Chapter Three
Dani had been closer in his estimation of the time the cleanup tasks would take, than he had been with the duration of the skirmish. The stars told him that it was at least three marks past midnight when the last of the stretchers were moved away to be transported to the camp.
“That’s it, Dani.” Karragh spoke up behind him. “We can get at least four or five marks rest now. Only the enemy dead remain on those hills, and that’s not our problem.”
The big brown dragon was speaking aloud for the benefit of the two humans with him. One was the huge man that Karragh had recently partnered with, the other a Valterni commander who had been in charge of the evacuation of the wounded. Dani sat back on his haunches, and stuck one of his talons between his teeth. An irritating habit he had since childhood when he was feeling worried. Chewing talons was something for insecure younglings to do, not a dragon who had thirty three years to his life. But right now he was too tired to care.
“Are you sure? Did they double check?”
“The fires lit up that place so brightly, that it was as if we were working in daylight.” The Valterni commander standing next to the brown dragon sounded as tired as he looked.
Dani turned his head to look at the hill closest to them. Smoke was still drifting into the night sky from the smouldering embers that dotted the hillside. That crawling feeling he had felt under his amour all night had intensified as time had passed, and it was now more than just an irritation. It was driving him insane. “Something’s not right,” he softly muttered to himself.
At that moment the mental touch of Mineltan, the Onlashian Healer-Commander team, reached him and Karragh simultaneously. {: Karragh? Dani? We’ve just been contacted by the Healer Adept at Fort Lowrin base camp. He says that Songhmar, the injured grey they pulled from the enemy camp, is being contacted by someone still stuck on one of those hills. She can’t tell them who it is, or where the person is. She’s still half out of it, so she babbles a bit, but she insists that ‘the voice that kept me alive’ is stuck on that hill, and dying. It makes no sense to any one of us, except that maybe one of the mages got left behind. Can you check? :}
{: All our people, and those of our allies, have been accounted for; dead or alive. :} Karragh sounded as confident as only a dragon who had double checked the figures for himself could sound. {: None of our mages were even injured. What now remains up there is only from the enemy side, and even then the medics were sure that those remaining are dead. :}
Dani only half heard what Karragh mind-sent back to his fellow Commanders, as for the first time in years, and the first time ever in a battle situation, he dropped his protective shields completely. Only years of training and a strong will enabled him to ignore the accumulated pain and anguish around him as he stretched a searching tendril of his own consciousness towards that hill that had been bothering him all night.
He knew the moment he made contact. It was as if that tendril was grabbed by another, weak and faltering, but still strong enough for him to connect with the essence of the being lying on that hill, its life energy bleeding away into the soil.
There was only emotion; pain, regret, longing, and the tiniest portion of hope.
With a roar and a jet of flame that surprised even himself, Dani took to the air with a massive stroke of his wings. Deaf to the shouts behind him and the confusion his abrupt departure had caused, the yellow dragon arrowed straight towards that hill that had bothered him so much. He now knew exactly where the man lay dying among the smouldering embers. Behind him Karragh only waited for his partner to settle in the saddle before he took off as well, following.
Near the top of the hill Dani settled down on a rock and looked around him. The smoke was now reduced to thin wisps curling up from smouldering bits of shrub, most of the area covered in trampled ash, blood and corpses. For a moment he doubted himself. How had he been so sure that it was here? There was no movement among the bodies, and he had lost that tenuous link he had so briefly managed to establish. Karragh landing on an adjacent rock stirred up the ash, and Dani sneezed loudly.
Maybe it was just Fate taking a hand, or maybe it was the sound that stirred the man, but for a brief moment Dani felt that mental touch again. It lasted just long enough for him to get a direction bearing. Switching to the sight a healer-mage uses when working with his patients, he saw the faint greenish-blue glow of a healer’s aura underneath a pile of bodies. It was indeed so faint, that if he had not been concentrating on that area in particular, he would have missed it.
With a growl he jumped down off the rock, stalked over and used his hand-claws to drag the corpses off the still living man. He totally disregarded the possibility that without the protection of the usual armoured gauntlets, his sensitive taloned fingers could be injured. All he knew was that he had to get to the man, fast.
The clean up crew must have decided that the man was dead, and had simply piled more bodies on top of him as they were searching for survivors. Karragh’s partner slipped off his shoulder, the two joining Dani and within moments the rest of the bodies were removed. Karragh’s partner bent over the man and put his fingers to the neck of the battered, soot covered figure. “Yes, he’s alive. But just.”
Quickly Dani scanned the figure, trying to suppress his emotional response and to act professionally. “A lot of minor stab and cut wounds, but there is a deep stab wound in his left side, and both internal and external bleeding. I can’t fix it here. Can either of you do it?”
Both Karragh and the human shook their heads. “When it comes to healing, we’re both on journeyman level as well.” Karragh sounded concerned, but shook his head. “Maybe we should just give him a quick mercy death.”
For the first time in his life Dani growled and bared all his teeth at a friend. “You do, you die.”
Surprised, both dragon and human stepped back, the human putting his hands up in the sign of surrender. “Hock! It was just a thought!”
“I’m taking him to Minelbet and Tanika. Tell the others I’m going ahead.” Dani deliberately moved between the two partners and the wounded man, then leaned down and scooped him up in his hand-claws. He pressed the body securely against his chest, holding it much as his mother had held him as a youngling before he could fly, and stretched his wings to take off.
