Chapter 5 - Delirium

 Edmund remembered hearing the sun making light of his pain as they rode, more than once singing a fast-paced song about the knight who fell off his horse which only made him more determined not to do so, but he felt that it was a friendly mockery born out of some imagined sense of camaraderie. At another point, he saw John riding beside him with half his face crushed and his left arm hanging like a boneless sack of jelly. If he concentrated hard, he almost imagined that another figure rode behind him; her face was half coal-black and half bone-white, but any other features were hidden behind a voluminous cloak. The only comfort he could take was that he still recognised the hallucinations for what they were, resolutely defying the tricks of his addled mind.

Worse were those moments when he could not tell if what he saw was real or imagined. One such vision was of a crow landing in front of him on the saddle. He had looked so carefully at the crow, noting both the details of its wings and the slightly dishevelled appearance as it stared up at him. Were it not for its curious behaviour, just standing there and staring at him, he might almost have believed it could have been there. In the end, he just decided to ignore the curious bird; if it were not an illusion, it was doing him no great harm, while as a figment of his imagination, it was less disturbing than many of the others.

“My mistress sends her love and hopes that you will not forget her in your time of need.”

Edmund turned to look at a rider whose age seemed to fall between childhood and youth, nude but for a simple cloak worn loose, whose attire was at odds with the cold air of the region. The cloak fluttered behind him like a pair of snowy white wings. Curiously, it was not this which unsettled Edmund, but rather the look of untold wisdom in the clear brown eyes. Set in so young a face, surrounded by soft black hair, those eyes spoke of an age beyond reckoning. Somehow though, it seemed that those eyes spoke of youthful mischief.

Finally, Edmund decided that the boy could not be real. Some part of his mind relaxed with this realisation and allowed him to look once more at the hallucination without any preconceptions, showing him the unrecognised flaw which had argued against the vision's credibility; he saw no horse, the youth floated through the air as a bird might. With this truth, Edmund watched as the figure rose up toward the clouds and sped away at impossible speed into the open sky.

The final vision, as they entered the settlement, was of a beautiful woman with one side of her face veiled. Her single uncovered eye remained fixed on him as he passed, mundane enough that he could almost believe her to have been real. As with the other sights, something tugged at his mind. He saw that she carried a harp in one hand, while her other grasped a heavy hammer.

As he opened his mouth to speak, the wind blew her veil aside and he saw that it had covered a foul and disfigured appearance. He thought at first that injury or disease had done this, but he could see no obvious signs of either; he looked only for a moment, but it seemed that she was two women, joined along the centre of that alternately hideous and fair visage. As quickly as he had seen her, his horse dragged him away from her and she was gone.

* * * * *

Katya reigned in her horse as they arrived at the collection of buildings which was barely a settlement, let alone a village, and saw with relief that Edmund's horse also slowed to a less frantic gait. The day had been long, but neither horse had stumbled or slowed. More importantly, she saw that Edmund had stayed in the saddle even though he looked half-dead from the exertion. Some force, some deep instinct, kept him on the horse and following Katya, but the inn could not have come a moment too soon for her comfort.

She could tell the inn, as it was the only building rising more than a single story from the ground and one of the few with a stable. She recognised the building materials only from her history lessons, primitive huts made of mud and woven straw. The inn stood in great contrast to the huts, weathered stone making up the lower floor and close-fitting wooden planks continuing the building to a second and even third level.

As she approached, she saw that the stable was wooden, a later addition, but still of greater craftsmanship than the surrounding buildings. The timbers were dark-stained and of a dense wood that almost seemed more suited to a larger building, an impression reinforced by a number of carvings that seemed out of place such an out-building. Whatever the source of this wood, it had been salvaged or stolen from a richer setting.

Edmund's mutterings, which had started an hour into their ride, had started to subside when she dismounted from her horse and moved to help him down. His heavy-lidded eyes, staring through her at some world unseen by any sound mind, told her of great sickness. As he collapsed to one side, falling into her arms, her suspicions were confirmed. His skin burned with fever, though he had been healthy enough not half a day earlier.

“Edmund!” she called to him, trying to snap him back to reality.

Her friend simply stared up at her with a look of contented resignation. He was aware of her, she decided, but beyond all hope of rational discourse. Spitting out curses, she propped him against the wall and set out to find the innkeeper in hopes that a healer could be found.

