Moving on

Matthias felt as if someone had wrapped his head with a bunch of blankets, because all sounds around him were all sorts of distorted and refused to make sense even in the slightest. There was a person that stepped out of the crowd and knelt down beside the three of them. His voice was quiet and calm as he spoke some words of comfort that Matthias was unable to catch properly and it echoed around in his head as if it came from far away. The voice became louder as the person shook his shoulder until it was so loud he wanted to hide under a mountain of blankets to block it out.

Matthias turned and realized it was Berwald kneeling down beside him. He held Matthias' discarded cloak and pushed towards him. "Dry off your hands and get up." The tone of his voice was still gentle but held a firm undertone that left no room for discussion. "People are about to panic and we need someone to convince them this will not beat us. Torleif is in no shape to do that right now and we need a leader." Berwald jerked his head towards Torleif still crouched on the ground, eyes staring blankly ahead as he mumbled to himself. "We need you to step up and fill that role like you were meant to from the moment you stepped between the king's soldiers and Sigurd. Many has considered you as a second in command for all this time and trust your decisions. We need to get our people moving out of the north before the king get word and can send soldiers after us when we are vulnerable. We can't let them see both you and Torleif lose it at the same time."

Matthias did not get a chance to protest. Berwald hauled him up to his feet and wrapped the cloak tighter around his bloodstained hands until Matthias finally started drying them off by himself and swallowed several times to lessen the lump that seemed to reside in his throat. Berwald took back the cloak and rolled it up into a ball to the blood was not visible any longer.

Matthias clenched his hands into fists to hide the shaking of his fingers and put on a mask of determination. He had to change his mindset drastically if he wanted to convince the rest of the rebels that Brynjar's death was not evidence that they had taken water over their heads by declaring war on the king. Everything that was bothering him had to be at the very back of his mind to a time when he had time to sort through them without it affecting anyone else. Berwald was right, the people needed him and he could not afford to focus on his own problems and mistakes when hope balanced on the edge of a knife. He stepped up on the chopping block, held out his arms and let out a loud whistle to gather the attention of the crowd.

"People," he yelled and then paused to gather his thought and find the right words for an encouraging speech. "I know what just happened looked really horrible, but we have to remain calm and not panic. Our prisoner escaped and it is only a matter of time before the king finds out what happened here and sends reinforcements. You all need to gather your belongings and start packing up the camp, leave anything that cannot be salvaged behind; we have to travel as light as possible."

The crowd hesitated for a moment, sharing glances among each other and then looking from Torleif, Matthias to the body of Brynjar in the arms their leader. Torleif nodded towards the people. "He is right, listen to him and prepare to leave." His voice was thick with barely restrained grief and anger that sounded so foreign coming from the man that had led them this far.

"I'm sorry," Matthias muttered weakly and looked at Torleif. The words caught in his throat and it did not look like the veteran was hearing it anyways.

Tino came walking towards them with a second cloak in his arms and carefully put it over Brynjar to cover him from prying eyes. "The others should not have to see this," he whispered and stepped back, apparently uncomfortable.

Matthias knelt down beside Torleif and carefully wrapped the cloak a bit tighter around Brynjar.

"How do we move on from here?" Torleif whispered quietly. "We thought we had everything under control and you saw what happened. That thing…" he spat out the words "he murdered Brynjar right before our eyes. Stole his life away from him and then his injuries healed. How do we even fight something like that?"

"We go forward" Matthias replied just as quietly. "We can't give up now or we'll be crushed. I will not let that happen, as long as I still live. There is a way to stop the king and this commander; we just have to find it."

Matthias had to pry open Torleif's hands to make him let go of Brynjar's body when Berwald knelt down to help carry the body away. Together they brought the body away from the clearing while Torleif stayed behind, staring at the red stained snow.

Most remaining crowd that had not yet moved on to their other duties, parted and made an open for them as they walked through on the way to the medical tent. The only place they could figure out to put him until they could make some sort of memorial service.


