The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “As you say,” Falon agreed mildly, in too much pain if she tried to talk too much to be willing to argue about it—not for Gearalt’s men.

  Chapter 28: Attacks and Clearing the Gap

  They were attacked twice before clearing the ‘gap’, the first attack began with berserkers charging out of the trees one at a time.

  “Mogrey’s!” screamed the first berserker, his voice deep and guttural as he burst out of the trees with a razor sharp bronze axe in one hand, and a stone dagger in the other. Foam was literally dripping from the corners of his mouth as he charged.

  “His eyes are solid yellow,” a murmur swept through the column of men with growing alarm.

  “They glow!” cried a Raven accented voice with growing hysteria. The words were followed by hollow thud of a good smack to the back of the head and when Falon glanced back a member of the Raven contingent was holding the back of his head and rubbing it. Their war leader, sensing Falon’s gaze, looked up at her and cocked an eyebrow at her.

  Falon rolled her eyes, the right corner of her mouth tilting but before she turned back to see the berserker slam headlong into a wall of spears.

  Two spears were knocked down aside by his bulk, while a third stuck in his leather armored chest, bowed, and then broke with a mighty cry of effort by the barbarian as he attempted to penetrate the spear-wall.

  Instants later the berserker had axed one of her men in the side, literally lifting him off the ground and throwing him several feet, and then smashed the flat of the axe into the face of another of her men, sending the him down to the ground, like a pole axed steer or felled tree.

  The men in front of him turned to run but the ones to the side shouted and stabbed with their spears and although the barbarian sunk his axe into the back of one of the fainthearted, who when faced with the hazard, took to his heels instead of standing tall.

  But the man’s comrades proved their own courage when they stabbed the barbarian multiple times in the front and side. Even a mighty oak like the blood-crazed, shaman power-boosted, mouth-frothing savage could be felled.

  Still crying with guttural, angry sounds more akin to those of a beast than a man, the spearmen continued to stab away at the fallen barbarian long after he was dead.

  Falon looked at the Imperial Sergeant with widened eyes but he covertly shook his head. Not liking the advice but feeling she had to take it under serious consideration—especially since she had just solicited it—Falon turned forward and averted her gaze.

  “Alright, that’s enough,” Darius finally barked, “you’ve kilt him dead enough already; there’s no time to slaughter him like a goat.” When the men hesitated but then returned to their mad stabbing, the Sergeant finally got mad, “Eyes out and mind your spear-wall; there could be more of them, damn your eyes!”

  At this, the men seemed to snap out of it with one of them looking slightly dazed and only seeming to stop in confusion, likely because the rest of the half dozen men pin-cushioning the corpse had stopped doing so.

  “Formation and forward march,” Darius ordered, “now march!”

  After several minutes they reordered their lines, transferred the still-living wounded back to the wagon, and returned to marching forward. That was when the second berserker came storming down the hill, yellow-eyed and frothing at the mouth, just like his counterpart they had just killed.

  “They’re trying to make us slow to a crawl by stopping us with an attack every time we get going,” Darius said in an elevated voice.

  Falon’s mouth tightened and the pit of her stomach knotted so tight that it started hurting. They couldn’t afford to lose at least three men down, dead or wounded for every barbarian raider—she couldn’t afford to lose that many men. For her own peace of mind, forget how the other officers, gentry and the nobles would think of her, she had to do something.

  “Yah!” she snapped, holding tight to the horn of her saddle with one hand to protect her damaged ribs.

  Like a stone loosed from a sling, Cloud went from standing still to surging forward in almost the blink of an eye. Urging him forward with her heels, they made a bee-line toward the berserker.

  “Control your horse!” Darius barked from behind her, and when she didn’t slow or turn, he cried, “don’t be hotheaded; turn him!”