Before leaving him, Katya turned to look at the delirious squire. She could see that his breathing was troubled, his mind detached and wandering its own world, but she knew that her own gifts would not be enough. Just for a moment, he lifted his hand to her, but then slipped back into the comforting dream which protected him from the realities of his situation.

* * * * *

Edmund was about to fall from his horse...

This single truth echoed in his head, bringing the song of the sun to mind. It was a great shame, he knew, for a knight to fall off his horse. He was not old, he knew. He should not be drunk either, but his memory was hazy on that point. Disease? That seemed almost right, but not quite. Poison? No... He had been poisoned, but he was getting better.

Edmund's leg slipped and he knew that he could not prevent it any more...

It was a shame, such an embarrassment, but it was quite unavoidable. Gravity, the inexorable pull of the Earth, was drawing him to her amble bosom. Another offer of affection, or power, or some exhortation of duty. No... That was not him. He knew someone had been talking about honour and debts, but you could hardly expect him to pay attention when he was falling off his horse.

Somewhere below Edmund, the saddle had parted company with his buttocks and now he seemed to be falling...

That earthy bosom seemed less inviting as it reached up to break his fall. The sweet smell of spring flowers receded, the soft welcoming maternal breast fell away. Edmund's face was pressed against a firmly-muscled chest, meagre and spare, stinking of horse and of leather. Somehow, it seemed familiar, right... This was the best place to be right now.

Edmund was laid carefully against a tree...

He could feel the solid trunk of the oak, a comforting illusion. It was a memory of a tree that held him in its arms, but the memory was strong enough to whisper into his mind. It spoke of enduring the harshest storms, of roots that extended deeper than any miner had ever seen. And then it spoke of fear. He saw a darkness and a chill that extended deeper, drawing up all life in its frozen grasp to suck the warmth out of the world.

Edmund was dreaming, yet he was not asleep...

The knowledge was disconcerting, but Edmund knew it was true. A part of his consciousness saw straw and carved wood, horses and a woman looking down at him with fear in her eyes. He reached out his hand to her, but the strain was too much and this painful reality fled.

He was grateful for this retreat, the escape from what he knew he could not face. The heaviness in his limbs faded and he found that he could stand again. He could walk again. He closed his eyes and listened to the silence, waiting to see who or what would break it.

Hooves...

Edmund opened his eyes to see a rider approaching through the snow, cloaked and bearing a spear. Somehow, this did not perplex him as much as the sound of the horse. He had though to see at least two horses, but only one approached, making noise enough for more. Within seconds, the horse was upon him and Edmund was forced to move to the side or be trampled. Dream or no, he was unwilling to take the chance.

As the rider reigned in his horse, Edmund saw that eight legs held the giant mount aloft. He was also able to better examine the rider. Tall, old and weathered, but still vital, the rider dismounted and walked to Edmund, flanked by a pair of ravens.

“Are you ready to listen?” the rider asked.

“I have been listing all day.” Edmund countered.

“Your kind need every soldier the gods will grant.”

“You come to join my cause?”

“I come to ask you if you will join mine.”

“I... don't know...” Edmund admitted.

At this, the figure nodded quietly and pushed him firmly. Without warning, the ground behind Edmund gave way and he found himself falling into a shallow depression as the tall rider kicked snow over his shivering naked body...

* * * * *

As she entered the inn, Katya noted only two men in the dark common-room despite the late hour. The first was short, dressed in a greasy leather apron and coarse clothes of drab browns and greys. The second was taller and wore the white woollen robes of a travelling monk.

“My friend is sick and needs a healer.” she told the monk, glancing at the other man as well.

“Lead on then...” the monk replied, sounding bored.

She returned to find that Edmund had slipped to the ground and crawled half-way to the door. Even as she moved to lift him, the monk pushed her firmly aside and lifted him as though he was a child. Wordlessly, he pushed a side-door open and called to the aproned man.

“Keeper, I need to use your bathtub if you would be so kind.”

“There's no water...” the shorter man grumbled.

“I won't need water.”

The innkeeper reluctantly, though efficiently, dragged the metal tub out from an alcove in the wall and dumped it in the middle of the room. As he did this, Katya approached the strangely-calm monk.

“Can I help?” she asked.

“Aye. Bring me snow for the bath. He will not like it, but your friend needs to be cooled.”

* * * * *

Edmund balled his fists instinctively and forced them through the snow that covered his body to the chin. As his right hand broke through the white surface, he found himself holding a dark feather, one which seemed familiar. It showed subtle hints of blue and purple in the harsh light shining from a cloudless sky and reflected from below.