Eir let out a short cry of surprise when the two of them made their way through the tent flap and realized that the bundle in their arms could be nothing but a body. "What happened?"

"It's Brynjar," Matthias answered. "The commander killed him."

Eir stopped dead in her tracks, mouth open in horror and disbelief.

The two boys laid down the cloaked body on the far end of the tent and out of view from most people. "We have to bury him before we leave," Berwald said. "But for now it's best to keep him out of sight."

Eir took a couple of moments to collect herself and then looked the two boys over. She frowned when she realized what state Matthias was in, the shirt and cloak he wore had stains of fresh blood over the cut on his arm. "You were supposed to take it easy," she scolded, but there was a back tone of worry lacing her voice. "Get your shirt of young man; I have to make sure you haven't ruined my needlework."

Matthias reluctantly complied, shrugging off the outer coat and loosening the strings on his shirt before taking it off. It was first now that some of the adrenalin had left his system that he started to notice just how much the earlier injuries were itching and burning. He had focused so strongly on everything else, so the pain remained buried in his mind. Carrying a full grown, muscular man from the execution place outside to the healer's tent had most likely caused further damage to the wound a suspicion that was confirmed when he finally managed to wrangle off the shirt. The partially healed tear on his arm was open again and slowly oozing blood.

Eir sighed tiredly and gestured for Matthias to sit down on one of the free cots. Her mouth drew in a thin line of concentration as she moved around the tent to fetch supplies. "That will have to be stitched back together… again." She pointed towards his arms and made sure to thread the sowing needle within his line of sight as revenge for having ruined her earlier work.

A few steps away Berwald was scoffing his feet. "I'll just leave now. Someone has to help sort through the weapons and armor quickly to figure out what we can afford to bring with us and what will have to be left behind."

Before he left however, Berwald's gaze lingered on Matthias chest where the bandages had ridden down to reveal the upper part of the angry, red burns from the garnet crystal and then glanced quickly at Brynjar's body. Berwald was not the most verbal of people, but after years of knowing each other, Matthias knew the intellect hidden behind the stoic facade and now he could practically see the wheels in the smiths brain turn as if he knew there was a connection between the burns on both Matthias and Brynjar's chest.

Matthias looks after him as the tent flap falls back into place but is distracted from his thought when Eir sharply jabs the needle in his arms to begin stitching the wound back together. She lifts and unimpressed eyebrow at his attempt at holding back a groan of pain and returns her attention to the stitching.

She continues her work in silence. Matthias is unable to tell if she is angry with him for not listening to her earlier advice and strict instructions or if she is simply mourning the loss of Brynjar in her own way. Constantly having to think about the next battle and moving on to avoid an ambush or attack has left them all little time to deal with the losses they have suffered. This battle was their greatest victory so far and still it had cost them some of their greatest losses.

Now Matthias almost wished he did not have time to process what had happened, because a wave of guilt washes over him. He was the one to blame for Brynjar's death, allowing Lukas to manipulate the situation and not stopping Brynjar for falling in the obvious trap. Torleif had broken down in front of their people and let everyone see him in a moment of weakness. Who knew if he would be able to continue leading them with the same will force he had shown earlier on? Who knew if the rebels even wanted to continue fighting after having seen what just one man had been able to do to them?

Then there was his conflicting feelings towards Lukas. He had no idea of what to do and he had nobody that could give him proper advice. Berwald wanted him to lead the people as Torleif's second in command, but if anybody knew that he had withheld information from them all and trusted an enemy soldier, they would never trust him again or blame him for everything that had happened.

He snapped out of his thoughts yet again from another jolt of pain, this time it was from Eir tightening a fresh bandage around his arm, much more forcibly than necessary. "Don't you dare move a step," she commanded sharply as she put down her supplies. "Get some rest while you can."