  Ignoring the Imperial, Falon groaned at the demands the horse’s movements made upon her battered body and held on for dear life. Gambling with both her horse’s life and her own, Falon took the risk that Cloud Breaker had the same training she had discovered when riding her father’s heavy warhorse. Using heels and reins in a specific manner she’d learned entirely by accident with old Phantom, she had a split second to be pleased when Cloud Breaker dug in his heels and then pivoted precisely as she had desired.

  Then she was holding on for grim life as she heard an ‘oof,’ followed by the sound of metal impacting against flesh as her light warhorse used his metal-shod hooves to send the berserker flying.

  She had time for one victorious thought as she caught sight of the flying savage out of the corner of her eye. Then pain turned to agony as something tore in her side. White and red flashed before her eyes and she listed sideways with a weak groan.

  Images of grass and trees flashed in a disjointed series of impressions, and the next thing she knew Darius had a hand on her heel and she was laying forward across her horse’s neck.

  “That was a dang fool stunt,” the Imperial scowled for a long moment, but Falon was in too much pain just trying to catch her breath to notice. Then the Imperial broke out into a dire smile, “But good job, son. You decked him hard; he won’t be getting back up.”

  Falon looked at him blankly and forced herself mostly upright. “That’s ‘Squire’ to you,” she panted barely able to hear herself over the panting of her breath.

  Darius barked a laugh, clapping her on the back and it felt like he had just shoved spear into her instead of the openhanded clout she knew it to be. For a moment she thought she was going to die, then the pain subsided to something less than jaw-locking intensity.

  “Lieutenant!” the men around her gave such a cheer that it drowned out the sound of her whining—to all but the Training Master, who looked at her with sudden concern.

  “You going to be okay there, Squire?” Darius asked with concern and more deference than she was used to hearing from him.

  “Dandy,” she gasped, unable to get out more than one word at a time.

  “Just hold on until moonrise,” he said worriedly, “then we’ll get your shirt off and those ribs healed up.”

  Falon started to nod, the idea of relief from pain like the idea of just a sip of water to parched woman out in the summer sun so long—then the import of his exact words penetrated.

  “No!” she burst out and then gagged, fighting to keep her gorge down. She covered a spastic cough and the back of her hand came back red speckled. She couldn’t let them take her shirt off; she’d be found out for sure!

  “Just let us take care of it for you,” Darius said in a no nonsense voice that had more than a note of consolation to it.

  “Fine,” Falon protested, “I’m—” she had to pause panting for breath, a coppery taste in her mouth.

  “Not doing as well as we’d all like,” Darius said, eyeing the men who had stopped cheering and were now starting to look at the pair of them with unconcealed concern. “But still with a lot of fight left in you,” he added in a rising voice.

  Warriors stopped looking at her out of the corner of their eyes and chucked each other on the shoulders, once again assured of the indestructibility of high command.

  “Did you see the way the Lieutenant just charged that barbarian?”

  “He’s not got a fearful bone in his body?”

  “Why, did you see how that last one kilt four men—and it took six more to put him down?”

  “The Lieutenant took him on with just him and his horse!-”

  The babble of boys and men without a clue in their heads a
bout the ‘real’ Lieutenant they had leading them and her very much frail, fear-filled, and less-than-highly-trained body, continued on without letup for more than a minute while they kept on marching.

  “Fine,” Falon panted again, her mind stuck on the fact she couldn’t let them take her shirt off or she was done, “if I fall, just bury me,” she wheezed. “Don’t…try…” she took a breath.

  “It was a fine stand, for certain. You’re just freaked out. Insecure. Neurotic and emotional,” Darius said in a low voice, a confident smile pasted on his face that was at odds with the tight words he said to her out of the corner of his mouth, “you’ll see the healer, get patched up, and that’s the end of it.”

  Falon made an inarticulate sound of protest.

  “Save your strength. I’ve spent too much time breaking you in as an Officer to let you die and have to start all over with some high-strung, overbred replacement too full of himself to listen to a lowly Optio— I mean, Sergeant, in your speak,” he corrected himself, then muttered something to himself about back in the ‘Regiments.’

