67. After the Rain, Part 1
Selvathy spend hours after the battle searching for Ewalt, first among the living, and then among the dead and heavily wounded, rushing wherever one of the creatures scattered across the forest floor moved or moaned. That was how she found Tezza, and right in time to stop a southswarder vole from caving the weasel's head in, after she faintly moaned in response to prodding.
"Wait!" Selvathy cried out. "She's on our side!"
"That was going to be a mercy anyway," the vole growled, stepping aside.
As Selvathy walked closer and looked upon Tezza's wound in the graying evening light, she had to agree. A horrible cut on Tezza's scalp left her skull visible, and her left footpaw has been pierced, but the worst of all were wide and deep wounds on her midriff and chest. Even with rain washing away most of the blood, there was still enough of it around. Selvathy was not sure by what miracle the weasel was still alive, and the thought of as much as touching a beast wounded this badly made her shiver. Or that might have something to do with Tezza being the beast in question. The young otter considered whether one of the woodlanders who also were combing the battlefield may be asked to search for Rowanbloom. Ewalt also may have been lying somewhere in an equally bad state, and Selvathy did not wish to waste time on Tezza. But she quickly put such unbecoming thoughts aside. Even if Selvathy never liked Tezza one bit, Tezza still was a comrade in arms, and one who had never betrayed trust placed in her, never even complained when going was tough. Selvathy knelt besides the old weasel.
As soon as she touched her, Tezza opened the one eye that still could open. "Who's there?"
"Tis' me, Selvathy. Don't talk, I'm gonna get you to a healer."
"Ain't no healer can pull me back from the steps of Hellgates." Tezza's voice was weak, but clear. She turned her head slightly to look at the direction of Selvathy's voice. "We won?"
"Yes."
"Good. But… Ewalt and Smalltooth. Did ye free them?"
Only then Selvathy remembered that the three spoke something about going into the forest together this morning, a thought that flown out of her head over the busy day and the chaos of battle. She grabbed Tezza's bony shoulders. "What happened? Where you left them?"
"I gave the signal, the bugle. Could not escape. There was a fight. They were taken alive. They must be alive. Alive." More strength seemed to be leaving Tezza with each phrase, and the last words were barely a whisper. "Huh. I'm… It's… no longer cold."
000000000000000
It was a near miracle that almost half of Lurthen's vermin ended up present, once the defeated band finally managed to get enough of breathing space to make a headcount. Of course, their escape wouldn't have been possible at all without boats captured by Grotgard and his small force on the riverbank. But even with the boats, losing only over half of their number after breaking ranks and routing was a near miracle.
Of course, nobeast was in the mood to appreciate the sheer extent of their luck.
"Grotgard, you flea-bitten vagabond! Where were you when we fought? Seeking that cursed sword for your scurvy self? After I forbade looting until the battle is over?" Lurthen pointed at the fox accusingly.
"And who are you to forbid me anything, old rotter?" Grotgard sneered back. "If not for me we all would be dead, even a blind fish can see that's true! Looks like all of your father's wit and good fortune went to your brothers!"
Lurthen reached for his curved sword, but Grotgard was faster. Before Lurthen's blade was out of the scabbard, the fox already held the Sword of Martin at the ready and that gave Lurthen pause.
Grotgard spat contemptuously. "Why, draw it all the way, you moth-eaten crook, and we'll see if your frog-dicer can cut as well as my new sword! I'm wounded, that'd make things fair. Draw, if you're warrior enough!"
Everybeast held their breaths. Well, everybeast except Sheska. The weasel did not like Grotgard acting like he owned the Sword of Martin at all, and "my new sword" was the last straw. She moved like lightning. Grotgard, confident that his fellow warriors from the Land of Ice and Snow would respect a challenge to the chieftain, at least to the chieftain discredited by defeat, did not expect an attack from behind, and so he did not even got a chance to cry out, as her wiry paw pressed against his throat and her knife slid between his ribs.
"You viper!" After a second of shock, another fox, a relative of Grotgard, lunged forward, raising his axe to strike Sheska, but Lurthen started moving before him, as soon as Sheska struck, and used this time to grab a spear from the paws of an ermine near him. His throw was accurate and deadly.
Silence briefly fell again, except for the sounds made by the two dying foxes. Snowlanders were no strangers to violence and bloody squabbles lasting for generations, and perhaps for that exact reason such nonchalant double murder gave them a serious pause.
