It came as no surprise that His Highness was a quick study. We did not cover every aspect of shooting, seeing as we couldn’t do the actual shooting part, but he did some practices of measuring out powder from the horn, priming the pan, and bringing the dragonet to bear. With his still boyish frame the dragonet was a better fit than an arquebus would have been, with its less clumsy aspect.

We discussed the essential practices of safety and efficacy as well: being sure to remove the ramrod, keeping the muzzle tipped upwards after loading (although the newer models were much less prone to losing the ball), and most importantly never bringing a firearm to full cock unless you fully intended to discharge it. I had no desire for His Highness to incapacitate himself -- or me -- while trying to managed a cocked dragonet, or to do something unwise like attempt to un-cock it without firing it.

His Highness watched and listened with an intent look, nodding and asking questions at intervals. I rarely had to say anything twice, and it was not overly long before I decided he was as prepared as he could be made in the course of one evening. I had him properly charge both dragonets while I made up a miserable soup of some forage gathered along the road to soften our hard tack, watching him out the corner of my eye. My confidence was justified, though, and I had no need to intervene as he carefully went through the steps.

Thus armed, we ate our dismal but blessedly hot supper in silence, each occupied with our own thoughts. I could only speculate on what might be running through His Highness’s head, but for my part I was still concerned with whatever had caused the previous occupant of the cabin to forget hat and manners both. Combined with the peculiar wyvern attack, I felt events were taking on an inauspicious alignment. Several ideas presented themselves as to why a hunter might feel driven out, and few of them seemed innocuous.

And so it was that after we finished our meal and I rinsed the pot with rainwater from the trough, I latched the door -- after giving it another good kick to get the swollen wood closed again -- appraised the state of the latch, and tipped the table over in front of it as well for good measure. I could only pray that if any trouble did come calling, it wouldn’t be trouble enough for Munter, or at the least that he would whinny and wake us.

My last task before I could answer the siren call of sleep, even if a shallow sleep with scabbard in one hand and a gun beside me, was the least pleasant of the night. Peeling back my sweat- and bloodstained shirt, I found the wound in my shoulder throbbing, angry and red. Of course there was no company surgeon to be had out here in the woods, so I had to make do as best I could with what I knew, probing at the wound with conscientiously scrubbed fingers. It didn’t seem too badly off, aside from the way I kept aggravating it with my incessant fighting.

I searched through the saddlebags until I found the medical equipment, such as it was. Lacking a surgeon there was little merit to carrying scalpels, bone saws, and the like, but we had bandages in abundance and some soft cloths and pads. I soaked one such pad in boiling water, grit my teeth, and set to wiping at my shoulder.

It stung like the blazes. My swift intake of breath was loud enough to make His Highness twitch up from his stupor on one of the bunks, but I quickly waved him back down.

“Nothing to worry about, your Highness, just seeing to the scratch from before. Wouldn’t do to have it get infected, sir, that might have me in a real spot of trouble.” I said, returning to gingerly dabbing at the injury, little flakes of dried blood and dirt that had worked through the shirt coming away.

His Highness looked like he wanted to offer a rejoinder of some kind, but his exhaustion won out and he slumped back against the bedframe instead. I smiled to myself, despite the stinging. The prince had a good heart, and it eased my work.

I rummaged through the medical kit again after I had done cleaning the wound -- revealing once again the rather ragged cut, just a few centimetres long -- in search of any kind of poultice, but came out empty handed. Sighing, I set to making the standard soldier’s poultice and hoping it would help. A spoon full of breadcrumbs -- in the case of hard tack it felt more like brick dust, but there it was -- with a spoon full of black powder, soaked in hot water and mixed to a paste. I wished we had a bit of milk for it, too, but that would be a real luxury in our situation, so instead I just scooped the mix out onto a pad and awkwardly bound it around my shoulder with a length of bandaging. The wound’s position near my collarbone meant I had to run bandaging below my arm and around my neck, and it was a bit of a trick getting it tied off, but I thought I had managed it by the end.

Pulling my shirt back on and buttoning it, I offered a prayer to the Heavens that I wouldn’t have to deal with an infection on the journey as well. I’d seen many powerful men laid low by a small wound that just wouldn’t heal right, and I knew we could ill afford any such delay -- or worse, loss.

Finally, I banked the fire, extinguished the lantern, and made myself as comfortable as I could on the other ground-level bedframe. I was too afraid of what might come to fully consign myself to sleep, so I sat up with my back against the wall and a blanket over my legs, scimitar held by the scabbard in my left hand and dragonet propped against my side. So armed, I let weariness overcome me and my tired eyes sagged shut.

***

I slept fitfully, waking up at intervals through the night to look around. When I did sleep, I dreamed of fighting and sentry duty, waking abruptly each time the enemy broke through our position. The dawn brought with it a rare pause in the drizzle, but I was hard put to muster any enthusiasm for another day’s travel.

Nevertheless I ignored my fatigue and forced myself off the low bed, feeling rather like a puppet pulling at its own strings. The fire had died in the night and the temperature fallen, the cold leaking through my blanket. I rolled my stiff shoulders and winced. My little tussle with the wyvern had left me with a bruise across all my upper back, plus miscellaneous other injuries I’d dismissed at the time: my hands were scraped up from the rough bark of my improvised pike, my elbows bruised from being battered against the ground while I tried to throw the beast off, and, of course, every muscle in my body was aching.

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I mentally snarled at the pain, abruptly rising fully upright and throwing myself into the chores of the morning before inertia could set in. I had a duty to fulfill and I would see it through, not let a few bumps stop me.

