The Fire Dragon

‘Should we get old Grodyr to attend you?’ Clodda said.

Lilli shook her head and took the cup, then gulped more water. The two women sat back on their heels and waited till she finished.

‘I had a vision.’ Lilli could hear her voice croak, all hoarse. ‘Branoic’s been wounded. Badly.’

They stared at her for a long silent moment. She braced herself against meaningless reassurances, but none came.

‘Oh gods, how horrible!’ Elyssa said. ‘I’ll pray for him, then.’

‘And so will I,’ Clodda said. ‘There’s not much else we can do.’

‘That’s true,’ Lilli whispered. ‘I wish it weren’t, but it is.’

The chirurgeons back in camp heard the battle begin, a distant shouting on the wind. For some while they paced back and forth beside their readied wagons, but soon enough the wounded began to arrive. Some men could still ride, others came in the company of friends who left them to rush back to the slaughter. With them came news: the Boar forces had received the shock of their life to see Maryn waiting for them. The other part of the enemy army, that under the command of Braemys’s allies, had broken fast – its men had been bandits, mostly, was the judgment of those men who could talk well enough to consider the matter.

The sun was still fairly high in the sky when the tide of wounded began to swell. This time the slightly wounded men brought in the badly wounded, and most of those died while the chirurgeons were trying to help them. Yet their presence meant that some troops had the leisure to help their comrades, that the battle was turning Maryn’s way. Distantly on the wind came the sound of silver horns, screeching for a retreat. Nevyn prayed that it was the Boars pulling back. A man with a bloody scrape down one arm confirmed Nevyn’s guess while he waited his turn.

‘The Boars are running like a lot of scared pigs,’ the rider said. ‘I’m no captain, my lord, but I think me they were only planning on making one try on the prince and then retreating if they couldn’t kill him straightaway.’

‘What?’ Nevyn turned briefly away from the patient lying on the wagon bed. ‘They were making straight for the prince?’

‘They were, my lord, but the silver daggers, they were right around him.’

For a moment Nevyn felt fear like a cold stone in his stomach. If the prince were slain? Yet he had only a little while to wait before he learned that Maryn was safe. He had just finished binding his informant’s arm when he heard someone yelling his name. He turned and saw the prince himself, his mail hood pushed back, his pale hair plastered to his skull with sweat, running towards him.

‘It’s Branoic! He’s bleeding too badly for us to bring him all the way in.’

Nevyn grabbed his readied sack of supplies and raced after Maryn as he led the way back. By then the tide of wounded had turned to a flood. Men brought them in fast, dumped them near the wagons, then rushed back to their horses to return to the field. Together Nevyn and Maryn picked their way across the camp, strewn with the dead and dying, horses and men both. In the middle of the worst of it they found Caudyr and a little clot of silver daggers clustered around someone who lay on ground turned muddy with blood. At the prince’s order, the men parted to let Nevyn through. He saw Branoic with Caudyr kneeling beside him, pressing a wad of bandages to Branoic’s face. Red oozed through the pale linen. Branoic struggled to sit up.

‘Lie still!’ Caudyr snarled.

Maryn fell to his knees behind Branoic’s head and shoved him back down by the shoulders. Caudyr gasped out a thanks.

‘Where is it?’ Nevyn knelt beside his fellow chirurgeon.

‘Cut his mouth in two,’ Caudyr said. ‘A lucky stroke just under the nasal of his helmet. It’s deep, and it won’t staunch.’

Caudyr lifted the wad quickly and pressed it back even quicker, but Nevyn had seen what he needed to. The blow had split both lips, shattered teeth, then bitten deep on either cheek, almost to the ear on the left side of his face. No doubt the skull lay cracked under that part of the wound as well. Branoic’s eyes sought him out, and in them Nevyn read a desperate resignation. He knows he’s going to die, Nevyn thought. Aloud he said,

‘Let’s get it stitched up. We daren’t move him till we do.’

Prince Maryn rose, glancing around him. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, you piss-proud lot of slackers! Get out there and find the rest of our wounded!’

The men rushed off at his order, but the prince himself lingered, staring down at his rival. Nevyn had no time to wonder if Maryn were glad or sorry to see Branoic at the gates of the Otherlands, and in a moment, the prince turned and walked away. Nevyn rummaged in his sack and found a long needle, threaded and ready.

‘Nevyn, your aid!’ Caudyr yelped.

Nevyn turned back to Branoic and found him choking on his own blood. Caudyr had put one arm under his massive shoulders and was trying to raise them whilst keeping the bandages pressed on the wound. Nevyn grabbed the wad and let Caudyr lift. Branoic’s face was dead-white and sweating; the skin of his eyelids stretched thin, a pale bluish white. Suddenly his cloudy eyes rolled back in his head. He coughed, spasmed, flailing with one arm and waving it near his head, as if he were trying to find his face.

‘It’s no use,’ Nevyn whispered.

Caudyr nodded. Branoic convulsed again, both arms working, and somehow managed to pull himself up to a sitting position. For the briefest of moments he stared unspeaking at Nevyn’s face; then he arched his back and fell in an oddly graceful gesture to die against Caudyr. With a sigh the chirurgeon laid the body down upon the ground and crossed its arms over its chest. Nevyn felt his cold skin crawl with the presence of spirits close at hand, clustering on the etheric plane.

‘Ah horseshit!’ Caudyr muttered. ‘That’s one death I’d hoped never to see.’

