More days with the baron’s men had done little to improve Dallen’s view of them. In that time there had been more incidents like the tax outing, more instances of abuse, more fearful looks from the townsfolk, and more tension building across the town. The baron and his guards were bullies, cowards, and violent men by the vast majority, and what few half-decent folk were among them were too scared and too outnumbered to do much. Which made them no better, as far as the townsfolk were concerned. Vanteus’ plan to sway them, or the baron, somehow, was proving every day to be nothing but wishful thinking. Dallen’s reputation, actions, and influence wouldn’t be of much use.
Power did that to folks — turned them rotten. These men were all rotten from power, there was no doubt about that, but even in his days here watching miserable men abuse that meager power, Dallen had not seen much to indicate that they were any worse than any others in power elsewhere in the Shattered Heights. That was just the way of the world now.
The only thing different about this whole mess was the Shapeless warrior. Hadrir. Dallen had heard whisperings of him. Of the things he said, and did. He didn’t know which were truth and which were legends. But from all of them, it seemed like Hadrir might be a man capable of exceptional cruelty, even by the current standards of the world. Exceptional cruelty, and exceptional brutality. Dallen found himself thinking about it more and more each day. The baron was just a bastard with a bloated ego and too much power in his title, but the Shapeless warrior could be a real threat to the people of this town.
They all seemed to know that, but none of them seemed willing to run. That all felt rather foolish, to Dallen — no way in the deep hell he’d stick around for a scrape with that fellow, after all he’d heard. It was too much of a risk. He planned on being long gone before Hadrir rolled back into town, returning from whatever sick business he was on now. Frankly, Dallen couldn’t shake the feeling that the only thing they could really do was pack up and leave before things got ugly. Maybe he could convince a few of them to do so. Fighting wouldn’t change much, especially if all the legends of this warrior were to be believed.
A twitch shot through Dallen’s right shoulder as he walked across the empty town square. He rolled it out, wincing at it, and shook his head. The thoughts of Hadrir and the town’s fate dimmed to an acceptable level, and he realized he’d been so deep in those thoughts that he’d almost walked straight past Vanteus’ workshop. That kind of thing didn’t usually happen unless he’d been drinking.
After a moment, he realized he could hear sounds coming from inside the workshop. Shouts, pained yells, and loud, guttural groaning.
Dallen’s muscles tensed. The interlocking pieces on the Maker’s arm shifted under his shirt, ready to be used. He placed the gloved hand on the Duke’s sword, and paced quickly toward the entrance.
Inside there was blood, and bodies. Injured folk lying around, wailing, holding wounds, going pale. People shouting.
But there was no fight. A strange numbness washed over Dallen and almost made him lose his footing as his muscles relaxed. There was no fight here — why was he still so ready for a fight? There was blood and wounds here, but not by any terrible attack. Just the cruel strike of the earth against those who dared to try and live atop it.
There were five new injured folk in the sickhouse, adding to Prella, who had woken from her fevered sleep just in time to cover her ears in pain from all the commotion the new patients had brought. Three were sprawled out on the near side of the room, wearing pained grimaces and quickly-wrapped bandages. Two were on the far side, in far worse shape. Vanteus and Adelaine both stooped over one, focused and working quickly, on the edge of frantic.
The drive to fight had faded, and yet the feelings still remained, twisting themselves up and rearranging. This was still a battle. Dallen’s mind went back to the front lines during his time as a knight of Callia. Of all the aftermaths there, much like this one. The battle did not end when one army retreated — it brought a new battle, against the ever-vigilant, ever-pressing enemy of death.
Dallen pressed forward, towards those more in need. Wizard and apprentice were hunched over one woman, drenched red along her front with blood. Her legs were bruised and lacerated, one twisted at an odd angle. A tray covered in bloody spikes of wood and sharp rocks sat propped up next to her, as Adelaine drew out the last few pieces from the woman’s ruined flesh. Vanteus hovered a hand one foot over the woman’s torso, a single finger extended. He whispered quietly under his breath.
Suddenly Dallen’s drive to action was slowed, like running up to a pool of water, eager to jump in, and realizing it was far deeper than anticipated. Something told him to help, but something more pressing at the moment told him not to interrupt.
“There,” said Adelaine, taking a step back. She shot a quick look at Dallen, but gave nothing more. He stayed his distance. “That’s the last of them.”
Vanteus spoke a single, long word of High Empyreal. It was barely louder than a whisper, but it seemed to reverberate through the wooden supports of the building. Through Dallen’s bones.
