“Good,” Agar said. “And Anthanasius is there with two hundred men?”
“He was when I left,” Luke replied. “I doubt they’ll have kept looking for me this long. I’m not sure what day it is or how long I lay unconscious. We did pass many people on the road though and we’ll surely meet someone before long.”
“Well, I’m able tost… tost…and. To stand,” Agar said as he tried his legs. “Do you think youcould walk if I help you support you?”
Luke undid his boot and looked down at his swelling ankle for the first time. He moved it front to back and side to side with extreme care. He thought of falling through the high ceiling onto the rough stone floor and marveled that his ankle or leg didn’t break. The pain that now blended into the constant throb of the rest of his aching body rose up at the movement and he winced. “Yes I can,” he said. “Give me a hand.”
Agar crouched next to Luke who placed his arm around his friend’s shoulder for support and Agar helped raise him to his feet whereupon Luke stood in a wobbly position leaning against the wall with one hand for support.
“Oh yeah,” he said while testing a minimal amount of weight on his bad foot. “This won’t be too bad. It must have been the shock of falling through the roof that hurt me the most initially. I don’t recommend it.”
Agar smiled with his mouth but his eyes showed a look of concern. “We only have to make it… a mile orso tothe highroad. You can, um, lean onme when we’re ready to go and let me know when you need to break. I mean, needabreak.”
He said this as Luke lowered himself to the ground. “I’ll be ready soon,” Luke said as he grabbed up his boot. He feared for Agar but tried to push the feeling away; they were already dealing with enough. “You better find something for your feet. Your soaked skin would tear so easily in the forest and on the road.”
“We need to... wait and restfirst,” Agar said, moving about with the torch, then shivered violently. “Neither ofus is… can be good… tomake it far.”
Luke agreed to the wisdom in this; they both survived dreadful ordeals and needed to rest. He had been beaten almost to death and lay unconscious for he didn’t know how long and Agar had been subject to prolonged submersion. He nodded his head.
Agar started to remove most of his soaked clothing and Luke stared in amazement. Pale wrinkles covered his skin below his shoulders from contact with water for so long.
“How long were you in there?” Luke asked from his place against the wall.
“I think it was almost… two years, I mean two daysago they didit,” he answered. “Otherwise they keptme chained… inanother room. Gosh I’m cold.”
He shivered violently while standing there in only his undergarment and holding the small torch. Luke whipped off his shirt and reached it up.
“Here. A dry one will help.”
Agar accepted it and wrapped it about his shoulders. Luke got to his feet; he could see hypothermia threatened Agar from so long in the room-temperature water.
“We’ve got to get you warm. Let’s go up to where I fell through. There might be more garments or something to burn.”
The two made quick progress to the topmost room considering their conditions, and Luke hobbled gratefully over to a corner where lay a pile of firewood and kindling. Agar found more clothing and was putting it on when Luke called to him with the good news. He stumbled once while slowly walking over and Luke already transferred a spark from the torch to a pile of tinder by the time he arrived. He sat, no longer shivering, beside the beginnings of the fire, with his new garment crooked to one side.
“What arrr you doin’? Agar asked slowly.
Luke looked up suddenly at this question and saw a confused expression in his friend’s face. Luke knew hypothermia brings on confusion and he said, “Getting the fire going for us. We’ll get you warm soon.”
“Yeah,” Agar said.
“It won’t be long now,” Luke said as the spark flickered into the flame and started lapping at a larger log.
“Yeah.”
Two hours later found Agar lying stretched out by the fire fast asleep with Luke sitting by his head to feel his forehead periodically. The last few days taxed his willpower more than anything in his life before. Now that Agar’s troubled sleep subsided, Luke could focus on his own exhaustion. Relaxing for the first time, his mind wandered as his eyes looked over the rest of the room. Shadows flickered on the stone walls, and through the hole in the roof he could begin to discern daylight.
Below the hole he saw the pieces of sod, some loose stones, and other debris from when he fell through days before. Not far away dry blood darkened the stones where he initially lay. The memory weighed heavily on him for a few seconds until the thought of the deer sent by the gods took its place.
