Wychling

Chapter 53

Corby dragged himself up the hill, limping and exhausted. Ulrich was staring out over the vista below, a tear slowly falling down his face. Corby knew how he felt. He looked down at the mace dangling in his tired grip, expecting to see the carnage he had wreaked still clinging to it. Oddly though, it was clean. Completely clean. Not a drop of blood or viscera on it at all.

Flashes of violence from the minutes before, swept through his memory almost too fast to follow. He had caved in at least three skulls, shattered two knees, broke- he didn't know how many bones...and yet there wasn't even a splatter on the viciously edged diamond, nor the twisted metal that held it in place. He shuddered to think of the mad genius that had crafted such efficient rivulets in the cruel-looking tool to make it appear so flawless in the middle of all of this carnage. Genius design, truly horrific.

He reached Ulrich at the edge of the road and sunk to his knees alongside the Wildman, gazing out over the landscape below in exhausted silence. He hadn't known Ulrich long, but in that time, he had come to like the Wildman a lot. He was quiet and gentle in spirit, but so certain of himself. He was always generous, be it with extra food at the end of the night, or his knowledge, which was vast.

Corby had had a few teachers in his time, but he had never been a very good student. He just didn't have a lot of time for sitting and being talked at. He smiled remembering the struggle that Shimon had gone through to get him to learn his letters.

Somehow though, Ulrich made things interesting; it was the most natural thing in the world to listen to him talk of the plants they were passing and their medicinal qualities, or the reasons they grew in such abundance in one area but not another, or the reason the landscape looked the way that it did. His casual observations had captured Corby's imagination like no one else had ever managed before.

Somehow, knowing that Ulrich was also saddened by the necessity of what had just happened made him feel less guilty. As if, by the silent acceptance of the horror that they had just visited upon people, they were at least acknowledging the evil in it. A necessary evil, to be sure. Corby wasn't such a meek priest of a man to believe that violence was never the answer; some folk needed a good slap, the truly thick skilled only learned that way. It wasn't like they'd had much choice in what they'd done. The brown cloaks had certainly made their intentions clear enough...but for all the necessity of it, it was still a hard thing.

So he sat, gathering his thoughts and waiting for the excess adrenaline to burn off so that his hands would stop shaking. In different company he might have felt self-conscious of that. Certainly, he would have tried to hide it from another Watchman, but sitting here with Ulrich, it was just another after-effect that his body went through. A necessary event after a traumatic experience. Nothing shameful. As natural as the aching in his left leg. Thank the Gods none of the brown cloaks had tested that! Though many had rocked his shield with violence, he had been aggressive enough to stop them pressing him. If he'd just cowered behind his shield, his leg would have given out, and it would have been the work of seconds to butcher them all.

As the moment stretched, his breath slowly evened out and he stopped blowing like forge bellows stoking a fire. He closed his eyes, enjoying the last rays of the setting sun on his face. He felt almost at peace. He heard a faint sound to his left and assumed Shimon was checking on Tal, who was fast asleep on the other side of Ulrich. He opened his eyes and turned, finding the huge dark mass of Suma not three feet away. Curling  up and pulling Tal's sleeping form into his forepaws with a delicacy that belied the blood spattered all over his dark fur.

Corby jumped, his heart racing again, but Suma just sat, calmly licking himself clean, tail curling around them both in obvious contentment. It brushed past Ulrich, breaking him from his reverie. He started, standing quickly and looking around, spotting Shimon coming up the road. Corby fought down a blush. Nobody had seen him nearly jump out of his skin. So much for the unselfconscious man of seconds before. Apparently, that only counted for things he had no control over. Although, on reflection, that was a sensible attitude indeed.