The wizard splayed his hand, and tapped it on the air, as if sending ripples through a still pond. From the point in the air that it struck, lines began forming. A hundred of them, forming two interlocking circles. White-gold lines, less than a hair’s breadth, perfectly straight, angled at one another in soft, smoothly bending formations. Together they formed a hundred smaller shapes, all linking together to form a single image that was greater than the sum of its parts. The lights in the room seemed to dim in comparison to its brilliance. Even the wailing and groans seemed to quiet, as if even the gravely injured held their breath to keep from disturbing the wizard’s work.
The Pattern hovered in the air for a moment, slowly falling towards the woman. Then there was the soft sound of wet shifting, and Dallen looked closely at her deep wounds. The bleeding slowed. Then came to a stop. Then the open wounds began to close themselves back up, rejoining as if healing over three month’s time. Thin, almost translucent traces of white energy weaved back and forth across the wounds, like ethereal stitches.
The woman shifted. Then she grimaced, tried to breath in, and hacked up a mouthful of blood through a monstrous fit of coughing. It did not sound like the coughing of a healthy person — and yet, when the coughing was done, and the blood had been cleared from her throat, she drew in a heaving, ragged breath, the color returning to her face.
Dallen let his own breath out, just realizing he’d been holding it. The woman looked up bleary eyed, towards Vanteus and Dallen, who stood just behind the white-robed wizard.
“Tha—” She tried to speak, but it came out choked. Vanteus soothed her with a calming hand.
“Shh. You need your strength. There is still work to be done.” The wizard drew in a breath, gave Dallen a single look of deep sadness and exhaustion, and then set out to work again, moving to the second patient who was in bad — but not deathly — condition.
Now that the woman had been saved, Adelaine spared Dallen a grim look. In that moment, Dallen remembered how young she was. Far too young to see such things, and to bear such burdens. As all the youth of this new world was — but they had to bear it anyway.
“What happened?” he asked.
“A chasm opened up on the southwestern side of town.” She spoke it in a dry, emotionless tone. Clinical and detached, just as her expression was, to hide the pain threatening to surface underneath. “It took a house down with it. Six were caught in the collapse. Another was hurt running in to try and save them.”
Dallen swallowed, and gave a solemn nod. The initial urge of stress and drive was fading, after seeing Vanteus work.
What did you expect to do? Run to the rescue and save everyone? What good would that even do them — two are already dead, and any injury in a place like this might as well be a death sentence to a slow end by starvation.
Adelaine turned and began helping Vanteus with the second townsperson. Dallen stood, hands clenched in frustration. The urge to push through or give up battling within his mind.
It’s a waste of time, part of him said. Spend your energy on those you can still help.
But the voice of his mother came through as well. Clear, soft, and strong.
A knight’s duty is not to fight. It is to protect.
He was not a knight, and hadn’t been for a good long while. But he still had trouble saying no to his mother’s words.
Maybe it was a useless effort. Maybe it would just be a warm feeling in the moment, only for that feeling to be snatched away a moment later. But maybe it was better than feeling cold the whole way through.
Dallen knelt down beside some of the less injured folks on the one end of the room. They all winced with pain, their faces beaded with sweat or their skin pale. All were stable, and at low risk of dying to anything other than a bad infection, but all their various injuries had to hurt. Luckily, Dallen had some experience with this sort of thing, from his time fighting for Callia. His mother had always taught him to look after others. And his father had taught him that no man was above hard work, no matter his station.
It was all simple treatment, really. He cleaned a few lighter wounds, and dressed them with good, clean bandages. He pressed cool, damp cloths to people’s foreheads for their comfort. He found common herbs among the wizard’s workshop that would ease pain, or help fight off infection. He went about his work, feeling that odd mixture of feelings in his gut. The same one he’d had when he’d saved Irne from extortion. He fought to keep that feeling down. It was little more than a distraction here.
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He knelt beside a stout, balding man who held a tight grimace of pain. He’d been the one who’d run into the sinking house to save the others. That act had left him with a badly hurt ankle and back, and a left arm shredded up by jagged wood and rocks. The bleeding had stopped, but his body must have ached and throbbed with pain all over. Dallen had a small wooden bowl of crushed ronos bark for him to chew on.
“Here. For the pain.”
The man peeked one eye open, keeping the other squinting shut. He looked down at the bowl with trepidation.
“Don’t worry,” said Dallen. “It’s not sullenroot; it won’t knock you out.”
