“How’s Artur?” Kestrel asked.
“He’s gone on to the next realm,” Arlen answered, keeping his head down as he held his dead companion’s hand.
Kestrel walked over to the nearly dead yeti, which moaned periodically while his limbs quivered randomly. Cautiously, Kestrel stepped in and placed both hands on the handle of the sword, then pulled the blade, giving a mighty heave to draw it free of the monster’s body. He skipped back a step as the yeti’s arms flailed weakly, then looked up, away from the immediate scene and took in the rest of the vicinity.
The woman was kneeling over the inert figure on the ground near the burning shed, and the two children were clinging to her skirts. He walked over to her, feeling pain in several spots on his body, and light-headed from the contact with the stony ground. He reached the small family tableau and dropped his sword, then crouched down by the woman. Her hands were holding the hands of the man on the ground, and one look at the gaping rip in his torso showed Kestrel that the man had died.
The woman looked up, her face tear-streaked, and she said something to Kestrel, something he couldn’t translate. “Say that again, and speak slowly. I didn’t understand you,” Kestrel told the woman.
He was studying her features, the first human woman he had seen.
“He’s dead, my Youkal is dead, and we would be too if you hadn’t saved us,” the woman said between sobbing gulps. “Thank you.”
Kestrel saw the pain and shock in her eyes, and he saw the tiny figures that shrunk away from him, trying to hide themselves in the folds of the skirt they clung to.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Kestrel replied. “Is anyone else hurt?”
“No, there are just the three of us,” the woman answered, her words and accent growing more intelligible to Kestrel as he listened. “What’s happening over there?” she nodded with her head to the mounds in the darkness at the edge of the fire’s illumination, the lumps that were the dying yeti and the grieving Arlen sitting over Artur’s body.
“The yeti is dying, and one of my partners is dead,” Kestrel replied. He looked down again. “Why don’t you take the little ones back to the cabin? We’ll help start preparing a burial plot for your man,” he suggested.
The woman obediently rose, and ushered her children away from their father’s body.
“Do you have a shovel?” Kestrel asked as they walked away.
“In here,” the woman replied as she entered the broken cabin. Kestrel trotted over, as the woman picked up the shovel from the spot where she had dropped it. She had been using it as a weapon, Kestrel realized. He took the implement from her, looking at her face in the firelight.
Her face was more angular than an elven maiden’s face, he realized. The lower part was more prominent, and her cheekbones were more pronounced. She reacted to his scrutiny by unconsciously sweeping her hair behind her ear, and he stared at her ear, her human ear, for a long second, before he broke from his immobility and turned away with the shovel in his hand.
He walked back to where Arlen was standing, still looking down at Artur.
“What’s the shovel for?” he asked.
“I told her we’d bury her husband,” Kestrel replied.
“That’s good. Go get a bucket first,” Arlen told him.
“Why?” Kestrel asked, surprised by the request.
“We need to save the yeti blood. The healers in Estone think that yeti blood gives strength and virility to people who drink it. The woman is going to need some money to recover from this,” Arlen said, looking up from Artur at last. “We can collect some of the blood, and cut off the head and,” he paused, “other things. She’ll be able to take them to Estone and make a good amount of money.”
Kestrel dropped the shovel and obediently walked back to the cabin. The fire in the shack was dying down, and the scene was growing darker around the farmstead, but the woman had a lantern lit inside the cabin, where she sat on the side of a bed and softly stroked the hair of the two little children who were snuggled together under a cover.
“Do you have a bucket?” Kestrel asked as she watched him approach.
“We have two, but they’re both in the shed where we kept the cow. They were our milk pails,” she finished her sentence and began to cry, pressing the back of her hand against her face to hide her emotion.
“I’ll try to get them, you just stay here and watch the wee ones,” Kestrel said sofly.
He walked out to the remains of the shed, hot embers all around the burnt carcass of the cow that had died there, and he spotted the pails. He got a long tree branch from the forest, and fished the pails out of the ruins, then carried them over to where Arlen waited.
“We’ll need a rope to do this,” Arlen said. “I’ll go back to the campsite and get our horses. We’ve got rope there, and we’ll need the horses anyway. You stay here and honor Artur,” he commanded Kestrel, then turned and was gone.
Kestrel gave a sigh, in physical pain and in shock from the events of the battle, then sat cross-legged beside Artur, and began to recite the good things that he remembered about his instructor, and called upon the gods to hurry his soul to the other realm. “Give him peace, Kere, and let all of us here who remain also accept his loss with peace,” he finished up his devotions just as Arlen returned.
“He was a good man. His wife will be heart-broken when we return,” Arlen said as he led the horses into the clearing.
“Here, tie this rope around the yeti’s feet,” Arlen told Kestrel who stood up.
“Wait just a moment,” Kestrel replied, as he went to his horse and pulled a water skin off. It was one of the skins from the healing spring, and he knew there was never a time when its effects would be more welcome.
“Here, take a drink of this,” Kestrel instructed Arlen, shoving the uncorked skin at him.
“What is it?” Arlen asked as he held the skin.
“It’s water from a special spring. It will help heal any wounds you may have gotten,” he explained.
Arlen held the skin upward and took a drink then handed it back to Kestrel. “I’m going to give some to the family. I’ll be right back,” Kestrel said, and crossed the yard again.
“Here, this water is from a healing spring. Take a drink,” Kestrel urged the woman.
She obediently raised the skin and took a drink. “It tastes refreshing,” she commented.
“Do the children need any?” Kestrel asked.
“No, they weren’t hurt. Their bodies weren’t,” she replied softly.
Kestrel held the skin up high and took a long drink for himself, a draught that left the skin half empty. He hoped it would help soothe the headache that pounded in the back of his skull, and take away the pain in his ribs that increased with every deep breath.
Without further word he returned to where Arlen already had the rope tied around the yeti’s feet. “Throw the other end of the rope over that tree branch,” Arlen directed. He had his small lantern open to provide feeble light that helped the stars and the crescent moon illuminate their actions, now that the shed fire was nearly gone.
Kestrel threw the rope, then tied it to the saddle of his horse as Arlen directed, and they raised the dead yeti four feet off the ground, its fingers nearly touching the dirt below. Kestrel was horrified by the butchery that followed, but obeyed every command he was given. He felt disrespectful; the yeti had only been a monster, but it was too elf-like, with two arms and two legs, not to find the process of harvesting its parts distasteful.
They finished their work around sunrise, and in the red morning glow, Kestrel liked the looks of his work even less. He had found additional buckets, and they had gallons of blood, the hairy head, and numerous body parts stacked in a pile.
“I’m going to take Artur back to Firheng,” Arlen announced as Kestrel began to lower the yeti.
“I want you to stay here. you need to bury the human and the yeti, then I want you to take the woman and her children to Estone. Find a human trader named Castona there, and tell him what you have, and that you want to sell it all into the market to give the widow money to live on,” Arlen explained as Kestrel listened in astonishment.
“You can tell Castona you were with me and Artur, but don’t tell him you’re really an elf; you have to keep that secret, you understand?” Arlen said intensely.
“You’re going to leave me alone to do these things without any help?” Kestrel asked in fear.
“Yes,” Arlen said. “I want Artur to be treated to the ceremony of our own people, so I need to hurry his body
