by Duncan Pile
At the very last, blue light washed over him, sinking into his body and flooding it with power. Within moments his vision started to clear and the pain returned in full force. He was alive! Lilly was healing him! He could feel Loreill’s relief through the bond, but the elemental was also dreadfully concerned about Lilly. The water spirit was enduring agony of her own, extreme pain caused by taking spirit form while out of her natural element. But there was no way around it. Gaspi would die if not for her intervention, and even now Gaspi could feel his body trying to give up. Lilly had her hands full stopping that from happening. A major artery in Gaspi’s thigh had been severed, and in that moment he felt it seal under the spirit’s ministrations. Lilly’s attention shifted to his back, or more precisely, a point of pain deep within his lower back. Gaspi could sense the gravity of the wound as Lilly poured healing power into it. The blade that had pierced his back had sliced deeply into his liver, a death wound under any other circumstance.
Lilly’s power knitted the tissue back together, restoring blood flow and repairing the lacerated veins surrounding it. When the spirit’s presence withdrew, she took bodily form and lay next to him, her furry little chest rising and falling in pained exhaustion.
“Thank you Lilly,” Gaspi muttered. He didn’t even attempt to sit up. He had lost a lot of blood – the sheets were soaked with it, and it trailed in thick spatters across the floor. He needed more healing and he needed to rest, but there was no time for it. Emmy and Lydia were in the next room, and the Foreman and his men had the very worst of intentions. “Emmy’s in danger,” he said. “Can you give me any more?”
Lilly lifted her weary head, but it fell back down again against Gaspi’s leg. She had clearly given all that she could. Loreill spoke through the bond; it was just a feeling, a fleeting sensation, but if Gaspi had to put it into words it would have meant one thing: they’re coming!
At that exact moment, the walls of the house started to shake, battered by sudden winds. The roof above him rattled, lifted at one corner, and then flew off as if it was made of parchment. Suddenly Gaspi could see the stars above him. The thick supporting beams holding the walls in place were ripped out of their frame and sent smashing into nearby houses. The walls tumbling outwards, the house collapsing around him without harming a hair on his head. He was lying abed, right out in the open! To his left, the Foreman and his men stood frozen, looking around them fearfully. They were ringed around another bed, on which Emmy and Lydia knelt, surrounded in a force shield that Emmy had summoned – feeble by Gaspi’s standards but enough to hold a group of ordinary men at bay.
“EAGLE’S ROOST!” a voice shouted, and Gaspi looked up to find Rimulth riding in on the wind. He was surrounded by a nimbus of power, the air spirit circling him in rapid, darting circles, glowing intensely with elemental power. The Foreman and his men shouted at the terrifying sight and ran from the ruined house, but Rimulth thrust out a forearm and swept them from their feet with a mighty current of air. They tumbled across the ground, cutting and bruising themselves on the hard stone. One of them cracked his head hard against a rock and was still, but the others rose to their feet and started to run again. A booming detonation rocked the very gates of Ironhall, only a few dozen feet distant from where they were. The huge gates ripped noisily from their hinges and exploded in a thousand shards. The Foreman and his men covered their faces, but they were peppered with slivers of wood, cutting their exposed arms and scalps and sending them sprawling to the ground again. Gaspi lifted his head in time to see Voltan, Heath, Sabu, and Baard stride through the broken gates with faces like thunder. Voltan led the group, holding glowering fistfuls of power, and the other four looked just as dangerous, striding across the ground towards the cowering men.
The entire community of Ironhall had arisen at the noise. Most of them stuck their heads out of their doors, took one look at the fearsome warriors entering their gates and pulled them back in again, but a few foolhardy men ran out at them, brandishing weapons.
Sabu took the first three men, snapping the first’s neck with a flying kick. He seized the dead man’s blade, beheaded the second attacker, and took the third’s sword arm off at the shoulder. The armless man was left writhing in the dust, clutching his severed limb to his chest.