Matthias just watched as she moved on to her other patients. Most of them were unconscious and the few that were awake seemed so weak they barely had energy to respond to her words with pained groans or whispers. When she had made her round around the tent, she moved on to where Brynjar was laying. She carefully moved aside the fabric and talked quietly to herself as she went over every single injury. "Poor boy almost scratched open his own throat tying to breathe," she muttered as she ran her fingers over the scratches on the veteran's throat. She then pulled aside more of the fabric and gasped when she saw the man's chest. She turned her face firmly away from the patients so they would not see her face, but Matthias could hear the quiet sniffle that left her.


The tent remained mostly quiet for the next few hours. Eir moved around the tent, rolling up bandages, mixing herbs and tending to the patients. Outside the atmosphere is entirely different, judging from the loud voices and the number of people stomping past, all of them most likely working on breaking camp before their march south.

Then the tent flap opened and a gush of cold air came rushing in. A young man came storming inside, gasping for breath. "Matthias. We need your help outside." His words came gushing out. "Torleif is not talking to us and refuses to leave his tent. Somebody needs to organize the retreat and it would be best if it were somebody everyone felt we could trust. Someone like you."

"Where is Berwald? Could he not help out?" Matthias asked.

"Berwald is busy" The messenger gasped. "And I think most of us would be more comfortable with leading us when Torleif is unable to do so."

Eir sent and angry glare at the messenger just before she erupted in a long string of vicious curses. "It will not be the blade of an enemy that takes your life," she growled at Matthias. The messenger looked nervous and kept throwing glances towards the door as if he was ready to bolt towards it at a moment's notice. "It will be your own stupidity that takes you. You've already torn your stitches once going against my orders and you still need a lot of rest and should not even be out of bed."

"But they need me" Matthias insisted weakly.

Fury shone in Eir's eyes and Matthias wondered how a woman with so much anger had decided to become a healer in the first place. She snorted angrily, tossed Matthias a fresh, clean shirt and then stormed off towards a different section of the tent, separated only by a thin sheet and only giving a vague illusion of privacy since all her movements behind it was visible through the fabric. "I should just kill you myself and have it over with" she growled angrily as the sheet rustled behind her.

The messenger looked hopefully at Matthias. "So you'll come then?" He asked.

Matthias nodded weakly and tried not to wince as he donned the new shirt and struggled to keep his fingers from shaking as he tightened the strings and moved on to put on the much thicker winter cloak again.

The messenger led the way out and moved quickly between the tents. They followed the sound of raised voices that clearly came from a group of people arguing about something. "I told you we have to leave the weapons behind." One voice yelled. "We should just lay down our weapons and just return to our homes. We should collect what little we have and offer it to our king begging for his mercy, hoping that he will be kind enough to give us a chance. We have more of a chance facing winter with little food rather than fighting against massive troops and magic wielders."

His words drew a storm of angry arguments from the others. "Giving up will definitely lead to our death. Even if we give up fighting the king will never forgive any of us and kill us any way. And then he will display our bodies in the capitol as a warning to others."

"We don't know that for sure" the first voice insisted. "We could try sending a message to the king and surrender."

Matthias straightened his back and marched right into the group of people. "You will do no such thing! Just because we lost Brynjar, does not mean that we are defeated. Do not forget that just a day ago we won the most amazing battle with much less causalities than what we could have hoped was possible. There are always losses in war; most of us know that already. All of us have lost someone in either this war or the last one. That means you know the fight will take more lives before the end, we all knew that when we started."

The first man looked shamefully down at his feet while some of the others that had stood up to him looked fiercely determined.

"We have already told you that every able-bodied man should help break down the camp. The tents should be the last to go; we probably have to stay one night here before we leave. Bring the weapons and armor to Berwald or the smith; they know what is worth salvaging and what we should leave behind. Eir is in charge of medical supplies so bring those to her. With all the food we gathered, some of it should be send to the villages that have lost their supplies to their king to make sure they have enough to feed themselves for the winter. "

He split the group up in smaller sections and gave them all a separate task to focus on, hoping that it could keep them too busy to despair and argue amongst one another.


