Suddenly there was a whinny behind her. She turned and this time she smiled happily for real.
"Rillan!" she cried.
Her horse was standing behind her, his front hoof digging into the ground. Lina didn't wait and swung at him immediately. She felt her body protest, but she didn't think about the pain.
She urged him on and rode after Brax. In one hand she still held her bow and arrow ready - just in case.
"Stop!" she shouted at him. "Do you hear me, Brax! Stop!"
Brax roared into the forest straight after the bandits. They were waiting for him two hundred meters away.
But they were ill-prepared. Brax, running as fast as he could, jumped as he ran, swung his hammer and literally crushed one of them. Before they could recover, he knocked another and another to the ground.
They stabbed him in the shoulder - but he didn't seem to feel it, they just kept crushing one after the other. He didn't feel the pain, he didn't feel the blood splashing everywhere, he didn't even feel the bones cracking under his hammer and he didn't even hear the last death cries of his enemies - there was only one thing for him. Kill everyone around him, spare no one, leave no one alive. No one.
It didn't take long and he achieved his goal - everyone was lying dead on the ground.
When he had nowhere else to turn his anger, he began to calm down. The red haze that had obscured his eyes and mind began to lift. He saw and thought clearly again.
"How I hate myself," he cried, tears welling up in his eyes.
His lips trembled and the hammer in his hands became unimaginably heavy.
He looked up at the sky. When will this end?
He looked at his hammer. How many had he killed today and how many in total?
He swung with all the strength he could still find in him, even though he had to extract it from the last one, and threw the hammer in the direction from which he had come.
How he hated himself! There was a sound of branches breaking and finally a thud as the hammer hit the ground about fifteen meters away.
He was beginning to feel all his wounds. He was covered in blood. He didn't even know if it was his or someone else's. Probably both. But now he was too tired to think about it. He wanted to sleep so much. Along with the blood, his strength was draining from his body. He didn't want to bandage his wounds, he didn't even have anything to do.
He was so tired. Sleep - that was all he wanted, nothing more. When, and if at all, he woke up, he would collect the medallions. Now, of course, he would sleep.
Tired and heavy, he sat down on the strong root of a massive tree and leaned his back against the trunk. His head fell to his shoulder, and the pain, combined with the loss of blood, was beginning to dull his senses more and more.
Sleep!
Lina would never have believed that a person could run so fast. As she rode, she heard a roar and the clank of metal, and then suddenly everything stopped. Her eyes scanned the trees quickly, searching for anything moving. She looked at the ground in front of her, covered with the bodies of the bandits.
She jumped off her horse and searched for Brax with wide eyes.
If he was... if... She didn't even want to guess what.
As her despair slowly began to fill her and tears welled up in her eyes, she saw his figure leaning against the trunk of a tree.
"Brax!" she called to him, but he didn't move.
She quickly jumped over the bodies of the dead to get to him.
Suddenly, she noticed that one of the bandits in front of her had risen and was staggering towards Brax with his knife, who didn't even move.
She didn't wait and put an arrow into the bowstring. A second later, the bandit fell to the ground with the arrow stuck in his back.
"Brax!" she shouted again.
This time, he didn't move either. She was barely ten feet away from him when another one began to rise from the ground. Lina was more furious than ever, so she jumped at him and dealt him such a blow to the back of his head that he fell to the ground and didn't move anymore.
She exhaled from her lungs and finally reached Brax.
She took his shoulders and wrestled with him as hard as she could. It wasn't easy, because he was huge compared to her, and with his heavy equipment.
She wrestled with him again.
"You hear me, Brax! You can't sleep now, you hear me! Not now!" she shouted at him.
When he moved his head weakly, she took his face in her hands and began to pat him lightly.
"Wake up! You hear me! Come on! Open your eyes and look at me!"
While his eyelids wouldn't move, he still found some strength in his hands. With effort he took her hands in his. Only at that moment did he manage to open his eyelids.
"Don't shake me," he grumbled tiredly. "It hurts."
Lina exhaled and smiled shakily.
She freed her hands from his weak grip and put them back on his face. She wiped the blood around his eyes with her fingers.
