Hello Brax, what are you doing here?" his friends greeted him.
They were all here - Jean, Balkar, Lintiel and Senqual. They were sitting around the fire in the middle of the pitch darkness. They were staring into the flames, roasting a caught hare and drinking mead.
"How is this possible? You are all dead," he breathed in amazement.
"And you are not far from it," Balkar laughed and emptied his tankard.
"Am I dead?" he raised his eyebrows and sat down on the stone next to Lintiel.
"No… not yet. But you have certainly been trying for some time, haven't you?" she laughed and tucked a strand of unruly dark hair behind her ear.
"You know, we may be dead, but that doesn't mean you have to join us," Senqual smiled and threw a piece of wood into the fire.
He was exactly as he remembered him - slim, handsome and full of charm.
"And what am I supposed to do without you? Life isn't what it used to be. Everything seems darker," he replied, hanging his head.
"Nothing has changed, you've changed. Damn it, don't throw your life away just because we're not with you anymore! Do you remember what we did? We fought, drank and had fun. Battles were one big adventure for us. But everything ends eventually," Balkar said, his gaze fixed on his eyes.
"You're not alone. There's a whole world out there waiting for you. You have to make new friends, you have to start living. The fact that you survived and we didn't is not a betrayal. At least one of us survived, someone who will remember us," Jean said with a flame in his eyes.
"As long as you live, we will live too. As long as you don't forget us, we will always be with you and you won't be alone," Lintiel smiled and hugged him amicably. She had tears in her eyes.
"How about settling down, starting a family, and living like a normal person? What about that girl who takes such good care of you? What's her name, eh, Lina?" Jean spoke again, and with a cheerful expression on his face, he added, "You old goat."
Something began to pull him away. Some force he didn't know. He resisted, but in vain.
He desperately reached out to his friends, but they only smiled and waved goodbye.
"Your time has not come yet. So live and don't forget us," Lintiel smiled.
He moved away from them. Suddenly he saw a flash of bright light…
Kalat was driving his horse as fast as he could.
"He must be here somewhere," he growled.
It had barely been a few hours since they had separated.
He now had an escort of men from the village with him. When they found out that the local girl - Lina, was in danger, they saddled their horses, grabbed all the weapons they could find, and rode with Kalat to the Mered Valley.
"We'll split up," one of them shouted, and half of the men separated to search a larger area faster.
"Braxi! Lina!" he shouted at the top of his lungs to the surroundings.
After all, they didn't fall into the ground.
They searched for hours. Only in the early morning did they come across dead bodies in the forest. There were many of them - in the meadow and some further in the forest.
"My God," one of the men gasped, seeing the corpses all around him. "Don't tell me one person did this."
Brax was clearly not taking it lightly.
"There's someone here!" came a voice a few meters from Kalat.
He immediately spurred his horse in that direction. He looked where the man was pointing – it was a place almost a hundred meters away.
"Brax! Lina!" he shouted again.
Lina was sleeping and didn't even move. Suddenly she thought she heard something, like a voice from afar. She moved, but didn't wake up. Then she felt something move behind her.
She took a breath and wanted to turn around, because her head hurt so bad.
Suddenly she heard Rillan's neigh. She opened her eyes and jerked. Her heart, which had been beating calmly until now, started to race, because the voices were not from a dream at all.
She came to full alertness in a second, and her hand immediately shot to the sword that lay a short distance away from her. She took it in her hand and stood in front of the place where Brax and Burinsfel lay.
Rillan had also stood up, shaking his head restlessly.
Her eyes narrowed and looked at the place where the footsteps had come from. She turned her head to the other side, because now she could hear the sound of horse hooves from there too.
Kalat drove the horse until the animal foamed at the mouth. He arrived at the place the others had pointed out to him. He rode with them into a small clearing among the trees, where a girl stood ready to fight.
"Just calm down," he said as he dismounted.
Immediately he saw Brax, pale as a wall, lying on the ground.
"We are here for you," he reassured Lina.
The girl looked at him for a moment, then lowered her sword.
She sighed, knowing that this was not what she had expected, although she didn't really know what she had expected.
She threw her sword to the ground and then walked back. She knelt by Brax's head and, with a familiar and almost practiced movement, moved down to his neck. When her fingers felt the familiar movement, she sighed and rubbed her tired eyes.
"Quick! We have to get him out of here," Kalat ordered the two men.
The others stood spread out around, looking alternately at the trigger and the corpses, and then at Lina and Brax.
They then fashioned a makeshift stretcher from two spears and several cloaks.
"Be careful," Kalat muttered as they lifted Brax.
"Are you hurt?" Kalat frowned at Lina.
She shook her head: "No."
"Sure," Kalat nodded ironically at her own, where she had a serious wound.