Once the crowd dispersed, Torleif came stumbling out of a nearby tent, most likely his own and the crowd had gathered here in the first place so they could discuss their situation with the supposed leader. He had most likely heard the entire discussion but chosen to ignore them.

"It would almost seem like you were born to do that" Torleif remarked with a slur. His breath held a stench that that closely resembled that of e brewery. "They listen to you so easily."

"They would have listened to you just as easily," Matthias said quietly in case anybody was listening in on their conversation. "If you had cared to speak to them instead of drinking what must have been the entire storage of alcohol we must have brought with us. Why did you drink now? That was foolish."

Torleif sighed and drew a hand over his face. "I just had to get away. This shit is so much more complicated than we first thought. I had forgotten what it was like to lose your friends. Brynjar was my closest comrade after the war; we both knew what it was like. I thought I had seen it all, the worst possible ways for men to die. But I was wrong, the world always finds way to be crueler than you thought possible." He stumbled forward and almost fell. Matthias stepped forward to give him some support.

"We better get you back to the tent. You should get some rest before we leave early tomorrow; sleep off some of that alcohol."

Torleif muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, speech slurring even further, but he did not protest when Matthias led him back inside the tent.


The next morning, the tents was taken down and packed the moment day broke and the camp was bathed in pale winter morning light. The last thing they did before they left were to make a small memorial pyre for Brynjar. The body had been wrapped tightly in linens so they would not have to see his injuries and Torleif had lit it without a single word and immediately afterwards mounted his horse and rode off ahead of their company.

Matthias was on a horse in the very front of the line along with Torleif. The war veteran was silent, deep in thought and clearly suffering from a massive hangover. Occasionally he was sipping from a small bottle hidden under his cloak.

Tino and a small group of scouts galloped past the entire caravan almost immediately after they had set out with the intention of scouting out the paths ahead to make sure the army they had fought had no incoming reinforcement that could ambush them.

The rest of the caravan was slow, the carts were loaded as heavily with supplies as the animals could handle. More people were on horses this time than on their way up north. There had been some losses of horses as well as men in the battle, but they had also managed to catch quite a few of the animals that Matthias and Tino had set free as a distraction and those horses had been well trained in battle, a good addition to their herd.

The air was bitingly cold and their breath came out in white puffs, but despite of that Matthias never felt cold. His skin felt as if it was catching on fire and the longer they traveled the worse it became. Just spending the entire day on horseback at a slow pace was enough to leave him exhausted. He brushed it off as being a cold at first. Many had gotten sick over the past few days in the cold and violent coughing had become a common occurrence. Every time they stopped for the day, Eir had her hands full trying to ease the symptoms of those that had gotten sick with herbal teas she had made.

One evening when Matthias had a few moments to himself in a tent and he took off his shirt to check how his wounds were healing. Eir had told him to change bandages every other day and apply a salve to the burns on his chest. They had looked more or less all right the first days, the wound on his arm as closing up nicely despite him having torn his stitches and had them redone the day of Brynjar's death.

The burns on his chest however had been healing very slowly, barely having gone from angry red to a more irritated pink the first few days. He had not wanted to bother Eir when she was so busy with everybody else, but now he was beginning to see the fault in that decision. The burns that had started to heal had gone back to look red and yellowish around the center where the crystal had been in contact with his skin. It was inflamed and hot to the touch in the cold air of the tent. He decided he would talk to Eir if it got any worse.

On the next day's march, his fever got worse. The motion of the horse was steady and calming his mind began to blur as the head made him dizzy. Slowly, dreams started taking over his vision and the rest of the world faded to black around him. He was slowly losing his grip on the reigns and slipped out of the saddle. He was out before he could even hit the ground.