Blade of Erogrund

Almost before Godric could stand, the man fell to his knees, his cloak pooling in the glowing scarlet firelight like the blood that no doubt was dripping to join it.

“Help!” Gordric cried, his voice no doubt higher in the tension of fear than he would have liked. “Matthias, Hilthwen, help! Someones here; he’s hurt!”

Before even a second had passed the rustling of leaves betrayed Matthias rising hastily and Hilthwen too.

“Get back,” the other boy commanded. Godric could just make out his narrowed eyes which glowed just less than the dull flash of his the head of his spear. The graveness of Matthias’s voice sent thoughts spinning through his head. Was this a ploy by Theronin? Was this man just a bandit hurt in some scuffle? Or worse, was he a bandit just looking to catch them off guard?

The same ideas must have been tracing through Matthias and Hilthwen’s minds as they surveyed the scene suspiciously. Hilthwen had drawn one of her knives and was inching closer to the fallen man. The way her entire frame was drawn back like a feline preparing to pounce told him she was more than ready for any sudden surprises.

“I said get back,” Matthias repeated sharply. Shaking away these observations, Godric complied, painstakingly placing one foot behind the other. “For Ecthion’s sake, he isn’t a bloody timber wolf,” the boy barked. Godric felt Matthias's hard grip on his shoulder, pulling him back with a jerk, but he bit his tongue.

Hilthwen was hunched over the man and had two fingers just below his wrist. “Wait, Matthias, I think he’s really hurt. His pulse is weak.” The boy hesitated. “C’mon! Help me!”

Matthias set his spear aside and moved to kneel beside her. “What’s wrong with him? Can you tell?”

“He was mauled,” Godric interrupted from by the fire. “There were scratches on his chest.”

Hilthwen glanced up. “Good eye. He’s been attacked alright. Let’s get him over on his back.” Matthias helped her roll the man over onto his haggard cloak, cracking the black-red blood crusted around his shirt.

Three long gashes ran from his left shoulder down his side, the first from his arm to his waist and the others along his chest. Skin had been shredded around the wounds and blood had spilled from them onto his tunic. Evidently it had been there for quite some time as it was a scabbed black crimson.

“This is bad,” Hilthwen murmured. “Matthias, get a knife heating in the fire. Godric, grab some water from our bags, we need to clean out these wounds if he’s going to have a chance to live.”

Matthias drew a long hunting dagger from his belt and stuck it in the coals of the fire. He knelt down on the grass, blowing carefully on the embers until tongues of fire licked the steel.

It only took a second for Godric to find a canteen in the saddle bags. Hilthwen accepted it gratefully. With a pop, she pulled out the cork and poured a generous amount of water onto the man’s chest. The clear liquid cut its way through much of the grime, tracing with it much of the blood that crusted on his chest. Unfortunately it only revealed the gore of the wound even more.

“Matthias, where’s the knife?”

“One second,” he said from the fire. Once the blade had flickered and the edge just begun to glow with its own heat, he made his way to where they knelt and handed it handle-first to the girl.

Hilthwen arranged the blade nearly horizontal to the fallen man’s tunic and slide it carefully along the cloth. A soft hiss escaped his chest as mist from the water and blood rose with the heat of the metal. Before long she had cut away most of the cloth that was clinging to him and washed away much of the blood, but the sight beneath was little consolation.

Strong muscles and toned abs built his solid core beneath scarred skin, but a sickening shade of red painted an ill sight that ebbed from the gashes. Hilthwen placed the back of her palm on his forehead for a moment prior to sitting back, defeated.

“Infection. He must’ve sustained these at least a day ago, judging by the spread of it. He’s got a burning fever, too.”

“Anything we can do?” Matthias asked.

“Not really. Maybe if he was in the apothecary’s, but I’m no herbalist or healer. Other than washing out the wound, I’ve no idea what to do.”

A thought filled Godric’s mind with surprising abruptness as though it had appeared like one of the ribbons in his dream. “Is there any bethra herb around here?”

Matthias wrinkled his nose. “Bethra? That weed is almost everywhere out here, so what?”

“I don’t know, but the clerics put some on my cuts when I was at the apothecary’s. Maybe it would help.”

“And maybe it would kill him,” Matthias cut in sternly. “You’re no healer, Godric. You’re here for the patrol because you have to be. Leave the keeping people alive part to us.”

“If we don’t do something soon he’s dead anyway,” Hilthwen argued. The girl stared Matthias down for an instant before he shook his head.

“Fine.” Matthias said, glaring. “What do we do?”

“Grab the leaves, boil a little water, and cook it into a tea. There should be some bandages in the bags we can use to soak it up and apply to the gashes.”

