by B. T. Narro
My only concerns were that this might not be Graham’s father—though it was unlikely someone else was this big—and the other was what Graham’s father would say when he awoke. I had to remind myself again that there was much more at stake than this man’s life, and I still planned to help Sondra.
There would be time for her after. If I was going to save this man’s life, it had to be now.
I knew in my heart what I was going to do. I might as well not delay.
I started the long process of ridding the sickness within this man’s massive body. Had he been a child, I was certain I could finish in half the time, but he was the size of a bear. I was glad when he did not wake until later, sitting up with a startled gasp.
I stopped healing immediately. “Listen to me.”
“What are you—?”
“Listen to me!” I whispered more harshly. “I’m saving your life. You want that, don’t you? If so, you’ll be quiet, or you’ll get us both killed. Put your head back down and I will finish healing you, but only if you will be quiet.”
He stared at me for a long moment. The moon hung in the sky above the forest, the cold wind whistling by. I could hear his breathing had returned to a more normal sound, but pox still covered his skin. Getting rid of it would be last.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“I met your son, Graham, recently. He told me you were here. You are his father, right?”
“I am. They didn’t recruit him, did they?” he asked in an ominous tone.
“No, he is safe in Drayer for now. You will start your journey there tonight and see him by morning.”
“I am too weak,” he said with a breaking voice.
“Because I haven’t finished healing you yet.” I handed him the piece of bread I had saved from supper. “Don’t eat this now. Wait until you are safely out of the encampment. I recommend you sneak out as soon as I’m done healing you, before the commotion I will cause, because afterward they will be looking for a traitor.”
He did not reply.
“Do you understand that you were going to die had I not intervened?” I asked with building frustration.
“I do.”
“They don’t care about the sick or the injured. They have brought in new recruits. They plan to decimate the land as they pillage and rape. You understand that, yes?”
“I do.”
“Did you know that they ransacked your hometown and raped many of the girls there?”
His breathing became heavy. “No. My wife?”
“I don’t believe she was targeted.” Probably because she’s bigger than most men.
“I know you,” he said with a gasp. “You are the healer from Lycast they’ve been talking about.”
“I am. I’m here for a task, but I came across you. I recognized you from your son’s description. I couldn’t let you die.”
He took my hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“You can thank me by defending your town after you get back there. Davon tried to return with his men, but we stopped them. Your son will explain everything.”
“Bless you.”
“I will finish healing you now. Try not to make a sound, as it will hurt.”
“I will be completely silent.”
He kept to his word as I spent a few long minutes getting rid of every last trace of the infection, then moved on to the pox on his skin. I was quite tired by the time I finished, as I hadn’t eaten very much that day, but I knew I had enough in me to get everything done.
“I think you should change out of your clothes and wash well before getting close to anyone in Drayer,” I said when I was finished. “Otherwise, you might spread the sickness to others. I should be able to heal them later, but it’s better to be safe. I don’t care if you enter your hometown stark naked and go straight to bathe. It’s better than infecting anyone, but you can probably leave your undergarments on if you must.”
“Can’t say my wife will be too pleased about everyone seeing my shame, but I do agree with you.” He offered his hand. We shook. “I’m in your debt, healer.”
“I might hold you to that debt as this war goes on.”
“Of course. Good luck.”
He started to get up as I left him and made my way between the sick. There were so many dying, so many lives I could save, but how was I to know who were dark mages corrupted by power? Sondra was the only one I could be sure of.
She was asleep when I came to her bedside. I had gotten used to the sickening stench in the air by now.
I gently took her hand. “Sondra.”
She stirred, then coughed. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m going to save your life.”
*****
The conversation I had with Sondra before healing her was nearly the same as with Graham’s father. It took very little to convince her to trust me, as I figured it would. When life became precious, desperation was in abundance.
Her home was much too far away for her to get there easily on her own, but I wasn’t about to risk my life taking her deep into Rohaer. We came up with a compromise.
She agreed to wait for me in the forest straight west of here. She would sneak there as soon as I left her bedside. When I was done with my task, I would find her and take her back to my fort. I had wanted her to join us, as water mages were especially valuable in times of war, but she told me that Davon had threatened the life of her family if she was to flee from her duties.
“I must get back to them, as difficult as it will be.”
“If Davon’s promise is real,” I replied, “then you will not be safe even after you reunite with them. You should bring them to Drayer. If you cannot make a new home for yourself there, then you should bring them a little farther north to our fortress. We will keep you and your family safe.”
“Yes, I will try Drayer first, if I can get back to my family.”
It would be a difficult and dangerous trek back and forth for Sondra, but she had to do it without our assistance.
Fatigue and hunger made me sluggish when it was finally time to carry out my task. I especially worried that I did not have my Induct stone of dvinia. If the fight went on long, I might run out of mana and find myself captured, or worse. I had to prevent that at all costs.
