More Than A Dream
The fire was spreading. It had been such an unnaturally dry summer, the ground was hard and brittle, the grass dying. Nobody was sure where the fire had started. A stray flaming arrow? It didn’t matter. It was spreading, and already some bodies were beginning to burn.
The stench of burning flesh was one you never forgot, and Brendan knew he’d smell it in his dreams for the rest of his life. He limped across the battlefield, doubled-over, trying not to breathe in too much smoke. He didn’t know the name of the man lying motionless on his back, only that the man was too injured to move out of the way of the fire. Once Brendan reached their camp, by the river, he would drop the man like a stone and head back to collect another one.
He’d lost track of how long he’d been doing it. There and back again, there and back again, collecting any man who was too hurt to move himself, without worrying too much about whether he’d die of his wounds or not. Nobody deserved to die by fire.
The camp was quiet, men staggering about as if they were half-dead already. Noah, the fresh-faced young man with big brown eyes like a deer, had been assigned to serve as Brendan’spersonal aide only that morning. He was glad to see that the young man still lived, although there was a nasty gash carved down his cheek. Noah sat on an upturned stump before a pathetic, smoking excuse of a fire, staring at nothing in particular. His fine velvet doublet was coated in blood, mud, and worse. He didn’t seem to care, or even notice. He didn’t glance up as Brendan limped by.
Brendan let the man slide off his shoulders in front of the healers’ tent. He noticed dispassionately that the man wore Grahame tartan.
One of ours, then.
He turned to walk back down the hill—there was no time to waste—but a heavy hand landed on his shoulder, yanking him back.
“What are ye doing, boy?” snarled a grizzled, fearsome-looking veteran. His face was familiar, but Brendan was too tired to conjure up the man’s name from the depths of his memory.
“There are men down there,” Brendan responded bluntly, meaning that to be the end of the sentence. He turned away again, but the man pulled him back once more, harder this time. Red-raw, Brendan’s temper flared, and he rounded on him.
“Get yer hands off me,” he hissed. “Ye call meboy. Do ye know who I am? What I’ve done?”
“Oh, I know what ye have done,” the man insisted, coming almost nose-to-nose with him. “I saw my own son on that battlefield. Fighting for the other side. That what’s ye and yours have done—turned brother against brother, father against son. And yet ye still support him, don’t ye? Ye still think he is right to do this to us. No other clan has such infighting, and he’s made it clear all rebels will be gutted by the end of this war.”
There was no need to ask whohewas. Part of Brendan was glad thathehadn’t been named.
“There’s no other way,” he whispered.
The man, suddenly looking older than ever, took a step back, shaking his head.
“Ye don’t believe that,” he whispered. “None of us do. None of us.”
Brendan turned on his heel, away from the man’s blank, accusing stare.
“Yer son,” he murmured. “Did he make it?”
No answer was given, but Brendan thought he’d gotten an answer anyway.
He began to walk, stumbling down the hill, smoke wafting across his path in great clouds. His breath misted out before him. Before Brendan knew what he was doing, he was running. Not towards the battlefield—he’d run to more battles than he could count, and wanted to run to no more—but away from it. Away from all of it.
He ran and ran until he could run no more, until the old man’s accusing eyes and the smoky, stinking battlefield were leagues behind. He ran until his legs gave out, and he plummeted to the ground, unconscious.
Brendan’s eyes snapped open.For an instant, the stench of smoke and burning flesh filled his nostrils, hanging about him like a cloak. Then he woke up fully, and the dream—perhaps memory would be more accurate—was gone. For now, at least.
He was lying on his back on a soft fur rug. His rug, he recalled, staring up at the familiar spider-webbing cracks on his own ceiling. Blankets were draped over him, and to his right, a fire smoldered in the hearth.
It was morning, and rich golden light drifted into the room. A thumping sound got his attention, and he glanced over to see Argentum, head on his paws, tail pounding against the floor. The dog almost looked as if he were smiling, and Brendan’s chest ached.
“Hey, there,” he whispered, and the thumping grew louder and harder.
Finally, Brendan became conscious of a weight on his shoulder, and a warm body pressed against him. His breath caught in his throat. Glancing over, he saw that it was Freya.
Freya, whose face had danced through his fevered dreams, driving him mad. He remembered chasing after her, again and again, begging her to slow down, towait. He remembered reaching out, fingers almost brushing the long, fiery strands of her red hair, but he was never quite close enough to touch. Nearly, but not quite, like a man dying of thirst only inches away from a cup of water, but not quite able to reach.
Carefully, so as not to disturb her, he slid his hand down to the vicious wound on his stomach. The pain was still there, throbbing regularly, but the heat and swelling had gone down, the skin not so tight as it had been before. Gingerly, braced against the rush of pain, he lifted his linen shirt.
His stomach was neatly bandaged, the savory, medicinal scent of a poultice stinging his nose. Even with the bandage, he could see that the infection was receding, the redness going down.
“Ye need stitches,” came a female voice, right in his ear, making him jump. “I should have done them last night, but I didn’t want to seal in the infection.”
