After fourteen hours of sleep I was fit as a fiddle. My companions seemed surprised by this, as they’d found me unconscious, cold to the touch, and covered in blood. They had stripped me, rubbed my limbs a bit, then rolled me in blankets and put me inside the bandits’ single surviving tent. The other five had been either burned, buried, or lost when a great white pillar of lightning blasted the tall oak that stood at the center of the bandits’ camp.
The next day was overcast but blessedly free of rain. First we tended to our hurts. Hespe had taken an arrow in the leg when the sentry had surprised them. Dedan had a deep gash along one of his shoulders, which was fairly lucky, considering he’d rushed the sentry bare-handed. When I asked him about it, he said he simply hadn’t had time to draw his sword.
Marten had an angry red lump on his forehead above one eyebrow, either from when I had kicked him over or dragged him around. It was tender to the touch, but he claimed he had gotten worse a dozen times in tavern brawls.
After I recovered from the chills I was fine. I could tell my companions were surprised by my sudden return from the doors of death and decided to leave them to their amazement. A little mystery wouldn’t hurt my reputation.
I bandaged the ragged cut where the arrow had grazed my shoulder and tended to a few bruises and scrapes I didn’t remember receiving. I also had the long, shallow cut I had made on the top of my arm, but it was barely worth stitches.
Tempi was unhurt, unruffled, unreadable.
Our second order of business was to tend to the dead. While I had been unconscious the rest of the group had pulled most of the burned, lifeless bodies to one side of the clearing. They tallied thus:
One sentry, killed by Dedan.
Two who had surprised Tempi in the forest.
Three who had survived the lightning and tried to escape. Marten brought one down, Tempi claimed the other two.
Seventeen burned, broken, or otherwise ravaged by the lightning. Of those, eight had been dead, or wounded unto death, beforehand.
We found tracks of one sentry who had watched the whole incident from the northeast piece of the ridge. His tracks were a day old before we found them, and none of us felt the slightest desire to hunt him down. Dedan pointed out he might be worth more alive if he spread word of this spectacular defeat to others who were thinking of banditry as a way of life. For once we agreed on something.
The leader’s body was not among those gathered. The large tent he had ducked into had been crushed beneath large sections of the huge oak’s blasted trunk. Having more than enough to occupy us for the time being, we left his remains alone for now.
Rather than try to dig twenty-three graves, or even a mass grave large enough for twenty-three bodies, we built a pyre and kindled it while the surrounding forest was still wet with rain. I used my skills to ensure it burned hot and hard.
But there was one other: the sentry Marten had shot and I had put to use. While my companions were busy collecting wood for the pyre I went over the south side of the ridge and found where Tempi had hidden him away, covered with a fir branch.
I looked at the body for a long time before I carried it away to the south. I found a quiet place under a willow and built a cairn of stones. Then I crept into the underbrush and was quietly, violently sick.
The lightning? Well, the lightning is difficult to explain. A storm overhead. A galvanic binding with two similar arrows. An attempt to ground the tree more strongly than any lightning rod. Honestly, I don’t know if I can take credit for the lightning striking when and where it did. But as far as stories go, I called the lightning and it came.
From the stories the others told, when the lightning struck it wasn’t a single startling bolt, but several in quick succession. Dedan described it as “a pillar of white fire,” and said it shook the ground hard enough to knock him off his feet.
Regardless of why, the towering oak was reduced to a charred stump about the height of a greystone. Huge pieces of it lay scattered about. Smaller trees and shrubs had caught fire and been doused by the rain. Most of the long planks the bandits had used for their fortifications had exploded into pieces no bigger than the tip of your finger or burned to charcoal. Streaking out from the base of the tree were great tracks of churned-up earth, making the clearing look as if it had been plowed by a madman or raked by the claws of some huge beast.
Despite this, we stayed at the bandit’s camp for three days following our victory. The stream provided easy water, and what remained of the bandits’ provisions were superior to our own. What’s more, after we salvaged some lumber and canvas, each of us had the luxury of a tent or lean-to.
With our job completed, the tensions plaguing our group faded. The rain stopped, and we didn’t need to be bashful about our fires anymore, and as a result Marten’s cough was improving. Dedan and Hespe were civil to each other, and Dedan stopped about three-quarters of his incessant jackassery toward me.
But despite the relief at our job being done, things weren’t entirely comfortable. There were no stories at night, and Marten distanced himself from me whenever he could. I could hardly blame him, considering what he had seen.
With that in mind, I took the first chance I had to privately destroy the wax mommets I had made. I had no use for them now, and I feared what might happen if one of my companions discovered them in my travelsack.
Tempi made no comment on what I’d done with the bandit’s body, and from what I could tell, he didn’t seem to hold it against me. Looking back, I realize how little I truly understood the Adem. But at the time, all I noticed was that Tempi spent less time helping me practice the Ketan, and more time practicing our language and discussing the ever-confusing concept of the Lethani.
We fetched our equipment from our previous camp on the second day. I was relieved to have my lute back, and doubly glad to find Denna’s marvelous case had stayed dry and tight despite the endless rain.
And, since we were no longer slinking about, I played. For a solid day I did little else. It had been nearly a month since I had made any music, and I’d missed it more than you can imagine.
At first I thought Tempi didn’t care for my music. Aside from the fact that I’d somehow insulted him by singing early on, he always left camp when I brought out my lute. Then I began to catch glimpses of him watching me, though always from a distance and usually at least partly hidden from sight. Once I knew to look for him, I discovered he was always listening while I played. Wide-eyed as an owl. Motionless as a stone.
On the third day, Hespe decided her leg could stand a little walking. So we had to decide what was going to come with us, and what would get left behind.
It wasn’t going to be as difficult as it might have been. Most of the bandits’ equipment had been destroyed by the lightning, the falling tree, or exposure to the storm. But there were still valuables to be salvaged from the ruined camp.
We had been prevented from making a good search of the leader’s tent, as it had been crushed beneath one of the huge branches of the fallen oak. Over two feet thick, the fallen limb was larger than most trees in its own right. However, on the third day we finally managed to hatchet enough of it away so we could roll it off the wreckage of the tent.
I was anxious to get a closer look at the leader’s body, as something about him had been nagging my memory ever since I saw him step from the tent. And, in a more worldly vein, I knew his chain mail was worth at least a dozen talents.
But we didn’t find any sign of the leader at all. It gave us a bit of a puzzle. Marten had only found one set of tracks leading away from the camp, those of the escaped sentry. None of us could guess where the leader had gone.
To me it was a puzzle and an annoyance, as I had been wanting to get a clearer look at his face. Dedan and Hespe believed he’d simply escaped in the chaos following the lighting, maybe using the stream to avoid leaving tracks.
Marten, however, grew distinctly uneasy when we didn’t find his body. He murmured something about demons and refused to go near the wreckage. I thought he was being a superstitious fool, but I won’t deny that I found the missing body more than slightly unnerving as well.
Inside the ruined tent we found a table, a cot, a desk, and a pair of chairs, all shattered and useless. In the