Lurthen was in command largely because he could think faster than the rest of the band. He spoke, loudly enough to be heard by everybeast: "You all know that whomever stops to seek booty for himself while a battle still goes on is betraying his comrades. And you all heard that this sword is cursed. Whomever risks bringing curse and doom upon his entire crew in the middle of battle betrays his comrades twice! Fates know, mayhap the curse of the sword is the reason for our defeat. I wouldn't touch this thing with a single claw, and had it been sharp enough to cut stone, I still wouldn't have touched it. Let the weasel and her teacher in sorcery handle it."
As Lurthen spoke he looked upon the Sword of Martin with no small amount of hidden regret. Cursed or not, it was the finest weapon he had ever seen. Many of the vermin who now crowded the clearing near the river where the band stopped to lick their wounds, eyed it greedily even now, as Sheska went to pick it up. That's why, of course, his rejection of the sword was guaranteed to make his words ring true in the ears of his superstitious underlings. With a bit of luck and further persuasion, he could completely shift blame for the defeat to Grotgard and the "cursed sword"...
Lurthen had plenty of other things to take care this evening, so it was deep in the night, when most of the rest of snowlanders were already trying to sleep, huddling to each other in an attempt to preserve some warmth and alleviate a bit their misery, when he remembered that he still had prisoners. He sent the two beasts captured in the initial skirmish away, with those who were wounded in that skirmish, and they found their way to Grotgard's crew and the boats. Even bone-tired, Lurthen was not a beast to postpone doing important things he had to do, and he deemed the reason for which he ordered to capture the ermine in the first place pretty important.
000000000000000
"So, you told me you had your reason. What it was?"
"You sure you want to hear it now?" Suran had returned to his usual, or even better than usual, mood. Half a bottle of brandy he swilled down to make pain a bit more tolerable, as Rowanbloom stitched together the wound on his footpaw, may have contributed to that. "We may at least call Sovna, so I won't have to retell this old crap all over again."
"Tell now. Give some distraction."
"And you stop talking." Rowanbloom just finished cleaning her needles and now approached Kethra. After the whole evening of cutting and sewing flesh, as she treated beasts with worse wounds, never mind what happened during the battle itself, she looked as if she was within a few minutes of dropping dead herself. "Or do you want your face to be uglier than it has to be?"
"All right, all right." Suran felt an itch in his ear, the missing one. Good thing Smalltooth got lost somewhere and could not hear the story. However economical with the truth Suran intended to be, the young ermine certainly would not have liked it. "It happened back then, when I was one of Kunas' captains, and nobeast doubted I was the strongest fighter on Ergaph. One day an unusual captive was brought to me…"
By the time Suran Longspear reached the place of battle, everything was already over. And albeit small, what a battle it was! Red blood painted the snow in splashes and its pools highlighted corpses, scattered around. As Suran stood, his tongue lolling, panting heavily, after a long run, he counted the bodies. At least a dozen vermin soldiers were dead as rocks, five more, including Hookfang the score commander, sorely wounded. The white ermines who inflicted this carnage were dead too, all three of them. None even armored! Had Suran and soldiers under his direct command not heard the noise of fighting, had his scouts and runners been not fleet of foot enough to join the fight in time, Hookfang's entire score might have been wiped out. It pretty much was, anyway. Examining the carnage, Suran had rather mixed feelings about not getting there in time to take part in the fighting. Well, at least the ermines died in vain, and the vixen they protected did not go far at all.
"One of 'em got away." The score commander Hookfang limped to Suran, using a spear to help himself walk. "I swear there was an ermine cub, and he got away. Send trackers to catch…"
"Catch? No cub can survive alone in the winter, you know, and only prey creatures are stupid enough to take in another useless mouth in the winter, and they only do that for their own. I don't care to stay in this part of the woods any longer, not after you wasted a third of our strength."
"I tried to trick those snowspawn, said they'd be allowed to go if they give the vixen to us, asked 'em real nice, hoped to make 'em lower their guard, or keep 'em talking until ye and yer beasts join us, and they answered with arrows!" Hookfang spat, his ire rising despite the pain. "And Lord Ubel said many bloody times, we have to kill or catch everybeast. Everybeast! He will hear ab…"
Suran's spear piercing Hookfang's throat prevented them from saying anything more. Suran grinned as he looked around. "Ubel will hear that scorebeast Hookfang died from his wounds, and everybeast around the vixen died as well. Right?"