"I won't shake you, but you'll be awake, you hear? Until I stop the bleeding, you'll be awake!"
"Heh," he lifted his upper lip, trying to smile. "You should leave me here and go home."
What he was about to do was unwise, but the only right thing to do.
He put his hand on her cheek and said, "You saw me, I'm… an animal. Do yourself a favor… leave me here and… go home. I've already lost… a lot of blood."
He looked at her dirty face, and even though he was in terrible pain, both physically and mentally, he was glad he could still look at her and touch her. If these were his last moments, he couldn't ask for more than to look at the good girl.
A tear slipped from Lina's eyes.
"You're not an animal," she said, her jaw clenched. "Not inside."
She looked into his eyes and felt her fear disappear, but her determination returned.
"I won't leave you here, forget it! I've never walked away from anyone when they needed help, so accept it," she said in a firm voice.
"But some people you just... can't help," he smiled sadly. "You'll have to accept it someday."
A neighing and the stamping of hooves sounded through the trees. Burinsfel emerged from the darkness of the forest and headed straight for his master.
"Okay," Lina nodded and stood up. "You're right. One day. But today…" she said and looked at him defiantly. "Today is not that day."
Brax caught a glimpse of the determination and stubbornness with which she looked at him before she stood up. But he felt nothing but the need to close his eyes and let himself be carried away…
Lina headed for Rillan.
"And dare not fall asleep, or you'll see," she said and began to untie the bag from Rillan's saddle with everything she had brought for the journey.
"Your battle… has begun." - was the last thing Brax said.
His eyes closed, unable to keep them open any longer. His body grew heavy, he had no control over it. A dark blanket of unconsciousness covered his mind.
He fainted in a second. His limp body slid uncontrollably and fell from the root he was sitting on, straight to the ground.
He had lost too much blood. He wasn't dead, but not even a dragon could have revived him at that moment.
Lina turned to follow the sound. When she saw Brax fall limply to the ground, she grabbed the bag and ran to him.
"Oh, come on! No!" she said desperately and turned him onto his back.
She quickly reached for his neck to make sure his heart was still beating. It was beating, but weakly, terribly weakly.
She didn't intend to waste precious time. She started unbuttoning his armor. She never did this, yet it seemed like she had to do it every day.
She pulled the armor off his chest and threw it behind her. She also took off the bracers that followed the armor in the next moment. With a little more difficulty, she began to take off his coat and shirt. She tried to move him as little as possible.
When her hands brushed against his shoulder, she felt warm blood on her fingers. It didn't take her long to find the wound, from which blood was still gushing.
She tore the entire sleeve of her shirt, tore it in two, and used one piece to wipe away the blood, making it impossible to see exactly where the wound was. The cloth soaked with blood in a moment, turning its white color dark.
Then she reached into her bag and pulled out two bags of dried herbs. She wiped her hands on her pants and took a little bit of herbs from each. She put them in her mouth and chewed them. In the meantime, she poured a little liquid from the bottle that was supposed to clean it directly into the wound.
She then spat the crushed herbs onto her palm. She carefully placed them in the wound on her shoulder. She used the other piece of shirt to bandage the wound tightly.
She then ran her fingers over his entire arm, down to his hand, to see if he had any other injuries.
He was probably injured from head to toe, but she couldn't find any serious wounds on his hand, so she moved on to the other one. The slash wounds on it were numerous, but not particularly deep - they were no longer bleeding.
His chest was fine, fortunately protected by steel armor. The girl breathed a sigh of relief, as she had no idea what she would do with the little ointment and herbs if he had a serious injury there.
Lina then tried to put his shirt back on, which was not as quick as she would have liked. When she succeeded, she threw his doublet over him.
She wanted to go to the slash wound on his head, but then she remembered that he was binding his leg. So she quickly went over to it. She caught a glimpse of Rillan, who was standing a little behind her, and Burinsfel, who was standing opposite her, his head hanging, watching her. She
removed the steel guards from his shins and threw them behind her, like the rest of his equipment. She eased the bandage on the wound, but it immediately bled again, so she quickly pulled a bandage from the bag and pulled the calf above the wound.
