I told him that Gurdinn and his injured man had withdrawn, and I couldn’t account for the others, save one. He waited while I swallowed and took a deep breath before telling him that Lloi was injured, perhaps mortally.
I expected Braylar to rage or profane the air, but he only coughed briefly and then reached up to massage his injured throat, his expression unchanging. A moment later, he said in a rough whisper, “The others then.”
I wanted to ask his permission to check on Lloi but he’d already started off. Mulldoos fell in alongside me while Vendurro stayed to keep watch on the distant lancers. We navigated the trees, Mulldoos calling out, “Hewspear. Hewspear, you horsecock, answer.”
We heard voices, one very loud, and followed them to the source. Gurdinn was standing over one of his soldiers, hands balled into fists, screaming down at him. Hewspear was leaning against a tree, holding onto his grounded spear with both hands, eyes closed. The Brunesman who had nearly been trampled to death was standing over the captured guard, though clearly favoring one leg. I didn’t see the underpriest anywhere.
We approached and Braylar said something, made unintelligible by his damaged throat and the shouting Gurdinn continued to do. Braylar grabbed Gurdinn and swung him around. “The priest? Where is the underpriest?”
Gurdinn shook Braylar’s hand away. “Our prize is dead.” Then he pointed off into some dense thicket. “Beyond there.”
Braylar again remained surprisingly impassive. “And what happened to the cleric, that he should find himself so newly dead?”
“After you ran off, we had to fend for ourselves here. When things looked grim,” he turned and kicked the prone Brunesman, “this man struck him down. That account for the deadness enough for you, Black Noose?”
I thought Braylar might attack the Brunesman himself, or even Gurdinn, but after a small pause he replied, “Better a dead traitor than a free traitor. There are still four lancers out there. In the middle of our cowardly flight we killed the rest. But there might be more still we haven’t met yet. I don’t imagine we’ll survive another encounter. We head to the city. Now.”
Judging by the tenor of their conversation, I expected it to end in blows. But Gurdinn turned around quickly before saying anything more and began walking towards the Brunesman and the captive. He’d only taken two steps when Braylar added, “You really ought to address me as captain, Honeycock. It reminds everyone present who is issuing orders and who is following them. And you should be careful about fleeing a conversation before being dismissed, as I’m like to imagine that you’re deserting, and might be tempted to strike you down.”
I was certain their exchange would only end with one man dead. Gurdinn spun back around to face Braylar, who hadn’t moved, but he somehow found it in himself to rein in his temper. “I’ll see to my remaining men. Captain. And our horses. Captain. If you see to you and yours. Captain. Is there anything else, then? Captain?”
Braylar smiled wryly. “Excused, Captain Honeycock.”
Gurdinn moved towards the prisoner and the Brunesman he’d viciously kicked got up and joined them as well.
After looking Hewspear over, Braylar turned to Mulldoos. “You’ll need to collect Lloi and meet us at the other side of the copse, where the other horses are tethered. Arki can lead you. If those four lancers make another run at us, we can break them, but if there are more out there…”
Though Mulldoos obviously had no affection for me or Lloi, he didn’t voice a complaint. To me, he said, “Take me to the cripple.”
I led him to Lloi’s body, still slumped against a tree.
Mulldoos squatted down in front of her and wiped his hands on his pants. He touched one of the strips of cloth on her face, and she moaned. “She wasn’t the captain’s pet, I’d smother her out of her misery right now. Gods be cruel.”
I pointed out that the horse also probably broke some of her ribs or her sternum, and then added that she sustained these injuries saving Hewspear’s life (leaving out my own, as that would dilute the point I was making).
Mulldoos spit on the ground and glared at me. “Where’re your broken bones, then? Your tattered flesh? Hewspear, the witch, both half dead. What of you?”
I said nothing, which proved to be a poor choice (though, in my meager defense, I doubt there was a good choice). Mulldoos rose and stood in front of me, face close, voice guttural. “I met plenty of sacks of shit in my life, and some of them were at least good in a scrap. But not you. No. Worthless. You’re a worthless sack of slimy shit, you hear me?”
