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Elerde's Story Continues

by Jack Graham

It didn’t feel right. The little hairs on Elerde’s neck felt
like they were straining to stand up straight as if to provide extra protection
from a blow. Lagu said quietly, “Lord Elerde, this trail is haunted. It is too
quiet. Even the breeze has stopped. I can’t even hear the river” 

Elerde raised his arm to halt the column. “Lagu, take three
men and see what is around that bend. See if you can find a place to scout the
top of the bluff ahead. We will wait here until you send for us. We’ve got your
back, just watch your flanks. I’ll send Toby up the cliff from here so don’t
shoot him. See if you can catch up the advanced guard to tell them to hold in
place and then send for us. Go.”

Lagu called three archers to him and they set off single
file along the path that lay ahead. These men had the sharpest eyes and
instinctively looked in all directions at once with their heads always
swiveling. 

Toby over heard and slipped off his horse without being
told. Agile and quiet as a cat the half sized man scrambled up the cliff to the
left working his way up a series of intersecting rock slides between the
boulders that formed the cliff side which got steeper ahead and pressed the
trail against the edge that fell off too steeply to the right down to the rushing
water a hundred feet below. The trail narrowed so anything wider than a horse
litter could not have negotiated the curve in the trail around which Lagu’s
party on their horses disappeared to the left.
   
A little boy ran up to Elerde and asked, “The princess wants
to know why we stopped. What should I tell her?”

“Tell her we are checking the trail ahead to make sure her
carriage can pass, your grace.”

“It has always passed before, but I will tell her the new
guards are uncertain of the trail.” And he ran back to the covered litter that
was slung between two horses so one walked in front of the covered litter and
one walked behind. He climbed back into it and closed the half door.

Elerde sighed. “The new guards are uncertain” was rather
insolent and might have drawn a reprimand from Elerde, but this was a seven
year old prince of Scotland .
So he could say what ever he wanted as long as his father paid the price for
Elerde’s mercenary guard. The king had entrusted his children to Elerde and his
twenty men so he could keep his own guards at what had become the battlefront.
Elerde was part of the guard accompanying the king on his progress between his
estates in the Trossachs. They had arrived at the next estate in the circuit to
find it besieged by lowlanders from the east. The king had sent his children
back to his keep three days ride from the battle. This was not to Elerde’s
liking. He had lost most his men on his ride farther and farther north, farther
and farther from his impossible love. But try as he might, he could not get
himself killed, just his men. That was beginning to hurt as much as remaining
alive. Why they stayed with him he did not know. He had told them to go home.
They said where he was, is their home. They sensed his death wish but gave
their own lives rather than let him be killed. He supposed it was because he no
longer kept any of the spoils for himself. He gave it all to them in equal
shares, double to his lieutenants, of which only Lagu remained. 

Elerde dismounted and signaled his men to do the same and
they scattered off the trail into the trees to take up watch positions as they
always did at halts. He slipped off his bowl shaped light helmet and poured
some water into it from the water bag hanging from the pack frame of his supply
horse. He watered his own two horses and watched as the drivers watered the
carriage horses. Two of his men came by gathering water bags and headed down
into the steep ravine to refill them. 

Elerde looked into the carriage where the two royal children
were sitting facing each other in the chairs that were suspended from the
litter poles. The prince was carefully pinching the string intersections for
the next step in the game of cat’s cradle they were playing. “Your highnesses
should step out and let your horses rest. We will be here for a while.”

The startled prince slipped the string in a tangle off of his
sister’s fingers and screamed, “You made me miss!” and in a heart beat his tone
changed to hopeful. “Can we climb down and see the river?” 

