Chapter 2

I gathered up my silver protection talismans which were always near at hand in my front belt pouch and was placing them around the sides of the cave mouth as my foe squeezed past me and collapsed inside the small cave against the back wall in a renewed coughing fit. I don't think she noticed by what a slim margin she made it to safety into the cave mouth as the Orkneas glided after her. It's truly frightening how fast they can move if they wish to, floating through the air and with no apparent feet, just a glowing cloud of death. I held my last talisman outstretched in my hand and held it forward to ward back the demonic spirit as I retreated past my prepared defenses. It gibbered in rage, but fortunately did not call out to me, as I was as yet still unprepared for that.

The silver protective talismans now firmly and prominently in place at the mouth of the cave, I retreated to the back and had a seat on the other side of the back wall facing her. Yes, now that I could see the face and front of my tracker, I could tell that she was a woman, albeit of rather tall and slight built and could be easily mistaken for a man from behind in her traveling leathers. She was probably in her late 20's or so but certainly not older than my own age of 31.

"We are safe for now but I still have not heard your pledge Oath in return? Are things going be complicated between us?"

"Probably." She said between wet grasping coughs. "Considering the Oath I have taken to kill you, I'm not sure what remaining Oaths are left or strong enough for me to pledge by, even temporarily." She did however show that she was also holding silver in her hand — an important act of any trust Oath that demonstrated that she was human, and not a shape-shifting demon, such as one of the Dussi, that could seduce and kill using the appearance of a human form. Before this ill-fated war Dussi were not entirely unknown in our world but stories of them were rare and very far between. Some addled demonologist undoubted thought that having a few more around to participate in this war would be a good idea, so alas they are not a rare nowadays as they should be.

This is another excellent reason why parents should drown any child at once the moment they take any interest in learning the arts of magic.

"That would complicate things a bit." I agreed. "There is also the further complication that any bloodshed here would attract the Pink Terrors so strongly that it would be difficult to evade it later and it would wait for you or me outside there for a good many days. Further, I doubt with the snow storm that is coming that either of us will want to be outside in it for awhile. If we could agree not to disembowel each other for just a day or two it would greatly simplify matters."

"Alas, my life has never been simple." She replied and after a lengthy wracking coughing fit she closed her eyes for a good long while and soon she was quite asleep from utter exhaustion. That at least slightly simplified things a tiny bit.

It's a shame that it was now dark outside, except for the shining pink glow of an utterly evil demonic creature that craves to suck our souls out of our bodies, before feasting upon the flesh and marrow of our bones. Otherwise, this could have been an excellent time to make a permanent and lasting escape. As exhausted and ill as she sounded, it was likely that she would sleep for all of this night and likely a good part of the next day too. I could have been leagues away, with enough time to escape and cover my tracks such that she might never be able to relocate me.

Sigh, it was not to be. I'd just have to deal with this situation in some other way. At worst, as she had not made a valid pact of truce with me, I could always tie her up securely while she slept and make her my prisoner, but that would soon present other problems. I decided to give the entire matter some more thought later.

When I could tell that she was in a deep, unfeigned sleep, albeit with some labored breathing, I took the time to explore the rest of the cave. It was quite small actually but it had a little bit of a hook to it so the very back part was just out of sight from the entrance. Someone else had once camped here as there was a goodly pile of old, very hardened but dry firewood and a small iron cooking pot with a healthy coating of rust but otherwise serviceable for heating water, which I started at once to do. The cave very slightly sloped downwards towards the middle and someone long ago had cleverly cut a crude channel to bring rain water from outside into a small reservoir about half way into the cave, keeping the rest of the cave dry. This was all ice now but it looked clean and safe and after a few minutes of effort with my dagger I had enough scraped away enough to heat water for a pair of warm drinks. The ragged breathing of my lady foe was taking on a noticeably more liquid rasping sound. I wasn't much of a doctor but if she didn't get warm fast then her Oath of revenge was going to be pointless, because she was going to soon develop pneumonia and possibly never awaken again from her sleep.

First things first. I got the fire started and dug into my pack to find what herbs I had left, but I didn't have much. I hadn't been out of the river valley or even to visit home in several years and a short two month growing season in the valley didn't lead to much productive herb farming. Traveling merchants were very few and far between in our cursed war zone. Most traders felt that the dangers to life, soul and limb far outweighed any profits they could earn from soldiers. There were a few useful river plants that Old Venial had taught me the use of, but conversely these fragile plants did not dry or travel well, and swiftly lost most of their medicinal usefulness. There were also a few useful plants found in the river delta region, but it had been some time since I was last there and most stocks of those items were either extinguished or too old and dried to be more than marginally useful.

Obviously, now seemed like a perfectly good time to go rummaging through her pack.

I first removed her sword belt and belt dagger and then the two daggers that were in each of her boots. Another slim dagger was in a sheath behind her back between her shoulder blades. Yet another two were strapped to their arms under her shirt sleeves. I had the feeling I'd probably find more goodies if I undressed her, but declined the opportunity to go further exploring for the moment. I tossed all of our weapons outside into the snow. This annoyed the Orkneas hovering outside considerably and it began to gibber and wail again at me in frustration.