His words were met with more or less enthusiastic nodding. Even those soldiers, who feared Ubel more than Suran, were not eager to waste any more time on tracking or searching. Surviving woodlanders and Marroch's marauders lurked somewhere in these parts of the island. And losses suffered just now were disheartening enough.
While soldiers were cutting branches to make stretchers for the wounded, Suran approached the real target of their hunt, held at spearpoint by four soldiers.
"So, you're Amber." From a distance the Seer vixen looked youthful and handsome enough to have quite a bit of fun with her on the way back to the castle. But up close Suran got a strange feeling. There was something uncanny in her features and movements, when she turned to look at him, as if she was some ancient creature, wearing an exceptionally well-made mask of a young one, and moving with unusual carefulness so that the mask won't slip. Suddenly Suran lost all desire to even touch her.
"Suran Longspear. I've seen you coming."
"Still trying to play a Seer, eh?" Suran chuckled. "Why didn't you get to the other side of the island, then?"
Amber's face had no expression. "Running from one's doom is useless. I can easily prove that to you, if you're bold enough to know your own fate."
"If I'm bold enough?" Truth be told, Suran felt shivers, but he was not going to admit that, neither to vermin who guarded Amber, nor to himself. "I always expected to die in battle one day, what new can you tell me, you old corpse?"
"Give me a minute and a drop of your blood, and we shall see." Suran hesitated. If there was efficacious magic anywhere in the world, it was the magic of blood. Amber smiled thinly. "Or do you believe in my magic enough to be afraid of me, after all?"
"Vulpuz'' fangs! I, afraid?!" Suran slammed the butt end of his spear into the ground hard enough for it to pass right through the snow and reach the frozen earth, drew a vicious-looking knife from his belt, cut deeply into the middle finger on his left paw, until a thick line of red blood smeared the flat of the blade, and showed it straight into Amber's face, almost hitting her on the nose. "Enough blood for you, or what?"
With delicate movements, Amber took his fist in her paws – as if she could possibly restrain his movements – and licked blood off the blade. Then she let go and made a step back. Suran shuddered visibly before he could control himself, when her eyes suddenly went glassy, impossibly widened pupils staring into him, and past him. Winter air suddenly felt a good deal colder. Stingingly cold. Suran could not tell if mere moments or minutes passed before Amber sighed and lowered her head, returning to what passed for normal in her case.
Then she looked at him again. "You will not die in battle, Suran Longspear. Yes, one night your strength will fail you, your spear will be broken, and your sword will be lost. But you will live, because of an enemy's change of heart. Then what you truly fear will come to pass, fate to which you prefer death will befall you, and you will become what you despise – thrice over. And when three more female beasts die by your paw, you shall know that this doom will await you before the moon is born anew. This is my blood curse upon you, this is…"
"You witch!" Suran moved before he realized what he was doing and with strength that surprised him later. He struck Amber with such force, that even without a knife in his paw this blow would have cracked ribs. But somehow she wasn't thrown to the snow.
Instead she grabbed Suran by the cloak on his shoulders. There was a surprising strength in her limbs – for a beast just stabbed through the heart. "There is no such thing as blood curses, but there is destiny, which I foretold. Now the white fool you serve won't get me alive..."
Even now Suran wondered whether Amber was trying to spit into his face or bite him as she died after those words, still standing up. Of course, that part he was not going to ever share with anybeast, no matter how drunk he was. Actually, remembering that day all over again made Suran believe he is still far too sober. "So where I was… yeah, I did as I promised and killed Amber nice and clean in exchange for her prophecy. Had no choice, you know. Ubel was mad at me anyway. I think it was then… it was then when he started turning King Kunas against me. And then there was another one I killed… You know, on the day Rugger and the rest tried to gang up, murder me, and I fought my way outta castle. So I was one more death away from, you know, that. My fate, my doom. Until today, heh."
Kethra was pretty drunk at the moment too. She finished the second half of the same bottle, before Rowanbloom started stitching up her face. And maybe pain from that operation made her unwilling to speak anything. She just walked up to Suran, threw herself groggily at him nearly knocking the fox down from the log on which he sat, and hugged him tightly.
It was at that moment, when Selvathy threw flaps of the tent aside and almost fell inside, breath heavy and eyes wild.
Author's Notes: Sorry, no energy to give any sort of extended comments on reviews at the moment (I'm still buried by work and had been for months), but thanks to everyone, and just so you know, I do read them all.