  Falon wanted to protest, but it was all she could do to keep from whimpering with each step her horse took. What had once seemed an almost heavenly smooth gait now felt like Cloud Breaker was deliberately stepping on every rock and rough patch of earth on the trail through the Gap.

  “Besides, that fool stunt of yours showed the men that these berserkers are killable by just one man alone—even a three fourths grown sprout like you,” Darius said with a nod. “Knowing that it doesn’t take ten men to kill one of these ice-bred savages at the loss of four-to-one is going to do more for morale than any amount of speechifying from their Officers and Sergeants. The fact that they know how…skilled,” he politely looked away, “you are with a blade doesn’t hurt—even though it was your horse that killed the man.”

  Falon would have given him a haggard look, and a few words at this sideways shot at her lack of sword fighting ability compared to most ‘men and even boys’ of her class, but she didn’t have the strength for it.

  She was dimly aware that this seemed to concern the Imperial more than all her protests that she’d rather die than be healed if her shirt had to come off. Holding onto the horn of her saddle, her head slumped forward.

  She silently prayed for death. The pain would stop for sure then, and if she should die before she woke, the odds of discovery and the risk to her family and the estate that supported them went back to almost nothing.

  Chapter 29: A Cold Camp

  Things got a lot worse before they got any better and it all started with Falon vaguely coming to slumped over the neck of her horse.

  She protested incoherently and tried to bat away the hands that pulled her off her horse, but she was too weakened and confused to be successful.

  “He’s burning up, healer,” someone said, and it took several sentences later before she realized it was Darius who had spoken.

  “I’ve never seen him this bad before,” Ernest said, sounding worried. Worse than worried, he actually sounded scared for her. For some reason this knowledge caused a bit of warmth to penetrate Falon’s stupor.

  “Bring him to the wagon while I start the lamp. I’m going to need to get a good look at him and check the wounds,” a young woman’s soft voice said with professional concern.

  “We’ll carry him,” Darius assured her stolidly.

  “There’s no need to lay him down with the rest of the wounded in that gore-covered wagon,” Ernest protested.

  “It’s the best and only place for now,” the Healing Wench said, “we don’t want to put him on the ground like this when there’s a solid wooden surface to sit on that won’t bring the chill from the ground right up into his bones. Besides, after I finish with him I can turn and work on the rest of the wounded…you did insist I start on the Officer first, Sergeant,” she said pointedly, turning to address her words to Darius.

  “Me brother, Duncan’s, setting up Fal’s tent right now. Tug should be helping him,” Ernest said quickly. “Wouldn’t it be better to get him into a warm, dry place and not have to move him after ye do yer repairs?”

  The Wench hesitated. “Direct moonlight is best for the healing itself, but not having to move yer Officer after healing is good too.” She hesitated before an amused tone crept into her voice, “Although I don’t know how warm it’s going to be in a recently pitched tent.” “It’s colder than a witch’s teat,” Ernest muttered under his breath and Falon, her mind wandering back to the conversation, idly wondered if that were really the truth. A case could be made that she was a witch herself, now that she had been tattooed and painted by that old hag Tulla.

  “Watch yer tongue,” the Wench said shortly, “I may not be a lady, or even a goodwoman yet, but there’s no cause to chap my ears so causally.”

  “Sorry,” Ernest sounded chastened.

  For a time there was nothing but the sensation of movement. “Move the bedroll near the opening, just inside the tent,” the Wench instructed, “we can move him back later. Here, let me adjust the lamp and start the light.”

  Falon was carefully laid down and as she came to rest there she noticed the smell of cloves on the air, which seemed odd given their location.

  “Now, just a candle sliver,” the Wench muttered, and then Falon observed light through her eyelids. The Wench leaned forward and quickly sucked in her breath.

  “Is something wrong?” Darius asked alarm in his voice.

  “I—” the Wench, who Falon slowly recognized as Chloe, hesitated, “I’ve healed this one before. Right after the big battle with the Ravens.”