“I suppose it will be OK if I and your nanny come with you.”
The nanny approached having left her horse tied to a tree just behind the
litter. “Bring your water bags and we will all go and fetch some water for the
rest of the trip.” The four slid down the hill to the river which was hardly
more than half a dozen paces across but rather fast moving for as deep as it
appeared. It didn’t gurgle as most mountain streams because of its depth and
nearly level course here. Elerde hurried them back up the hill as quickly as
they got the bags filled. As they arrived back at the trail so did Lagu. He
slid from the saddle and took Elerde aside up the trail from the royal
children.

“Sir there is nothing amiss that we can see. This whole wood
is deathly quiet. Not even buzzing insects. We could not see the top of the
hill but we could see most of the slope above this bluff and it is all clear.
We saw Toby at the military crest signal a thumbs up to us so it must be clear.
I left the men to watch from a little rise about a half mile ahead which is
where we caught the advanced guard. They’ve seen nothing. But we all have that
spooky feeling. Let’s ride out of here as fast as we can. It levels off and
opens out where I left the advanced guard.”

“OK, saddle up. Let’s get on home.” Then quietly to Lagu,
“Thanks, I still have that feeling. Don’t say anything so the nanny or kids can
hear, but tell the men to hurry along. We must stay with the carriage but tell
the drivers to get those nags moving.” Lagu moved away to carry out his orders
and Elerde mounted and rode up to the bend where he could still see the
procession but could look up the face of the bluff and a little ways further
along the road. The eerie silence away from the group was unnerving. He waved
to start everyone moving and the procession approached. Their hoof beats as
they caught up to him were reassuring and he turned to head up the trail when
Toby flew over head followed by what sounded like screaming devils straight
from hell. He looked up to see the banshees as the first screaming arrow
thwacked into his horse which crumpled under him. He threw himself against the
cliff face and scrambled back to the litter. It was only two horse lengths away
but it might have been a hundred miles as he was too late. The lead horse had
dropped like his did but the trail horse had bolted and pulled the litter over
the edge of the trail so both horses, drivers, and litter were rolling and
bouncing down the hillside toward the silent river below. One of the screaming
children flew out of the spinning carriage and landed in the water as a
screaming banshee bit Elerde’s left shoulder blade and followed the reverse
path of the old wound inflicted by Lawrence .
The momentum of the arrow threw Elerde face down on the path and he too slid
over the edge but came to rest against a boulder only a few paces down hill as
he lost consciousness. 

The momentum of the arrow threw Elerde face down on the path and he too slid over the edge but came to rest against a boulder only a few paces down hill as he lost consciousness.

It was dark, cold, and silent as a tomb. Elerde recognized the excruciating pain in his shoulder and the throbbing in his head which rested against the boulder that had taken his consciousness away. His left arm was numb. He gingerly felt his head with his right hand but there was no slime of blood or stiff matted hair from dried blood. There was a large goose egg on top. He had not broken his head open even though it felt like he had.

He started to roll off his left side onto his right to swing his feet down hill to sit up. This shot a sharp pain down his whole left side as if the arrow had jabbed from above his shoulder and passed down the length of his body. He persisted in moving to sit with his feet down hill even though a wave of nausea swept over him so he leaned forward, drew his knees up and caught his right knee with his right arm waiting to heave. It didn’t happen. He sat up a little and touched just under his collar bone where it hurt the most expecting to find the protruding arrow. It wasn’t there. Maybe it had been broken off by the fall. His shoulder was bare. He realized he was cold because he was half naked. Someone had removed his padded armor. In order to do so they would have had to remove the arrow. They had left him for dead but he had not bled to death. It was just his damned luck to survive a death blow. Maybe he would get luckier and freeze to death tonight, but it was high summer and he could still feel the heat coming up from the rocks surrounding him.

The nausea passed and the thirst set in. So in spite of the pain he carefully felt his way down hill to the silent river and drank from his hand while sitting knees up on a flat rock. It hurt too much to lean over or lay down to drink his fill. It was probably better to drink more slowly as he was forced to do. He drank his fill which took a while. The cold water numbed his hand. He started to put it under his left armpit to warm it up but that set off such an avalanche of pain that he sat on it instead. But the boulder by the water was cold. So he moved back up hill to where the rocks were warm and lay down to sleep or pass out from the pain. Either way, it was suddenly high noon of a bright cloudy highland day and he was tremendously thirsty again.