“That’s not how the apothecaries did it. From what I recall, they made it into a poultice and rubbed it on the cuts.”

“I’m sure that’s more potent,” Hilthwen murmured, carefully cleaning out the cuts with a cloth, “but these cuts are too deep. If we tried to put leaves in, we would never get them out, at least not without using up all of our water supplies.”

Almost an hour passed and with it the end of the night. By the time steam was rising from the boiling tin of water over the fire, the sun’s first rays had just begun to break the solid black of the night horizon. Matthias dropped a generous handful of herb leaves into the water, sending the vaguely familiar aroma of bethra wafting through the camp in a scent imitating a mixture of garlic and must. The pungent stench continued even by the time they had wrapped the man’s chest in the bandages.

It wasn’t until the sun had risen like its own tongue of flame above the scanty tree line to replace the light of the dying fire that any response to the tea was noticeable.

The man’s breathing had grown deeper since they had applied the bandages but stubbornly he had remained otherwise unchanged. Hilthwen, Matthias, and Godric took turns holding a cool cloth to his forehead in a futile attempt to break the fever, but to no avail. Despite the frigid torrents of icy air that continued to blow the cloth perpetually heated with little impact on the injured man’s condition.

Each also took their turn watching intently for any sign from Biren-Larath of an envoy or patrol, but the tall grass of the hills refused any sight other than the dull swaying of its stalks in the whipping wind.

Godric sat on one of the boulders watching the man and holding the cloth to his forehead. Every now and then it would be exchanged with another that sat in the tin beside him in a small pool of water where the air was kind enough to chill it significantly. Hilthwen had just risen to take a turn around the camp while Matthias sat not far away, gazing blankly toward the hills with his spear at hand.

Just as Godric went to remove the cloth from the man’s head, a ragged cry escaped his chapped lips and he frantically darted up before stumbling and falling to his knees. Matthias jumped from his seat to where the man had fallen, but the man would not be consoled. His strong arm grabbed a stone from where he fell and he swung it into the boy’s legs, sending him tumbling to the ground.

Hilthwen scrambled for her bow and arrow while Godric drew his sword from where it rested beside him in a shriek of steel on stone.

“Hold!” Even to him his voice spoke with such authority that the man hesitated. Matthias took advantage of the moment, pinning the man’s arm to the ground while he rolled on top of him.

“Calm, soldier,” Matthias whispered. “We’re not trying to hurt you!” This must have been little consolation as the man continued to lash out to little effect against Matthias’s firm grip. “Knock it off, you fool, or you’ll tear your bandages!”

This finally was enough to still him. His wild eyes searched the boy frantically as quickly as his limbs had sought to strike him. “Who...Where am I?! Where’s Caleb?!”

“Shhh,” Hilthwen cooed from where she stood, arrow notched and pointed at the man. “Just calm down and we can sort this out. We’re not here to hurt you.”

“That is,” Matthias said, offering a startlingly friendly grin, “unless you keep hitting us with stones.”

The man hesitated but returned the small expression cautiously. “Alright then. Let me up.”

“Not so fast. We can be friendly from here.”

“Is that right? Because I can’t breathe, that girl has an arrow pointed at me, and that boy has a sword.”

“Yes it’s right,” Godric answered. “And trust me, we know how to use them.” Hilthwen eyed him curiously at the confident response. “We’ve taken the time to clean your wounds and bandage you up, doesn’t that get us anywhere? Besides, you’ve got one fire of a fever and some far from healed chest wounds.”

“I suppose it does,” he murmured. “I’d forgotten... You were the boy I saw...Last night was it?” Godric nodded. “Right then. What is it you want?”

“Who you are would be a good start,” Matthias answered calmly.

“My name is Ephraun. I came from the First Army, on the West Patrols.”

“Your nearest post is some twenty miles from here; what business do you have coming so far East by yourself?”

“I was part of a retreat.”

“A retreated?” Hilthwen echoed with discernible concern.

Ephraun nodded with some difficulty. “Yes. If you might let me up I could explain.”

Without hesitation Matthias released the man. “You’d better start from the beginning.”

Once Ephraun had been helped to a seat on one of the boulders and given a canteen of water, he began to explain.

“As you know, the majority of the First Army is deployed in a line roughly three fourths of the distance between Biren-Larath and the coast, with Draeknol being in the cliffs barely off the sea. I was stationed on patrol in the Grove of Narenhior, which lies in the North of our line. Some month back word came from the division just south of us that there was increased activity in the Draeknol. Hatchlings were leaving the cliffs more frequently and word was they were coming farther East.”

