Hand of Fire (The Master of the Tane) (10 page)

             
“I be famished little lassie!” he roared reaching eagerly for a piece of bread.

             
Rani raised her hand to stop him. “And what do you think you are doing?”

             
Helgar stopped suddenly, his mouth agape. “Ye did offer some of them vittles now didn’t ye, miss?”

             
Rani gave him a stern look as if she were dealing with a mere child. “Of course, but not until you clean up first. Just look at yourself. You’re filthy.”

             
Helgar looked at his blood stained shirt and hands. “What, this? ‘Tis nothing. Why I’ve eaten a whole meal at the king’s table itself much dirtier than this.”

             
Rani scoffed at such a thought. “Well, you’ll eat nothing at this
humble
table until you have properly bathed and changed your clothes. Now, I suggest you hurry up and get started before the fog completely disappears and you are left standing in the open bare as the day you were born.”

             
Helgar’s face turned bright red but whether from anger or embarrassment she could not tell. His eyes glared at hers as if to force her with sheer will. Rani stared back just as hard not backing down in the least. Finally, throwing his hands up and cursing under his breath, he turned and stalked away down the bank towards the river. Rani smiled trying desperately to hold back her laughter as his curses suddenly turned into shouts of dismay as he entered the frigid water to bathe. Loud splashes and howls filled the morning air mingling with Rani’s peals of laughter chasing the nearby birds into the clear skies above.

             
Soon, Helgar reappeared still dripping from his morning bath, a sour look squeezing his face. “I hope ye be satisfied. I’m as...as...as...aaaachooo!” Rani jumped at the loud sneeze that bulged out his eyes and sprayed the air with spittle. “There now,” Helgar grumbled, “I’ve gone and caught a sniffle!”

             
Rani held back the smile that beat at her lips for escape. For such a husky and rough looking creature, he sure seemed awfully pampered. “Have some bread,” Rani offered. “I’ll start a fire and warm up some tea for your...” she smiled, “sniffle.”

             
Helgar grabbed the bread. “Better let me be gettin’ the wood lass. No telling what might be lurking about.”

             
Rani was about to protest but Helgar was already up and heading into the forest. In scant minutes he returned with an arm full of lumber and in no time they had a warm fire and some hot mulberry tea. Rani checked Bardolf again and then settled down next to Helgar and sipped her tea letting the morning’s activities wash away with the warmth of the fire.

             
“That be good tea,” Helgar said, gulping down the last bit in his cup before accepting a refill. “I usually throw back a draught of ale with me breakfast, but this be just fine.”

             
Rani stared at the brash young dwarf and shook her head at his attempts to impress her. He almost seemed clumsy. Glancing at the wicked looking axe resting near his side she remembered the grace with which he had wielded his weapon against the orcs. He had seemed so sure and confident. Now he seemed more like an ungainly adolescent.

             
“So what brings ye out this far from the swamps?” Helgar asked timidly, catching her suddenly off guard.

             
Rani sucked in a breath, almost like a gasp as tears instantly glossed her eyes.

             
Helgar frowned at her sudden change. “I...uh...I be sorry. I did not mean to upset ye again.”

             
Rani smiled at Helgar’s bumbling manner and then rested her hand lightly on his arm. “It’s all right, Helgar. It’s nothing you said.” Wiping the tears from her eyes, she curled her legs up under her chin and stared at the fire. “It’s why I am here that makes me sad. I don’t want to be in this place.”

             
Helgar’s frown deepened. “I understand. I have offended ye beyond forgiveness. I will leave with Bardolf as soon as he be able.”

             
Rani smiled at the sudden gentleness of the powerful young man. “Oh Helgar, no. It has nothing to do with you at all.”

             
Helgar brightened a bit. “Honest?”

             
“Honest.” Rani’s face once again became a mask of pain. “It’s something else. Something that I must do.”

             
Helgar sat up quickly. “Can I help?”

             
Rani stared at the eager dwarf with eyes that looked beyond, covered with shadow. “No,” she whispered. “No one can.” She could sense Helgar’s confusion and discomfort, and without quite knowing why, she continued. “My husband and son were taken by a creature of the swamps not many days past. I am on an Appeasing Journey.”

             
“What be that?” Helgar burst out.

             
Rani picked up a small stick and pushed it into the fire stirring the coals and sending tiny sparks drifting into the air. “When a loved one dies, someone must go on an Appeasing Journey to satisfy the ancestors. That way his soul will be accepted by them and find peace.”

             
Helgar was riveted in place. “And what do ye have to be doin’ on this journey of yers?”

             
Rani sighed slightly. “I must find a gift to present to the ancestors. When I have found what I seek, I must drop it into the swamp at the base of my tree. Then the ancestors will be appeased and my husband and Tahben will find rest with them.” A tear escaped down Rani’s face as she finished, landing unnoticed upon her quivering lip.

             
Helgar pressed. “And what is it ye seek?”

             
Rani shrugged and looked up into the dwarf’s concerned face. “I don’t know. Something worthy of the ancestors.”

             
Bardolf suddenly wheezed followed by a massive convulsion that shook violently through his entire body. Rani rushed to his side and was instantly knocked back by a flailing tree trunk of an arm that split her lip in a gush of blood. Helgar sat frozen for a long moment and then rushed to her side to help her. “I’m all right!” she shouted. “Get hold of his arms and hold him so I can check his wound.”

