Jeff Salyards - Scourge of the Betrayer

Though Mulldoos obviously had no affection for me or Lloi, he didn’t voice a complaint. To me, he said, “Take me to the cripple.”

I led him to Lloi’s body, still slumped against a tree.

Mulldoos squatted down in front of her and wiped his hands on his pants. He touched one of the strips of cloth on her face, and she moaned. “She wasn’t the captain’s pet, I’d smother her out of her misery right now. Gods be cruel.”

I pointed out that the horse also probably broke some of her ribs or her sternum, and then added that she sustained these injuries saving Hewspear’s life (leaving out my own, as that would dilute the point I was making).

Mulldoos spit on the ground and glared at me. “Where’re your broken bones, then? Your tattered flesh? Hewspear, the witch, both half dead. What of you?”

I said nothing, which proved to be a poor choice (though, in my meager defense, I doubt there was a good choice). Mulldoos rose and stood in front of me, face close, voice guttural. “I met plenty of sacks of shit in my life, and some of them were at least good in a scrap. But not you. No. Worthless. You’re a worthless sack of slimy shit, you hear me?”

I wanted to protest that I might not have acted quickly, but I did act, and though I didn’t prevent their injuries, I might have prevented them from being worse, but I knew that would only prompt more abuse, and so I kept my mouth shut and tried not to flinch as his spittle sprayed on my face.

He grabbed the crossbow out of my hands and started to walk away. I called after him, asking what he intended to do with Lloi. I thought he’d round on me in a fury, but he only said over his shoulder, “You got two arms. Only thing that makes you better than her. Carry her, you dumb horsecunt.” Then he kept walking.

I slowly knelt next to her and looked at the poor girl’s face, or what was visible at least. Her eyes moved behind the lids, and I thought they might flutter open any second, and she’d scream, but she barely stirred at all as I slid my arms beneath her.

As gently as I could, I lifted her off the ground, and then she twisted in my arms, and I whispered to her, tried to soothe her, though I doubt it did any good. She thrashed briefly and went limp again, falling against my chest like an exhausted child. Like an exhausted one-handed child, half-eaten and kicked to death by a horse. The colossal unfairness of the thing washed over me, and I felt more tired than I imagined possible as I carried her back to what remained of our party.

To avoid the clinging brambles and scrub, I circled around the trees towards the tethered horses. It didn’t take us long to complete our circuit, and from the outside, the copse seemed much smaller than when we’d been in the middle, dodging behind tree trunks for our lives. Everyone else was saddled up already or just about to, and the final captive was on a horse, his ankles ties together beneath him, his hands tied firmly in front. Although, given the mass of bruises on his face, and the treatment the underpriest had received, I didn’t think he’d be trying to flee anytime soon.

No one looked at me as I made my way to my horse. I looked for Braylar, but he’d already ridden down the small hill. Mulldoos and Hewspear were alongside him, Hewspear bent over, hunchbacked.

I considered asking one of the Brunesmen to help me, but the rest of the riders began making their way towards the Syldoon, and they ignored Lloi and me as if we were trees. I tried to convince myself Braylar would come back for me. Of all of us, he knew Lloi the best, and beyond that, depended on her the most, for things no one else could possibly understand. But he was only interested in leading us back to the city. I’d nearly forgotten about the lancers, and the underpriest’s men that might still be roaming the wild, closing in on us.

I tried to climb into the saddle with Lloi in my arms, and nearly fell. I shifted her slightly and she cried out again. I told her we were heading home, and finally made it into the saddle on the third try.

I adjusted Lloi as best I could, but there was no way to make her comfortable. I tried not to jostle her as I flicked the reins and clicked at my horse, who slowly carried me down the hill. Lloi groaned and whimpered with each step the horse took, and I rode up alongside the Syldoon, my arms already beginning to burn from cradling her.

Hewspear looked over at me, face ashen, ribs clearly paining him. He nodded once, as if trying to stiffen my resolve or steel me for what was going to be an agonizing ride for her, and an exhausting one for me.

Braylar started off first, Hewspear and Vendurro on either side, and then Mulldoos, Xen, and I followed, with the Brunesmen and prisoner behind us as we set off towards Alespell once more. The roiling clouds had promised a heavy rain, but when it finally came, some miles later, it was just a drizzle. A full-on rain would have washed away some of the blood, sweat, mud, and gore that marked all of us. But the thin rain did little more than spread the filth around and lower spirits even further. The only redeeming feature was that Lloi seemed to go slack again, her whimpering subsiding.

I tried to think of anything except my shaking arms and aching back. I remembered an artist at Rivermost, a talented muralist who, like me, earned his coin by appealing to the vanity of major merchants and minor nobility. I couldn’t remember his name, but I recalled one mural he did, on a cracked wall just outside a tavern he used to frequent. While nearly everything he painted for his patrons was full of color and crowded with lively characters, the wall outside the tavern was a scene of the aftermath of a war. Soldiers were leaving a battlefield strewn with corpses. Most of the soldiers were sitting in wagons, while a few rode, but they weren’t celebrating the spoils of victory, laden with booty. They didn’t even look grateful their lives had been spared among so many who hadn’t. Almost to the man, their heads were hung, even the horses’ heads were low, and they were the most dejected company I’d ever seen depicted, bandaged and battered, but still riding. Everything about the mural-colors, expressions, posture, mood-was muted, slack, sad.

While I was impressed with the atmosphere the muralist had manufactured, I couldn’t understand how the victors of a battle could look so utterly lost or dejected. I thought he must have erred, never having witnessed real combat or is effects before. But looking around at our small, bloodied band, I realized that the artist’s only failing had been in not truly capturing all the horrible details. He had bandages, but didn’t show the gaping wounds. He showed grim faces, but not the jaw set so tight teeth might shatter as broken bones shifted with the ride. He showed corpses on the battlefield, but couldn’t illustrate how it feels to survive when comrades and friends have fallen.

I promised myself if I ever made it back to Rivermost, I’d find that muralist and commission him to paint the brightest, most cheerful tavern scene imaginable, filled with impossibly beautiful serving girls and ruddy-cheeked carousers, and a hundred mugs clinking in happy toast.

And then I began to pray. Not to Truth, because of course Truth isn’t interested in prayers. But to Countenance, to ease Lloi’s suffering, if only a little, prayed as earnestly as I ever prayed for anything before. It kept the wet miles rolling by as I came up with elaborate vows for what I would do in return if my prayers were answered. Quit Braylar’s “service” immediately. Chronicle only for those men and women who had nothing whatsoever to do with war. Join a reclusive temple so I could copy and recopy only old tomes and fantastic bestiaries. Leave chronicling behind altogether, and dedicate my life to service at a leper colony. I vowed that if Lloi recovered, I would carry her off from her fickle patron who left her behind for an archivist to save. I prayed because I fervently wanted to see Lloi recover, and because it distracted me from my own growing pains and weakness.