“You hold my token.”

Edmund turned to face a woman of either great beauty of great cruelty. Her face seemed to shift without ever once changing, bringing to mind his meeting with another figment of his imagination earlier that day. Beside her stood a number of crows, smaller cousins to the ravens of his previous visitor. He could see that she was attempting to wash blood from a shirt of chain-mail, but the stream she was using only stained the metal darker red.

With dawning horror, he saw that the stream was not water. He followed the tricking flow back from the figure and saw that it sprang from the vital rivers of his own left wrist.

“Mine is the gift of foresight.” she told him, “I offer you two gifts; choice and the opportunity to choose. You will be given a choice in the future, between glory and safety. Should you choose it, I can make you a great hero among men, but it will claim your life. Choose safety and I swear to you that old age will take you before any injury.”

“Who are you?” Edmund asked and it seemed that she had been waiting for this question.

“I am nobody but the washer at the ford.”

“Then you have my thanks. Should you ever have need of it, my sword is yours.”

“Aye?” she smiled, “I think it is, at that...”

* * * * *

Katya closed her eyes and fought to shut out the screams as she poured another bucket of snow and ice over her friend. She wanted to stop, to beg the monk to relent, but she could tell that Edmund's fever was subsiding at last and just wanted to see him healthy.

“That should be enough.” the monk called as she turned to refill her bucket.

“His fever's broken?” she asked hopefully.

“Not yet, but it shouldn't kill him.”

When Edmund stopped screaming, both Katya and the monk rushed to see what was happening, since his protests at the cold bath seemed more natural than the calm expression currently on his face. She could see that the monk was just as concerned, but his concern soon turned to confusion.

“Did you give him anything to counteract the fever?” he asked.

“No. I came running to find a healer as soon as I realised.”

“Nobody could have given him herbs or drugs while you were riding here?”

“We rode hard for most of the day, never stopping long enough to eat or drink.”

“I see...” the monk said, though his expression did not.

“What is wrong?” Katya asked, fear rising in her chest.

“Nothing is wrong. He is sleeping peacefully.”

“That is a good thing, isn't it?”

“Normally, I would say yes. He is lying in a bath full of snow though; he should be screaming.”

“Even if his fever has broken?”

“I defy you to lie in that bath and look so calm.”

Katya started to see what the monk meant. Edmund's calm was sinister and inexplicable, no longer the relief that it had been at first. She approached her friend and took his hand, almost dropping it again as she realised that it was warm. If the fever still raged, surely it would be hot. If not, surely the cold water would chill his hands.

Katya reached into the water to place her hand on his chest, marvelling at the warmth of his body even in the frigid water. His neck, his forehead, his feet... Edmund slept peacefully, as if in a feather-bed; warm, but not excessively so, and wholly at ease.

Katya let out a breath that she had not realised she was holding. Edmund was safe once more, which was all that mattered. She took his hand once more and just enjoyed the sense of peace he exuded.

“You love him, don't you?” the monk asked.

“Yes,” she admitted, “but not in the way you think.”

“He is your brother, by more than simple birth. You were trained to fight side-by-side, to bleed and to spill blood together, to die for one another if the moment ever came.”

“How...?” she began.

“For more than twenty years, I have been a monk. I know what it is to have a true brother.”

“Of course. I think it is harder for Edmund, but you are right.”

“He was not raised to be a paladin, while you were. Perhaps that is why...”

“It is not for us to second guess the gods.” Katya told him firmly.

The monk nodded quietly in acquiescence and the two of them lapsed into silence. Somewhere nearby, the innkeeper bustled and muttered, but he would not make too much noise when there was money to be had from simply serving the guests and moving them along in the morning.

Katya reached for a towel to wipe the snow-melt from her hands and noticed the small crimson spot at her feet. Blood dripped from Edmund's hand, discolouring the wet saw-dust.

“Brother... He is bleeding...” she called.

Her training flooded back to her, reminding her to raise his injured hand. She wiped at the wound, using the chilly bathwater to clean away the blood which obscured the true shape and size of its source.

A tiny cut, barely visible, extended for less than an inch across the heel of his hand. It was only a very minor injury, she realised, and looked worse for the water. Even as she held his hand aloft, the bleeding came to a stop and she was able to clean away the last of the red stain.

“Very strange...” the monk said at last.

“Not really. I knew he had been in a fight, but I didn't realise he had been injured. With all of the time we have spent riding, I suppose he just didn't get a chance to bleed at all; I have heard of it happening, wounds that stayed bloodless because of the cold.”

