Fear and Ashes

Rishi moved before the guard’s cry ended.

He crossed the ash to the satchel he had left behind before the fighting, pulled its strap over one shoulder, and went to Kora’s line.

Blood darkened his robe beneath the ribs. A kobold blade had found him somewhere inside the smoke, before the black wings opened. He had not checked the cut then.

He did not check it now.

The guard with blood on his brow was trying to stand.

“No,” Rishi said.

The man looked at his face, then over his shoulder at the empty air where the wings had been.

Rishi planted his staff and lowered himself slowly into a crouch.

“Sit.”

The guard sat hard in the ash. His hands shook against his knees.

Rishi set two fingers beneath the man’s jaw and counted the beats there while he watched each breath. Then he turned the man’s head so blood ran away from the eye and pressed a clean bandage to the cut.

“Hold this. Hard.”

The man obeyed.

Rishi moved on.

A woman cradled one arm against her chest. Each breath stopped too soon.

“Can you feel your fingers?” he asked.

She flexed them once. Pain tightened her mouth. “I can stand.”

Kora passed behind him. “Stay still. That is an order.”

The woman stayed still.

Rishi folded a clean linen scarf into a sling and bound the arm against her body.

“Keep it bound on the way down. This will stop the road making it worse, but you still need someone to examine it properly.”

He worked across the ledge.

Pressure first.

Then breath.

“Look at me.”

“Hold here.”

“Do not sleep yet.”

“Turn him onto his side. Yes. There.”

Kora moved behind him, putting uninjured hands where he needed them.

“If you can curse, you can hold pressure,” she called. “If you can hold pressure, you can be useful.”

Someone cursed.

“Better.”

Rishi checked the last guard twice before he stopped.

Across the burned camp, injured people sat or lay with breath still moving through them. Limbs were bound. Cuts had pressure on them. Some guards still shivered, but none was bleeding fast enough to die before they could be carried down.

Only then did the battle end for Rishi.

He stood.

Pain returned as his body found room for it: the cut in his side, the pull in both knees, the ache through his shoulders and wrists where the giant’s blow had entered the staff and passed into bone.

Rishi touched two fingers to the red cord at his wrist and bowed his head.

One breath.

A prayer.

Then he lowered his hand.

Maeril had watched him do all of it.

She had also watched the blood spread below his ribs while he refused to touch it.

Rainwater filled a shallow hollow between two stones. She knelt beside it and took three acorns, dried leaves, and a thread of moss from her pouch.

Ash already clouded the water. It would serve.

Maeril split the acorns beneath her thumbnail. She added the halves, the leaves, and the moss, then crushed them against the stone with the rounded end of her knife. Brown-green color spread through the water. The sharp smell of wet earth and broken leaves rose through the smoke.

She planted her staff beside the hollow and spoke.

The Druidic words sat rounder in her mouth than a wizard’s syllables. Older. Softer. No one on the ledge understood them, but everyone heard.

The green scent reached the wounded first.

The man with blood in his eye closed it and let the stone take his weight. The woman with the sling drew one full breath. A guard who had lain motionless opened his eyes.

Pain remained. Torn flesh did not become untouched.

But cuts drew closed beneath Rishi’s bindings. Breath slowed. Bruised guards found enough strength to sit upright.

Crushed leaf, wet acorn, blood, and ash shared the air.

Maeril’s voice roughened. She braced one palm on the stone and finished the last phrase with her head bowed. Smoke passed between her horns. Her tail lay still in the mud.

When the words ended, she sat back on her heels.

Rishi stood a few paces away with one hand laid over his side as though that made the blood private.

Maeril narrowed her eyes.

He almost stepped back.

“Rish.”

She crossed to him and moved his hand.

The kobold’s cut lay low beneath his ribs. Blood had soaked his robe, but the blade had not entered deeply enough to kill him.

“I am fine,” he said.

“No.”