‘Me either.’ Nevyn could barely speak. ‘Well, there’s naught to be done here. You’d best get back to work. I’ll follow in a moment.’

Caudyr nodded, then got up, shaking his head, and hurried off, heading back to the circled wagons and his improvised surgery. Still kneeling, Nevyn opened his dweomer sight and looked up, searching for Branoic’s etheric double. Dimly he saw great shafts of silver light, vaguely man-shaped, surrounding the pale blue form that once had been Branoic’s soul. The Lords of the Elements had come to guide him – no, her – to the Light that lies beyond death. In her true female form she was staring down at the male body she had worn, as if perhaps in disbelief.

‘My thanks,’ he whispered to the lords. ‘My solemn thanks.’

They nodded his way. Nevyn closed down the sight and scrambled to his feet, grabbing his sack of supplies. There were other men dying on this field, and his duty lay with them, no matter how badly he wished he could say farewell to the soul that he would always think of as his Brangwen.

Maddyn had spent the battle lying under one of the wagons and cursing himself for a weakling for being unable to fight. Finally, when he heard men yelling, others sobbing or crying out, the hurrying of horses and the curses, he knew that the wounded were being brought in. He went out, found a couple of waterskins, and made himself useful as a water carrier for the wounded men. He had just refilled the skins for the fifth time when Caudyr hailed him.

‘Maddo, Maddo! Branoic’s dead.’

Maddyn turned fast to see the chirurgeon limping over. He felt nothing but a chill that seemed to have frozen his mouth shut. He shrugged, tried to speak, then merely stared at Caudyr in a blind hope that he’d misheard.

‘I thought mayhap we could dig him a proper grave,’ Caudyr went on. ‘When there’s time.’

Maddyn nodded to show that he understood, then turned on his heel and walked away. By then the men of the army were reclaiming their possessions from the heap in the middle of the protective wagons. Tents were already rising, men were talking about finding provisions and firewood. Maddyn found his own bedroll with Branoic’s piled under it. For a moment he nearly wept. He grabbed one of Branoic’s blankets, then headed for the long sprawl of dead men brought back to camp. He could see their friends wrapping them in blankets like the one he held to lay them out for the morrow’s burying. By then the sun hung low and striped the sky with pale gold at the horizon. As he walked down the long grim lines, Maddyn began to wonder if he’d be able to find Branoic’s body, but at length he saw Owaen, standing next to one of the dead.

‘Over here,’ Owaen called out. ‘I can guess who you’re looking for.’

Maddyn joined him. Owaen had cast off his mail to reveal his rust-stained and filthy shirt; his hair lay plastered against his skull with sweat. Branoic lay on the ground, stripped of his mail and sword. Maddyn swore at the sight of the wound, a ghastly gape of red as if Death herself smiled up at them. When he knelt, he threw the blanket over Branoic’s face first. With Owaen’s help he wrapped Branoic up. For a moment they knelt at his side.

‘Remember us in the Otherlands,’ Maddyn whispered. ‘The gods all know we’ll be joining you soon enough.’

Together they rose, then stood together, shoulders touching. Maddyn looked down at the old blue blanket wound round what was left of a man he’d known for more years than he could remember. He felt his grief like a blanket pressed into his face, smothering him. Involuntarily he shuddered, tossing his head as if to throw it off. He heard Owaen step back.

‘Did you see it happen?’ Maddyn said.

When Owaen didn’t answer, Maddyn looked up to find him staring off at the sunset, his head thrown a little back, his jaw set tight.

‘Ah well,’ Maddyn said. ‘See that stone wall over there, across the pasture? On the morrow, when they bury him, I’ll be wanting to haul some stones to set up a cairn. Will you help?’

Owaen nodded.

‘And what about his poor lass?’ Maddyn went on. ‘It aches my heart, thinking of her praying he’ll ride home soon, and here he’s already ridden through the gates of the Otherlands.’

‘Just so.’ Owaen kicked the ground hard with the toe of his boot. ‘Oh horseshit and a warm tub of it!’ He turned and ran, trotting down the long line of their dead.

Despite the warmth of the night, Lilli had her maid build a small fire in the hearth in her chamber. She wanted light, and lanterns would, she felt, cast only shadows. As she sat in her chair and tried to read, her mind kept turning to the war and to Branoic. No matter how hard she concentrated on the book in front of her, the horrors she’d seen earlier kept breaking into her studies. Finally she laid the book aside and stared into the flames. She found herself thinking of Branoic, remembering the blood sheeting from his face. Nevyn will save him – she told herself this repeatedly but didn’t believe it once.

Suddenly in the glowing coals she could see Nevyn, a tiny figure, it seemed, walking among the ashes. She leaned forward in her chair, concentrated on the image, saw the embers turn into the image of another fire as the darkness of a night camp appeared through the flames. The fire faded away, and it seemed to her that she walked beside Nevyn, who was carrying a cloth sack as he threaded his way through the tents. At length he returned to the tent she recognized as his from the past summer’s expedition. In a stone circle a tidy stack of wood waited for him. When Nevyn snapped his fingers, salamanders rushed forward to light it. He tossed the sack into his tent, then sat down on a stool in front of the fire. Lilli saw him lean forward – the view changed. It seemed to her that she sat on the other side of the fire and looked across at him.

‘Lilli!’ Nevyn’s voice sounded in her mind. ‘How did you reach me?’