Ch 18: TO THE CASTLE’S OUTSKIRTS

As soon as the sky lightened enough to see by, Marten changed into his own clothes, blessedly dry and clean, and dragged Fionnobhar and all their belongings back to the roadside on a makeshift sledge. He had crudely fashioned it out of branches, and it would suffice for short distances, but he didn’t want to try dragging it all the way back to Wickshaw. Either the construction would collapse along the road, or he would.

Fionnobhar, he had plied with poppy milk at regular intervals through the night, and the knight was thankfully unconscious, and hopefully unaware of his own pain. Marten changed his bandages again in the grey predawn, which only solidified his belief that they needed to get somewhere civilized if he wanted a chance of seeing the knight through this.

As the sun cleared the horizon, warding off the chill, early-morning mist, a cart pulled by two heavy draft horses approached, heading west. The card, piled high with provisions, slowed to a stop when Marten flagged it down. The driver was a woman of perhaps forty years, with a wide-brimmed hat and a wool coat pulled over her sensible work clothes.

“My companion needs help,” Marten said as she regarded him impassively, chewing on a stick of straw. “A hunting accident. We need a lift to the next nearest town where I can provide him medical attention.”

“Next stop west is Renmore Castle,” said the woman. “I'm heading there now.” She glanced at Fionnobhar, half stripped of his armor, but with his helmet still planted firmly on his head. “A hunting accident. Is that not the knight they were talking about back in Wickshaw?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Marten lied.

“They said a knight in black slayed a wyrm there, only to lose all favor won by that when he killed a local on his way out.”

“That couldn’t have been him, then. We met on the road last night; he said he’d been hunting in the woods all day. A boar interrupted our campsite.”

The woman let out a low whistle, jumping down from the cart and gesturing to Marten that she would help him load Fionnobhar into the back. “You’re lucky to have walked away from that. Well; I guess he’s not walking anywhere, is he?”

“Not currently, no.”

Together, they tossed Fionnobhar’s pack, his bag, and armor, followed by Marten’s satchel into the back of the cart before each picking up an end of the makeshift sledge and carrying it over. There was no room in the cart for the contraption itself, so they had to roll Fionnobhar off it and in amid the provisions.

“Hopefully, if the boar didn’t kill him, a spot of manhandling won’t, either,” the woman grunted, shoving him in.

When Marten was satisfied that Fionnobhar was safely wedged in place and still breathing, he turned to offer the woman his hand. “Marten, from Easton.”

“You a physician?” she asked, shaking it. Her grip was firm, no-nonsense, and callused.

“I am.”

She nodded. “Myg, from Renmore’s house.” She tipped her head towards the cart. “Hop up, and don’t let him bleed on anything. We’ll be at the castle by noon.”

As the sun rose and the morning warmed, Myg and Marten both shed their overcoats as the silver mist dissipated and the dew evaporated from the grass to either side of the road. Marten sat with his back to the cart’s provisions, facing the road they were leaving behind with one hand on his satchel for safekeeping, and the other hand on Fionnobhar’s chest to mark his breathing.

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The knight’s breath held steady, in no danger of fading away, with the only hitch coming when the drugs in his system receded and he stirred, close to waking. He was strong and fit, in the prime of health and endurance, and if Marten could only clean his wounds properly and stitch them shut in good lighting and a sterile environment, he could make a full recovery. He was running a light fever, but the flesh around the edges of the bandages wasn't inflamed or discolored, so any possible infection was still in its very early stages. The knight’s luck seemed as blessed as Marten’s was cursed, of late.

When Fionnobhar next stirred at mid-morning, Marten allowed him to fully wake, in order to get some water in him.

“Moving?” Fionnobhar asked blearily, looking around.

“We’re on our way to the castle, like you wanted,” Marten told him, though he doubted the knight would remember any conversation after Marten dosed him again. “Can I raise your visor so you can drink?”

Through the night, he’d dripped water from a soaked cloth through the slats in Fionnobhar’s helm, but Fionnobhar could use more water than just drops. Fionnobhar made a sound that might have been agreement. In any case, he didn’t fight as Marten inched his visor up just enough to show his mouth, allowing Marten to tip the flask against his lips.

His skin was dusky—likely a natural-born complexion compared to a tan, if he’d been sealed in his armor for much of the summer—full lips, and a few day’s-worth of dark stubble, suggesting that Fionnobhar had only stopped shaving when Marten joined his company and cost him the chance to remove his helmet for a morning shave. When Fionnobhar had drunk what Marten deemed a suitable amount, Marten carefully lowered his visor again without looking any further.

“Didn’t leave me in the woods,” Fionnobhar observed, clapping one clumsy, gauntleted hand over Marten’s knee.

“I didn’t,” Marten agreed.

“Fixing me?”

“I’m trying to, but you’re not fixed yet, so don’t move around.”

“Feel fixed.”

“That’s the poppies talking,” Marten said drily. “Believe me, you’re no better off than you were laying in that field.”

“Good stuff,” Fionnobhar said approvingly.

“Yes, it is. And, good news: I’m about to give you some more.”

That time, the sound Fionnobhar made was wholly approving as Marten raised his visor to feed him a spoonful of the liquid drug.

With the knight asleep once more, the rest of the journey passed quietly, with nothing but birdsong, the rhythm of the horses’ hooves against the dirt, and the regular clatter of the cart wheels to fill the air. With Myg and Marten facing opposite directions, and with Marten unwilling to leave Fionnobhar’s side, there was no chance for conversation there. Myg had auburn red hair that matched the early autumn landscape, slightly faded with age and gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck, and freckles on her face and hands. She didn’t invite Marten to join her in the driver’s seat and seemed accustomed to making the trek from the castle to the village in solitude, so Marten left her to it.

As the sun approached noon, the woods thinned to farmland again. When Marten turned to look forward, Renmore Castle rose on a hill on the horizon ahead, dark and hulking against the cloudy blue sky. The witch’s warning of a darkness hanging over the place hadn’t been literal, but Marten sensed something uneasy in the air as they approached.

“Lord Renmore isn’t accepting visitors,” Myg said over her shoulder as they came to the foot of the hill, “but you can get help for your friend in town.”

Town was hardly more than a hundred houses inside the castle’s outermost walls, dotted up the eastern side of the hill: a scattering of families to work the farmland and serve the castle interior. As they rolled through, slowly climbing the hill, Marten noted the atmosphere seemed subdued. The few townsfolk he saw along the road, tending to livestock or on their way from one place to the next, looked tired and grim, and there were no children to be seen.

“Is there some misfortune at work here?” he asked, standing in the back of the cart and leaning over its stores to talk to Myg.

“Folks are on edge,” she said shortly, “but there’s no illness or politics plaguing folks, if that’s what you mean. The rest is Lord Renmore’s business.”

She drew the horses to a stop outside a house on the edge of the residences with a red thatched roof, and, disembarking, gave a sharp rap on the door.

“Got two folks needing medical attention,” she said to whomever opened it. “One of them’s gored, the other’s a doctor. They hitched a ride from Whicken Wood, just outside Wickshaw.” To Marten, she said, “Unload your shite, and Lester here will help you get your knight inside.”

Lester stepped out of the house to nod a greeting to Marten. He was an old man, though not as old as the witch had been, with white hair and silver spectacles, giving him the look of a scholar more than a butcher. In Marten’s experience, doctors tended to fall closer to one end or the other of those extremes.

Lester collected Marten and Fionnobhar’s belongings and set them inside before taking a look at the knight, still slumped unconscious in the cart. “The witch’s boar caught him in the woods, did she?”