Ch 7: THE JOURNEY BEGINS
Marten supressed a shiver. “How many of these beasts have you slain so far?” he asked, desperate to change the subject.
“I'm just starting out! You’re lucky to have caught me at the very beginning of my quest. You should come with me to witness it from start to finish! You’re a learned man; you should pen the details of my exploits to pass them down through history. You might not be as suited to the task as a bard, but having a doctor travel with me has its own benefits.”
Marten’s first instinct was to decline, but he paused to think it through. He wasn’t keen on returning to his hometown and explaining to folks there what happened to their neighbors. He had no family waiting for him, and there were other physicians running their own practises who could look after the ill and infirm. Likely, those other doctors could look after them better than Marten could manage at the moment. He had witnessed terrible things before, but never such senseless, brutal violence, and he had never encountered a pathogen as terrifying and inexplicable as what plagued the poor people of Drummondville. Having failed so badly to identify the problem, never mind solve it, his confidence in his own practice was shaken. He did not want to go home and admit his failures and accept the pity or misplaced comfort of anyone who heard the tale.
Furthermore, he didn’t want to risk failing anyone so badly again.
“You said yourself, there's still a chance you could take a turn for the worse through the day, and end up a bloodghast after all,” Fionnobhar pointed out, watching him closely.
It was unlikely, but Fionnobhar was right: it was a convenient excuse to stay in the knight’s company and avoid going home.
“I can travel with you a short while,” Marten allowed, ignoring the knight’s responding enthusiasm. “Perhaps for a few days, until I’ve recovered somewhat from the surgery.”
“You have to come with me to see this wyrm,” Fionnobhar said, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “How many people actually get to watch a knight slay a dragon in real life? Shit, everybody wants that.”
Marten had never seen a dragon before, not even a lowly wyrm. “I would actually like that,” he admitted, unable to keep from cracking a tiny smile.
The rest of the night passed quietly. Marten dozed in and out of sleep, too tired to fight it, but he did not dream again, and he kept his supper down. When he woke again before the dawn, he stayed awake, leaning against the hollow tree with the knight’s cloak draped over him, watching the world gently lighten from indigo to navy to soft dove grey, as glimpses of sky took shape in between the canopy of trees.
Sitting there in the stillness as the morning birds began their chorus, Marten felt absolutely nothing. There was no shock left from the day before, hardly even any horror, like all his emotions had been scooped out, leaving him as hollow as that tree. Perhaps some feelings would return after breakfast, but until then, Marten quietly appreciated the numbness. It was preferable to the abject terror of Drummondville.
Marten had never been a particularly adventurous man, but perhaps a brief journey with an outgoing knight would settle him and put him back in sorts. It would offer a thorough change of pace, an engaging distraction for both mind and body, and when it was done, he could go home again and put the Drummondville incident firmly behind him.
He underestimated how annoying it would be to travel with the knight for any amount of time.
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In the village, Marten had been terrified for his life, operating entirely in survival mode. En route to the campsite, he’d been delirious with fever. Now, awake, calm, and lucid, the full force of the knight’s personality hit him and ran him over like a cart horse.
Fionnobhar never removed his helmet, never mind the rest of his armor. He never stopped talking except to whistle instead, the sound coming out thin and tinny through his visor, and the words that came out of his mouth were unpredictable, and often unhinged. In Marten’s exhausted state the previous night, it had been easier to overlook the fact that Fionnobhar carried around a bag of severed heads, at least one of which was human. In the light of day, he was not a man Marten much wanted to spend time with.
The knight, however, seemed wholly enthusiastic to have Marten’s company.
“I’ve never been on a god-given quest before,” he said, kicking ashes over the fire’s last embers before setting out. “It’s going to be great to have someone tagging along to witness all my heroic deeds. You’re a credible source; you can talk me up to my lady when we’re done.”
“I said I’d accompany you to see the wyrm,” Marten said, hurrying along in the knight’s wake. “I definitely did not agree to follow you on your entire quest.”
Fionnobhar scoffed, striding ahead. “What, have you got anything better lined up?”
“I’m not some stray cat for you to gather up off the street and take with you wherever you go,” Marten protested. “I have a whole life I’ll need to return to.”
“It’s not like I’m kidnapping you,” Fionnobhar said, not breaking his stride. “If you want to go back to your old life, you can turn around and head straight back through Corpse Town and do whatever you want. I'm going to go fight a fucking dragon, and it’s going to be awesome, with or without you there to see it.”
Marten did not want to go back through Corpse Town. He never wanted to set foot in Drummondville again, not that there would be much left of it after that barn-fire burned itself out. Reluctantly, he hurried forward to keep pace with the knight. At least if Fionnobhar was looking smug about Marten’s decision, Marten couldn't see it through the knight’s visor.
Because Fionnobhar had no horse, he carried very little with him by way of provisions, which either meant he was sleeping rough and hunting small game every night, or stopping at every town and hamlet he passed for regular meals. They reached the village of Wickshaw by mid-morning, in time for a late breakfast after chewing on the last of the rabbit bones from the night before. Fionnobhar wasted no time in rolling up to the inn, ordering a hearty spread, and announcing to the innkeeper, “I hear you have a wyrm in these parts.”
“That's the rumor,” the innkeeper agreed.
She was a broad, heavy-set woman of middle age who looked wary of the knight all in black, but not wary enough to refuse him service. Marten tried his best to look extra polite and civilized in comparison.
“Tell me about it,” Fionnobhar invited, making himself comfortable against the bar. “And bring a plate for my friend, too.”
“I’ll tell you about the wyrm,” said a man from one of the tables, one of the inn’s only other occupants. He had a bushy, bristly grey beard, and the look of a man who had spent every one of his fifty-odd years toiling outdoors. Fionnobhar joined him at his table, and Marten followed in the knight’s wake, curious despite himself.
“There is no wyrm,” the man said flatly.
He had a bowl of thick porridge sitting in front of him, with raisins and chunks of apple in it, and sugar and cinnamon stirred throughout. Marten's stomach growled, informing him that it had recovered from its earlier queasiness.
“The wyrm is a story my bastard neighbor invented to cover up the way he's been sabotaging my land. Fields furrowed, trenches dug, weird tunnels burrowed underneath my property. He says there’s a wyrm taken up residence in the outfields, but I’ve never seen anything. It’s just him, trying to drive me off so he can take my farm and my wife for himself.”
“He’s digging tunnels as a form of psychological warfare?” Marten asked.
The man harrumphed over the rim of his mug of tea. “I’ll show you, after I’m done eating. Have you got food coming? Our Mary, she serves up a decent plate. I’ve taken to breakfasting here just to get away from the place for an hour a day. It's doing my head in, this wyrm nonsense. But the real ones know he’s a liar. The rest of folks just think he's taken a turn and gone daft. I’m Reb,” he added.
“We do have food coming,” Fionnobhar said, leaning in to plant his elbows on the table. “And then we would love to see what’s going on with your fields.”