Two men ran at Heath, swords drawn. The druid chanted loudly, lifting his hands and letting elemental power fill them. The dragon flapping above him screeched loudly, ecstatically, and a fiery stream shot from Heath’s hands, transforming the attackers into wailing pillars of flame. Heath intensified the stream, burning them to ash in a matter of moments.
Baard took the last two men, barrelling into them and stopping their charge as if they were children wielding sticks. He took each of them by the side of the head and smashed their skulls together. Both men died instantly, crushed by Baard’s formidable strength.
“COME ON!” the giant roared, turning from left to right. “COME AN’ FIGHT YER COWARDS!” But no-one else appeared.
Voltan paced up to the Foreman and booted him hard under the ribs. The stocky man flipped to his back and stayed there, gazing up at Voltan with the look of a man who sees his death coming. The warrior mage looked around, seeing Gaspi and the girls in the ruin of the house.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yes we are,” Emmy responded. Gaspi was too weak to shout so he just lifted a hand.
Voltan turned his attention back to the Foreman and his men. “You could have just let us go,” he said quietly.
“Too late now,” the Foreman said.
“Tell us where our belongings are,” Voltan said, drawing a concealed dagger from within his clothing and holding it to the Foreman’s throat.”
“No need Voltan,” Rimulth called. “They’re over here.” Gaspi lifted his head to see Rimulth standing with Emmy and Lydia, holding one of Sabu’s scimitars aloft next to the open door of a large closet. Voltan stood over the Foreman, and for a moment Gaspi thought he was going to kill him, but the warrior mage straightened up and sheathed his knife.
“You don’t deserve it, but we will let you live.” The Foreman didn’t move, watching Voltan with disbelieving eyes. “This is no game,” Voltan snapped. “Get up, the lot of you.” Slowly, uncertainly, the men got to their feet, brushing the dust from their clothing and keeping wary eyes on Voltan the whole time. “We are not murderers,” Voltan said. “You will provision us for our journey, and we will be on our way. But if any one of you shows a single sign of duplicity, we will destroy this town and everyone in it. Understand?”
“Yes,” the Foreman said bitterly.
“Baard, Sabu, go with him,” Voltan said. “Bring clean blankets, food, and cloaks. We’ll wait here for you.”
The Foreman turned and walked away with his shoulders bowed, flanked by the two warriors. Gaspi watched him as he went. After so convincing a defeat he looked smaller somehow, the charisma and strength gone from him.
He heard a rush of footsteps and glanced up urgently, only to find Emmy bearing down on him. She fell to her knees next to him and kissed every last inch of his face!
“I’m so sorry Gasp,” she said. “I’ve been such a fool.”
Gaspi put his arms around her and smiled in surprise. He kissed her on the mouth. “Getting stabbed might have been worth it.”
“Don’t even joke about it!” Emmy said, pulling back. “Where were you stabbed?”
“There and in my back,” he answered, touching his thigh. “Lilly already healed the wounds. I think I’m just weak because I lost so much blood.
Emmy glanced down at the red-soaked sheets, seeing them clearly for the first time. “Sheesh,” she breathed. “You must have almost…”
“I think so,” Gaspi responded sombrely. “The whole world was going black, and then Lilly was there. She damaged herself trying to heal me.”
“I know, I felt it,” Emmy responded, reaching out and stroking the exhausted elemental. Lilly opened her clear blue eyes a moment and chirruped fain
tly. “Why did you transform you silly thing?” she asked, running a tender finger down the side of Lilly’s face. She looked back at Gaspi. “She could have healed you without changing.”
“She needed to sink inside my body. There was no other way.” Lilly looked up at her wearily, and chirruped once more. “Can you help her?”
“I can help a little. Hold on,” she said, closing her eyes and resting a hand atop both of her patients. Light blossomed beneath her palms, and Gaspi felt a trickle of strength flow into him, taking the edge off his exhaustion. After a few moments, Emmy stopped and took a deep, gulping breath. “That’s all I can do for now,” she said. “We need to get you both to some water so Lilly can recover properly. Then she can replenish your strength completely.”
“Okay, thanks,” Gaspi responded. He did feel a little stronger, but he was still in a bad way.