He harbored no doubt a deer occupied the room with him; he saw it fall through while his head held no troubles and he stood on solid ground in the forest. He found it strange that the deer didn’t fear his presence and that a circle appeared floating between its mended antlers. He felt a strange sense of peace that only attended a few moments in his life before when he looked upon it. He could explain all that away with some stretches but the fact remained that it pulled him deeper into the chamber to find Agar who surely would have died without aid.
Luke’s head swam with half-formed thoughts in his exhaustion. Before letting himself fall asleep also he felt Agar’s now normal temperature, placed a few more logs on the fire, and lay down on the opposite side. His head welcomed the support of the stone floor as a pillow and within seconds fell fast asleep.
He awoke to find Agar stirring some newly-added twigs to the hot coals of the fire in an attempt to revive it. Luke looked up and to the side to see shades of dusk visible in the sky overhead. He, anyway, slept the whole day away and now sat up to ask Agar how he felt.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Good evening,” his friend said upon seeing him stir. “How was your sleep?”
“Wonderful. And are you feeling better?”
“Still tired but refreshed.”
“You’ve stopped shaking, I see. That was a close call.”
Agar stopped tending to the fire and looked up. “I don’t think I remember everything when I got so cold. But I do know you saved my life. Probably twice.”
Luke nodded his head and moved to help coax the fire back to life but Agar said, “I mean it, Luke; I would have died in that barrel if you didn’t save me and I’m sure I would have died again if you didn’t get this fire going once I fell asleep. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Luke answered with the awkwardness of someone receiving a compliment. He continued while standing up, “I’m glad Semias didn’t come back; we’re in no condition to fight his troops.”
He walked with a serious limp over to pick up the two pieces of his sword then came back to sit by the new fire. “I’m still exhausted. How about we stay here until daylight?”
“Have some food first,” Agar said. “They left some behind.”
*****
Luke awoke the next morning after another long sleep to find, once again, smoldering coals from their untended fire. He rekindled it for the last time with the remaining wood and soon after Agar woke to find him examining the pieces of his broken sword.
“I think it’s almost sunrise,” Luke said.
The two then got busy preparing food for the morning; both desperately needed food now that the pressing needs of sleep relented enough.
“Back to the highroad this morning,” Agar said. “Then north or south?”
Luke thought for a moment. The shorter journey to Brownstone Castle tempted him but the scene of battle interfering with their recovery changed his mind.
“South to Echo Slope,” he answered. “Unless we hear about Bronlum region having been significantly liberated while we’re on the way. We both need time to rest and Echo Slope is certainly a better location.”
They gathered up a few items they scrounged and made their way to the surface. After so long underground, especially for Agar, the rising sun glared intensely in their eyes and made it hard to do anything but sit and wait to get used to it once again even though they walked away from the sun.
The short walk back to the highroad took longer than it should have, which didn’t surprise either Luke or Agar. Upon reaching it they were both simply grateful for reaching it at all. Neither expected the incredible escape from the underground chamber.
After a quarter of an hour sitting by the highroad the two rose from their resting places and began to walk south. They hadn’t gone more than a dozen yards when the sound of footsteps arrested their attention from behind. Sore and already eager for an excuse to tarry, they stopped and waited until the walker came into view. An older man with a large frame made the footfalls. His dark grayish-black hair surrounded the balding patch atop. He walked with a purpose though none too quick as he looked deep in thought.
As he approached they could see his eyes looked kind but sad and they greeted him. He returned their welcome then asked, “Where are you off to? You’re heading the wrong way dressed as ye are. Not deserting, I pray?”
“Heaven forfend,” answered Agar. “We were captured and are returning to Echo Slope to heal. We desire no time away from the war and would rather fight in a battle than waste away in a dungeon.”
The stranger now reached their position and stopped. “Ah, I spoke too hastily. I meant you no ill. Seeing such destruction about me is no reason for me to take out my frustration on you who seek to prevent it. A thousand pardons, I beg of ye.”