Very few people still roamed the encampment at this late hour, which made me quite conspicuous as I searched for the food shed. I felt like every footstep was thunderous as I walked around groups of tents.
I had left my eyepatch on my injury bed. I needed both eyes to see as well as I could in the dark, and no one was going to recognize me in this dim light, even if someone held a lamp up.
I figured it would be better to lose some of the disguise, anyway. A man with an eyepatch would be too conspicuous once they knew I was there, and the changes I had made to my face and hair should be enough. It wasn’t like Valinox had spent a lot of time getting to know how I looked.
I had a sword with me, though it was made of steel that Davon could melt. I had little idea where he was sleeping, but I figured he, along with many others, would soon be aware of me.
Let Davon come.
It was Valinox I was more worried about.
I made my first stop where two barrels of water were stored, lids secured on top. I took Sondra’s disgusting, moist rag from my pocket—I had borrowed it from her after I left her bedside—and wiped it all around each lid. I wasn’t sure how effective it would be at spreading the sickness, but I figured it was worth a try. I put the rag back in my pocket.
Eventually I came to the shed where the spy had told us food was stored. It was large, about the size of my room at the castle, with a big lock on its door. There was no way to know just how many days’ worth of food it contained, but if it was at least half full, I estimated it would provide the army with a few days of meals or more.
Suddenly losing that amount of food could devastate their plans to remain here because, while a few days of meals for one person were easy to
come by, the thousands of pounds of food required to sustain these people put an unbearable strain on their kingdom.
I knew because the same thing was happening in ours. It was how I first came up with this idea, when I feared someone might sneak into our camp and destroy our supply. It would devastate us.
Only one man seemed to be guarding the shed. He was most likely put there to protect it from ransacking by his own people, which meant he was probably a skilled sorcerer who could defend himself better than most.
Rohaer knew neither Souriff nor Failina could get to this shed without Valinox sensing them, and I supposed they figured I would never risk my neck flying into their encampment in order to destroy it. That was true. I wouldn’t fly in.
I was glad for the dark night as I skulked over to the outskirts of the camp. I walked along the mountainside, deep in the shadows.
I crept along until I was close enough to the shed to see its backside. Then I lifted myself with dvinia and hovered up behind it and across the roof in complete silence.
I slowly let myself down behind the man guarding the shed at its front. There was just enough room for me to fit between him and the locked door behind me.
He looked as if he was falling asleep, his head drooping, as I prepared a ring of dvinia.
I closed my dvinia around his head, face, and mouth as I pulled out my sword and ran it through his back.
His scream was muffled by my dense energy as he tried to make a run for it, but that same dense energy held him in place as his feet slipped out from under him.
I made a quick decision to twist and pull the energy the opposite way from his momentum, cracking his neck. He fell limp to the ground, but I wanted to be sure he couldn’t make a sound. I plunged the tip of my sword into his heart and decided not to look at his face as I held my energy in place for a moment longer.
Remorseful, but bound by my duty, I pulled him up by his arms, just enough to get dvinia around his chest to slow his bleeding and help me drag him away. I lifted him much easier with my sorcery, guiding him mostly with my mind as I walked around the shed to the back again. I set the body down, leaning it against the wooden wall.
I still could hardly call myself a fire mage, but I had enough skill to at least get this job done. It was much more difficult to find the three notes of fire compared to the four notes of dvinia that had become as comfortable as breathing, but soon I had them ready.
I pushed out the spell with my mind, mana spewing from my hands and turning into a jet of fire.
It roared louder than I would’ve liked as it quickly caught the uniform of the man I had killed. I stopped and walked to the edge of the shed and listened, but I heard no sounds of commotion. I went back to check on the fire.
“Come on,” I whispered, as the flames danced against the wood but refused to catch.
My hand stung from the heat of the spell, but I ignored the pain as I pushed out more mana in another spell of Fire, this time aimed at the wood right above the dead man’s head.
In roared and cackled, my skin singeing. I wasn’t sure I would ever have the same control with fire as I did with dvinia, but I didn’t care right now so long as I had power.
I pushed harder, transforming more of my mana into fire. The flames finally caught the wood. I hissed in pain, quickly healing myself as the flames spread along the backside of the shed.
I turned away and covered my face with my shirt, keeping my mouth shut as my body tried to force out coughs. I moved toward the corner of the shed and unleashed another jet of fire, burning my hand once again in the process. The flame took to the wood, though it did not look like it would spread very quickly. I needed more, so I moved over to the other corner and did the same.
By the time I had healed my hand again, flames covered most of the back wall. The heat was too intense for me to stay so close. I hurried off, temporarily blinded by the bright light and hoping no one had noticed the fire yet.
I made my way over to the siege weapons. It was a bit greedy to set one of the catapults on fire because it would temporarily take me away from the burning shed, but I thought it was worth the chance.
