hit him.

"Uncle Alex, Uncle Alex, you're here, you never come, you're always fighting." John, all in one breath, already climbing him like furniture.

"Are you done fighting? Can you fight us? We have swords."

"Those are sticks," Alex said.

"They're swords."

"They're very good sticks," Jake offered, quieter, from where he'd wrapped himself around Alex's arm, and there was something in the careful way he said it, checking, still not quite sure his uncle wanted him there, that made Alex slightly sad.

"They're excellent sticks," Alex agreed, and pulled Jake in closer against his side, and felt the boy relax when he understood he was wanted.

"And yes. I'm done fighting for tonight. And I hear you two have been letting some grown man think he's the strongest one in this camp." He looked over at Carl, still on his back in the dirt, propped up on his elbows now, watching the reunion with an easy smile.

"We can't have that." Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. John gasped like Alex had announced war.

"GET HIM." What followed was the least dignified fifteen minutes of Alex's month, and the best. He let them take him down. That was the whole art of it, and he'd forgotten how much he loved it, the careful engineering of his own defeat, letting a pack of children believe they were bringing down the biggest man in the settlement through sheer teamwork and stick-based violence.

He picked John up by the back of the shirt and held him at arm's length while the boy pinwheeled, then let a well-placed bonk from Jake "defeat" him and dropped John gently onto the pile. He threw them in the air, one at a time, and they screamed with delight and demanded higher, and he did not go higher, because with his stats he could have put a seven-year-old through the rune lights and Ace would have used his own spine for a garden trellis.

So he kept it to a safe joyful height, the kids none the wiser, thinking their uncle was flinging them to the sky. The other children swarmed in once they saw the giant was fair game. Carl's whole army defected to the new target, and Alex found himself buried under a dozen shrieking kids, going down theatrically into the dirt under an assault that couldn't have moved his arm if he'd let it, and he let it, folding under them, playing dead while they climbed onto his chest and declared victory over the fallen titan.

"Victory," John bellowed, standing on Alex's sternum with his stick raised.

"VICTORY."

"He's defeated," Jake confirmed solemnly, patting Alex's cheek to check.

"He's really defeated." Alex kept his eyes shut and let them have it, this pack of children who a month ago had walked into camp carrying the specific silence he'd learned to recognize, now standing on his chest shrieking about a victory they'd been allowed to win, and something in him that had been clenched tight since the field loosened by a degree. He'd been so busy being the wall that he'd forgotten there was anything worth building a wall around beyond keeping people breathing. This was the thing.

Kids on his chest in the light, screaming with joy, alive and loud and unafraid. This was what the fighting was for, and he'd stopped taking a single hour to stand inside it. Something distracted the children eventually, the way something always did, some new game involving throwing stones at a distant post, and the whole swarm went pelting off after it, John in the lead, Jake pausing to make sure Alex was really getting up before he ran to catch his brother.

Alex sat up in the dirt, and Carl offered him a hand, and Alex took it and let the smaller man pretend to haul him to his feet.

"Thanks," Alex said.

"For keeping them going. They needed the run."

"They keep me going, honestly." Carl brushed dirt off his knees, easy and unbothered.

"I'm not much for people, big crowds, all that. But the kids are simple. You show up, you lose a sword fight, everyone's happy." He shrugged, a little sheepish.

"It's the one thing around here I'm actually good at."

"Looked pretty good to me."

"Well. It's not exactly your line of work." Carl said it with a friendly, self-aware grin, glancing at Alex's frame, at the sheer size of him even standing at ease.

"Everybody knows what you're good at. You've got a bit of a reputation, in case nobody's told you. People talk." Alex huffed something like a laugh.

"I never asked for a reputation."

"Nobody ever does. It just kind of shows up." Carl said it lightly, no edge to it, and then glanced toward the kids.

"Anyway. Good to actually meet you. You seem like a decent guy under all the, you know." He waved vaguely at all of Alex.

"The everything."

"You too," Alex said, and meant it, and that was the whole of it, two decent tired men in a camp at night, and then Carl drifted off toward his own tent with a wave, forgettable as ever, and Alex would not think about him again until the night he did. He was still standing there, warm and dirt-streaked and lighter than he'd been in weeks, when he noticed Cassandra.

She was a little way off, near the edge of the light, and she'd clearly been there a moment, watching the tail end of the romp with an expression he couldn't quite read. Not the careful, calculating look she usually wore. Something softer and more surprised, the look of a person seeing a side of someone they hadn't known was there.

"I didn't take you for the type," she said, coming over.

"For what?"

"Getting flattened by children in the dirt." She nodded at the state of him, the dust, the grass in his hair.

"You spend all your time fighting. It's strange to see you let kids stand on you."

"He earned it. Superior tactics." Alex brushed himself off.

"It's been a long day. This helped more than I expected."

"I heard about today. About what it was." She said it carefully, not pushing, leaving the door open without shoving him through it.

"I'm glad you're all back."

"Me too." He looked at her a moment in the rune light, this woman who'd become the steadiest thing in his ordinary days, and found he didn't have more to say and didn't need to, and she seemed to understand that, because she didn't press.

"Get some sleep, Alex," she said.

"You look like a man who could use it." And she left him there, dirt-streaked and quietly grateful, under the lights he'd made, with the sound of children shrieking somewhere off in the dark, and for the first time since the field he felt something that wasn't the ache. He felt human.