Well of Sorrows (80 page)
Authors: Benjamin Tate
They sat in silence a long moment, Colin between them, his chest rising and falling, slower than normal, but still moving.
“Take it out,” Moiran said. When the healer began to protest, she insisted, “Take it out! And if you have any of the water of the ruanavriell, use it on him. I don’t care how rare it is, or that he’s human.”
The healer shot her a black look, but he set about arranging his bandages, removing needle and gut and a small vial of the precious pink-tinged water of the ruanavriell. He wet a cloth in the bowl and passed it to Moiran, then ripped Colin’s shirt down the middle, exposing his chest. Moiran began wiping the blood clear, the cloth instantly stained a dark red. The skin beneath was a pasty white, bruised in a few places, and more blood seeped from the wound around the knife, sluggish and thick. She frowned but continued her work as the healer prepared.
The healer, gut threaded and in hand, hesitated, looking at the handle of the knife.
“What’s wrong?” Moiran asked.
“Taking the knife out may kill him.”
“I thought you said he should already be dead,” Eraeth muttered.
The healer replied. “Twice over if you dragged him all the way here from the tent.”
Moiran snorted in disgust. But before she could say anything, Eraeth crouched down, grabbed the handle of the knife, and jerked it out of Colin’s body.
Colin spasmed, chest heaving upward, his eyes flying wide as he coughed up more blood while rocking over onto his side. His eyes caught Eraeth’s, held them for a moment. Eraeth couldn’t tell if the human was conscious, if he knew what Eraeth had done.
But the healer did. Cursing, he pushed Eraeth out of the way, rolled Colin onto his back once he stopped coughing, tilting his head to the side so the blood could drain, then turned back to the chest wound.
When he leaned forward, vial ready and needle poised, Moiran glaring as she fought the dark flow of heart’s blood, Eraeth nodded to the two Phalanx and stepped out into the tent’s corridor.
He stood for a long moment, hand clutching the bloody knife in one hand, trying to control the tremors caused by the thought of Colin’s death, the nausea that burned like acid in the back of his throat. He swallowed, steadied himself, then let his hand fall back to his side.
Moving to the front of the tent, he stepped out into the afternoon sunlight and stared up at the cloudless sky. Distantly, he heard the low rumble of fighting and he turned, his ear automatically picking out the direction of the disturbance.
The urge to ride into battle made his hands twitch. He crossed his arms over his chest to control them, forced himself to wait, even though he knew Aeren had ridden into battle with the Rhyssal House Phalanx.
Aeren had ordered him to take care of Colin. Not in so many words, but he knew his lord.
And Colin was Rhyssal-aein.
A short time later, Moiran emerged from the tent, wiping her hands free of blood with a wet cloth. She squinted into the sunlight and turned toward the sounds of battle.
After a long moment of silence, she said, “He’s still alive, although barely. The water of the ruanavriell—the Blood of Aielan—it helped to stanch the flow of blood, but the healer says Colin is still bleeding inside, that the damage there is . . . extensive. He’s sealed the wound, but he does not expect him to survive. The ruanavriell is not enough.”
“Colin was given into my care by Lord Aeren himself.”
She faced him, hands on her hips, her eyes intent. “I owe him a debt myself,” she said. “For Thaedoren’s life, if you are correct, as well as my own. There’s nothing more to be done here.”
Eraeth hesitated. The knife he’d drawn from Colin’s chest weighed heavily in his hand, the blood already drying.
“Go,” Moiran said, her voice gentle. “I will take care of him. You need to protect your lord.”
Eraeth handed Moiran Colin’s knife, pressing it into the soiled cloth she still held, even though she still wore the bloodstained dress and had a smear of dried blood on her cheek. “Return this,” he said, and then he dug into the pocket hidden in the folds of cloth of his shirt beneath the hardened leather of his armor and removed the cloth-wrapped vial Colin had given him on the plains, the vial that contained the Lifeblood.
He held it before him a long moment, staring at the clear liquid through the glass. He could see Colin’s pained expression, heated with anger, as he handed it over, still hunched in the grass from the seizure. Those seizures had decreased after that, until he’d begun returning to the forest to converse with the Faelehgre about the Wraiths and the sukrael.
The Lifeblood hurt him, but Eraeth knew it could save him as well.
“Take this,” he said gruffly, handing the vial to Moiran, catching her confused gaze and holding it. “If he asks for me, give this to him. But only if he asks.”
Moiran nodded.
And then Eraeth stepped away, letting his concern over Colin fall behind, resting it on Moiran’s shoulders. He motioned to one of the nearest Phalanx. “A horse! Now!”
Ten minutes later, he dug in his heels, the horse leaping forward, charging out of the camp and over the ridge, toward the battlefield below.
Aeren’s cattan met the Legionnaire’s blade with a clash, metal scraping against metal as it slid down toward the hilt. The grizzled, bearded man howled and jerked his blade away, thrusting Aeren’s cattan to the side, swinging wide. Sweat drenched the man’s face, droplets flung from his hair as he twisted, bringing his sword around for another strike—
But Aeren was quicker. His cattan sank into the break in the man’s armor beneath the armpit, in and out in the space of a breath.
The man’s roar choked off and he staggered backward, the momentum he’d built up for the swing faltering and dragging him off-balance. He tripped over the body of a fellow Legionnaire and went down, but Aeren barely saw him, spinning where he stood, searching for Thaedoren.
The Tamaell Presumptive was still astride his horse, surrounded by at least twenty members of the Phalanx, all from House Resue, and as Aeren’s gaze picked him out of the mass of men and Alvritshai fighting on the open battlefield before the Escarpment, the leader of House Resue and the Evant bellowed a challenge and charged toward the thickest group of Legionnaires, his mount plowing into the morass without hesitation. His Phalanx roared after him, cattans already bloody.