             
Helgar practically jumped on Bardolf wrestling the unconscious dwarf into spasms of brief submission. Sweat beaded on Helgar’s face at the strain of trying to hold down his friend. “Hurry up,” he grunted. “I can’t be holdin’ him all day now.”

             
Rani wiped the blood from her lip and then moved in again for a closer look. Pulling back the bandage, she practically spat. “Just as I feared. It’s festering. He’s burning up with fever.”

             
Helgar grunted against the strain, his muscles bulging in protest. “What does that mean?”

             
Bardolf suddenly fell still. “It means,” Rani sighed, her lip throbbing with pain, “that if we don’t get him cooled down quickly, he’s going to die.”

             
Helgar’s face went pale. “He can’t die. He just can’t. What do we do? You have to save him. It’s just a small scratch. What do we do?”

             
Rani grabbed Helgar’s arm pulling his eyes into hers. “Relax, Helgar. I didn’t say he was going to die this instant. Do you think you can lift him?”

             
Helgar stared at her dumbly and nodded.

             
“Good. You pick him up and get him down to the river. I have an idea.”

             
Helgar obeyed her orders without question, easily hefting his companion over his shoulder and deftly followed Rani down to the banks of the river below. Finding a good-sized boulder, Rani tied her canoe to its mass and then pushed her craft to the river’s edge. “Put him in,” she directed.

             
Helgar hesitated for only a brief moment before following her order.

             
“Now, help me tie him to the boat. We don’t want to lose him down stream.”

             
Helgar nodded, still unsure of what exactly it was they were doing as he helped Rani tie Bardolf’s legs, arms and chest to the tiny craft. Satisfied the cords would hold, Rani put her weight against the canoe. “All right now, help me push him into the river.”

             
The boat swayed slightly as it was forced off the shore and was caught by the current. Helgar eyed the line suspiciously but was soon convinced it was not going to give way. “Now,” Rani instructed, “help me sink the canoe.”

             
“What?!” Helgar burst. “Are ye daft woman?! Are ye tryin’ to drown the boy ‘fore the fever kills him?”

             
Rani felt her temper flare at the accusation. “Of course not, you dolt! But the water is not going to cool his fever if he doesn’t get into it.”

             
Helgar glanced at the canoe and then at Rani’s glaring face. “Oh. Sorry.”

             
She didn’t reply, but pushed the side of the canoe into the cool water quickly swamping the craft and immersing Bardolf’s whole frame into the river. The current gripped his body, testing the hold the lashings had on him, as if hungry to claim another victim. Rani sat on the stern where the canoe just barely broke free of the water and lifted Bardolf’s head from the water. “I’ll need some more spindle root flowers and some feverfew. You know what that looks like?”

             
Helgar nodded again and whispered, “I’ll get ‘em.”

             
The day passed slowly for both as they traded off keeping Bardolf’s nose out of the freezing, river water. His fever still had not abated and his sleep was restless but the convulsions did not return which gave Rani hope. Helgar had fallen into a foul mood and could not be persuaded to speak much. Rani’s attempts at light conversation only brought grunts or glares from the gloomy dwarf so she gave up, returning to her own gloomy thoughts.

             
Finally, when the light from the sun began to fade behind the mountains to the west Helgar called out in alarm. “What’s happening?”

             
“What?!” Rani rushed down to the canoe from her spot on the bank where she had been dozing for the last couple of hours. “What’s the matter?”

             
“I...I don’t know,” Helgar stammered shaking his head. “He not be movin’ about like before. He’s gone stone still.”

             
Rani jumped into the river by the canoe. “Help me get the canoe out.”

             
Helgar obliged and both strained against the current and the added weight of the water filled craft bringing it slowly up onto the sandy shore. Rani quickly checked Bardolf’s breathing, which was steady and strong. Feeling his forehead, she could detect none of the fire that had, until so recently, been burning him up from the inside out. “He’s all right!” she cried. “We did it. The fever has broken!”

             
Helgar shouted and commenced to dance a jig reeling about like a drunken man.

             
Rani laughed at his relief and enthusiasm feeling as if some of her own sorrow had just been permanently drained away, swallowed in the joy of helping another. Suddenly, Helgar caught her up into his arms and twirled her about almost sending her flying as he set her down again and started into another step.

             
For the first time since starting her journey, Rani slept that night without dreaming. She slept without remembering and reliving the tragedy of her own loss. She slept in peace.

             
The next morning, she was up early. The mists of the day before had returned, soaking everything in a thick blanket of dew. Miraculously, Helgar had started a fire and they shared its warmth and another pot of mulberry tea before Rani announced she had to be going.

             
“I thought ye might be,” Helgar said gruffly, though Rani thought she sensed a touch of sorrow in his voice.

             
“I have to complete my journey. Who knows what kind of trouble my children have gotten themselves into?” She tried to smile but it felt forced.

             
“Thank ye lassie for yer help,” Helgar said with a slight touch of emotion. “Bardolf here might not have made it without you. I know I would not without that whistle stick of yers and those needles. I Thank ye.”

             
Rani blushed. She knew it had been hard for Helgar to admit his need for her, and she found it was just as difficult for her to hear it. “Well,” she said softly. “I best be on my way.”

             
Helgar looked at her with a pensive wrinkle to his forehead and then abruptly turned about. “Wait just one moment,” he said, rummaging through his pack. Turning back around, he held out two large, red stones and his sheathed dagger. “Take these. I think at least one of ‘em should appease yer ancestors.”