Page 207 of Of Empires and Dust
The Rusty Shell
18thDay of the Blood Moon
Salme – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
By the time night fell,Erdhardt was already awake again. He’d never needed much sleep. Always retired long after Aela and woke when she did. Her voice had been his morning bells, her warmth his sliver of the rising sun. Now he woke quiet and cold.
He grunted as he slipped on a shirt and trousers, the sutures along a cut on his back splitting, the blood seeping into the fabric. Anya had been sleeping when he’d gone to see her. The man from Ölm had done what he could, but his hand was half as deft as Anya’s and there were more injured than he knew what to do with. There were others who helped at the bloodhouse, but most were more used to tending pigs or sheep, not people. There were few things he wouldn’t have given to have Freis Bryer livingand breathing. That woman had no equal when it came to the art of healing.
He ran his finger down the thick catgut stitching along his right arm before slipping on a long coat and boots. He slid his arms through the straps of his weapons belt and dropped his hammer into the loop on his back.
Erdhardt left his cabin and strode through the city, lanterns hanging on the ramparts, guards moving back and forth. With input from Erdhardt and the others, Dahlen had established watch and combat rotations to allow the city’s defenders to get some rest. Though Dahlen himself often ignored his nights of rest. Erdhardt couldn’t tell the man off as he was much the same. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so little.
Two sharp horn bursts would let the defenders know the Uraks were charging the walls. Three called for the resting rotation to be woken. In theory it was a sound plan, but few men or women could return to sleep knowing that Uraks attacked the walls and a battle was raging. So as soon as two horns blew, the city was awake.
Before long, Erdhardt found his way to The Rusty Shell. The place was older than The Gilded Dragon had been, built some two hundred years ago. And those added years in the world were clear in the rotting wood that plagued some of the floorboards and the grime built up on the stone – though Erdhardt doubted Lasch would ever have allowed The Gilded Dragon to suffer the same way. The roof had been leaking profusely when they’d first arrived, but a few weeks back, a thatcher who had travelled from Camylin had patched it up for a few tankards of ale.
Erdhardt found Tharn Pimm and Jorvill Ehrnin at the bar, nattering like old hens, Jorvill’s wife on the other side of the counter serving out ale and stew. The tavern’s proprietor, Shola Holten, had found herself bitterly outmanned when the refugees from across the western villages had flooded through the doorsin search of something to ease their pain. And with the loss of The Glade – and her son – Paloma Ehrnin had been keen to find a task for her hands and mind.
Jorvill and Tharn slapped Erdhardt on the back in greeting, immediately dragging him into some conversation about the best wood to use for arrow shafts. A conversation for which he could not have had less interest.
“Ale?” Paloma Ehrnin gave him a sympathetic smile, drying her hands on a rag that she tossed over her shoulder.
“I’d love to say mead.”
She nodded in agreement, a sad soft nod. “If only.”
Both Lasch and Elia Havel had vanished from The Glade around the same time the Lorian soldiers had left. At first he’d thought they’d gone after Rist, but Lasch would never have gone without a word. The soldiers had taken them, that was a certainty in Erdhardt’s mind. But by the time he’d realised, it had been far too late. The one question that plagued him, though, waswhy. They’d not taken Tharn or Ylinda Pimm. It was a question he didn’t expect to ever be answered. And one that would plague him until Heraya finally let him rest.
Paloma dropped a full tankard of ale on the counter and waved away the coppers he offered, as she did every night he stepped through the door.“Keep those Uraks away from my tavern,”Shola Holten had said,“and you’ll not ever worry about a coin purse in here.”
It took all of ten seconds of Tharn Pimm talking about the merits of turkey feathers versus goose feathers when it came to fletching for Erdhardt to slowly extract himself from the conversation and pull away from the bar.
A hand stuck up amidst the swell of bodies.
Dahlen Virandr sat near the middle of the tavern, Nimara, Yoring, Thannon, and a number of others sitting at his side at along rectangular table. The others who usually marched around with Dahlen must have been on watch.
“Feeling better now, old man?”
“Vibrant as a spring chicken.” Erdhardt bit down against a sharp pain in his knee as he took a seat on the bench across from Dahlen, Yoring shifting over to create space.
“Fellhammer.” Yoring tapped his tankard against Erdhardt’s, ale sloshing from one to the other. Erdhardt had fought side by side with Yoring and Almer on many nights, hard as iron the pair of them. Never in his days had he expected to meet a dwarf. They had retreated into the mountains since long before he was born, and now there he was drinking and fighting beside them. “May your fires never be extinguished and your blade never dull.”
“Nor yours, Master Dwarf.”
“Nobody’s ever called me master except for you, Fellhammer.”
“It’s a sign of respect in the villages.”
“Well, Master Fellhammer it is. Knees still aching?” He nodded to where Erdhardt was subconsciously rubbing the side of his knee.
Erdhardt nodded, squeezing. “Only when I stop moving. As long as I’m warm, it’s fine.”
“I know the feeling.” Yoring pulled the trouser of his left leg up past the knee to reveal a twisted patch of hairless flesh as big as a coin. “Arrow during the Burning of Belduar. Right through and out the back. Hurt like a kerathlin-fucker.” He lifted his tankard and pointed it at Dahlen. “Were it not for this son-of-a-goat I’d be nothing but another body on the city’s second wall.”
Erdhardt watched Dahlen as Yoring told the tale of how Almer and the young man had dragged him through the city and onto the Wind Runner while the Lorian forces flooded over the second wall. It was a strange thing, amidst a sea of strange things, to sit around a table with a group of warriors who hadfought at the fall of Belduar, at the burning of the great city of legend. Even Erdhardt had been told stories of Belduar as a child, of the last bastion of mankind that remained entirely free of Lorian control.
Dahlen Virandr had an uncomfortable smile on his face the entire time, both hands cupping his tankard, which he never seemed to drink from.