The man drew in a deep, careful breath before speaking.
“How much of it you got?”
“Afraid we can’t give you more than your fair share. Sorry, friend. Won’t make the pain disappear, but it’s something to help”.
The man thought of a moment, closed both eyes, and breathed deep once more. A breath labored by both pain and a hard decision.
“Don’t need it.” He jerked his head — as much as he could — towards the young boy on the cot next to him. “Give mine to him. Poor lad needs it more.”
Dallen had a small urge to call the man a fool. To tell him that it would be unwise to give a younger, smaller boy a double dosage of ronos bark. To ask him what he thought he would accomplish, trying to act the hero all the time. To tell him that nobody would repay the kindness that he gave out. Not even with a pat on the back and a “thank you, kind sir.”
But what would have been the point? If this man wanted to be a fool, to go through more pain just to feel a little better about himself, Dallen had no right to stop him. Maybe for him, a heavy conscience made it harder to sleep than an aching body.
As he rose and crossed to the other side of the room some cleaned towels, Dallen overheard Adelaine speaking to her teacher quietly.
“The bone is set, but it’s shattered. It won’t heal well. I can tell that much already, and you can too.”
“We’ve done all we can,” the old wizard said simply.
“You know we haven’t.”
The wizard stopped what he was doing at that comment, and turned slowly to his apprentice. His eyes were stern and level, to meet Adelaine’s steady and defiant ones. And he spoke in a low voice.
“We have done all we can,” he repeated, slower this time. “To do any more would be irresponsible and dangerous. This is a place of healing.”
“Then we can heal her leg, not just set the bones straight.”
“Watch your voice, young one,” Vanteus hissed. “You are absolutely forbidden to try anything more than the prescribed treatment, and forbidden to speak of it anymore.” Dallen understood the wizard’s frustrations. This place was already full of desperation — you didn’t want these poor people overhearing a false hope that they wouldn’t receive.
Adelaine stared back for a moment, then dropped her eyes towards the woman’s leg, set in a splint.
“Yes, Master Vanteus.”
The wizard nodded, then walked away, tending to another. Adelaine stayed and stared at the set leg. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted slightly in frustration.
“You alright?” Dallen asked.
Adelaine gave a single, slow nod that was not at all convincing. Her eyes did not leave the leg. But there was something else behind them other than frustration. Some deep thinking, as her eyes began shifting slightly back and forth across the leg.
“Listen,” Dallen said, trying his best to sound comforting, “it’s important to know your limitations, right? You’ve done a good deal for these people already, a whole lot more than they’d get in any other town like—”
Adelaine closed her eyes, and calmly raised one finger towards the woman’s leg. Dallen realized what was happening too late to do anything but watch.
The apprentice spoke in a low voice. High Empyreal — the words sounded like music, or poetry. Beautiful but terrible in the power they carried, even when spoken
so softly.
Adelaine’s eyes opened and flashed with a pulse of light. Her finger traced an odd path through the air. And beneath it, lines sprouted in interlocking curves, filling out and glowing with pale light, making the air shimmer. Like the world itself was bending around them.
Dallen felt a warmth from that Pattern. But also a terrible pang of fear.
The Pattern was broken. Its magic was dangerous. And it was being used mere feet from him. Vanteus’ heavy, sobering look was still left in his mind as he watched the Pattern pulse and fade, and held his breath.
The woman’s leg glowed with soft white lines, and she winced in pain, drawing in a sharp, shallow breath. Then the lines of white seemed to tighten around her shin, crooked and covered in bandages. She grimaced, gripping the sides of the cot.
Adelaine’s eyes were focused, her brow furrowed. Dallen realized he was gripping the hilt of the Duke’s sword as tight as if he was trying to choke it to death. Then, Adelaine reached out with her free hand, and gripped the woman’s tight. The poor woman held on, hand shaking with effort.
There was the soft, muted sound of scraping and squelching. The woman let out a whelp of pain. And the bones beneath the bandages and broken skin began to shift and slither around. Slivers knitting together slowly, painfully. But they formed the distinct, straight shape of a shin bone, set into place, and then the white glow faded.
The woman let out a ragged exhale, but then seemed to breathe freely for the first time after it, her face pale and glossy with sweat. Her breath seemed to remind both Adelaine and Dallen that they had been holding theirs, and they followed suit.