Aeren moved toward the group, his own escort—slightly scattered and dealing with the last of the men who’d hit them hard an hour before, as the three armies collided on the plains—falling in around him with a sharp order.
“What now?” Dharel asked, trotting alongside him. His face was dark, a trail of blood down one side of his neck from a cut near his ear.
“Back to the Tamaell Presumptive’s side,” Aeren said. “That last wave spread us out too far. We need to regroup.” He didn’t mention the loss of his horse, cut from beneath him when the humans had first struck, their front line so overwhelming it had split their forces nearly in two. Thaedoren had divided the army into two fronts, had struck the field at the head of a vee, each side ready to face the two opposing forces, the left—consisting of Houses Nuant, Licaeta, and Baene—confronting the dwarren, the right—Houses Redlien, Ionaen, and Duvoraen—facing the Legion. After careful consideration, he’d ordered Lord Khalaek’s men to follow Khalaek’s caitan, not trusting Khalaek’s men to follow any other lord’s directions on the field. House loyalty was fierce, and most of Khalaek’s men were already grumbling over the seizure of their lord. Thaedoren then ordered Aeren to stay close, leaving Lords Jydell and Peloroun in charge of the southern flank.
The strongest Houses were facing the Legion. They were the greatest threat. The Legion were better trained, had better armor and longer reaches, and there were more of them. And the Legion had the greater conviction, the most hatred. Aeren could sense it on the field, had seen it in each of the men’s eyes as they attacked him. A good portion of the Legion here on the field were older. Old enough to remember the previous battle on this land, when the Alvritshai had turned on their allies and assassinated their King.
The memories of that battle crowded forward. Not the fighting, but the final stages of the attack, when they’d pressed the dwarren to the lip of the Escarpment . . . and then over.
The screams as they’d fallen—both dwarren and the higher, more piercing shrieks of the gaezels—haunted his dreams still.
“Look!”
Aeren slowed and spun, caught sight of Auvant, then turned to look in the direction his House guardsman had pointed.
The northern edge of the line, near where Lord Peloroun stood, had begun to crumble. Legion poured through the breaks.
“Signal House Duvoraen!” Aeren snapped, his horn-bearer scrambling to pull the curved horn from its place at his side.
The short peals of the horn rang out, ordering House Duvoraen to aide Peloroun. Aeren watched, breath held, as Peloroun fought to keep his line intact. Lord Jydell attempted to send some of his own force, but his men were already locked in desperate battle with the Legion.
As Peloroun’s line finally sagged and gave way completely, House Duvoraen, led by its Phalanx caitan instead of its lord, charged into the middle of the fray in a tight arc around Lord Jydell’s men. Aeren expelled a held breath in relief.
For a long moment, the Legion that had broken through held. Alvritshai fell to human swords. Horses stumbled and sank beneath the crushing waves of men, killing more men and Alvritshai as they panicked. The caitan’s mount reared, and Aeren heard Dharel suck air between his teeth as it wavered, threatening to tumble backward and crush the Duvoraen’s temporary leader. But then he regained control, and the horse dropped, hooves kicking, one crushing the head of a Legionnaire, the man falling like a sack of grain.
The caitan roared, so loud Aeren could hear it through the chaos of the battle on all sides, the sound flat with distance. The Alvritshai responded, both Duvoraen and Ionaen. They surged forward, gaining momentum as they charged, like an ocean’s wave approaching the shore. They crashed into the rough line the Legion had formed and shoved it back, hard, enough that the Alvritshai line rejoined with Lord Jydell.
Aeren allowed himself to breathe, grimacing at the stench of the battlefield. The smell of blood was sharp, permeated with death, an undertone of churned earth and trampled grass beneath that and, faintly, from somewhere close, smoke. Satisfied that the line would hold, Aeren turned back toward the Tamaell Presumptive. He hadn’t been certain how the caitan of House Duvoraen would react to his lord being supplanted, but it appeared that his fears were unjustified. “Call House Rhyssal to me.”
The horn-bearer nodded, raising the silvered horn to his lips. As the call to regroup faded, Aeren heard the pounding of hooves, close, and turned to see Eraeth pulling to a halt on the outside of the assembling group.
“Lord Aeren,” Eraeth said. “You called?”
Aeren grinned, Dharel and Auvant doing the same to either side. “It’s good to see you. While Dharel and Auvant are more than competent, it’s been strange not having you fighting by my side.” But then his grin faltered. “Shaeveran?”
All of the surrounding guardsmen shifted. Word of what Colin had done in the tent had been passed among them almost instantly, and nearly all of them had seen Eraeth carrying him from the field, had seen the knife in his chest, the blood that even now soaked the front of Eraeth’s shirt.
Eraeth’s expression darkened, and when he spoke there was apprehension in his voice. “I left him in the Tamaea’s care. A healer tended him, but he couldn’t say whether he’d survive. I left the Tamaea the vial Shaeveran gave into my care on the plains.”
Aeren nodded, as those of House Rhyssal who’d continued to gather to the call murmured, passing the word. “Her debt to him is as great as ours,” he said, and saw Eraeth relax slightly. Then the edge of his grin returned. “And Shaeveran has a habit of surviving longer than he has any right to.”
A few of the men chuckled. Aeren felt the moment of dread, of depression and despair, slip away and thanked Aielan’s Light, sending a prayer for Colin along with the thanks. He had his doubts about Colin’s survival—he’d seen the wound, seen the blood and the paleness of Colin’s face as Eraeth gathered him into his arms—but he’d be damned if he let his men see them.
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