03
The old woman stumbled along in the dark. Consciousness fluttered, hovering at the edges of dream, like a moth at a window. She was aware that she was ill, but certain this wasn’t the doing of any ale, cider, or mead.
Her wounds must have festered, and the pain guided her through the brain fog.
“Bloody brownies,” she hissed. Limping stiffly, she used the leather wrapped greatsword as a crutch. The diminutive figure leaned heavily, dangling from the high hilt of the weapon. Each scrape of the tip offset a heavy step that thrummed pain from the back of her knee, like molten iron slithering up the base of her spine.
Tenderly, the swordmarm hobbled along gritting her teeth. Sweat dripped, tracing the contours of her creased forehead. Squinting her eyes brought the darkened road into focus. Leviathan shapes loomed in the starless overcast sky, before revealing tired trees and sodden bushes.
When she inhaled, the ancient warrior’s teeth chattered, as though she squatted naked in the snow. Her breath rasped, and she shivered as the rampaging infection boiled through her body.
Time had muddled, trudging through the thick road mud. Perhaps three nights had passed since waking in the fairy lit forest. Maybe four? It was a tenuous relationship she kept with hours and days under the best of circumstances. The corners of her mouth pulled down a drapery of wrinkles, as she tried to piece it together. That was when she became aware the dousing rain had ceased at some point during the night. Like a dog, she shook her weathered frame, but her clothes remained uncomfortably wet.
Blinking with a brief moment of clarity, the wizened barbarian remembered; the snotty boy.
At some point in the last day, she had stopped the driver of a rickety wooden wagon. His two children sat on a mound of hay, rootcloth sacks, and farm goods. The boy had stared unflinching at her sword, green snot slowly oozing from his nose.
After she asked for help, the cart driver rotated in his seat, arm raised, like a scarecrow in the breeze. He pointed down the road. There was a distant village they’d just come from. Not far, and fates be thanked, already in the direction she was heading. They even had healers.
He shook his head, flapping his wattles, when she begged for a ride to town. Apologizing, he had insisted his family was already late for seeding season. With a fearful look to the sky, he waved her away, shouting over his shoulder that she’d best hurry, a heavy rain would soon come.
The snotty boy continued to ogle as the rocking cart dwindled into the distance.
That was perhaps, midday?
The swordmarm coughed and clomped haltingly in the chill night air. Each step felt heavier as her boots clodded with soggy earth. She leaned heavily on the greatsword. Not for the first time, she thanked the flame for her trusty blade.
Coming over a rise where tough grass had punched through the deep muck in the cart path, she was pleased to see the warm glow of firelight in the distance. The farmer in the wagon had told her true.
Squelching down the path toward the village, she hastened her step, wincing through the pain. She cursed her misfortune, unlike the old biddies in villages like these, she knew little about fevers, tinctures, and poultices.
Her knowledge lay elsewhere.
The little valley town was thriving. It was belted by a sturdy wall, beautifully constructed from gigantic forest timber. Gorgeous carvings swirled up the tall planks. Colorful and elaborate wooden creatures, topped some of the panels like painted gargoyles. The muddy path ended at a reinforced gate. Even gravely ill, the adventurer’s senses scanned. Dim voices could be heard beyond the wall. Above her a guard snoozed in a short archer’s tower.
The bent woman filled her lungs to shout at the oaf, which brought on a coughing fit. Ragged hacking forced her eyes shut, and she leaned against the gate, which creaked open. She started and looked up. In the overlook, the sleeping bowman scratched his nose, and the little torch beside him crackled.
Dolt, she thought.
Inside, white walled cottages in thatched roofing surrounded a square with a stout well. Beyond that, a quaint market road. This opened into a great meadow populated with large, permanent looking tents. Each decorated in rich colorful geometric patterns.
Chickens, sheep, and other simple stock roamed freely among the little homes. The wind shifted and the swordmarm tilted her head. She picked up the earthy stink of pigs. The smell of fire and cook pots informed her it was not as late as she believed.
Hobbling down the quiet street, she scanned for a green healer’s pole, or signpost. From beside a house, hissed cursing and the sound of scraping wood caught the white haired warrior’s attention.
A young woman struggled with a large yoke over her shoulders that supported a pair of water buckets. The child wore a simple dress, her dark hair looped in farmer’s braids.
The swordmarm observed the girl as she fought to balance the full pails.
“Less water, more trips,” croaked the old woman from the center of the dirt road.
The braided girl started, and took in the ancient stranger standing in the moonlight.
“I…I know that,” the maiden said with her nose in the air.
“Healer?” the ailing woman whispered.
Tilting her head with distrust, the youth considered the sweat dripping down the waxen face of the stranger. The grizzled woman stood shorter than she, but the sword she leaned against was huge. Her blade was tightly bound away, yet the weapon’s cross guard gleamed dangerously in the dark.
Then, the grandmotherly figure began to hack a cough over her rattling breath, bent over by the effort. The girl sighed, and laboriously set down her load. She stretched her sore muscles for a moment, and beckoned.
“This way.”
The girl led the limping figure through the market stalls. Walking ahead of the shuffling fighter, she kept a wary eye, as though the stranger were a mangy street dog.
The pitch smell of towering cords of wood, stacked timber, and giant slices of tree trunk slowly overtook the empty marketplace. Then, the lumber yard gave way to the tent filled meadow.
As they passed through the open pavilions, dark silhouettes revealed workshops with carving tools, and benches spread with leather and chisels. Intricately carved statues, table tops, and banisters waited to be completed. Even delirious with fever, the elderly barbarian paused to admire their quality.
Frustrated, the young woman huffed and walked back to the tottering sickly elder. She carefully hooked a hand under the swordmarm’s armpit. The warrior stiffened, then drooped, too weak to protest the help.