No snags in the Pattern this time. No defractions. Nothing that would leave them all blind, or turn the woman’s leg into a puddle of liquid, or devils know what. Adelaine had a satisfied smile on her face as she wiped a bit of sweat from her brow, and turned over her shoulder to see Vanteus looking at the two of them
His face was grim, angry, and disappointed. Dallen usually thought of the old wizard as a kind, harmless old type, but now, his disapproving gaze seemed to bring a tense silence to the entire room. Like even the injured quieted their labored breathing at his command.
Vanteus shook his head.
“We will talk later.”
And with that, he turned back to his work, face still set in frustrated disappointment.
Adelaine’s smile faded, and her mouth twisted up with frustration of her own. It came through in her words too, even as she tried to be calm and straightforward with the woman who’s leg she had mended.
“Your leg still needs a little time to heal. The bones are in the right place now, but you’ll need to keep off it for a week or two.”
The woman reached a weak hand towards Adelaine, grabbed her arm, and squeezed.
“Thank you,” she croaked out.
That seemed to lessen Adelaine’s frown, but not completely.
“Of course,” she said, placing a comforting hand on the other woman’s. Then she gently moved the hand back, and left to handle her other work.
Dallen was glad to not have been roped into the encounter any more than he had to be. He wasn’t here to get between a spat of master wizard and apprentice. And frankly, he would have just told them that neither of them were right, and neither were wrong. What Vanteus warned was true; the magic of the Pattern was broken and dangerous, and was not to be used lightly. But the stunt Adelaine had pulled felt much like something he would have done in his youth — minus the magic, of course. Much like the man in the cot refusing to take herbs for his pain, Dallen didn’t feel much like telling people not to do what they thought was right. Even if he knew it was foolish.
He brought the clean towels over and decided it was about time for him to leave. Vanteus was not available for any conversations any time soon. Dallen had done what he could here. Not much sense in sticking around when two others trained far better than him could handle it. He put the towels down on a small table, next to a boy laying and shuddering in a cot.
Before he could bring his hands back, the boy shot out an hand and grabbed hold of Dallen. Dallen’s eyes darted over to the boy’s, which were unfocused from herbs and blood loss. He hadn’t been lucid a moment ago. Fading in and out.
“Sir, I…” The boy’s words trailed and slurred, his voice weak with fright. “Where am…what’s going on?”
He gripped hard to Dallen’s right hand. Cold, hard, unfeeling plate beneath the hide glove. Dallen wondered how it could ever feel comforting.
“My house…” the boy continued. “What happened…” Tears were starting to well up in his eyes.
Dallen looked hard at this boy. The wound hadn’t been too bad — a good cut on the head that led to lots of bleeding, but nothing that would be permanent beyond a scar. If he fought off infection, he’d be perfectly healthy by the end of it. But he would still live in this town, under this baron, in this world. And now, he was without a home. The great earth had swallowed it up in a callous act of random chaos, and now he would live on to suffer for it.
But, by all the devils and dead gods, Dallen couldn’t bring himself to say that. What kind of a bastard would he be if he couldn’t just offer a damn word of comfort to this poor boy.
“You’ll be okay,” he said. “You’re not hurt bad. Be back on your feet in no time.” It felt the least like a lie.
Tears welled up, and the boy closed his eyes, fighting through words like he was slogging through a thick muck.
“My…my ma and dad…are they…”
Dallen looked over to the woman Vanteus had healed. Pale and weak, covered in her own blood. He could see the resemblance now, up close to this boy. She might be back on her feet, eventually. Maybe. In a town like this, with no home.
Dallen did not know who in this room might be the boy’s father. Or if his father was crumpled up and crushed at the bottom of a wide chasm, beneath the broken boards of their home. Dallen gritted his teeth. It felt like he already knew the truth of it.
“Your mom is alright.” What else was there to say? What else could possibly bring comfort?
“Everything will be alright.”
It was all he could say. It felt like a lie. His stomach twisted at the words.
But the boy’s grimace seemed to fade a little.
“Everything will be alright,” he said again. The words tasted like poison in his mouth.
You lying fucking coward, Dallen. What good will it do him? Will it keep him from waking up to no home, no father, and a bedridden mother? What good will it do him?
But the boy nodded lazily at that, his body going limp as sleep took him again.
He felt like a liar. But Dallen had always been decent at lying, when it suited him. The boy would wake up to the cold, cruel truth of the world soon. But for now, he rested with a lie that brought him the briefest of false comfort. The littlest flicker of soon-fading warmth.
But maybe that was better than feeling cold the whole way through.