with the Lieutenant." He went to a pile of clothes, which shook and sat up to reveal a boy. "We're getting out of here now, sir. Just get you on your feet, there's a good lad."
The boy smiled through a mask of blood and pain. "I've come as far as I can, sergeant. Up to you now. You take the walking wounded, leave me the rest. We'll manage. I know the land, remember. Raised here. Don't take the main road, go up through the Vale."
"None of that, sir. You know the men won't leave you." The sergeant spoke tenderly. "We've got a wagon now, we're all going together. Mister Chad has come to take us back, you remember, the hero of the elf raid two years ago."
Chad blushed, he'd tried to keep that quiet, and felt the boy's eyes inspecting him. "Plenty of straw in the wagon to keep everyone comfortable despite the jolts, sir. Shall we get you to the wagon?"
"That's very kind of you Wagonmaster. However get me a seat up front. I know the ways around here. You may have to tie me on, though."
Chad stared at the boy's right arm, which ended just past the elbow in a bloody, seeping rag. Looking around, he saw it wasn't an unusual injury.
"Spakka axes," murmured the sergeant. "About the only injury that isn't instantly fatal." He helped the boy to his feet and Chad busied himself picking up equipment and taking it to the wagon. Soldiers filed out slowly and climbed painfully into the wagon.
Chad counted twenty eight on and it was packed. "Another seven? No trouble we can fit them in."
The sergeant looked at him for a moment, and then spoke to his Lieutenant. "I'm sorry, sir, but we have some who aren't going to make it. I will give them grace, but they would appreciate your words and face."
The boy flexed his left arm and looked at his hand. For the first time Chad realised he was missing part of the hand. "I can hold a sword, sergeant. I will do my duty."
"You can hold it, but you can't thrust properly. It wouldn't be fair, sir."
Abruptly Chad realised that they were going to kill some of the wounded. His gorge rose and he started to protest but couldn't find the words. He went back to the wagon while the boy staggered off with his sergeant.
He saw the guard who had first spoken to him, sitting on the straw in the wagon with a leg stuck out at an odd angle, blood soaked through the trousers and a horrific rent.
"What happened to Lord Young?" he asked.
"Spakka axe." The soldier grunted. "Split his fucking head in two." The soldier ruminated for a moment. "Good man, the Young Man. But his kid brother is something else. We'd all be dead if it wasn't for him. Not easy organising a retreat from axemen."
"Are there any of you that aren't wounded?"
"Went off with Lord Blackstair's company. They drove the Spakka back for a bit. How'd you get through, anyway? We must be about five miles behind the main Spakka army."
"I have no idea," said Chad with feeling. "A Pathfinder officer sent me down the track, and I went straight through the Spakka. They sat on the edge of the gulley and watched me."
"Where's your weapons? Were you holding them?" All the soldiers were listening to him, looking at him with eyes dulled with pain.
"Don’t carry a weapon. Can't use the things. Me, I miss whatever I aim at with a crossbow, more chance of hitting myself or the horses. Safer without."
"You're a right mental bastard," said the soldier with respect. "You wouldn’t catch me walking through Spakka lines without a weapon. Did they do anything?"
"One of them was going to throw an axe, but another stopped him. When I went past he said something, sounded like 'mod egg man'"
"Brave," said the Lieutenant, climbing onto the seat, his face drawn and fresh blood on his legs. "He said you were a brave man. Spakka respect that. Hold to the low ground there, and go round that stump. You'll find a passable track, wont be too soft and the wagon will get through."
Chad would have liked to forget that trip. The smell was dreadful, he hadn't realised that blood smelt and now it was mixed with shit and corruption. The boy led them through back lanes and they never saw the Spakka. Most of the sickly sweet smell seemed to come from his arm. Every now and then the boy would hiss as they went over a bump, and once he bit off a scream when his stump brushed the side of the wagon as he tried to grab it with his missing hand. Some of the wounded became delirious, but the sergeant kept their discipline and they didn't cry out too loudly.
They stopped for a few hours to rest the horses, and Chad managed to get a bit of sleep. The soldiers slept in the wagon where it was warmer, only a few getting down. He noticed the Lieutenant going round and talking to each man.