“That’s right,” Godric replied. “They destroyed Dunn and Threst.”

Ephraun hung his head. “Damn. I was hoping that was just rumor, but I guess the other reports were true then.”

“Not only that,” Matthias continued. “They made it so far as to attack the gates of the city.”

“You don’t say?” The soldier didn’t seem entirely surprised, but the haggard look on his face deepened. “Regardless, about a week later our unit was given orders to move south and cover the lines. We were told that the Second Army was being moved from the North and East to fill the gaps, but they hadn’t made it yet and the ranks were getting dangerously thin. Some of the war bands that fancy that land as theirs were taking advantage of the weakened numbers and the carnage was attracting wolves.

“Obviously we obeyed and took twenty men or so to show them a little steel, if you get my meaning. But when we got there... Boy, if you had seen the carnage you would not still be willing to leave that city,” he murmured, waving a hand toward Biren-Larath.

“So you ran,” Hilthwen finished.

“No,” Ephraun countered sharply. He took another long drink of water. “No, we didn’t run. We did what we had to do. In the first three nights we had made short work of most of the mongrels, but it got so bad we were stacking bodies for barricades. The poor Captain, Westir was his name, did all he could to hold us together. Anyway, the bandits got the idea and went back into their king-forsaken woods to go stab themselves, so we assumed all was well enough. Word came that regiments from the Second Army had made it to our old posts and would be there in two day’s ride. This was well enough by us.”

“So what happened?” Matthias pressed. His voice was soft and concerned, though the man’s elongated story was twisting his patience.

“We waited. A fortnight. Almost another week went by before we heard anything. By this time we were more than worried. Not only that, riders ceased coming from the southern outposts. We even tried sending out riders. We never heard from them.

“Finally it was decided that we would withdraw to Eastern posts, but ten men, including myself, were to be sent north and make contact with those outposts. If all was well we would return to Westir and re-advance to our former position.” Ephraun stopped and chuckled humorlessly to himself. “How foolish could we have been...

“We made it to our former post and found nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing?” Hilthwen questioned. “The groves have never been attacked by a Dragon; the trees are too thick and the foliage too dense.”

“I mean the entire grove was razed. Trees rent to the stumps, fortifications completely ruined. Desolation. Our entire unit was gone, slain or taken back to Draeknol. With little left to do we made preparations to return to Westir and give report, but we never got the chance. A night later several of the Hatchlings found us.”

Matthias’s countenance twisted. “You mean they attacked the grove? They destroyed the forest?”

“Boy, they did more than destroy the forest. They did not hesitate to set the entire treetops ablaze.” Ephraun set the canteen down, his hand positively quivering. “We were just riding and the entire forest was suddenly alight. The night was turned to day in less than a moment. Before we could even draw our weapons they were on us. The lame one was the fiercest; I daresay it killed four men before my sword was even clear of its sheath. Two others were with it, but we didn’t need to stick around to see fighting was not an option. Caleb, another soldier in my unit, and I made for the thickets.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve served with those men for over a year and would have gladly stayed behind if there was any chance at saving them. But the dragons were hungry for blood. They tore through the treetops like cloth, completely unafraid.”

“So they’ve gotten stronger,” Hilthwen murmured with horror. “They’ve grown.”

“Yes, they’ve grown. They aren’t stayed by the forest’s branches anymore or swayed by the prospect of what they cannot see. They’ve gotten ferocious,” Ephraun answered grimly. “Worst of all they’ve gotten voices. When they attacked I could hear them...” He cupped his head in his hands. “Their voices were everywhere and nowhere. Like a thousand chanting souls in my mind. Never have I been so afraid.

“Caleb and I made it out, thank Ecthion, but didn’t get far. Maybe three or four days later we were cornered by a wolf pack just some five miles from here. Our horses were mauled beyond saving and we both got some gruesome cuts. The last thing I really remember before seeing you,” he gestured to Godric, “was running blindly into the trees. I wondered why the wolves didn’t chase us. Looking back, I guess Caleb took care of that.”

“You did all you could,” Matthias consoled with unprecedented sincerity. “And so did he. If you weren’t here now we wouldn’t know any of this and would be worse off because of it.”

“I suppose so,” Ephraun muttered, unconvinced. “Regardless, the King must be told. What is left of the First and Second Armies must be given orders or they will be left stranded to be burned alive.”

Godric met Matthias’s and Hilthwen’s eyes, sharing an unspoken question among them.

“Obviously there can be no patrol now,” Hilthwen said. “The only matter is to get word to the King.”

“And,” Godric finished, “which King we will be getting word to.”