“I can’t believe I nearly lost you,” Emmy said, gazing intently into his eyes.
“Well you didn’t,” Gaspi said, his heart filling with unexpected happiness as the girl he loved showed her love for him in return. He might have been joking with her about getting stabbed being worth it, but in that moment he found he meant it with all of his heart.
Twenty-two
The Foreman returned with provisions within half an hour. Voltan sifted through the Foreman’s offering, choosing what they needed and discarding the rest. To Baard’s enormous pleasure, they found several long sausages of cured meat, along with rounded disks of travel bread and a small sack of root vegetables. The giant wanted to take a dozen wineskins with them too, but Voltan wasn’t having any of it.
“I’ll carry ’em m’self!” the giant pleaded.
“No wine,” Voltan said firmly. “I don’t want you drunk when it’s time to do battle.”
Baard grumbled to himself as they continued choosing provisions, but Gaspi was pretty sure even he could see the sense in what Voltan was saying. They replaced their old, dirty blankets for new ones, along with several cloaks, and Zlekic even found a new set of boots. They retrieved all their stolen belongings from the ruins of the Foreman’s house. Rimulth brought Gaspi’s enchanted items over in a bundle and handed them to him without saying a word. He turned to leave, but Gaspi gripped his arm.
“You did good Rimulth,” he said.
The tribesman shook his head. “It was my fault they were captured in the first place.”
“Nonsense. We were all exhausted – it’s no wonder you fell asleep. Besides, the Foreman didn’t need you to be asleep for his plan to work.”
“How so?” Rimulth asked.
“It’s obvious when you think about it. He was waiting for either of the girls to go to the outhouse. If you’d been awake, you wouldn’t have stopped them going would you?”
“No,” Rimulth said.
“He would have taken the first girl that came out, expecting us to notice when she didn’t return, and then exactly the same thing would have happened. We’d have gone out ready to fight, and he would have threatened to kill her if we didn’t surrender. There’s nothing you could have done to stop it. The Foreman just got lucky, and ended up with two girls instead of one.”
“That makes sense,” Rimulth said, the tension draining from his shoulders. “Thanks Gaspi. I feel a whole lot better, but even so, I still fell asleep on my watch.”
“And then made up for it in spectacular style,” Gaspi said with a grin.
Rimulth smiled slowly and nodded. “It was pretty spectacular eh?”
“Just a bit!” Gaspi said with a grin.
A much happier Rimulth went to check his own possessions were accounted for, and before long the group was ready to go. The first light of dawn had already coloured the horizon pink, so they could set off straight away.
Zlekic took Voltan aside before they left, explaining that the trail was impossible for horses from there on, so Voltan told the Foreman and his men that they were leaving the mounts with them for safekeeping. Taurnil spoke up at that point, making it clear that the animals were not to be mistreated. He promised that one day they’d be back to claim them, and there would be serious repercussions if he hadn’t been looked after to his satisfaction.
It was time to go. Gaspi was far too weak to walk, so Voltan drew him into the air on an invisible stretcher, just as the healers had done to wounded combatants in the Measure. It was a very strange sensation, floating three feet above the ground with no visible means of support! To start with he kept trying to throw his arms out to stop himself from falling, but they just hit the resistance of Voltan’s summoned stretcher. Once they’d passed through the gates, Voltan stopped the group and addressed the men of Ironhall one last time. The Foreman stood in the centre of the ruined gates, his arms folded in a final show of belligerence. Now that he believed he wasn’t going to die, he seemed to have recovered something of his customary bluster. What he hadn’t noticed was the way his men were gathering behind him, their eyes on his back.
“If you follow us, you will die,” Voltan called.
“Be on your way,” the Foreman said, gesturing sharply towards the rocky path leading up into the mountain pass. “I’m done with you.”
Voltan turned his back on the Foreman and walked away, leading the group away from Ironhall’s shattered gates.
“Why did you let him live?” Zaric asked, his tone disbelieving and a little angry.
“I would have cut his throat from ear to ear!” his brother said. “He tried to kill Gaspi, and who knows what he had planned for the girls!”
