The Dotard

by Greg Curtis

  Then something burst through the smoke. Something big and icy that moved like the wind. It reached out a limb for her. Carrie screamed and tried desperately to leap to one side, but far too slowly. The ice golem struck her, sending her flying. After that things were a little vague.

  There was pain and she felt herself tumbling. Fear and confusion soon took over her thoughts as her body hit the ground and she started tumbling some more. Somewhere in the distance she could hear a woman screaming. After a while it occurred to her that the woman might be her.

  But it stopped, somehow, and she found herself lying on the cold ground, hurting, and with no idea where she was. She couldn't see anything. She couldn't hear anything except the almost continuous thunder of battle. And she could barely think through the pain. Pain that grew a thousand times worse as she tried to breathe.

  Her ribs were broken. She understood that. Other things were probably broken too. Any more than that she didn’t know save that she couldn't move. Just then all she could manage was to remain where she had been thrown, and try to collect her wits. Try to breathe as shallowly as she could as she spat out the dirt and blood in her mouth. And try not to think about whatever was happening all around her.

  If another ice golem came for her there was nothing she could do about it. Nor if a drake sent a stream of fire down on her from above. She would be burnt to death where she lay. As it was her body already felt like it was burning up from the inside. She also found that she couldn't cast a healing spell on herself. Her body wasn't working properly. Nor was her mouth.

  So she remained where she was, and hoped it would end soon. Prayed that things would work out and the Priests would win. And that her grandfather would be freed of this demon inside him.

  The long minutes crawled by, one after the other. And still the battle continued. The Priests continued their chanting. The drakes kept roaring. The ice golems continued to shake the ground, as they pounded across it, cutting swathes through the army. Weapons kept firing. And through it all she heard the sound of men crying out in pain.

  She was sure it had to finish sooner or later. But when it did she feared that she wouldn’t see it. What little strength she had left seemed to be running out. The thick smoke all around seemed to be darkening. Her breathing was becoming laboured. As for the pain, what had once felt like sharp stabs of a bread knife now felt more like a blanket that had wrapped her completely in its embrace.

  The last of Carrie’s hope faded as the darkness rushed up to greet her.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  What a mess! What a terrible, bloody mess! It was the only thought running through Edrick's head as he surveyed the scene of the battle and hunted for survivors. All around him was a sea of ash, and dead bodies – both those of the drakes and the army. At least the ice golems had had the decency to melt, leaving behind no trace of where they had fallen. Other summoned creatures however, had taken their place. Flying sharks for a start.

  Perhaps the hardest thing to bear was the silence. Silence punctured by the sounds of those who had fallen but were still alive and crying out in pain, and by the cries of women as they searched for their loved ones. Many of the camp followers were the wives and lovers of the soldiers. When the battle had raged the noise had been deafening and terrible. It had filled him with fear and horror. But the silence was worse. It was a soul-destroying sound.

  It had been a horrible battle. All battles were horrible he supposed as he lifted a piece of a dead drake off the body of a soldier. But he had never before been in one and so had never experienced the reality. But even if he had been, he doubted anyone had ever seen one like that which had just taken place. He had never seen drakes screaming down out of the smoke-filled skies laying down rivers of fire. Or men being torn apart by giant golems made of ice. He had never heard screaming like it, nor smelled the acrid odour of flesh burning or the tang of blood. He had never struck at enemies with his most deadly spells, nor seen them survive them. He had never known the nearness of death. Not like he had.

  Yet somehow, he had moved beyond those things. The fear had faded, and the memories of it too. The smell had stopped bothering him so much some time before. Even the sights of all that blood and gore had little effect on him any longer. He had spent long hours simply walking the battlefield in a sort of daze, his senses numb, his emotions simply overwhelmed. Now he even felt numb to the faces of the fallen and the sight of the terrible injuries they had sustained. But then he was feeling half dead inside himself.

  As he worked, trying to find the survivors and bring them to the healers, he couldn't help but think that this was his doing. He had been the one to speak to the Priests. That had been his idea. And everything had followed from that. Maybe it was his guilt and shame that had destroyed his ability to feel? Or maybe it was fear. The fear of what he might find, each time he turned another body over. Of whose face or whose bright blue eyes he might see staring lifelessly back at him.

  Edrick stepped up to the body of another man – a soldier by the looks of his tattered uniform – and felt a moment of relief when the man let out a moan of pain. So many had been killed that it was good to find another survivor.

  “Over here!” He yelled to the distant soldiers with the stretchers and waved at them. They had been busy, running from one searcher to another, and ferrying away the injured.

  Edrick quickly sent a spell of healing into his flesh while he waited for the others to arrive as he had so many times before. Praise Sirtis there were a lot of survivors. But there were also a lot of dead. Surely thousands of them! Half the army had surely been killed. Though of course it wasn't only soldiers that lay dead on the battlefield. There were plenty of Priests, wizards and camp followers among the dead as well. The smoke had blinded everyone and people had run in all directions in their fear.