Despite the night passing undisturbed (save for the phantoms in my dreams), I was still on edge this morning. Intent on allaying the fears or confronting them head-on, I quietly lifted the toppled table away from the door, took my scimitar in hand, and lifted the latch.

A couple of swift yanks popped the buldging wood from the frame, swinging back with a yawning creak as I stepped out blade drawn—into the fresh, crisp air of a spring dawn.

The air was filled with birdsong, flashes of bright spring plumage showing through the trees as the birds showed off in the early grey light. A light breeze played in the loose strands of hair that had been steadily escaping my plait in the last two days. Munter nickered at me from the hitching post and tapped a hoof impatiently, demanding his breakfast. The smell of wet leaf mould and earth mixed with just a hint of old smoke from last night in the quintessential blend of the woods.

I felt rather silly. Exhaling slowly, I jammed my sword back into its scabbard and set it down against the wall, stretching and turning my face to the sky.

I stood like that for a long minute, eyes shut, just enjoying the peace of the moment in the forest. No screams and demons in the night. No enemies at the gate. No wyverns in the sky. It was refreshing.

Finally, I stooped to pick my weapon back up and return to the business of the day. The work ahead was no easier, but my heart felt lighter. I offered a short thanks to the Heavens as I ducked back through the doorway, ready to face whatever might come.

The cabin was still mostly dark, lit only by the ambient light streaming in through the open door, but I decided against lighting the lantern. The oil was costly, but more importantly irreplaceable until we reached a proper town.

The prince stirred and rose while I went about tending to the horse and tidying the cabin, leaving it in readiness for the next visitor.

“Why go to so much effort, gefreiter?” He finally asked. “It’s not as though we’re staying here.”

I was splitting dead wood for kindling when he asked, the last task before leaving. I sank the small hatchet into stump decades of travellers had been using as a chopping block and stretched my back before answering.

“Woodsman’s code, your Highness,” I said. “Leave the place as you’d like to find it, sir, for the sake of anyone else who might use it. And it may be that something unexpected holds you up and you have to return immediately, and then it’s best that the place be ready anyway.”

“That makes sense, I suppose. But it wasn’t left so when we arrived, was it? The ashes left piled in the stove and there being no wood. Is that not common?”

Not wanting to trouble His Highness with matters he couldn’t influence, I opted to avoid mentioning my theory about the last visitor having fled, though I wasn’t sure how recently.

“No, your Highness, not usually. But it’s troubled times, sir, and they may have been in a hurry.”

“Is that why you showed me how to use the dragonets last night?” The prince asked, honest curiosity in his voice. I grinned ruefully, my plans to put one over His Highness scuppered by his wit.

“Quite right, sir, although I didn’t wish to trouble you with uncertain concerns, and you had asked earlier besides. I think it almost certain they fled the cabin, but not hard recently, your Highness. I doubt anything will come of it, but a surfeit of preparation is rarely so damning as a scarcity.”

The prince nodded. “I see,” He said, and then abruptly changed his tone and focus. “May I help?”

I blinked and pushed back my hair. “Pardon, your Highness?”

“May I help?” He repeated himself, sounding entirely earnest. He indicated the chopping block and wood. “I shouldn’t like to be slowing our travel all the time, and it is the least I can do.”

My mind raced down a thousand different tracks at once, most to do with the absurdity of expecting His Royal Highness Prince Franz of Immerland to do manual labour. Most of those tracks immediately suffered the mental equivalent of fatal chariot crashes. It would be too charitable to say I didn’t miss a beat, but an old and dusty attitude from home creaked into the lead.

“Of course, your Highness,” I said, gesturing to the rough pile of split wood to my side. “Could you start carrying this inside, sir? Just set it beside the fireplace for now, sir, I’ll show you how to stack it so it dries when I’m done here, sir.”

“Very well.” His Highness set to gathering up an armful of split pieces, while my mind still reeled.

“Don’t take too much, lad, and mind how you touch it. You could get a nasty splinter,” I commented absently.

Wait, “lad”? The thought came, too late.

“Ah, sorry, your Highness, sir, didn’t mean to call you that, sir, it was just force of habit, sir, this whole situation reminding me of home, your Highness, sir, my apologies again, sir, I meant no disrespect, sir, won’t happen again, your Highness,” I babbled, feeling at once like I would spontaneously ignite and that I must have gone white as a sheet. Such a colossal blunder, Friedrich! I mentally upbraided myself. Even if he is asking for chores, His Highness is not a child nor an apprentice!

To my immense relief, His Highness laughed quietly at my panic. “It’s quite alright, Schreiner,” He replied with a wry smile. “I shall be sure not to get a splinter.”

“Thank you, your Highness, as you say, sir.” I willed my pounding heart to slow as the prince set off around the cabin with a small armful of wood. The prince’s alternation between regally calm and incisive and boyishly earnest and curious was evidently difficult for my unthinking mind to follow or at least it was when I was preoccupied. Which was all the time, at present, for obvious reasons.

I blew out a deep breath, taking up the hatchet again. Wallowing in shame over mis-addressing His Highness wouldn’t split firewood.

The next half hour passed without incident, the prince helping out with carrying and stacking the firewood next to the stove. When we left the cabin the stove was clean, the stools and table set neatly in order, and at least two days’ worth of rain-soaked but dry-cored split wood lay stacked by the hearth. The sun peeked out through the clouds for a few minutes in a rare springtime visit, and as we set off I had the rare problem of keeping the sun out of my eyes rather than the rain.