“I didn’t let him live,” Voltan said quietly.
“Eh?” Zlekic said, but there was no need to explain. Before they’d even set foot on the mountain path, a hoarse cry sounded from behind them. Gaspi looked back. There was a scuffle kicking off beyond the gates.
“His men will do for him,” Sabu said, and sure enough, silence fell within moments.
“I won’t be mournin’,” Baard said with a chuckle.
“Me neither!” Gaspi muttered.
…
They climbed the mountain pass for several hours before they found a good place to stop and rest. Normally they’d travel throughout the day, but Gaspi was in dire need of rest, and both Emmy and Lydia had been shaken up by their ordeal too. They also had to build harnesses for Loreill and Lilly, whose bodily forms were not suited to climbing. The elementals had ridden up the slope on Voltan’s summoned stretcher, but the warrior mage was anxious to limit the use of magic wherever possible, and intended to dispel the stretcher as soon as Gaspi was better. They stopped in a sheltered, shady nook, cut deep into the face of the mountain. A stream splashed down from above, feeding a small pool at one end, and deep grass carpeted the ground, making it soft and yielding. A single pine tree stood sentinel over them, its thick branches offering shade. As soon as Lilly saw the stream, she pushed herself off the stretcher and limped across the ground towards the pool. She practically fell into the water, where she instantly transformed in a flash of light and zipped endlessly about the pool, a bolt of cobalt energy. Emmy sighed happily as she felt Lilly’s relief, the elemental’s pain and exhaustion replaced by swift, burgeoning health. Gaspi was pleased for her, happy that the spirit was free from pain, but the elemental wasn’t the only one that needed refreshment. They were all tired from a broken night’s sleep, and Gaspi in particular needed to be healed and then to rest up before they could make any more progress, so Voltan decided that the best thing to do was to stop there overnight.
“What about the Darkman?” Talmo asked.
“There’s no point killing ourselves just to keep ahead of it. If we rest up now, we’ll make better time tomorrow, and every day after that,” Voltan said.
“Voltan’s right,” Zaric said. “The terrain only gets harder from here onwards. We need to be in good shape.”
“I’ll keep watch,” Talmo responded, grabbing the first branch of the pine tree and hoisting himself up the trunk.
“The air spirit can do it,” Rimul
th said. The hawk cried from above, circling way above them.
Talmo paused a moment, but then continued to climb. “Two sets of eyes are better than one,” he said, moving quickly from handhold to handhold, and soon enough he was halfway up the tree. Selecting a broad spot where two thick branches joined at the trunk, he turned around and shuffled into position, his back pressed against the trunk and his bow held across his lap.
“See anything?” Voltan asked.
“No movement,” Talmo responded. “I can see for miles. Nothing’s going to approach without our knowledge.”
“Good,” Voltan said. “Come down when you need a break.” Talmo didn’t respond, and Voltan started directing people to their tasks. Heath, who’d been even quieter than usual since leaving Ironhall, set about making lunch. The others sat or lay on the grass, groaning as they dropped their packs and stretched their limbs. Baard lay flat on his back, his arms and legs splayed like a starfish.
Voltan lowered Gaspi to the ground and released the spell that had suspended him. “Can I leave you to it?” he asked Emmy and Lilly, who were already at his side and ready to start using their powers. Emmy’s hand slipped into his, squeezing firmly.
“Yes, he’s fine with us,” Emmy said absently, her eyes exploring Gaspi’s face. Voltan left them and Emmy began her spell work. Lilly sank into Gaspi’s body and Emmy started to chant gently, her voice rising and falling like the splashing waterfall that fed the pool. A cool wave of power washed through him, easing his aches and ushering him into a dreamlike state of contentment. He closed his eyes and let it happen, Emmy’s voice merging with the waterfall until he could barely tell the difference. He drifted liked that for long minutes, or perhaps it was hours, until Lilly’s presence finally lifted and Emmy’s spell-song came to a close. He blinked, squinting against the brightness of the sun. He sat up experimentally, looking around the plateau through narrowed eyes, the sunlight bleaching it of all colour until his eyes adjusted.