  The drakes had come as a horrible surprise in the midst of the battle. Until then he had thought they were going to win easily. That it was only the ice golems they'd have to face. They had seemed to be Wilberton's army after all. The storm had begun to blow out. The Priests had seemed to be in command. And he, like everyone else, had hoped that it would all come to a peaceful end shortly. But when the drakes had fallen on them, everything had fallen apart.

  The soldiers had broken from their ranks and run. Many had died. Cannons and rifles had discharged in their thousands, creating an almost continuous thunder. And once the smoke from the weapons and the drake's fire had blinded everything, fear had gripped his heart. There had been no way of knowing what was happening. Whether they were winning or losing.

  And yet they had actually been fortunate. Had the drakes been smarter creatures or better commanded, they would have struck first for the Priests, and the battle would have ended there and then.

  He still didn't know what the outcome was. Perhaps they had won through? If they had though then it didn't feel like a victory. All he knew was that it had ended and he was alive. He was luckier than many others in that. And it was truly only the God of Misfortune that had saved him. Andal had spared him his misfortune. But only because he had had too many others to bestow his black blessing on. Death could have come from any direction at any moment during the battle. There had been no way of stopping it. Nor of knowing how or when you were going to die. Or even what would kill you.

  The fact that he was lucky to have survived was once again with him as he worked with the soldiers to roll the injured man on to the stretcher, and then saw the bullet hole. It wasn't the first he had seen. A great many of the dead had fallen to the rifles of their comrades. In the smoke and confusion the soldiers had had no idea who was friend and who was foe. They had seen a figure in the murk and fired. But then he supposed it was a merciful way to die. The ice golems had torn soldiers apart. And the drakes had bitten and burned their way through the army. A bullet was kinder. But whatever form death would have taken as it approached, there would have been no warning. Nor any way of defending yourself. Death would have struck far too
quickly, whether it was by drake, golem or fellow soldier for that.

  After the wounded man had been carried away Edrick moved on a few steps to the rest of the drake's broken body where he could see a few limbs sticking out from under it, and then sent a spell of lightness into the corpse. That made it possible for him to toss the corpse away to reveal the men underneath. Unfortunately, he swiftly discovered, it was too late for them. Three men lay there, crushed by the weight of the falling beast. He checked to see if any still breathed, though he knew there was no point. Their forms were simply too broken.

  “Over here!” This time he called to the soldiers carrying the dead away, and moved on, not wanting to be there as they dumped the dead on more stretchers.

  Edrick continued slowly picking his way across the battlefield, doing what he could and hoping to find the people he knew. Carrie, the Priests, fallen wizards. Even his father. But the field was simply so large and there was so much destruction and blood, that he knew he might never find them all.

  And the burning just made things worse. Drake fire didn't leave a lot behind. Mostly just charred corpses. It meant he had no idea if any of those hundreds of blackened husks he had seen had once belonged to people he knew. No way he would ever find out.

  Many others were doing the same as him. Some were wizards using their spells just as he was. Most though were soldiers searching for their comrades. Their friends. Behind him there were two sets of wagons. One to carry the wounded away to the healers and physicians. The other to carry the bodies away to the graves already being dug. Bodies that often had no name and which would be buried in unmarked graves.

  Every so often he looked across to Coldwater. Or rather, to the ruined town that had once been Coldwater. It had been wiped from this land and he doubted it would ever exist again. Because when he looked at it he saw nothing but destruction and despair. Still, the storm in the skies above it had also gone. That had to be a good thing he thought. Did that mean the Priests had defeated the demon? He didn't know. Maybe they'd only weakened it? Or maybe it had simply escaped and gone somewhere else? The Priests weren't saying anything.

  “Carrie!” Edrick stopped and called her name once again, hoping for an answer. But why should he get an answer this time when the hundreds of times before that he'd called for her there had been none? He wasn't surprised when he heard nothing back.

  “Father! Lord Baraman!” Edrick called for his father as well, but again got only silence. Was his father dead? And if he was, how was he supposed to feel about that? Edrick didn't know. But he did know was that even after all that had happened he didn't want his father to be dead.

  Edrick called for the other wizards he knew. Yelling out their names one after another. Again no one answered. They were the closest thing he had to friends he supposed. And some of them were surely dead. Certainly none answered him.

  Once his throat began to grow hoarse from shouting, he moved on, and again began methodically checking each of the new bodies he came across.

  And so the hours passed as he moved from one body to the next. Giving each of the survivors he found a spell of healing and then calling for others to take them away for more sustained healing. Slowly the sun travelled across the sky, rising higher until it reached its peak, before beginning its long, slow decline towards the distant hills. But he did not find either Carrie or his father.