“We grant it, sir. Don’t be too harsh with yourself in these troubled days,” Luke said. “We’ve not made it any farther north than we are now; perhaps you could tell us what has befallen Bronlum.”
“Were you captured in the battle three days ago?” the man asked.
Luke almost answered in the affirmative but a thought entered his mind. “What battle?” he asked.
“Perhaps not a battle according to ones such as yer’selves, but fighting for sure. And killing, too, not two hundred yards north of here. When were you captured? And how did you not see the remnants?”
“I remember that now,” Luke said, turning to Agar. “Right before my capture I heard the sounds of fighting from our camp.” Then he faced the traveler and explained, “We were captured separately and held in the forest a mile east of here. We just reached the road and turned toward Echo Slope a score of paces back.”
The stranger’s face cleared of the questioning expression it assumed but instead of resuming a smile his look turned to one of concern. “Held prisoner a mile from here? Are they after you?”
Luke told him a few details including how they were left to die alone and that no one remained to pursue the fleeing prisoners. “For all they know we’ve both been dead for days,” he finished.
The three talked a while longer with Agar joining back in after his annoyance. The stranger mentioned what they assumed; that he headed to Echo Slope. He even went so far as to offer to travel with them. As they welcomed a traveling companion and news from Bronlum they immediately accepted his offer.
“I’m afraid we’ll slow you down, though, sir.” Agar said.
“That’s not a bother at all,” he answered. “And I should’ve said my name earlier; call me Jim.”
The journey with Jim began immediately and his naturally slow pace matching the limping of the two wounded soldiers didn’t have him, Agar, or Luke feeling like anyone caused the slow progress.
A few soldiers who Luke knew met them while heading north on private business and upon stopping to talk noticed how seriously wounded both of their brothers-in-arms were. Both parties exchanged news and before leaving a few of his friends insisted Luke and Agar at least have a horse for the journey back.
Jim wouldn’t take one and said he’d just lead it along by the bridle if they insisted. “Riding on a horse won’t make me any younger. Shakes m’ bones, too.”
One soldier asked if they had food and as Luke and Agar carried none, the friends liberally donated from their own provisions.
“Thank you for your concern,” Luke said to them collectively. “I hope I have a chance to return this kind favor.”
“He wants us wounded,” one muttered to the rest who all laughed. Luke shook his head and laughed as well.
After the group of friends rode and walked off Luke’s party turned southwest and started again at a pace set by Jim.
The use of the horses enabled them to move as fast as Jim wanted which was faster than Luke or Agar would have guessed. As such they traversed the nearer familiar reaches of Rowaton Forest and came within sight of Echo Slope the fourth evening. Happening upon a camp beside the road they decided to finish the last bit of the journey the next morning.
Accordingly, before the sun rose above the horizon the three friends packed away their cloaks and gear and took to the road. As the forest subsided and they came out onto the grassy plain before Echo Slope Luke looked far into the distance and let his eyes rest on distant clumps of trees with their last vestiges of leaves glowing golden in the morning light. He looked also at the imposing castle he departed a week and a half earlier under much different circumstances. The castle and rock formation on which it stood glowed other shades of orange and yellow and cast massive shadows stretching west by northwest over the plain.
Luke grinned broadly as he thought back to a time in his childhood when on a visit to Echo Slope he had been out early enough one morning to chase the shadows formed by the conical roofs of the towers as the sun rose. The apparent speed of the sun in the morning hours combined with the shadows stretching far into the plain’s rolling terrain sometimes meant the shadow traveled as fast as he and his friends could run.
“Fine, isn’t it,” Jim said to them after a brief space. “Here’s where I’ll leave ye.”
After farewells he turned and made for a group of houses distant from the main village at the base of the castle. He walked through the sparkling dew-covered grass and left a trail where his feet disturbed the water droplets.
The sun on the late October morning soon rose high enough for a thick mass of clouds to obscure it. Luke and Agar shivered as a light wind took them from the side.
“Nothing like a cold breeze to stir me toward a castle,” Luke said. “Come; I’m eager to see people’s faces when they see you return.”