"It's nothing," she waved her hand impatiently, watching anxiously as Brax was loaded onto the stretcher.
"Carry him carefully," she repeated Kalat's words once more. "He has a deep wound on his shoulder and leg. And the rest…" she sighed, quickly stuffing the things she still had on the ground into her bag.
Then she saddled Rillan and attached the bag to his saddle.
Once her horse was ready, she took the second saddle and put it on Burinsfel.
"Did he do all this?" one of the villagers asked in horror, still looking around.
"He's not human," another joined in. "He's the devil!"
"Hey!" Kalat jumped in. "You wanted to get rid of the bandits, didn't you? There you have it."
Lina mounted Rillan and turned to the villager.
"The devil? Seriously? And how do you imagine him? Like this?" she said in a chilling voice, nodding her head toward the stretcher.
"Wounded so close to death?"
Her fierce eyes pierced those closest to her—the people of her home village.
"Shouldn't you be grateful?" she shouted at them.
Then she nudged Rillan slightly, took Burinsfel by the bridle, and joined the men carrying the stretcher.
Then several voices were heard, and they began to hum among themselves in discontent.
"Okay, that's enough!" Kalat ordered. "We must go."
The hum of voices gradually died down, so Kalat spurred his horse and the whole group, with Brax on the litter in the middle, set off.
"Where are we going?" asked the man at the litter when Kalat reached them.
"First we have to get out of the valley, then we'll see," he replied.
They traveled slowly because of the litter, but within a few hours they were out of the valley.
Lina rode Rillan in silence all the while. She glanced at Brax now and then, and at other times she glared at the villagers.
She was not surprised by their behavior. She remembered well that when the baker's son saw her as a little girl with a sword in his hand, he had run home and told his mother. The next day, her father had asked her if she was all right. Fortunately, her father had settled her down, so that no one would have thought it strange that she was running around the hills with a sword or a bow.
Then the girl turned and looked at Kalat.
"What about the other prisoners? Are they okay?" she asked him.
"Yeah, they're in the village. The innkeeper said he'd take care of them," he nodded. "When the people heard you were left behind, they came to help you. It's incredible how much they value you. You, or your mother, I don't know. But they went willingly."
Lina said nothing, just watched the road ahead.
The sun was already high in the sky when they had passed the valley a few miles.
"I hope he can make it," Kalat tossed his head at Brax. "He has a room at the inn, we can put him to bed there. I don't know what else to do."
"No," Lina dismissed immediately. "We'll take him to us. He needs more herbs and ointments. At least we'll save time and travel. Someone would have to look at him anyway, he can't stay like this."
"He has to handle it. Otherwise, he won't want me," she added quietly, trying to suppress the tears welling up in her eyes.
"Okay, then to you. Lead us," Kalat nodded.
Lina shook her head and the tears immediately disappeared from her eyes.
"No, we're going to stop for a moment," Lina said, stopping Rillan.
"Stop!" she shouted at the man carrying the stretcher. "Put him down."
She jumped off her horse, ignoring the confused and curious looks of the villagers.
She took the rest of the ointments and herbs from her bag. She crouched down beside Brax, pulled his cloak and shirt from his shoulder. She took off the bandage holding the other shoulder on and slowly untied it.
She squinted as she saw the wound now in daylight. The skin around the wound was red, but the edges were smoother, which was a good thing. She carefully used her finger to remove the herbs she had put there the night before.
She chewed two dried herbs again and put them in the wound. She smeared the ointment around the area and then bandaged it with a cleaner part of the bandage and secured the other under her arm on her opposite arm.
She smeared only the ointment on the wound on her leg and bandaged it tightly. It looked much better.
She moved to his neck, and as she untied the covering cloth, she smiled. She was almost gone.
There was still part of the wound on his face. She began to rub the last of the ointment on it. She hadn't reached the entire wound, but this wasn't that serious.
"Do you have any water?" she asked, without looking up from her work.
Kalat dismounted and handed Lina his waterskin. "Here."
"Thanks," she said, taking it.
He squatted down next to her and asked, "How's he doing?"
Lina then began to pour water on his face and wash it with her hand.
"The wound on his face and leg looks better," she told Kalat. "It's just that the shoulder isn't... well, it doesn't look the way I'd like it to. But when we get home, I'll give him better herbs than these."
She rubbed her fingers over his lips and clenched her jaw.
"He's lost an awful lot of blood, too. It's almost a miracle he's still alive," she said.
"He's got a tough guy," Kalat put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, "he'll make it."
Brax was still as pale as he had been moments after death. Kalat was worried about him, too. To him, Brax was a hero—he'd heard of him on the battlefields. The roughest mercenary of all. The terror of battle.
Lina smiled weakly, "A tough guy and a real tough guy."