  Just as the sun was setting on the horizon however, he came across someone he knew – Brother Reginald. The Brother had been hurt. He had blood trickling down his head and a leg that was bent the wrong way. But he was still lucid and Edrick was able to ask him some questions as he sent his magic streaming into the Brother's broken body and waited for the men with stretchers to arrive. About Carrie and the others. And about the battle. He managed to ask him probably the only important question the Brother could answer. If they'd won.

  “Win?” The Brother looked at him strangely, as if he'd said something completely beyond reason. “Could anyone call this winning?”

  Edrick nodded. He agreed completely with the Brother.

  “We fought the beast. We sanctified the ground, as much as we could. We've trapped him somewhere in that town. And we've weakened him. The wizard will die in time and the demon will return to his darkness. We've defeated him but we did not manage to destroy him.

  “But I would not call that winning.”

  Edrick thanked the Brother for his words and for the tiny sliver of cheer he'd offered him. The hope that this was at least ended. But he didn't completely believe it. He couldn't. A few minutes later the soldiers with the stretcher arrived and lifted him on to it. Even as the injured Brother was carried away Edrick returned to his search.

  Night fell in due course and he threw up a few spells of glowing light into the sky to help him as he worked. Others did the same. And he carried on. They all did. Criss-crossing the battlefield again and again. Searching for those who had survived. But by the time the moon was high he realised that they weren't going to find many more. Things had grown very quiet all around him. Now most of what was left on the field were pieces of drake. Those who lived had been carried away to the healers and physicians. Those who didn't had been ferried away to lie with the other dead as they waited to be buried.

  Still, he carried on as did the others. He had to give whoever still lived the chance to be found. Because it would be the most terrible thing to be lying out here in the midst of all this death, hurting and unable to cry out for help.

  Dawn when it finally came, was the time he and the others finally gave up, accepting that there were no more bodies to be found. Only pieces of bodies. And he was exhausted. They all were. So he went with the others to the tent that had been set up for them, and drank some hot tea and rested for a while. He even closed his eyes.

  In time he told himself, he would join the others in the makeshift infirmary and lend his skills to healing the injured. He had some useful spells. First though he needed a little rest. Perhaps some time to make sense of a world in which it seemed that many of those he knew and cared about, were gone. Maybe all of them. A world that he had helped bring about.

  He needed to simply stop.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Carrie woke from dark dreams to a world of suffering. The fact she had awoken at all though surprised her. She was sure she should be dead. Her memories of what had happened were vague, but she remembered the pain as the ice golem had struck her distinctly. She also remembered the snapping of her bones. That memory was vivid where everything else was a blur.

  After that everything she could remember was no more than fragments. Pieces of memory that didn't even make sense. But she remembered screaming in the darkness as the hand of an ice golem had wrapped itself around her and hoisted her off the ground. The white-hot agony as it had squeezed her broken flesh. Carrie presumed she must have passed out after that because her next memory was of at some point opening her eyes to see the ground moving beneath her as she was being carried away. And the ground had been a long way beneath her. After that she remembered being dropped here. Dumped on the ground like a piece of rubbish. None of it made much sense to her.

  But one thing she did understand was that someone was calling her name. A man. And she knew that man. She knew his voice. She loved that voice. She also knew that he was worried. It was his voice that had brought her a little further back to the world.

  “Grandfather?” She turned her head to the side so she could see him, but since she was lying face down and couldn't lift herself up, she only saw his feet and the bottom of his tattered robe. She knew that robe though. She'd washed it so many times. It was him!

  “Carrie! Praise Sirtis you're alive!”

  His voice was filled with concern, something Carrie hadn't heard in a very long time. For so long he had been completely wrapped up in his spells or more recently his imagined grudges. Filled with paranoia and madness. Was it a good sign she wondered? Or evidence that she was in worse shape than she realised? But it
didn't matter. She had finally reached him, somehow.

  “Grandfather!” She knew a moment of happiness at being with him again. “You sound like yourself again! It worked! You're free!” The joy she felt overwhelmed everything.

  “No! I'm not free. I'll never be free. And child, you have to go!”

  “But –?”

  “No. No buts Carrie! Heal yourself and run. I'll protect you. But you have to run. Before it's too late.”

  She didn't understand. Admittedly she couldn't see much, mostly just his feet and the clay of the road beneath them. But things seemed peaceful. He was right though about her needing to heal herself. Reaching out for her magic she concentrated on the simplest and best healing spells she knew and started casting, something that was made more difficult by the fact that she was lying face down. The magic made a small improvement as it sang through her veins but not as much as it would have had she been able to use her hands more freely. At least it drove the worst of the pain away and allowed her to start thinking a little more clearly.