  “You healed him…you saved Fal after the battle?” Duncan exclaimed with surprise.

  “Him…” The Wench sounded at a loss, “well I couldn’t heal…Fal, as you call…” she paused and took a deep breath. “The wound was made by a weapon that resists the healing energies of the moon. I could do little other than try to stabilized yer Officer and take him to a more experienced healer, knowledgeable about such resistant wounds. Frankly I am shocked and amazed this one not only survived, but then continued on with the army.”

  “Here, let me get the shirt off,” Ernest said all-too-helpfully after a momentary silence.

  “No!” the Wench said sharply before adding, “I mean, I’ll take things from here—including the shirt. If ye could bring the wagon of wounded as close as possible then I can bestow the healing energies of the Mother Moon upon the other wounded with as little delay as possible. That would probably be best.”

  “Are you sure—” Duncan started loudly.

  “Certain sure,” the Wench cut him off and then took a deep breath, “please, see the rest of yer men are brought here.”

  “You heard the lady,” Darius said after an extended pause, “let’s give the healer time to work.”

  There was the sound of footsteps leading away from the tent and Chloe sighed. She reached for the shirt and Falon make a sound of protest, trying to ward her off, but the healer wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer and pulled up the shirt.

  Her chest exposed, there was nothing left to do and an exhausted, nearly delirious, Falon lay still. She felt almost like she was about to sink down through the bedroll itself and into the ground beneath.

  “They did a number on ye didn’t they, Sister,” the Wench sighed, placing her hands on Falon’s side.

  A warmth started deep inside where her bones were kept and started to radiate outward, it was just starting to get painful as all healing spells did when the Wench sucked in her breath and the warmth stopped increasing.

  “Ye’ve been painted,” Chloe breathed when Falon’s tattoos flashed to life under the power of the moon, “who…”

  “I’m not your Sister,” Falon managed to gasp.

  “Hush now,” the Wench said placing a finger to Falon’s lips, hands returning to her damaged side, “yer secret is safe for the nonce.”

  Falon’s mouth opened and then the Healer’s magic sunk deep into side sw
ift and hard. Bones groaned and muscle shifted underneath the skin, as that which was torn was knitted back together—the pain of which was unbearable.

  The last thing Falon remembered was opening her mouth to scream.

  Chapter 30: The Frozen Earth Campaign

  Her eyes snapped open and a startled, half-remembered shriek left her mouth before Falon could stop herself.

  Several rapid, deep breaths later, she realized that she must have passed out in the middle of the healing because it was light outside and it no longer hurt to breathe deeply, or even quickly, like she’d just been doing.

  Then she remembered the Healing woman had discovered her.

  “That Wench!” she exclaimed angrily, more furious with herself over being discovered and the shame it could bring on her family, not to mention repercussions if and when the news got back to his lordship, than actually angry at the other woman for doing her job and saving Falon’s life.

  Something stirred outside her tent and the flap was thrown back.

  Not knowing how she was dressed after the healing—and whether or not the Wench had cut off her shirt to gain access to everything that needed healing—Falon clutched her father’s travel blanket up to her chin and looked up with worry as a man, his features blotted out by the light of the rising sun behind him, poked his head into the tent.

  “Falon, yer awake!” Ernest cried with relief. “That’s great!”

  “It is?” Falon asked cautiously.

  “But o’ course,” Ernest said giving her a strange look, “you were pretty busted up but the Wench fixed you right up. Darius said not to worry and you’d be right as rain in no time but ye looked dreadful and…” he trailed off embarrassed.

  A smile started tugging around the edges of her mouth until it burst free like the new risen sun. She was still safe!

  “What happened after I faded out?” Falon asked guardedly, even as she surreptitiously moved her hands under the blanket to check if she was still fully clothed. It wouldn’t do to have the Wench actually keep her secret for some unknown reason, only to blow the fact she was a sister by sitting up and exposing herself.