He went down and drank his fill and carefully used handfuls of water to wash the dried blood, grit, and leaf mold from his chest and back around his wound. It had closed leaving only a very painful “X” he could have hidden with the tip of his thumb. The “X” was a shiny plum red that looked like it was filled with sealing wax. He prayed it would erupt in puss in a day or two and go putrid and kill him. He figured he was due a painful lingering death as penance for losing all his men. Clearly none survived or they would be here guarding him and burying the bodies that filled the air with the putrid smell of day old death.

He stood and looked around. All the horses and his men’s bodies had been dumped over the edge of the road. Most had lodged more than halfway down to the river and were now bloated and stinking. There was nothing he could do here and the smell was making him sick, so he filled a water skin he had found and rinsed as much blood as he could out of a saddle blanket that he took from the back of the dead lead carriage horse. Every pack-animal and man had been stripped but here and there were damaged or bloody items that the bandits had left or that had fallen off and were not found by them. The blanket had been soaked in blood so it had been left sticking to the back of the dead horse. It was woolen and would keep him warm even while wet as it dried. He threw it and the water bag strap over his shoulders and climbed to the trail.

Turning north, he headed toward the battle two days on horse away rather than toward the keep less than a day’s ride south. Telling a mother her children were dead was not to his liking. The queen would have him killed of course which was to his liking, but the king would not carry on crying and lamenting while having him slowly tortured to death. This queen was not his Josephine so he felt no obligation to suffer her laments. He walked and listened. The insects were back buzzing and harassing him. There were the normal high forest sounds, birds, branches grinding against each other in the moderate breeze that had quickly cooled and dried his blanket. The itchy wool distracted him from the major pains in his head and shoulder, but not from the hunger pains setting in to his stomach.

He had moved up the hill from the road but kept it in sight. This way he could navigate by the trail but not get caught on it by whatever traveled this way. This was absurd if he really wanted to die because surely anyone traveling the trail, man or beast would kill him for sport or food. His absurdity amused him for hours but he could not break the life long habits of tactical traveling.

Elerde ran out of water after walking for several hours on the steep hillside by following little game tracks going his way through the trees. So he turned directly down hill to cross the main trail or road on the way down to the river which he heard nearly a hundred paces below. He never came to the road before he came to the rushing stream. Barely too wide to leap across, it was much too small. It could not be his river, the one he had followed down from the highlands on the horse trail. He had lost his way and was no longer traveling toward the bereaved king and his battle. Refilling his water bag and his belly with water he started down stream. Surely this was a side stream to his river. He remembered crossing a few little streams two days before.

As dusk thickened about him so did his senses. The throbbing in his head and shoulder were so intense no other senses were communicating with his head. He stumbled blindly downhill along with the stream which was tumbling over the rocks with him until he fell and found he was too dizzy to raise. So he lay where he was on the warm leaf mold by the water and passed out again.

An eternity or two passed in totally delirious pain and for an age the only thing he could hear was the rushing of the blood through his pulsing head. The sun and the stars whirled overhead dizzily pursuing each other. He had gone to the Christian hell because he smelled smoke and brimstone through his excruciating pain. Oddly, occasionally he saw an angel face. A strange dark angel with short dark hair and a pretty round face with sad shining eyes. The angel slowly washed the pain away and fed him ambrosia in between long floating dizzy naps.

Elerde came to in a soddy with a peat fire in the center with the smoke slowly rising to the ceiling poles to slide along them to leak out the top of the door. His dark angel was gently washing his wound with what felt and smelled like damp moss. The pain was bearable. His head no longer throbbed. He found his voice. “Who… what… where am I?”

(more to follow)