She took out a bottle of hot liquid, raised her leg up and poured some of the liquid directly into the wound. Involuntarily, she caught her fingers on a piece of arrow sticking out of the wound.
"This again," she sighed.
One of the things she absolutely hated was having something unclean stick into an open wound. But she had no choice.
She didn't know where to find a dagger or a knife. Finally, she thought of looking in Brax's other shoe, where he might have had such a tool.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she found the dagger in her trouser leg. She poured some liquid on it and then approached the wound with the tip.
She dipped it into the wound near the arrow and gently pulled it into the flesh. She gritted her teeth as if it were herself she was cutting into. She cut the wound an inch. Then she put down the dagger and took hold of the shaft of the arrow with her fingers, slowly working her way up to the steel tip. Once her fingers were firmly around it, she moved it from side to side, then back. She moved it gently, so as to cause as little damage to the muscle as possible.
The tip came out slowly, but she pulled it out sooner than she expected.
She threw it away and quickly poured a cleaning fluid into the wound. Then she propped his leg up on her shoulder and took some of the ointment from a small bowl tied with a cloth. She scooped some onto her finger and covered the area around the wound, and put some inside. Then she wrapped the bandage around his calf and pulled it tight.
She checked his other leg, and when she saw that there was no serious injury, she moved back to his head. She took a deep breath and tore the other sleeve off her shirt. She poured water from the bottle over him, being careful not to spill a single drop. As soon as the sleeve was soaked with liquid, she began to slowly wring it out.
She directed the liquid that fell directly onto the wound from his eye, over his face to his neck, where it ended. Then she rubbed the sleeve all over his face and neck, so that she could finally see his face again, which had been covered in blood until now.
She took out another ointment and began to slowly apply it to the wound along its entire length. She rubbed the other ointment that she had previously used on his leg into the surrounding area. With the bandage she still had left, she at least bandaged his neck.
She paused for a moment, looking at him. She wasn't entirely sure she had ever seen a greater concentration of injuries on one person.
She tried to reach for his neck, and realized that she had never imagined how the faint movement beneath her fingers, the beating rhythm of life, could please her.
She looked at him and realized that she needed water. Before she went to get it, she got Brax into a more natural position. She put his coat under his head, then took her cloak from her saddle and covered him properly. She wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to build a fire. If there were any more robbers or anyone else here, they might be exposed. But he needed warmth.
"Come here, boy," she said to Burinsfel. "Come on," she urged him, reaching out her hand for him.
The horse slowly walked over to her. She took his bridle and stood him sideways to Brax. She took off his saddle and placed it a little further away. She squatted down and ran her hand along the ground beside him.
"Come here," she told him, pulling down the bridle slightly.
Burinsfel stood for a moment, but then he slowly lowered himself so that he was now lying next to Brax.
Lina moved to the other side, but then she realized that the bandage on his shoulder would come off if she moved him. Her eyes searched for something that could help her, something she could tie under her arm around his neck on the other side so that the bandage would hold.
She didn't want to tear any more of Brax's clothes, they were already done enough. She looked at herself and laughed for a brief second. Then she got up and headed for the bodies of the bandits. Next to one of them lay a sword. She took it and cut her trousers above the knees. She tore the entire leg from the knees and cut a thin strip from one. She didn't want a single thread from the bandits' clothes.
When she returned to Brax, she put a strip of cloth over his shoulder where he had been wounded, then tied it under the arm of her other hand. She carefully leaned him toward her, tipping him slightly onto his side so that his back was against Burinsfel. She adjusted his cloak so that it covered him completely and checked his pulse again.
She tucked the rest of the cloth from his trousers into her coat and went out to Rillan.
"I'll be right back," she said, not knowing who, the horse or the man,
she swung herself onto Rillan and urged him to ride out. She trotted over the fallen bodies, forcing herself to look up with all her might.
As soon as the horse had no more corpses under its hooves, it picked up speed and galloped toward the river. The cold night air stung Lina's face, reminding her that she too was wounded. She hadn't thought about it in all that time, until now, and even now, it didn't matter at all. She wasn't going to dwell on where it hurt when she knew others were in worse shape.
