I was the first to reach Julia’s prone form, fear propelling me towards her in an adrenaline-fueled haste. I quickly emptied my pouch of its healing fruit, but somewhere in the analytical part of my brain I knew I was too late.
There were claw marks on her ribs, the steady stream of blood from them indicating that the wounds were deep, though not necessarily fatal. The cause of my despair was the comparatively lighter cut on her throat. It was still a serious gash and it positively gushed blood in rhythmic spurts. From what I had been taught in my healing classes, wounds like these could be fatal in as little as two minutes if not treated immediately. It took time for gleanberries to get to work healing wounds and restoring lost blood, so if you didn’t get them to someone with this type of wound quickly, they would certainly die. Julia had been lying here for at least a minute and her breathing was shallow and fading quickly. The window for treating her successfully had passed.
That didn’t stop me from trying. Ann had joined me, appearing at my side in a flash, and she was hastily putting pressure on the wounds as I prepared our futile treatment. It wasn’t enough. I crushed the berries in desperation, knowing that they wouldn’t come into effect fast enough to stifle the bleeding.
Stifle the bleeding?
As my hands moved, my mind iced over as it searched for a solution. My mind suddenly drudged up an old memory of one of my lessons with Victor:
“It’s not common practice, but it has been proven that treating a wound with heat can help close it. Normally, we have gleanberries for that, so it’s not taught in first aid classes. But using fire to close a wound can be helpful in limited scenarios.”
Fire.
My eyes wandered to one of the younger Maegar crouching down nearby. He was watching us with concerned eyes that wanted to help but weren’t sure how. My brain was struck with the lightning bolt of a crazy idea:
“Help us!” I barked at him, “Place your hands over her wound, just like Ann is, but without the bandages.”
The man, bless him, understood what I was saying and hastened to obey. Ann looked at me like I was deranged, but still allowed the Maegar to put his hands on the neck wound, letting the pressure off just a little. The increased blood loss caused my worry to spike even higher, and my commands fell from my mouth in a torrent, my concern now evident:
“Heat the wounded area. Not too much, but enough to burn it. Be careful.”
The Maegar looked distressed and confused, but he did what he was told, and we soon smelled the nauseating stench of burning flesh coming from Julia’s neck. She cried out in pain, but I waited a little longer before I told the Maegar to stop. The bleeding from her neck had now mostly stopped, open wound replaced with painfully red skin, and Julia’s eyelids fluttered as she slipped in and out of consciousness. Eventually she seized a moment of focus, green eyes wide as they looked up at me in fear and pain. I matched that gaze with as many assurances as I could offer in a single glance and held up the pestle where I had ground down the berries for easier consumption. My mouth burbled out one final command:
“Drink.”
She did so, and when she had finished choking down the terrible tasting liquid, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell into a deep slumber. I had the Maegar cauterize the cuts on her ribs as well, and Ann and I placed snow on the burned areas to try to help them heal and alleviate Julia’s suffering. We waited with bated breath to see whether our friend would survive.
After a minute or so of raspy breathing, Julia’s exhales smoothed out as she drifted into a deeper, more pleasant sleep. A bit of color returned to her face, and the angry crimson burns on her neck and side began to shift towards a healthier pink. Ann and I both sighed in relief, as it appeared that she would make it after all. We both thanked our Maegar helper profusely. He bashfully indicated, in halting human speech, that he had been happy to help.
I only now took the time to look around the snow for Julia’s discarded weapon. The fragments of the spear shaft were scattered in front of her, but most devastating was what had happened to her spearhead. The white metal sparkled in the snow, sheared neatly into several pieces. Gwyniron was normally extremely durable, but spearheads were small and fragile, and we hadn’t had the opportunity to do proper maintenance on our weapons in a while. As we gathered the pieces of her broken weapon, I made a mental note to ask Hagor about that.
We carried Julia, and the rest of our wounded and dead, into the entrance of the cave and took stock of our situation. 6 Maegar had been seriously wounded in the skirmish, and 4 black corpses lay in the snow. It was easy to call it a successful attack, but a casualty rate of 33% was ugly, even if we had totally vanquished the enemy. I left ten of the remaining healthy warriors to watch over our wounded at the mouth of the cave and took the remaining ten deeper into the cave. The Harai likely hadn’t ventured further into the rear entrance since the narrow passageway would have been easy to guard and reinforce. A small group of Maegar with flame throwing spears could very easily roast a much larger force alive in these conditions. Any assailant to these tunnels would be walking into a death trap.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
That didn’t mean we could let our guard down, however. The Harai might have tried it anyways, and we would need our Maegar escort to avoid getting roasted alive ourselves. We followed the tunnel deeper into the mountain, and it wasn’t long before we stumbled upon the first signs of life. In the dim light of our lanterns, I could see the faint shadows of a checkpoint up ahead. The Maegar had piled up rocks up to the height of their chests, and I could see the faint glint of spearheads pointing right in our direction. One of the Maegar warriors beside me called out in their native tongue, presumably telling their fellows to stand down. Which they did, fortunately, turning their spearheads away from us and calling back in unmistakable relief.
