I can tell you’re very upset and that’s understandable. Maybe you should take a moment.
I didn’t have a moment. I swiped away the tears still wet on my face. Useless things. They hadn’t protected any of us. Not the dead knight, not his devastated squire, and not the dog currently infested with a demon.
Brindle snuffled against my palm and I petted his head absently. This was hardly his fault.
“I suppose this will go more quickly now that you’re not about to rip my throat out,” I told him. “But what am I going to do with you?”
Obviously, you must keep him by your side.
Devil or Branson? Branson or devil? Either way, he wasn’t wrong. Demons could jump to other creatures — a fact I had been made well aware of when this one hopped from the beggar who had found us on the derelict bridge over the Wendilclay River and into Sir Branson, and then from Sir Branson into the dog.
The beggar was dead, too, or I assumed he was, since Sir Branson had been trying to cast the demon from him and been dragged waist-deep into the water by the ravaged man. When the demon had leapt from the beggar to Sir Branson, my mentor had drowned the poor soul he’d been trying to save, before coming after me. The poor beggar’s corpse had washed down the river. Were I not bleeding from multiple places, I would be honor-bound to find it and offer last rites. Given the current circumstances, I’d have to leave that to whatever priest was near the shores where he washed up.
I’m starting to suspect that you shouldn’t cast the demon out.
That had to be the demon.
Cough.
I was terrible at this game.
Well, from what I can tell now that I’m elbows deep, as it were, had you tried to cast Hxyaltrytchus out without killing me first, he would have leapt from me to you, necessitating that I slay my supplicant squire, and killing a friend is not a thing a man gets over easily.
I glanced over my shoulder at the broken corpse behind me. He was not wrong on that last point. Abruptly the tears tried to surface again. I throttled them with all the heartlessness I had left.
There, there. It will be fine. I’m not really gone, am I?
From someone else that might have sounded sweet. From him it sounded dry and impatient.
But I was wasting time, even if I’d finally brought my shaking hands under control. With haste, I gathered the dead wood from the peeling trees along the edge of the forest and then hurried to light a fire.
Problem one under control.
Problem two. I was still bleeding badly and now it was making my vision shiver and darken, and if I did not deal promptly with that, then I may find I’d dug a grave only to collapse dead in it myself.
That would be such a waste.
Thank you, Sir Branson.
Cough.
Blessed Saints!
Listen, it’s all in the tone. When I speak, it’s in a humorous tone, and when he speaks, you can hear the clang of hell’s gongs in the background.
Hell had gongs?
Did I forget to teach you that, too? I hope I remembered to warn you against going to hell. Terribly dreadful place. An eternity without a drop of tea. I shudder at the thought.
He’d warned me often. He had no need for guilt on that count. I struggled not to roll my eyes.
Well, he said with the air of one holding up his hands in innocence, that really was the main thing.
Removing the trappings of a knight or paladin requires patience and laborious care. Fortunately, we Vagabond Paladins do not wear quite as many accoutrements as some of the other aspects are known to do. I didn’t regularly wear a helm and wasn’t wearing one now, but the light breastplate I usually wore was removed, along with my pauldrons, and gauntlets. This way I could get to my wounds.
Sir Branson had the same advantage I had when the two of us faced off — each of us was well aware of the other’s strengths and weaknesses. After all, he’d literally taught me everything I knew. And I’d lived with him for a decade.
He’d taken advantage of that to bleed me with neat cuts in every vulnerable spot. I’d taken a different approach and simply jammed my sword straight through the patchy mend in his breastplate that I knew was there from polishing to gleaming every day. I’d put all my weight behind the blow and all my prayers for his soul behind the force that kept going right through his body. It was a tidy death in the end.
