After long moments of holding back tears and curses, Kestrel awkwardly rose, holding his arm carefully against his chest, trying fruitlessly to immobilize it as he regained his bearings.
Once he knew what direction to move in, he climbed cautiously up out of the waterway and began to gingerly trot onward towards the fire. His right hand carefully probed his left arm, finding the location in his forearm that made him wince most strongly from the throbbing pain, while he continued to move towards the fire. As he continued onward, he came to realize that the rain was lessening — he could see farther afield through the trees, and he could breathe more easily.
Several minutes later, as the sickening odor of wet ashes nearly overwhelmed him, he came to a series of blackened tree trunks, evidence of the fire, and a few steps later he stopped, just as the rain stopped. Ahead of him the canopy stopped — there was a steaming, open, blackness — a large, newly opened hole in the heart of the forest. Steam and smoke rose in hellish plumes from innumerable locations within the opening, but nowhere could he see flames burning brightly.
“
In the bright sunlight Kestrel could see the full extent of the fire’s destruction. It was painful to see, but not as painful as he had expected it to be when he had first seen the pillar of smoke rising above the forest. There were trees intact on all sides of the blackened glade, showing that the opening was merely an isolated intrusion within the wider ocean of trees, which promised that men would not be likely to quickly move into the space — men would have to come through trees to try to get to the opening, and when men knew elves were nearby, they seldom ventured into trees, he knew.
Was there some relationship between this fire and men, he suddenly wondered. There was no other good explanation for how the fire could have started in such perfect weather. All the men were supposed to have been down south fighting in the great invasion that the other elves had gone to, but perhaps some had been up here at the same time.
He felt another painful twinge in his arm, and looked down at it, having forgotten about his injury momentarily in the double shock from goddess’s message and his view of the scorched parcel. There was an unnatural bend, a wrenching visual confirmation of the terrible pain he felt. He was going to have to leave his assignment in the red stag’s portion of the forest to return to town and have his arm treated by a healer. Mastrin, his commander, would have something to say about abandoning his post, but Kestrel would accept a tongue- lashing in return for relief from his pain. If everything went smoothly, he might even be able to return to finish out his shift.
He took a last panoramic look around the burn site, examining the charred remains and the trees that still stood on the far side of the new opening in the forest, and as he looked, a swarm of sparrows went swooping across the open space, already investigating the prospects for finding something nutritious among the ashes. Kestrel felt better; he knew the birds wouldn’t find anything at the moment, but given just a few weeks, greenery would start to sprout and forest life would begin the process of reclaiming its property.
Kestrel gauged his position, then calculated the direction he needed to travel to return to his elven home, where he could report on the fire and have his arm tended to. Perhaps, by the time he was back on base, there would even be some early reports on the state of the southern battle with the humans, he speculated. He plunged back into the greenery of the unsinged forest, leaving the blackened land behind, and journeyed towards the east.
The trip back to town was not as easy as he had expected. The torrential rains that had extinguished the fire had not only filled the ditch Kestrel had fallen into, but they had filled every brook, stream, swale, creek, and other potential conveyor of surface water, sending torrents of runoff flowing away from the fire site. Black water, loaded with ashes and debris, swept away from the fire, departing rapidly, and raising the level of several small streams so high that Kestrel decided to detour around them rather than try to cross them.
The trip took longer than he expected, so that Kestrel didn’t arrive at the outskirts of the provincial capital of Elmheng, until dinner time; even on the edges of the city the streams were running high, and he observed some homes being evacuated, while some were already deluged with water that had risen out of the stream banks. There were no walls or gates or guards, as he had heard existed around human cities, so he walked unimpeded, except by his pain, to the fence around his base, and then to the commander’s center, where Mastrin’s office was located on the third floor.
“The commander has gone to his home for the evening meal,” the guard at the door, an acquaintance of Kestrel’s, had informed him. “You better get to the medic to have him look at that thing before you do anything else,” Backsin advised Kestrel, looking at the swollen, red arm which still exhibited its gut-wrenching bend.
“I’ll see the doc in just a couple more minutes,” Kestrel agreed with a grimace. He knew he needed to see the doctor, but he felt obligated to make his report first. In so doing he would not only complete his mission to the commander, but would also have a chance to catch a glimpse of the commander’s daughter, Cheryl, under circumstances that might allow him to appear heroic.
He left Backsin and trotted down the street to the officers’ quarters, then walked up the wooden steps to the high front porch that looked down on the foot traffic in the street below. Kestrel hesitated for a long moment as he stood at the door, his hand raised to knock, letting his injured arm hang limp without support. Then he took a deep breath and knocked rapidly for a few seconds, until he stepped back from the door and waited.
Seconds later he heard footsteps inside, heavy boots striding across the floor inside, then watched the door open and Commander Mastrin appeared, a napkin in his hand as he swung the door inward.
“Kestrel?” he questioned, surprised to see the young elf on his doorstep. “What brings you here? Shouldn’t you be on duty?”
“Sir,” Kestrel began. He knew what his message was, but until the moment he faced the commander he hadn’t practiced putting his thoughts into words. At the moment he finally saw his commander, with his mind increasingly clouded by the pain from his arm, he felt at a loss to explain his reason for appearing there.
“There was a great fire in the forest,” he began, knowing that the fire was the focus of his mission.
“It’s been a pretty clear day here,” Mastrin answered. “Was there a lightning storm we didn’t know about? I can’t imagine a fire starting under a clear sky.
“I can believe you had some rain out your way though. We’ve seen that the streams from your sector have risen pretty fast — been flooding out a few ground-dwelling cabins as a matter of fact; hard to imagine a fire with all the rain that must have fallen. Did it get too wet for you to stay on duty?
“What happened? Did you slip and fall out of your tree? That’s a nasty injury — go see the doctor and have it taken care of, then come see me first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll discuss your absence from your post then,” Mastrin told Kestrel, as they both heard the sound of light footsteps behind the commander.
Cheryl appeared, her face looking over her father’s shoulder. Her quizzical expression changed to one of pleasant recognition, and she raised her left hand, the hand closest to the heart, the gesture used by elves to greet those they felt closest to.
Kestrel instinctively tried to raise his own left hand in response, pleased by Cheryl’s use of her heart-hand to greet him in the presence of her father.
Just the very beginning of the sudden movement on his part made the broken bone ends in his arm grate against one another, and he momentarily saw a red haze of pain in front of his eyes. He clutched the arm against him with his right arm, and felt embarrassed as he realized a moan of pain had escaped his lips.
“Daddy, he’s hurt!” Cheryl gasped sorrowfully. “Have someone take care of him!”
“I’ve just told him to go see the doctor,” her father said patiently. “You go back to the table and I’ll join you in a bit,” he dismissed his daughter, who dutifully turned and left, with a last glance over her shoulder at Kestrel and a wave of her fingertips.
“Get on to the doctor, and come see me first thing tomorrow,” Mastrin repeated, then he closed the door and left Kestrel alone on the porch.
The weary elf turned and gingerly descended the stairs down from the porch, each step jarring his
