E Stricker - The Almanac

“Just rest. You’re safe now, at least,” he said.

In truth, Benja was a long way from being out of danger. Illya built up the fire then coated a branch in sap to burn for light before setting off in search of medicinal plants. Benja was asleep before Illya finished making the torch.

Illya crashed through the underbrush in the darkness, disregarding how thorns and branches caught at him, tearing his skin. He held the flaming branch high above his head, casting a circle of shifting light ahead. He knew he couldn’t go far from Benja. Bleeding, and weak, he would be easy prey for the Terrors and anything else that was out there.

Trying to focus on the immediate need, instead of the overwhelming flood of worries, he scanned the ground for the fuzzy little fronds of yarrow.

There were none anywhere. Why was it that you saw hundreds of them when you were foraging for something tastier? He thought wistfully of the rows of dried plants hanging from Samuel’s walls and ceiling.

ILLYA BUILT A little shelter around his cousin. Benja laid in it, too weak to move, for four days. Illya did everything that he could think of to treat the wound. Not having any clay pots, or even a piece of rawhide to hang over the fire and boil water in, he layered the broadest leaves he could find, crossing them back and forth into a bowl to hold water. He placed it over the fire on a stack of rocks. After a little while, the outer leaves burned away, but the inner ones stayed intact long enough for bubbles to rise to the surface of the water.

He tore fresh bandages from his shirt and cleaned them with part of the water. With the rest of it, he brewed an infusion of yarrow and a little wild garlic and used it to wash the wound.

It had taken a long time to find yarrow, but once he had, it was plentiful, and there were enough of the fuzzy leaves to pack into the wound in the place of the filthy fabric of his shirt. He feared the ’fection, but, having done everything about it that was in his power, he tried to put it out of his mind.

Now the immediate concern was all the blood that Benja had lost. He could not sit up without lying back again, dizzy and wan. Knowing that Benja needed meat to recover, Illya ranged away from him as far as he dared in the search for it. Game was sparse now that he was closer to the village, and though he had set traps, he had not caught anything.

On the fifth morning, after boiling water and cleaning Benja’s wound, he went out along the trap line again.

His fears weighed down, pressing on his mind. Time was dwindling by while his family was stuck in prison at Conna’s mercy and the village faced the approach of winter unprepared. Meanwhile, the Rovers who had left the footprints by the spring could be anywhere. They could have attacked the village already. Most of the people there didn’t even believe that the Rovers existed anymore. Already divided by their internal problems, they would be an easy target.

Through it all, Benja was growing weaker and weaker as the days passed. Illya was desperate to find meat. Still, trap after trap came up empty. When he reached the end of the line, there was a sprung trap, with paw prints nearby.

Usually, he would have reset the trap, encouraged that there had been something in the area, even if it had escaped. But as he looked down at the little line of prints, he sunk to his knees in despair. The enormity of what he was facing threatened to crush him.

He couldn’t stay out there, waiting to catch food where there was none. He was doing his best to battle the forces arrayed against Benja alone, but it wasn’t enough. Benja needed Samuel. He knew in his deepest heart that, despite all of his best efforts, he was losing the battle. Benja was going to fade until he slipped away.

Illya knelt beside the sprung trap and the little prints in the dust for a long time and cried.

Eventually, it eased, as if he had indeed washed the despair from his heart with the tears. He blinked them away and found himself on the other side of the flood.

The trap and its one missed opportunity didn’t matter, not really. He knew what he had to do. There would be no way to sneak into the village unseen, not with a gravely wounded man. To get to Samuel, he would have to pass right through the center square. There was no way to go through at night, not with the gates shut. He would have to carry Benja through the village in broad daylight, in full sight of anyone who happened to be there, and hope that they would let him get to Samuel before shooting him down.

They would kill him eventually, and it didn’t matter. At least he wouldn’t be around to see Sabelle marry Conna. All that mattered was getting Benja to safety and getting his family out of prison. After that, maybe he would be able to warn them about the Rovers. They would all have a better chance then.

He went back to the little lean-to, gauging the position of the sun in the sky.

“Benj, we are going to Samuel,” he said. Benja did not respond.

He was pale to grayness. A sheen of sweat coated his skin, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused. He moaned when Illya tried to move him. Though he was shivering, his face was hot with fever. Illya swore. He pulled the bandaging off the wound and found that it was far too hot. It was red and smelled sickening.

No red streaks were running towards Benja’s heart, though; that, at least, was good.

There was a little of the yarrow infusion left from that morning, and Illya used all of it to clean the wound as well as he could. All the while, he talked.

“It’s going to be okay, Benj. You are going to be fine. Everything will be alright,” he said. Benja groaned intermittently, muttering incoherent words, as if he was already on the other side, talking to someone there. Maybe his sister, Rachel, or Illya’s father.

Illya clenched his jaw as he worked. Benja couldn’t die; he wouldn’t let it happen. There were no red streaks now, and there would be no red streaks. He would get to Samuel, and the Healer would know what to do.

There was an area where a flap of skin had stayed attached at the edge of the wound. Illya had cut away the grossly mangled part on the first night but left that bit, unsure if it would be better or worse to keep it. He dabbed gently at it with the leaves.

The spot sunk under the pressure of his fingers and yellow pus oozed out from under the flap. Frantically, Illya pressed on the skin all around the area. He found more. He cleaned and rinsed, cleaned and rinsed, then collapsed, sagging against the wall of the cave. Benja had caught the ’fection.

Squinting through the glaze of moisture across his vision, he took a handful of clean, soaked yarrow and packed the wound. When the ’fection came, first there would be heat and redness then the puss and fever. After that came red streaks. Death always followed once they came.

He couldn’t carry Benja himself and make good time. Instead, he built a travois much like the one Conna had made for Charlie on the day of the planting.

He had used most of his shirt for bandages and he didn’t have enough cloth to tie the travois together, so he joined the branches with strips of bark soaked in the stream until they were flexible. The idea came when he had remembered Ban, soaking wood to shape it into cups for the water wheel.

It was late afternoon by the time he got Benja on the travois, but Illya didn’t care. He would walk all night and all day after that if he had to. He hoisted up the poles and dragged it onto the path.

At sunset, Illya didn’t stop. Doggedly, he went on, putting one foot in front of the other, pushing himself forward in a daze, though his head spun with thirst and hunger.

The going was unbearably slow. A journey that would have taken a few hours if he could have run stretched out as he dragged the weight of his unconscious cousin over roots, and uneven ground. After the night chill had burned away, the sun rose hot. Sweat rolled down his forehead into his eyes. His fingers were slippery and numb with the continuous effort of gripping the travois poles, but he pressed on.