Maeril dipped two fingers into the green water. She touched the mixture to the torn cloth, then to his skin beside the wound, and spoke one softer line of Druidic.

This healing was smaller.

Private.

The cut did not disappear. Its edges closed enough to stop taking blood from him.

Rishi caught one breath between his teeth.

Maeril left her fingers against his side for a moment longer than the spell required.

He let her.

Kora struck her spear against stone.

“If everyone is finished bleeding in secret, we still have a camp to deal with.”

Smoke curled from broken crates and hides. Split casks bled pitch across the ledge. Beyond them, both giants lay where they had fallen.

“Kill the flames,” Kora said. “Then search everything. The witch said this was organized. I want to know how.”

They drowned embers and kicked spilled pitch away from heat. They opened crates, cut ropes, and sorted the scattered tools. Anything that could build another trap was broken or soaked. Anything Nashkel could use went into a separate pile.

A guard lifted a comb from the ash. A ribbon remained tied around its handle.

The nearest hands stopped working.

Beside a crushed chest, Rishi found a wooden horse small enough for a child’s palm. One wheel was gone. Fingers had worn the paint thin along its back.

Maeril opened an oilcloth packet and found two letters. Water had spared only one line on the upper page.

Your mother asks when you are coming home.

Kora watched the belongings gather between them.

After that, no one spoke. The people who had carried the comb, the horse, and the letters would not return for them.

Maeril folded the page along its old crease. Her fingers held it carefully enough to hurt.

“Horrible,” she said.

At the rear of the burned shelter, she pulled aside a scorched hide and uncovered a leather-bound book.

Water had swollen the cover. Fire had blackened one edge. The pages clung when she opened it, and blurred ink ran through them in grey veins.

Maeril crouched beside a crate and eased the pages apart one at a time. Dates survived. Fragments of cargo tallies. Road marks that ended where the paper had dissolved.

One phrase remained dark.

safe passage paid

She read it twice.

Then a humorless breath left her. “Someone was stupid enough to keep accounts.”

Kora stepped closer. “Useful?”

Maeril held up the page. Wet paper sagged between her fingers. “Not in court. But it confirms what I feared. This ambush was organized.”

Kora’s mouth twisted. “The worst sort of operation.”

Maeril closed the ledger more carefully than it deserved.

The guards had stopped again.

Kora allowed them one breath. “Feel it. Then keep moving.”

They moved.

Near the edge of the wreckage, Rishi shifted a broken crate away from spoiled cloth. Pale-brown leather showed beneath the ash.

He set the crate aside and drew out a pair of boots.

They were light, the leather still soft beneath the dirt. Their soles were thin but strong, and the stitching followed leaves along a stem. One seam had torn near the heel. Stone grit had ground the leather raw at one toe.

Rishi held them in both hands.

Maeril came to his side. She brushed soot from the torn seam with her thumb.

“Elven.”

“You think so?”

“Quiet work. Made for steps that do not wish to be remembered.”

Rishi looked over the ruins. “They might still be alive.”

Her expression softened. “You want to return them.”

“I do.”

“Do you not think you should use them yourself?”

He met her eyes. “They are not mine to claim.”

Maeril blinked. “I care more about your skin than your principles.”

Rishi looked back at the boots. “So do I.”

He wrapped them in clean cloth.

“I will keep them safe until I can return them.”

Maeril’s mouth softened. “And try not to disgrace their owner by tripping over your own sandals?”

His laugh surprised both of them.

“I will.”

Rishi held the bundle for another moment before placing it beside the belongings they would carry down.

By the time Kora called them off the ridge, every recovered thing had been wrapped or tied.

No one cheered.

Kora led the descent. Some guards supported wounded companions. Others carried small bundles from the dead.

Maeril walked beside Rishi.

She left a narrow space between them.

His eyes were no longer black. The wings were gone. Her body remembered both.

Behind them, smoke thinned above the cooling ash.