The flames caught the wood at the base of the catapult quickly. There was one more beside it. I rushed over and set it on fire as well.
It took me about a minute. By then, I heard someone screaming in the distance.
“Fire! Fire!”
I rushed toward the burning shed and away from the siege weapons behind me. Troops began rushing out of their tents in their undergarments and thin shirts. I joined their panic as I ran toward the burning shed.
“Where’s the guard?” I yelled. “How did this happen?”
I blended into the crowd as dark mages ran close and tried to smother the flames with dteria. I watched in dismay as it seemed to be working. The flames stretched high over the shed and crept over its top, but the dark mages forced it to the back wall, where it looked to be struggling against the invisible energy.
“Get the water mage!” Davon yelled from the middle of the crowd as he pushed two people in the direction of the injured. Then he turned and ran toward the large tent. “Valinox!”
The demigod was already on his way, now landing in front of me and many of the dark mages attempting to smother the flames.
“Is it Failina?” Davon asked.
“No,” Valinox said. “I would’ve sensed her presence as soon as she was close. It must be Jon. It doesn’t matter. I’ll have this out in a moment.” Valinox moved his hands about as if preparing a spell, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.
In the span of a breath, I formed a wall of dvinia and hurled it into the lot of us. I screamed in feigned confusion as we all tumbled away from the shed, Valinox included.
He picked himself up with dteria and marched toward the group of frightened-looking men who had not been disrupted by my spell. “Jon is here!” he seethed. “Where is he?”
They all looked at each other as the fire roared.
“Where?” he screamed.
I pretended to look around with the others, many mumbling that they didn’t know what I looked like. It was difficult not to smile.
Valinox swept his arm through the air at a group of men. They somersaulted away. Then Valinox pulled his hands down in the direction of the shed, smothering the flames with dteria. As powerful as he was, however, he couldn’t squelch the fire on his own.
“Help me with this until the water mage gets here!” he yelled at me and dozens of sorcerers around me.
We rushed back to his side. I prepared another spell of dvinia and hit all of us again. We tumbled back the way we came.
Valinox was first on his feet, his teeth gritted in a sinister look with the shed half on fire behind him. “Where the fuck is he?” he yelled.
His glance swept right over me. I might’ve enjoyed this game if it wasn’t for the look on his face. It seemed like he was thinking about murdering all of us right here and now if it meant getting rid of me.
“The siege weapons!” I yelled as I pointed at them in the distance. I could already see a group of soldiers running toward us from that direction, screaming for Valinox, so pointing out the fire only served to make me look authentic.
At the same time, the male water mage arrived.
He cursed in front of the massive flames. “I can’t do anything about this!” he claimed. “There’s too much fire.”
Valinox threw his arm at the shed, pummeling the wall with a powerful burst of dteria. It cracked the weakened wood. He repeated the spell, shattering the side wall almost completely. I watched, stunned, as he cast over and over, destroying most of the shed in a matter of a minute. A small fire still burned on the far side, but there was now a large opening where we could see within.
Fortunately, most of the bags, boxes, and barrels were already on fire, and Valinox had destroyed many of the others. “Put out the fires and salvage everything you can,” he instructed as he took off toward the siege weapons.
&nbs
p; The water mage and the dteria sorcerers rushed toward the shed as I slowly backed away. I broke into a run, passing by a few people who looked at me with confusion.
“I’m going for water,” I told everyone I passed, hoping they wouldn’t think much about it. I looked back after a little while to find that no one was checking on me. Back into the darkness and away from the fire, I took into the air and headed into the forest. I wished I could stick around and find out just how much of the food I had destroyed and what damage I had done to the catapults, but that was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
I figured it would be sometime the next morning that someone pieced together what I had done when they noticed the eyepatch sitting on the bed I had used.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
After I landed in the forest and called out for Sondra a few times, we eventually found each other. She got on my back so I could take her north to the fort for the night. But first, we needed to do something dreadful. This was the part I had looked forward to the least out of everything I had to do tonight. I veered toward the river instead of the fort.
We disrobed to our undergarments and tossed our clothes in the freezing river to get rid of them. She had grabbed her bag on her way out of Rohaer’s camp. It contained soap that we were both grateful for. We washed our hands and faces. I hoped it would be enough, as I couldn’t imagine submerging my body in the river at this temperature and making it back to our fort before we turned to ice.
With both of us shivering, she climbed on my back when we were done and I took her to the fort. I landed near my tent, where Hadley and Remi awaited. They were expecting me and had a fire going, though I could see both were surprised when I landed with a mostly naked woman on my back.
“I’ll wake Byron, unless there’s an emergency?” was the first thing Hadley asked.
“Wake him,” I replied. “Everything went well.”
She gave one quick glance at the woman shivering beside me before rushing off. Sondra and I stood close to the fire with our hands out as Remi handed me the dry clothes I had given her earlier in the day.