When we got closer, our lanterns illuminated the gaunt and starved faces of a dozen Maegar warriors, overjoyed to see that their prayers for reinforcements had been answered. They quickly joined our party and we all set off at a brisk clip down the passageway. We passed additional checkpoints, marked by rock and stone but manned by no one, before we finally made it into the interior of the Maegar shelter.
It was an open clearing, with only a curved dome of milky white acting as our shelter high above. Women and adolescents milled about, shouting encouragement to the fighters manning the front door, passing out refreshments to the warriors who were recovering in the backline, and caring for the wounded fighters. Some civilians were also working to patch any damage done to the packed snowy walls from the exterior assault, but anyone could see that it was a loosing battle. All the intact warriors, both resting and active, were panting heavily, clearly fatigued near their breaking point. The cracks on the exterior only grew more numerous by the minute and the ceiling seemed to shudder as its lower supports were threatened. The cries of civilian and warrior alike were frantic and hoarse as everyone pitched in to hold the line.
Our party was quickly intercepted by a wide-eyed old man who stopped us with hasty gestures and panicking speech. He was a far cry from Goran, likely a civilian, and his obvious exhaustion and fear likely made him look older than he truly was. His long white hair flowed down to a hunched back that made him slightly shorter even than Ann. His bushy white beard and mustache were unkempt from his time under siege, and his wild eyes glared at our party with distinct surprise. I imagined that he was asking the gaunt warriors from the checkpoint why they were here. His eyes were suddenly on fire with new life when they told him what was happening. I could see the hope return to those eyes as he was told he was being rescued.
The Maegar elder quickly began barking orders to the whole of the assembly, and I felt the energy in the room begin to shift. The women and youth were the first to line up in neat and orderly rows, chattering excitedly at the opportunity to survive, all exhaustion temporarily forgotten in the face of this new hope. After they had all filed through the tunnel and were making their way towards the exit, the civilian men came next, carrying the wounded warriors with them. Their retreat was done in more haste, as the moment they stopped reinforcing the walls the creaking noise of breaking ice grew even louder. Scratching could now be heard more clearly from the exterior walls, the Harai assault mere minutes away from finally breaking through.
The plan going forward was to have the warriors at the door beat a fighting retreat to the mouth of the cave. The enemy would funnel their way towards the front door the moment the warriors abandoned their post. Once the fighters got to the cave, they should be able to hold off our pursuers for long enough that the rest of us would be able to escape. And speaking of escape, the Maegar warriors had been urging Ann and I to retreat ever since the women and teens had left. We had refused to go out of sheer stubbornness, and many of the warriors of the relief party had also chosen to stay here and facilitate the fighting retreat. I could see that many of the warriors wouldn’t survive that, though, and a part of me just couldn’t bring myself to abandon them to that fate.
The seconds counted down to the time when the elder, who had stayed behind and in command, would order the retreat of the warriors. In those precious seconds, I did my best to calm down and think of a solution. The moment I took a deep breath, I was struck with yet another dayspring of inspiration as I listened more intently to the ominous sounds of the shelter crumbling all around us. I quickly made my way to the old man. Grabbing his attention, I stared into his crimson irises, trying hard to convey my urgency:
“Hold off for a little longer on calling a retreat!” I yelled, fighting to be heard over the din of combat, “Then tell your men to sprint at full speed to the exit.”
“Why?” he rasped back at my, eyes narrowing in suspicion and confusion.
I told him my idea as quickly as I could, and his eyes flickered between the warriors under my command and back to me. I saw indecision there, and unwillingness to trust an outsider. But I also saw that he recognized what we had done to help liberate them, how that bolstered our credibility in his eyes. In that key moment, he wavered just a bit, then made his decision:
“Be ready. I’ll signal you.”
I ordered my warriors back through the tunnel. I wouldn’t need them for this. This took some doing, as none of them wanted to turn tail in the face of the enemy. But I managed to convince them that they weren’t needed for the plan and that the civilians outside needed their help. Only Ann and the Maegar who helped us save Julia were too stubborn to leave me behind. They stood behind me as the last of our people escaped into the tunnel, leaving the open space of the shelter largely barren.
The three of us and the old man were the only people still standing at the mouth of the tunnel, waiting until the time was right. The warriors had tried to convince him to leave as well, but he had insisted on remaining in command until the end. I held my breath and trusted on his judgement, constantly switching between watching him and the faraway entrance. When the cries of combat had reached a crescendo, the old man gave the cry for a hasty retreat. In unison, the warriors let go of the door and sprinted towards us, fear and confusion written clear as day on their faces.
They were soon followed by a trickle of Snowwraiths, who quickly shredded the last dregs of the door and gamboled after the fleeing fighters. That trickle turned into a stream, and then a tide as the ambitious predators realized their opportunity in the unmanned door. As the first of the Maegar warriors began to close in on our position, the Harai vanguard nipped on their heels. My nerves rose as they closed in on us, but the old man to my right was the picture of calm. The moment I opened my mouth to say something, he turned to me and bellowed:
“Now, do it now!”
I focused in on the entrance and took a deep breath, trying to call on that feeling of desperation and power that I felt a week ago. It obeyed me like a well-trained pet, my present urgency and determination coaxing a rush of strength from my heart up to the base of my throat.
Eyes bloodshot, I opened my mouth and let loose an Oxen’s Bellow.