46. The Dead Lancer
Having set a poultice to draw the bullets from Forden’s wounds, sealed the whole lot in a clay cast and laid him in a hammock above a smouldering fire of thunderroot, I left the hive hut. There was nothing more I could do for him. He would sleep for at least three days. Time would be his healer now.
Part of the roof of my hive hut had been blown away in a phraxcannon bombardment, and there was also a gaping hole in the wall to the right of the doorway. I decided to start on the repairs immediately, relishing the thought of having something to do.
I worked all through the afternoon and into the night, cutting lengths of waterwillow to the right length and plaiting them slowly and methodically into place. The sun set and the moon rose, full and round and so bright it cast my beloved Farrow Ridges in eerie silver shadow.
It was close to midnight by the time my dwellings were patched up. Yet, even though I’d been up since daybreak, I was not tired.
I checked on Forden. He was out for the count. At least now, with the roof and wall repaired, he would not be chilled by the cold wind that was getting up outside. I heard it whistle and howl round my hive hut and I answered its call, stepping back outside and setting off on a walk.
I gave no thought to where I might head. I simply set off. Being outside, clearing my head; that was all I had in mind. It was only when I found myself in the Western Woods that I realized I’d walked right round the Farrow Lake and across the Levels. I stopped and looked about me…
Can there be any place more desperate than a battlefield at the end of a might battle? I strode through the decimated forest, picking my way over splintered tree-stumps, flattened rock-mounds and churned mud that was stained with blood and steaming with unspent phraxbullets, feeling sick to stomach. There were dead bodies on the ground, still to be cleared away, with shattered limps and gaping wounds. Our fighters and theirs. Enemies, united in death.
The horror of it all brought back flashbacks of the carnage wreaked at the terrible Battle of the Midwood Marshes. Back then, I’d lost many friends; grey goblins I’d grown up with, neighbours, comrades. The losses were soured by the fact that we all knew we were fighting on the wrong side of an unjust war. No-one dragooned into fighting for Hive by Kulltuft Warhammer and his cronies agreed with our battle with Great Glade.
Of course, we lost that war. And thank Earth and Sky we did! It meant that Kulltuft Warhammer was deposed, and a democratic council restored. Now, as I stared round me, I was more glad than ever that Great Glade had won. After all, if they had not, they could not have sent the Freeglade Lancers to come to our aid, and the Farrow Ridges would surely have fallen to our enemies.
What courageous fighters those Freeglade Lancers had proven to be! With their prowlgrins and their lances, theyhad routed the enemy, cutting them down like scythed blue-barley. I felt honoured to have ridden beside them into battle and humbled by the sacrifice they had made - a sentiment made all the more poignant by the body of the lancer I came across, lying on the ground.
‘Thank you, dear, brave comrade,’ I told him, tears welling in my eyes.
I noticed a piece of barkscroll protruding from his clenched fist. I prised his hand open. As the fingers unfolded, the barkscroll fell into my hand. I opened it and read the scrawled note written there.
To you, who has found this note, I would ask that the ring it encloses be delivered to my beloved, Laria Chillax, of the Reaches, Ambristown, Great Glade. Tell her I am hers until the end of time. Tell her, one day we shall be together again in Open Sky. Tell her, I love her. Tell her
The message stopped. My tears were flowing freely now. I looked at the ring - a simple gold band inscribed with two names; Parvis on one side, Laria on the other.
‘I promise you,’ I whispered, ‘I shall visit your Laria and…’
Just then, there was a noise behind me, and I turned to see a piebald prowlgrin pawing at the ground. It was snorting and growling and from the way it kept running off, then stopping and looking back at me, I knew it wanted me to go with it.
I wrapped up the ring, slipped it into my back pocket and followed the prowlgrin into the trees. We hadn’t gone more than a score or so strides, when I heard a strange noise. It was a plaintive mewling, like the cry of a snowbird, or the whimpering of a wood kitten, or…
As I rounded a vast lullabee tree, my jaw dropped. For there, amid the death and destruction of the aftermath of war, was the most incongruous sight I could imagine.
It was a newborn baby…