“Torn vishii, Dani!” Karragh shouted after him. Good winds. He was going to need them. Please, Universe, Great Creator, don’t let this human die now. Dani did not know why the life of one enemy soldier was so important to him, but he did not have the time or the emotional energy to ponder the question right then. The little prayer repeated itself over and over in his mind as his wings bore them the few maahla north to where the main body of the Allied army had made camp for the night.
Karragh apparently had sent word ahead of him, with details of the man’s injuries, as the two partners that formed the Healer Command team were waiting for him as he landed, a stretcher ready. Apart from a few strange and worried glances in his direction, nothing was mentioned about the way he was treating this wounded enemy soldier. He was glad nobody asked questions, as he did not have the answers himself.
Even though almost exhausted themselves, both being Master Healer-Mages, Minelbet and Tanika made short work of stopping the bleeding of the deep stab wound in the man’s side. “That’s all we can do for now. Anything further will take too much energy, and we have a battle awaiting us in the morning…. Which is only four marks off from now.” Tanika wiped a strand of dark brown hair out of her green eyes, and yawned. “We need to take a nap, or else I won’t be able to function. And so should you. I need you back here, so I can send the evacuations to you for assessment.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll just nap here.” Dani was not going to leave the man. Someone else might feel the way Karragh had. That it was better to give the enemy soldier a mercy death.
“Nonsense. Go find a comfortable place. I’ll just call a couple of the medics to fetch…”
&nbs
p; “No.”
Minelbet turned her golden gaze on him and he was glad that he no longer had a crush on the big green dragon. Those eyes of hers could melt steel. “Daninackin, what’s wrong with you? You did more than your duty by bringing the man here. And even Songhmar back at Fort Lowrin has calmed down now.”
“I’m not letting him out of my sight.” Dani was slightly embarrassed at the way that came out. More growl than words. What was it with him? He could not answer them.
Both healers studied him for a moment, and then Tanika sighed. “Have it your way. I’ll let them come tend to him over there.” She pointed to a spot to one side of the healers’ tents, slightly out of the way, but still accessible and in line with the path that had been laid out for the wounded to be brought in during the battle. “Then you can settle down next to him. That should also work as a place for you to do the assessments tomorrow.”
She shook her head as she walked towards the tent to call one of her helpers.
{: I don’t know what it is with you males! :} Minelbet’s voice echoed softly in his head. {: If it’s not bad enough what Karragh did, you come along doing something even more bizarre. At least he took a hale and hearty Kaadish warrior as a pet. But no, you have to go and find a dying Imperial Captain. Really! As if we don’t have enough to stress about! :}
She flicked her tail at him as she stalked off, leaving Dani gaping after her.
Minelbet must be mistaken. This was nothing like Karragh’s situation. He was just concerned for the man. If he saved someone, he wanted to make damn sure that being, whether dragon or human, remained alive. That was all there was to it.
But he could not help hovering protectively when the orderlies came to remove the uniform from the man, wash the soot off him and dress the minor wounds. Still the man did not regain consciousness, though to mage-sight his aura was slowly beginning to gain strength.
The orderlies waited for Dani to settle in the spot Tanika had indicated, then laid several blankets down before wrapping the wounded man in a sheet and laying him on the blankets on Dani’s left side. One of them, an Onla fehrarkon human female, winked at Dani and lingered as the other man, a Valterni medic, walked back into the big tent. As soon as the Valterni was out of earshot, the woman leaned towards Dani and whispered, “I don’t blame you for keeping watch over this one, Petmarpen Daninackin. He’s quite a looker. Once he’s healed, I would not mind getting to know him myself!”
She chuckled as she strolled away, leaving Dani to study the man in the torchlight. He had no idea what humans found attractive in each other, never even having had a temporary partnership. The man was well built, like most professional soldiers were. If he stood up, he would probably be almost, but not quite as tall as the average Onla human male. About the size of an Onla human female. But the Onla humans were exceptionally tall, compared to the other Ranmorians.
In the lamplight the man’s shoulder length hair, and the stubble on his face, shone silver. Although there were several old battle scars among the new ones on his body, there were none on the square face. But still, he could not judge as another human would. What he tried to see in that face now was the reason as to why he was so protective over the man. Why?
With a sigh he dropped one wing to cover the man’s body against the night insects, while tucking his head under his other wing for a few marks’ doze.
As most healers throughout the ages, Dani was able to sleep no matter how much went on around him, until his internal alarm woke him up when he wanted it to. He was wide awake by the time the bulk of the Army quietly marched that last maahla, around the bend in the valley, and onto what would be the battle field.
By midmorning the stream of casualties was constant, the medic teams plucking them out of the chaos of the battlefield at Mineltan’s direction. The medic teams of human and dragon dropped the wounded off in the queue waiting to be checked by Dani, then hopped back over the hill to where the battle was raging. From where the healers’ tents were in the Allied camp, the noise could be heard even from that distance.
Someone brought Dani a big jug of water, which he emptied in one gulp. The fehrarkon support staffer was expecting it though, as he had brought along another pail full of drinking water that he refilled the jug with. “For later.” He winked as he walked off. Dani lifted his wing slightly and peered at the unconscious man. His breathing was even, he had no fever, and his aura was getting stronger by the moment. But still he did not move.
Then there was no more time for thinking of the man, as the stream of injured starting coming faster, and Dani had to make split second decisions that could cost lives. At some point, just when he thought he was starting to tire, for a moment he felt slightly dizzy. But it was such a brief moment, and afterwards he felt reenergized, and he found himself able to think just that little bit faster.