The Dream Keeper's Dragon

44. It Hurts

Aurelie left her fire burning on the field behind the Inn. It would have taken too much out of her if she were to consume it and they still had to flee. If she collapsed now, someone would have to carry her.

Aurelie and Kirin followed Daerious uneasily. She dreaded seeing Sasha but had to keep going. Kirin's face was blank and his eyes distant. A moment ago, he reached for her hand but then seemed to have thought about it and decided not to touch her after all.

"Is it clear now?" Aurelie asked. "Did we get all of them?" The others were attacked from the front.

"Yes, but Shaelyn and Orken are injured. Catherine is trying to do her best with what's left of Sasha's herbs but there's hardly any," Daerious said with a panicked jitter in his voice. Shaelyn was a name she had not heard before. They must have been the people Kirin spoke about. What a time to show up at the Inn.

Orken staggered into view, from the back of the group. Evelyn, the morning cook, tried to keep up with him, looking both terrified and concerned.

"I told you that I am fine. The bastard caught me off guard," Orken said, his expression somber and bleak. The front of his shirt had been covered in blood, most of it coming from the side where it had a large slash. "Isn't there someone else you can help?"

They walked around to the entrance of the Inn. Bodies lay spread all across the field in front of the Inn. One lay on the stairs, his eyes open but the spark had gone. Aurelie averted her eyes and hoped that someone would close his mouth.

She wanted to feel nothing for the men and woman who had come to attack them, but she couldn't. She mourned each and every death that had occurred on their field. The blame was not on the attackers. No sane man would refuse the King's guards and her people had attacked their town just a couple of days ago. She had set their homes on fire. Whatever their cause might be, a newly homeless and hungry man would not be sympathetic to it.

Shaelyn lay just inside the door, her feet poking out through the door frame. Her mother and father sat beside her, holding her hand.

Tears welled up as her eyes moved from body to body. The shock of it all came crashing down like a wave of iced water.

No one had touched that man whose mouth was open. She had to close it. Aurelie climbed the steps, and halted, her body rocking from the tremor.

Sasha lay just outside of the door of the inn. An arrow was stuck in her heart and her knee. A cloth had covered her face. Aurelie's knees weakened and she down where she stood, clutching for something to hold on to as she dropped and turned from them. She kept her eyes high to avoid looking at the last expressions that the sea of corpses had been cursed with.

"It hurts," the new girl cried, as people gathered around her. Her hand was pressed into her side, and blood seeped through the gaps between her fingers. Her mother's dress had been torn at the hem, and the cloth rolled around the girl's body.

"Let's get her inside, we will see better there," Aurelie suggested, craving the hollow inn. There her eyes could wonder, and she could breathe without sucking in the stench of charred flesh.

"We can't, we need to move. They already know our location; it is only a matter of time before they come for us," Orken said, a gash spread from his cheek to his ear. Blood ran down his neck.

"She'll die if you don't get her now," the girl's mother cried. A panic rose in the others, their eyes drooped with worry as if one by one they realized that the same fate could fall upon them at any moment.

Orken wiped at his cheek and rubbed the blood off on his shirt. "We have no other choice, tie it around her wound as tightly as you can, and then we have to keep moving. More are coming you can be sure of it, if we stay we'll all die," he told her.