I wanted to protest that I might not have acted quickly, but I did act, and though I didn’t prevent their injuries, I might have prevented them from being worse, but I knew that would only prompt more abuse, and so I kept my mouth shut and tried not to flinch as his spittle sprayed on my face.
He grabbed the crossbow out of my hands and started to walk away. I called after him, asking what he intended to do with Lloi. I thought he’d round on me in a fury, but he only said over his shoulder, “You got two arms. Only thing that makes you better than her. Carry her, you dumb horsecunt.” Then he kept walking.
I slowly knelt next to her and looked at the poor girl’s face, or what was visible at least. Her eyes moved behind the lids, and I thought they might flutter open any second, and she’d scream, but she barely stirred at all as I slid my arms beneath her.
As gently as I could, I lifted her off the ground, and then she twisted in my arms, and I whispered to her, tried to soothe her, though I doubt it did any good. She thrashed briefly and went limp again, falling against my chest like an exhausted child. Like an exhausted one-handed child, half-eaten and kicked to death by a horse. The colossal unfairness of the thing washed over me, and I felt more tired than I imagined possible as I carried her back to what remained of our party.
To avoid the clinging brambles and scrub, I circled around the trees towards the tethered horses. It didn’t take us long to complete our circuit, and from the outside, the copse seemed much smaller than when we’d been in the middle, dodging behind tree trunks for our lives. Everyone else was saddled up already or just about to, and the final captive was on a horse, his ankles ties together beneath him, his hands tied firmly in front. Although, given the mass of bruises on his face, and the treatment the underpriest had received, I didn’t think he’d be trying to flee anytime soon.
No one looked at me as I made my way to my horse. I looked for Braylar, but he’d already ridden down the small hill. Mulldoos and Hewspear were alongside him, Hewspear bent over, hunchbacked.
I considered asking one of the Brunesmen to help me, but the rest of the riders began making their way towards the Syldoon, and they ignored Lloi and me as if we were trees. I tried to convince myself Braylar would come back for me. Of all of us, he knew Lloi the best, and beyond that, depended on her the most, for things no one else could possibly understand. But he was only interested in leading us back to the city. I’d nearly forgotten about the lancers, and the underpriest’s men that might still be roaming the wild, closing in on us.
I tried to climb into the saddle with Lloi in my arms, and nearly fell. I shifted her slightly and she cried out again. I told her we were heading home, and finally made it into the saddle on the third try.
I adjusted Lloi as best I could, but there was no way to make her comfortable. I tried not to jostle her as I flicked the reins and clicked at my horse, who slowly carried me down the hill. Lloi groaned and whimpered with each step the horse took, and I rode up alongside the Syldoon, my arms already beginning to burn from cradling her.
Hewspear looked over at me, face ashen, ribs clearly paining him. He nodded once, as if trying to stiffen my resolve or steel me for what was going to be an agonizing ride for her, and an exhausting one for me.
Braylar started off first, Hewspear and Vendurro on either side, and then Mulldoos, Xen, and I followed, with the Brunesmen and prisoner behind us as we set off towards Alespell once more. The roiling clouds had promised a heavy rain, but when it finally came, some miles later, it was just a drizzle. A full-on rain would have washed away some of the blood, sweat, mud, and gore that marked all of us. But the thin rain did little more than spread the filth around and lower spirits even further. The only redeeming feature was that Lloi seemed to go slack again, her whimpering subsiding.
I tried to think of anything except my shaking arms and aching back. I remembered an artist at Rivermost, a talented muralist who, like me, earned his coin by appealing to the vanity of major merchants and minor nobility. I couldn’t remember his name, but I recalled one mural he did, on a cracked wall just outside a tavern he used to frequent. While nearly everything he painted for his patrons was full of color and crowded with lively characters, the wall outside the tavern was a scene of the aftermath of a war. Soldiers were leaving a battlefield strewn with