Then she covered Brax with her cloak and stood up. She handed Kalat back the waterskin and mounted Rillan.
"We can go," she told the men.
Then she turned to Kalat again, "I haven't even thanked you yet for saving my life… Thank you." She
smiled gratefully at him.
"You're welcome," he smiled back. "We originally planned to scout the area for bandits."
He looked at Brax as he lay there.
"But now I know why he wanted to scout the Mered Valley first."
He mounted his horse and they set off again.
Lina looked at him in shock.
"What? He... you knew their camp was there? Why did you go there just the two of you?"
"We didn't know. We decided to explore the whole area and he insisted we start there," Kalat replied.
The girl exhaled and closed her eyes tightly.
"And... did he tell you... why there?" she asked, even though she knew the answer.
"No. He said we had to start somewhere, so why not there. And he was quite grumpy about it, I'll tell you that," he replied, amused.
Lina frowned at him. She didn't understand what was funny about it.
Why didn't she just keep quiet! - she thought to herself. If she hadn't told him where she was going, she would… She would probably be dead, or wish she were dead.
She ran a hand over her eyes and took a deep breath.
She knew they would still be riding for a few more hours, so she leaned against Rillan's neck and leaned lightly against it.
"If you can sleep in the saddle, then sleep, I'll watch over you," Kalat winked at her.
He would never have thought that a man like Brax could arouse the kind of interest in a girl that Lina was showing in him now. What if he had fallen in love with her? And from what it seemed, she was probably feeling the same way. Although… on the other hand – she was also an herbalist like her mother, she would probably take care of everyone like that. But…
When Kalat saw how carefully Lina took care of Brax, he envied him. But even so, mercenaries like Brax didn't like to commit and usually didn't last long in one place.
Would the two of them have any future at all?
Kalat promised himself another thing – if the two of them really felt something for each other and if they didn't do something about it, or if Braxe got the urge to go fight somewhere again, he would have to do something about it.
Lina raised herself a little and smiled: "Thanks, but I won't sleep. I just want to close my eyes for a while."
Then she lowered her head back to Rillan and buried her face in his mane. She felt tired and yet she knew she couldn't sleep.
So he had gone there for her. For her!
She felt terrible, knowing that he had ended up like this because he wanted to keep an eye on her.
Even though… something was nagging at her, he had gone to that camp alone, he didn't know she was there.
She shook her head and pushed the thoughts out of her head. She didn't have the strength to think about all this now. The main thing now was for him to get out of this.
"He would do it for anyone. No matter what he seems like, in battle you learn to value the lives of others," Kalat said quietly.
He wasn't even sure if she heard him. Maybe he didn't want her to hear him.
The road dragged on because they were going slowly, but they were getting closer to their destination. Finally, they came to the clearing where Lina lived.
The girl stopped her horse and turned to Kalat because she had heard it.
"I know," she said, looking him straight in the eyes. "He values life, his friends', yours… mine… but what about his?"
Then she turned Rillan toward the house. A moment later, Adar came running out of it, barking happily, and racing toward her.
"Please carry him into the house," Lina said as she turned to the men.
Then she spurred her horse and rode toward the house.
The men followed her with the stretcher and laid Brax in the bed she had indicated.
Kalat looked around the room before his gaze settled on Brax.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to stop by here sometimes. You know, to check on him," he suggested.
"Of course, whenever you want," Lina nodded.
She had Brax carried into her room, because the room where he had slept yesterday belonged to her grandfather, who had already returned from the next village. She recognized him by the fact that his old bag, which he had probably carried with him everywhere, hung by the door.
In her mother's room, the bed was wide enough for both women to fit on it.
Lina quickly ran through the house, wondering why she couldn't see her mother anywhere.
"Where are they, Adare?" she asked the wolf.
He barked outside and immediately ran out.
Lina then went out in front of the house and thanked the men for coming to their aid and for bringing Brax all the way here.
They then dispersed back towards the village, although it was clear from several of the younger ones that they would have liked to stay. Their eyes hardly left Lina, because they had never seen any girl wearing the clothes she was wearing, or rather what was left of her. Moreover, they liked her quite a bit. But
Lina had no thoughts or mood to deal with them at the moment, so she immediately turned to Kalat: "Thank you again for everything, seriously. Don't you want to stay for dinner?"
"No, thanks, I have a room rented at the inn. Besides, you'll have a lot of work now," he smiled at her and swung himself onto his horse.
"And by the way," he said, turning around and handing her Brax's war hammer, "this is what he'll probably be looking for."
He then turned his horse around, muttering: "Okay, if he throws it away."
He spurred his horse and set off. At the edge of the clearing, he stopped, turned, and waved goodbye to the petrified Lina.