They woke him after the second watch and he harnessed the horses and they went on through the night. He felt the Lieutenant's body like a block of ice beside him, and he shuffled closer, feeling his own body chill as he leaked heat into the boy.
Shortly after dawn they were coming down a track, the Lieutenant having fallen asleep at last, occasionally flopping his head onto Chad's shoulder. Chad saw two shapes beside the road and tensed before realising they couldn't be Spakka.
Coming closer, he saw a gaunt old man with a stern blond wife beside him. As they came up to them, a young girl came down the path that joined the track. Her dark eyes were huge, not looking at Chad as he came to a halt, but fastened on the Lieutenant.
The old man stepped forward and gently lifted the Lieutenant from his seat. The boy's head flopped backwards and Chad's skin crawled as he realised the boy was dead. The old man turned and walked away with his burden.
"Thank you for bringing us our son," said the old woman and she turned and walked away, followed by the girl, now openly weeping.
Unsure what to do, Chad looked back at the sergeant and saw him slumped down. All the soldiers had tears running down their faces, weeping quietly and openly. A big man at the back gestured to go on. Chad did so, the guilt rising up inside him. If he hadn't rested the horses and slept, the boy would have died at home. Maybe even lived under his mother's care.
"Lost his hand in the first action," said the sergeant quietly behind him. "Guarding the colour. Was always a killing wound. He just wanted to come home to die. Why he lasted so long. Thanks." This last was said gruffly, but murmured and echoed by the others. It made Chad feel worse, and a fake. He shouldn't have slept.
Chad sat on the rail overlooking the paddock and stared unseeing at his nephew, sitting beside him. The memories of twenty years in the Army flooded over him, the face of Old Lord Young as he took his son's body still haunting him fourteen years later. The Princess had heard and sought him out. She commended him, but he had refused the honour of a second medal presented by her in front of the garrison. That had annoyed her but this time he had insisted. The guilt had been too strong.
"No, Paul, I was just a haulier, taking stuff around for the army. I didn't kill anybody."
"What about women? Bet they all opened their legs for you, hey?" The boy grinned lasciviously, betraying his main reason for wanting to join the army.
A great emptiness swept through Chad as he remembered Maud, sweet smiling Maud. She'd laughed at his clumsy advances, touched his cheek and always been nice to him, whilst going off with the garrison soldiers. He'd married her, regardless of the belly swelling with another man's child, only to see her die in childbirth a scant few months later.
"Not what I wanted, lad." That was all he managed to say, wondering if he could ever share with anyone his feelings, how he would still see Maud's face on women as he passed them in the street, his heart raising with a lurch every time.
The boy looked at him scornfully, jumped off the rail and went off with his friends. Chad heard "Stupid old man" as the boy went round the barn and smiled ruefully. How could he explain his wars to a boy who though it was all about swords, and had no understanding of discomfort, of harnessing a recalcitrant team on a frozen morning with the leathers stiff and awkward.
He looked back into the paddock, and smi
led at the beauty of this year's crop of horses. He had carefully nurtured the bloodlines, managing to get some of Chloe's relations from the Army when he retired five years earlier and took up horse breeding. It was a good life, he thought, and absently wished Maud was sharing it with him.
He climbed down from the rails carefully and turned to the stable, coming to an abrupt halt at the sight of an elf, standing just in front of him with a tube held to his mouth. The elf's cheeks puffed and a cloud of acrid black smoke engulfed Chad's head briefly. He reeled back and sat down, coughing.
The elf sat down awkwardly on his haunches, a crooked leg off to one side. He looked at him with unblinking black eyes.
"Hello Fat Man," said the elf in perfect Harrheinian.
Chad looked up into his face and the years fell away, he was back in his charging wagon, looking out from under the dummy and right above the wheel as it went over the elf's leg. He heard again the sound of the bone breaking and he looked again into the same eyes, the same expressionless eyes that had looked up at him as the wagon broke his body and remembered again seeing the knowledge of who had caused the horse to turn into his jump flood into the elf's eyes.
"My leg didn't heal straight. The Shining Path, the Path of the Warrior, was closed to me. Thanks to you, Fat Man. I became a Shaman, a Medicine Man. I walk with the spirits and fly with the eagle.