The Robber Knight

07. A Stranger among the Carrion

With some difficulty, Ayla looked away from the stranger's face and pressed her ear against his chest.

Try to ignore that it is sticky with blood, she told herself. Get a grip! You have a head on your shoulders, so use it!

“He's still breathing,” she announced with obvious relief in her voice. “He is alive, but barely.” Straightening, she demanded: “We must get him to the castle, right now.”

“What, just the two of us?” Burchard raised a bushy eyebrow. “Forgive me, Milady, but how are we going to accomplish that? The fellow is pretty big.”

It was true. The young man was tall, probably six foot seven inches.

Ayla smiled. “Ah, but we are not alone.” Turning to the brush, she called: “Come out! I know you're hiding out there somewhere! We need you out here.”

A few moments elapsed. Nothing happened.

“The Margrave's men are long gone, by the way,” she added.

With rather sheepish expressions on their faces, six castle guards emerged from the underbrush.

“We're going to make a stretcher. You and you,” she ordered, pointing to two of them, “go find two solid and straight branches for me in the forest.”

They ran off hurriedly, obviously eager to prove their loyalty, as long as it involved hacking at trees rather than well-trained soldiers. Ayla supposed she couldn't blame them. There hadn't been a conflict in this part of the Empire for decades. Her father's guards were more accustomed to taking a nap beside the gate than to fighting. Still, that didn't mean she would condone such lax behavior in the future.

Quickly, she went searching among the fallen enemy soldiers for a piece of cloth that would suit her purpose. All she found in the end was a banner bearing the escutcheon of the house of Falkenstein. Smiling at the irony, she returned with it to the injured young man, just as the two soldiers approached with one suitable branch each.

“Tie this banner around each of the branches,” she ordered. “Then you lift him on the litter and be careful to put him on his side so the arrows won't be twisted or broken. Each of you takes one end of the litter. The others scout ahead to make sure there aren't any surprises waiting for us on the way back to the castle. Report back to me immediately if you see something out of the ordinary.”

The men obeyed her without question. Once the wounded stranger was lying on the makeshift litter, they lifted him up and made their way quickly and quietly back up the path towards the bridge, and away from the terrible field of death behind them.

Ayla stayed by the young man's side, not knowing entirely why. Just before they went around a bend in the path and the bloody clearing went out of sight, Ayla looked back with an odd kind of longing.

Burchard, who marched right beside her like a protective bear father beside his cub, noticed her look back and asked her what was wrong.

“I just wish I knew who managed to fell that many of the Margrave's men.”

“Do you?”

“Of course! Such people would be valuable allies indeed in our current predicament. Don't you?”

Burchard grunted. “Not particularly, no.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because, as strange as it may sound, there are more powerful, evil, and dangerous things walking this land than the Margrave von Falkenstein. Didn't you see what was done to the men back there?”