She decided she would think about that later, when her heart had stopped beating at such an appalling rate and her head had stopped spinning. She turned to Adhémar.
He was unconscious and drooling. Apparently that was his usual state of being where she and swords were concerned. She jammed his sword into the ground at his side and released it as if it burned her.
The red light disappeared, as if it had been a candle snuffed out.
Morgan backed away until she tripped over a body behind her. She turned to catch her feet, then found herself facing her comrades. They were looking at her with varying degrees of astonishment.
Well, except Fletcher, who was leaning back against a tree, clutching his arm and looking very pasty.
Paien was the first to break the silence.
"There's an inn ahead," he said briskly. "Let us be about getting ourselves there." He paused. "Morgan?"
She wondered if she looked as horrified as she felt. "Do not speak of this," she begged. "Not to anyone."
Paien, Camid, and Glines nodded as one. She didn't bother with Fletcher. He had now begun to retch and she suspected that he hadn't seen the business with Adhémar's sword.
She wished she hadn't seen it either. "I'll return for my sword," she said hoarsely, then she turned and stumbled away. She had no intention of losing the pitiful meal she'd had that day, but she had every intention of trying to escape what she'd just seen.
She flung herself into a stumbling run. It was Weger's favorite way to clear the head.
She suspected she might have to run all the way to Tor Neroche before she managed to clear hers.
Dusk had fallen by the time she returned to the scene of the battle. There was a mound of the slain, which she fell into almost before she realized what she was doing, and the ground was soaked and unsteady beneath her feet.
Her sword was still buried to the hilt in the chest of that something that wasn't at all human. The creature was, however, quite dead, which was somehow very reassuring. Morgan pulled her blade free, after a ferocious struggle and an enormous amount of energy expended. She frowned. What had she killed? And why had Adhémar's sword thrust in so easily where hers had not?
She could still see that damned sword glowing with a red that burned like hellfire. Yet it had been a glow that was not evil, that much she could say with certainty. Indeed, now that she could look at it with a bit of detachment, she could say that it had been a rather welcoming light?much like a campfire after a hard day's march.
Unfortunately, it had been fire she had apparently called.
She jerked herself away from her thoughts and resheathed her sword. It was an aberration, it was behind her, it was forgotten. She would move on.
She slowly and wearily limped onto the road. She wanted to credit the weakness to aftereffects of sea travel. She wanted to believe it would pass. She almost couldn't bring herself to consider what her future might hold if it didn't.
How would she get Nicholas's blade to the king if she couldn't bear up under the simple strain of an easy battle?
For the first time in her life, she gave serious thought to the possibility that she might not succeed at what was set before her.
She dragged herself toward where she knew the inn to be. It was an ill thing indeed to not be in control of her faculties. She shuddered to think what Weger would have had her doing to aid her in rooting out the weakness. Likely a fortnights hard labor to burn out of her whatever illness might be lingering.
He would have been appalled now to have watched her draw her sword and lean on it periodically as she made her way slowly and feebly toward the inn.
Weger had been, she could admit now with a bit of distance, a difficult taskmaster.
The inn turned out to be quite a bit farther up the road than Paien had claimed. She could only assume that his ability to smell roast pig at ridiculous distances had led him astray. Then again, he was one for traveling, so perhaps he had been here before but merely forgotten the precise location.
She reached it, eventually, and paused at the door. She could hear the full-bellied laughter of Paien, well fed and no doubt happily nursing a large mug of ale. She shook her head. She could not face their merriment now, nor the looks on their faces when they saw her so undone. Perhaps there would be room in the stables.
She paused there next, but there were too many voices inside to suit her there as well, so she continued to walk. Perhaps in that little clearing up ahead. She knew there was someone in that clearing because she could hear the swearing from where she stood, but perhaps he wouldn't mind company. She attempted a quiet approach, but found that it was all she could do to get there.
She paused in the shadows. Damnation, it was Adhémar. Fortunately, he hadn't noticed her. Perhaps that had something to do with him being busy trying without success to light a fire. It was as if he had never before set flint to tinder.
The chill intensified. Morgan looked up, listening to the wind in the trees, and smelling the sweet, sharp scent of pine that enveloped her like a pleasant memory. There were pines in the high mountains of Melksham and she had spent an agreeable summer there once, tracking things as part of Weger's curriculum. The smell was equally pleasing now, accompanied as it was by the breeze and the cursing.
And then she realized that the breeze was not exactly what it seemed to be. It was the sound of wings. The wings belonged to a very large bird, perhaps an eagle or a great hawk. A hawk, she decided, as it circled the glade, then came to rest on the ground. It stood there for a moment or two, then hopped over to the fire pit.
It opened its beak and spewed forth fire.