She dismounted from Rillan at the river and walked down to it. She leaned over the water where it flowed more slowly and scooped water into her hands to wash her face. She could feel the dried blood on it, which, along with the clay, had made a harder layer on most of it—almost like a second skin.
She'll probably play with all her colors, she thought. From her forehead to the middle of her face, she already had a wound that was deepening from a fall on a stone and abrasions on her forehead. She had another wound in the back of her hair. Nothing too bad, she sighed wearily.
When she was done with her face, she scrubbed her bloody hands thoroughly. She didn't even know whose blood she was washing away.
Immediately after that, she pulled the cloth from her trousers out of her coat and soaked them thoroughly in water. She wrung it out and soaked it again so that the water could soak into them more. Then she jumped on Rillan and started back.
As soon as she dismounted, she approached Brax and wrung out a piece of cloth on his face. She wiped his face until the blood and dirt were gone. So were his hands.
She couldn't think of anything else to do, so she got up and undressed Rillan. She put the saddle next to the other one and went to sit down with the man. She saw Burinsfel lying almost motionless, only his eyes occasionally showing signs of life. She stroked his strong neck with her hand and felt his head move weakly.
"You've been through worse, haven't you?" she told him. "He's recovered from worse injuries," she said, and it was no more than a whisper.
She sat down by Brax's head and carefully ran her fingers through his hair, running them through it. A few tears slipped from her eyes. Lina shook her head to get rid of them.
Suddenly, something moved behind her. She flinched and gasped when she realized it was only Rillan. He lowered himself to the ground behind her and gently nudged her head into it. The girl smiled sadly and leaned against him.
She kept her hand on Brax's head and gently stroked his hair. She occasionally lowered her hand to make sure his heart was beating.
She looked at his still face, praying that he would wake up and be okay.
"Fight," she whispered to him. "You've been flailing around here all this time, fighting for your life, so don't throw him away now."
With her eyes still fixed on him, she began to think. She wondered why he was so eager to fight, why he didn't seem to care about the danger, and why he really acted like a wild animal. Then she remembered the look in his eyes that day, yesterday, she realized in disbelief, in the stable.
She wasn't looking into the animal's eyes, she knew that clearly. Even now, when he was telling her to leave him here and go home, she saw nothing wild in them, nothing that would make her afraid.
She saw something that was hidden deep beneath the surface of it all—fighting, killing, ferocity, and power. She could easily imagine how a good, kind man could become something like him if he was always somewhere between the fight and the fight, between the death and the blood and the violence that was demanded and for which he was still paid.
She wondered if her father was like him. If he also fought like a madman, not looking right or left, not caring about anything more than the next approaching skull or chest of the enemy.
Why would someone act like this? Because they don't know anything else? That would fit what he was saying. That he had nothing but his hammer.
Lina sighed and shook her head. She was sure that there was 'something' good in him, that it wasn't lost, that it might come back and prevail over the majority that had taken center stage in his life.
"You have more… you just haven't… discovered it yet," she told him.
Then she leaned her head against Rillan and stared into the dark treetops. She felt tired and didn't want to move. She didn't want to think about anything. She wanted to just stare at the sky and see nothing. Know nothing and feel nothing. But she couldn't.
The past two days kept replaying in her head. She saw faces, places, heard words. She let them just float into her mind and disappear again into the distance. She lowered her head and looked at Brax.
What next? She had no answer. All she knew was that if he didn't wake up in the morning, she would put him on her horse and ride home. There were better herbs, ointments, and potions there than the few she had with her now.
She stroked Rillan's hand, and suddenly, like a flash, the memory of how he had pushed her into it yesterday and how close she and Brax had been appeared before her eyes. Her heart started racing again, and her eyes began to glaze over. She shook her head to wake herself up and to make sure again that the man's heart was still beating next to her.
She sat next to him, occasionally stroking his hair, and when she felt the urge to sleep, she tried to scare it away. A few hours before dawn, however, she was so exhausted and tired that her head fell on Rillan's back and she fell asleep.