Before long, the mismatched pair stood before a lone cabin, near the far wall of the town. Outside the structure a herd of rustic tables bowed, laden with pots. The ceramic vessels brimmed with a dark liquid, each seemed more foul smelling than the last.
While struggling to support her elder, the girl kicked at the wicker door. It promptly broke and fell from the worn twine hinges.
Plugging her nose at the malodorous heat that rushed from inside the hut, the young woman shouted over the threshold.
“Barnaby! Got an old lady, she’s looking peaked! Needs attention!” The young woman led her feeble ward to the door sill and leaned the pitiful creature against it. Gagging, the village girl offered a curtsey before marching quickly away.
“Ah, yes, come in. Don’t worry about the door,” called a distracted voice from inside the dim orange light of the hut. It was high and reedy. A young man, not the herb wielding biddy the ailing warrior expected.
She stumped over the woven door into the fire and candle light, and was hit by a wall of stomach churning ammonia fumes.
Eyes watering, she exclaimed, “I thought it stank outside!”
Squinting through the gas, she could see a slender figure silhouetted in the firelight. He stood over a big pot nested in red hot coals. Naked, save for stained pants and a heavy leather apron, the healer was lean and pale. Ash and coal smeared in patches over his skin. The man sniffed the air, nodded, then shook his head.
“I don’t notice it anymore,” the man called Barnaby said. He stirred the noxious liquid in the cauldron with a large spoon.
The elder limped forward, pushing through the smell, to peer into the vessel. The mad fool was boiling urine. A great deal of it.
The bent little woman looked, wide-eyed, back and forth, from the roiling solution to the skinny fellow towering over her.
“What in the hell are you doing!?” she asked, with her nose pinched.
She glared up, to the sallow face of the man before her. He squinted with total concentration on his work. His features were stretched, like his limbs. Dark eyes glinted with coal light, wreathed in straw colored lashes. Ruddy ginger stubble roughened his cheeks, all the way up to his shorn pate. Most startling of all, his eye brows seemed to be missing entirely.
The distracted healer, glanced back at his guest. He saw her drooping from her immense sword. Sweat slicked her forehead, and her eyes were sunken and dull with some malady.
“Oh my, yes. You are feeling poorly? There has been a nasty gripe going about among the old folks here. Blood in your leavings?…” Barnaby listed these absently as he wiped his blackened hands on his dirtier apron. Stooping to eye level, he lifted the sick woman’s chin and studied her features. With long digits he inspected her free hand. After tapping square fingertips on her wrinkled palm, he turned it and examined her knuckles. This close, the warrior could see, Barnaby’s hawkish nose had clearly been broken, more than once. And, his brows had been completely burned off the flesh.
“I’ve got a wound. It’s festering. I was hit by a dozen poison arrows, the blood has turned…fucking brownies,” the old woman carefully set down her sword, then tugged free her belts, and loosened her pants.
“Oh well, that is interesting,” the young man said, his long fingers steepled. He tapped a finger on his lip, and stood vertical again.
“Brownies? I usually only get stomach and head gripes. Nothing serious. The tree folk live in the small forests to the northwest. We avoid the area. Never seen one, myself,” Barnaby said, as he pulled the red hot coals away from the pot and set them in the hearth. He dropped a lid onto the cauldron, thinning the smell in the room almost immediately. After wrapping the steaming ceramic pot in a dense horse blanket he lifted the bundle and took it outside.
The little woman loosed her boots and gingerly removed her pants, the room spun and beads of sweat rose on her neck, as she was hit by another wave of the fever. She swallowed back a rush of nausea.
“You aren’t missing much. Savage little flathead bastards. Twig skinny, and bloody mean little thieves. They dress in leaves and paint themselves to look like the forest. Impossible to spot,” she said.
Trying not to focus on the betrayal of her body, the matron examined the room.
Little shelves on the wall bore clay bowls. Each brimmed with bright powdered hues. Small collections of flaked rocks sat beside flowers and herbs tied in neat bundles. Roughly blown glass bottles stood in rows, their contents obscured.
To her side, a long table strewn with bowls of strange liquids, touched the wall. At it’s center, a smooth flat stone with a heavy pestle rested. More colorful powders had been mixed with egg whites and thinned sap to make beautiful little piles of mud. Fiery reds, toxic yellows, deep and varied blues, and seemingly countless variants spotted the mixing stone.
Barnaby entered the hut, and lifted the wicker door, pinning it back on its twine hinges. He turned to the shriveled barbarian, who stood nude, and marveled at the objects in the room.
“I’m trying to invent a new…” the man began.
Suddenly, the white haired woman stumbled and sat heavily on the bench beside the table.
“Oh, dear!” cried Barnaby.
“My leg,” she whimpered
The young man knelt beside the shivering matron. He held an oil lamp near her to inspect the corrupted wound.
The woman shuddered when he rotated the thick little limb. He peered at a lifetime of scars scattered on the loose flesh. Behind the knee, slightly up the thigh, he found the infected injury.
A cruel hole, the size of a large spider bite, yawned. Dark purple curled around a core of puckered white flesh. Around that, radiated an angry ring of red with lacy tendrils climbing up her hip toward her torso.
The heart, he thought.
“This is a terrible blood infection! You were in dire danger, lady,” he said, as he gingerly dabbed a fingertip over her skin. The waxy surface burned like a black river rock left in the sun. His hairless brow pinched into a dimpled furrow.
“Lady?” Barnaby asked. He tapped his lip with a finger and considered the herbs and medicines he might need.
He started when she didn’t answer. The color slid from her cheeks as he watched.
Gently shaking her, he hissed again, “Lady!”
Eyes wide, he set down the lamp and scurried to gather his supplies.
