Ch 13: SEPARATION ANXIETY

Marten watched as the witch’s head joined the wyrm’s and the mayor’s in Fionnobhar’s bag of holding. However many the knight had left to collect to reach his thousand, Marten refused to be witness to a single one more.

“I'm going back to the sheep farm to collect my clothes,” he said, turning away from the knight and trying to pull his temper back in check. “I would ask you not to join me, and suggest you distance yourself from the scene of the murder you just committed, before anyone comes by to see.”

Squaring his shoulders, he set off down the street away from Wickshaw’s Town Hall, determinedly not looking back, even as he expected the tip of a blade between his shoulders. When he reached the first bend in the road that would take him around a corner and out of Fionnobhar’s sight, he stopped.

He didn't know why. It wasn’t intentional. But his feet planted in the dirt and refused to take another step, like his body was convinced he was forgetting something that his mind just hadn’t realized yet. He huffed, frustrated with himself, and still too furious with the knight to clearly articulate his thoughts. It wasn’t until he heard the clank of armor behind him as Fionnobhar began following in his footsteps that Marten’s feet unstuck from the road.

“Cool your boots,” Fionnobhar told him, before Marten had even acknowledged his presence. “I’m going back to the sheep farm too. There’s a hunk of mutton left I want to take with me on the road.”

“There’s no reason we need to walk together,” Marten said, forging ahead.

It was petty; it wasn’t like there were multiple roads to take them back to the farm in a village as small as Wickshaw. If Fionnobhar wanted to return to the farm, Marten could hang back by Town Hall and wait until the knight had moved on before collecting his clothes from Lisbet’s laundry. But he was too angry to stand still. His body kept pushing forward along the road, keeping him three paces ahead of the knight.

It was in this manner they returned to the farm, with Fionnobhar trailing behind, occasionally commenting on the farmland, or the rare passerby, or the weather, which was cool and overcast, befitting both the early autumn season and Marten’s mood. Marten ignored Fionnobhar as best he could, blocking any attempt at conversation without actually daring to take his attention off the knight, in case the man snapped again.

Marten wasn’t ignorant. He knew full well the danger any knight posed; for all their tales of honor and chivalry, there were as many stories about their violence and impulsiveness. No one became a knight without a willingness to swing a sword around or the money to buy a good one, and every commoner knew there was only so far that a wealthy man inclined to violence could be trusted. A knight was only held in check as far as his liege could control him, and Fionnobhar had plainly stated that he had no lord or king.

A knight who didn’t answer to anyone was as dangerous as a wild dog. There was no hand feeding Fionnobhar, which he seemed to take as permission to bite anyone he pleased. The headless old witch joined the legion of dead from Drummondville in their silent condemnation of Marten’s failure to save them.

But Marten didn’t return to Town Hall, and he didn’t rush ahead, or lag to let Fionnobhar pass him. They walked back to the farm house together, and filed inside one at a time. As Marten retrieved his clothes—scrubbed clean, but still wet —and his satchel of anatomical tomes and surgical instruments, Fionnobhar beelined for the pantry, honing in on that leftover mutton. There was a rack of ribs and half a rump left, which he bundled up in butcher’s paper from the farmer’s kitchen before helping himself to a loaf of brown bread and the remains of a block of cheese.

“For services rendered,” Fionnobhar said, when he caught Marten’s disapproving glare. “You think he wouldn’t invite me to take this shit if he were here, instead of pounding potato-guy’s face in at Town Hall? Or pounding potato-guy’s wife; whatever.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Jon has been a generous host,” Marten said stiffly. “Now, please, go.”

But Fionnobhar didn’t move, standing between Marten and the door. “Listen, if you’re freaked out about what that old witch said about my quest being swamped in darkness and ending the world, that’s definitely not going to happen. She was off her rocker. My lady is a priestess, not some deranged sorceress.”

“I’m upset,” said Marten, biting out each word, “because you killed a defenceless old woman. I don’t give a damn what she was talking about, or what she said about your lady. That was knavish, villainous behaviour, and I do not associate with villains.”

Fionnobhar looked affronted from behind his armor. “I’m not a villain. I saved your life, didn’t I?”

“I don't think it would have mattered an ounce to you if you had to watch me die at the hands of a bloodghast or a wyrm, or if you had to kill me yourself,” Marten said honestly.

“Fine,” Fionnobhar said, after a beat of silence. “Then you won’t see me again.”

Shouldering his pack with the fresh provisions shoved inside, and his gruesome bag of holding in one hand, Fionnobhar stomped out the door without another word.

Marten followed him onto the front step to watch him go, making sure he was heading away from the village, rather than back into town and the scene of the witch’s murder. As Fionnobhar drew further away, tromping down the dirt cart-path between the farmsteads, something anxious clawed its way up from the pit of Marten’s stomach.

It was some misplaced sense of attachment, he told himself as he took the first tentative step after the knight’s retreating back. Fionnobhar had saved him from certain death three times over—from the bloodghasts, the ensuing infection, and then the wyrm. His body associated the knight with safety and protection, even if his mind knew better. The trauma of it all had left him shaken and confused, but after he returned to his routine in Easton, everything would be fine.

He forced himself to a halt before he came to the road, muscles tense with the effort of holding still, and turned to look back at the farmhouse.

He couldn’t hear Fionnobhar’s footsteps anymore. His anxiety mounted, shifting from nervousness to molten dread that pooled in his guts. The longer he held still, not looking in Fionnobhar’s direction, the worse it got, climbing from his stomach into his chest to hold his lungs in a vice grip, crawling into his throat until he choked on panic.

Turning around so quickly he tripped over his own feet, Marten caught a glimpse of the knight in the distance just before the road curved behind a stand of trees. Fionnobhar disappeared from sight.

His sudden absence throttled Marten like a dog shaking a cat by the scruff of its neck, and he dropped to his knees like his tendons had been cut. A wet gasp choked out of him, and his body began dragging him forward on hands and knees, forcing him onto the road in the knight’s footsteps like there was a chain tied between the two of them, and Fionnobhar was dragging Marten in his wake on an invisible leash.

Marten couldn’t stop his body’s forward momentum for long enough to get his feet under him, and he couldn’t crawl quickly enough to catch up. His mind rebelled, terrified of this unwanted compulsion, fighting his body with every step.

“Fionnobhar!” he finally screamed. He tasted blood.

The longest minute of his life passed him by as he knelt there in the dirt, clutching his satchel and his damp laundry with white knuckles, biting his lip so hard it bled as he fought to hold his ground.

Finally, Fionnobhar edged out from around the trees, looking back the way he’d come with his sword half-drawn from its sheath. When he saw Marten kneeling slumped in the road, he paused before jogging forward a few steps, looking around. When no dragons or bandits or other obvious dangers were apparent, he shoved his sword back home, slowing to a walk as he approached.

The compulsion ebbed. The liquid dread and choking panic subsided. Staying on his knees, Marten caught his breath as he watched the knight approach, and all his anxiety slowly hardened to fury.

“What have you done to me?” he demanded, as soon as Fionnobhar was in range.

Fionnobhar pulled up short. “You told me to go away. I went. Now you’ve changed your mind?”

“You’ve done something,” Marten accused, laboriously pulling himself to his feet.

Now that the knight was standing near enough to touch, Marten didn’t feel any misplaced sense of safety. When Fionnobhar had been out of sight, that hadn’t been any common anxiety that plagued him. Something far stronger than nerves or lingering trauma had wrapped itself around his bones.

Marten had never been bespelled before, but this was how he imagined it must feel.

“What magic have you put on me?”