“Why did it reopen when we put him in an ice-cold bath, but not when he had a raging fever?”

“I don't know.” Katya admitted “Maybe it is just that he has warmed up now.”

“What about his sickness? If you had told me about his fight, we might have considered that he was poisoned. That's the trouble with paladins, they forget that not everyone else is immune to toxic drugs.”

“But even he did not seem to know he was injured...”

“No...” the monk offered, “I suppose not. In any case, he seems to be past the worst of it.”

* * * * *

Edmund woke to a pre-dawn light, a gentle glow coming through the eastern window. A soft bed lay beneath him and a peaceful-looking Katya lay snoring gently beside him. His initial shock was tempered by the feeling of a heavy weight between them.

In the gloom, he could make out the gleam of a pair of swords lying above the sheets that they shared, separating them neatly. He smiled at Katya's precious sense of honour, placing both of their swords between them in the bed much as the tales said male knights once did when they were forced to share a bed with a female traveller.

Edmund looked around the room, comfortably warm after his dreams of snow and ice. Two large windows, fully-glazed to keep out the chill, faced what he took to be east and north. He decided to assume that it was morning, as Katya would not have tarried so long, nor slept so late.

Their wide bed seemed to be one of the only items of furniture in the room, together with a dresser to one side and a chair that contained a sleeping man, cloaked and hooded. The man wore a pale beard, neatly trimmed, and the robes of a travelling monk. Somehow, Edmund no longer believed in coincidence and so he crept quietly to the sleeping monk.

“Brother Thanras.” Edmund whispered in his ear.

“No...” the monk told him without opening his eyes.

“Captain Hunter sends word that we have need of every soldier the gods will grant us.”

“You can tell that little peacock that Thanras is dead.”

“I see. Just a bitter little storm-cloud left in his place?”

Edmund stood quickly, driven back by the wild look in the brother's face. A vicious right-hook barely missed him, but the following left did not. Uncertain and off-guard, Edmund could do little more than dodge what blows he could and weather those he could not. His lip was numb and he felt blood dripping onto his chin, but it was the pain in his cheek that was the greater distraction.

Somewhere behind him, he heard Katya rousing at the sounds of combat, but could not afford to take his attention from the determined pugilist who was busy trying to knock him to the ground. The man looked to be in his forties, but fought with all the ferocity of a man half his age. Edmund offered a silent prayer of thanks that he was half the monk's age.

As he prepared to avoid yet another powerful blow, Edmund saw an opening in the older man's defences and drove forward to take advantage of it. Accepting a painful strike to his shoulder, Edmund drive his fist hard into the monk's midriff and quickly retreated to avoid the instinctive return blow.

“What's going on?” Katya asked, levelling her sword at both fighters,

“This monk is not who he claims to be.” Edmund told her, but his smile stayed her blade.

“What?” She asked.

“His name is Thanras.” Edmund told her proudly.

“I know.” Katya said, dropping the point of her sword as she fixed him with a disappointed look.

“Katya... Did you ever read the recent histories of the order?”

“When we were young, yes.” she admitted.

“And the name Thanras...?”

“Lord Stormcaller? He died twenty-four years ago.”

“Yes... In a small monastery just a few days' ride from the Fortress.”

“Surely you can't be suggesting...”

“What?”

“Thanras is not an uncommon name.”

“No, but how many monks can best a paladin in single combat?”

“A squire...” she corrected him, but the doubt was planted.

“He's no more a squire,” Brother Thanras said, finally catching his breath, “than I am a monk...”

Edmund realised what had been playing on his mind since he woke, that nagging feeling that something had changed. He reached deep inside himself and found a place that had not been there before, a small ford across a stream that ran red with rich clay. All things in their place, he told himself.

Katya watched awe-struck as the former squire touched the source of power and his wounds healed. Bruises faded, the wound to his lip closed and a sickening crunch accompanied the resetting of his cheekbone.

“Hail, Ser Edmund...” Katya gasped, abandoning any attempt at hiding her happiness.

“I think it is time to take Lord Stormcaller back to the Fortress.” Edmund said.

For a moment, Thanras simply stared defiantly at the paladins across the room. His fists clenched and unclenched as his troubled thoughts fought, but it seemed that some decision had been made. As the rising sun cast its first rays across the room, the former monk stared Edmund full in the face.

“Aye.” he said, “If Hunter sent you to find me, the Lord-Commander will have need of every soldier the gods will grant us.”