"Tough Shit" I told it, and gave it my best middle fingered salute as I walked back to the rear of cave while covering my ears just in case. Tomorrow, in the relatively safe daylight, I could bury all of her weapon deep in the snow for safekeeping. Even if she awoke during the night, even in her weakness she would not go outside to the Pink Terror. Unless she tried to strangle me then, I was safe ... and I was definitely the stronger if she attempted that ... hopefully.

In her pack I found a healthy collection of interesting herbs and plants, only about half of which I recognized and nothing that I recognized as being good for a cough or cold, let alone heavy lung fever. I was going to have to awaken her but first things, again first.

I checked the fire and the slowly melting ice and then I laid out our sleeping rolls. The floor was ice cold, so for now I double stacked the rolls to give her some insulation underneath and after taking off her leather jerkin and war belt, I set her on top of the bed rolls and started to get her icy boots off. As I suspected, they were virtually frozen to her and it took a lot of doing to get them off at all. Her feet were quite blue and frozen and were going to need warm compresses as soon as possible. Some of the toes even looked a tad frostbitten — they'd heal, but she'd have started to lose toes in just another day or two most likely.

It was just as I had thought and suspected, she had never even once stopped, even after chasing me upstream, and had allowed her feet to get thoroughly wet and then frozen near solid in the ice and snow rather than stopping for even just a few hours to dry and warm herself.

Madness. What on earth had I done to piss her off so much that her own life was apparently meaningless if she could take mine along with hers?

I examined her sleeping face for a few minutes, but it remained unfamiliar to him. If he had ever seen her before, it would have been at considerable distance. Helden did have some female scouts, including a legendarily good and talented one ... perhaps this was her, but he just didn't know for sure.

For now I put my spare pair of warm wool knitted socks onto her and got her under covers until the water was at least somewhat warm. Using a small towel I found in her pack, I began to apply warm compresses onto her icy cool feet. When they thawed, they were definitely going to hurt! It took hours to get her feet reasonably warmed up and then I began to boil up another entire cauldron of hot water.

At last there was no helping it, her breathing wasn't getting any better and she was beginning to feel quite feverish to my touch. If I couldn't wake her up now and get her coherent enough to select some proper herbs for brewing as medicinal tea, things were likely to get much more 'complicated' than even she would like. It took a lot of shaking and I nearly had to slap her to get her eyes to focus on me and able to comprehend what I was asking her. She did at length select out some three varieties of herbs that she thought would help and I make her drink two mugs of hot tea before she fell into a feverish sleep and remained asleep until after daylight.

With the first light of dawn, the Orkneas had disappeared to wherever those evil things vanish off to during the day. They were not unknown to appear in dark shady areas during the daytime, but they had a distinct dislike for even weakly diffused sunlight. A good thing, if we'd had to fight those things during the daytime too we'd probably all have been dead by now. Out of sheer exhaustion if nothing else.

As I had expected, the anticipated snow storm had now come upon us, and there was no question at all of my bugging out and leaving her to go out alone into it. Even secure with the knowledge that I could have a significant several days head start on her would still make this a very bad idea. This storm could be a killer for me to be out in and it was even too dangerous to consider looking for another cave in the area. I did make the quick run to retrieve my pants and boots — both of which were a solid blocks of ice and give our weapons a solid burial where only extreme luck would reveal them to her. I considered getting some more firewood but we had enough for another day or two and so decided not to risk it.

She was awake and semi-coherent when I returned inside. I offered her a bit of warm porridge that I had prepared (I had a biscuit for my breakfast — groceries were going to be an issue in a few days and an early winter storm like this could rage for up to a week).

She sounded a little bit better from the sleep if nothing else and drank another two cups of herb tea to wash down her hot meal. Her breathing was still very ragged and when she spoke it quickly caused her to start fresh coughing fits. If she noticed that I had partially undressed her and put her to bed, she didn't deign to mention it. She did have a long litany of other complaints, however.

"You've taken my weapons."

"Absolutely" I replied. "I prefer to sleep without getting my throat cut. If you prefer, I could tie you up, or else you could pledge truce still?" She ignored that. Figures, just like a woman to be difficult in a bad situation when everyone else is trying to remain 'practical'.

"My feet hurt. Do you have a pain-reliever in your kit? Mine have all been exhausted during my trip."

"Probably but I wouldn't trust it with your fever and chest cough except in a very small dose." I replied. "Besides, think of this as an object lesson not to run around in the snow for nearly a week in wet icy boots." The pain killer was the bark of an evergreen tree that I still had a small supply off. I gave her one piece and told her to chew it. It took awhile to work I warned her and it had several side effects, usually making most people a bit dizzy. It wasn't anything that you wanted to use when out on a trail or stuck alone in the wilderness. Like many herbs, it was medicinal in tiny amounts, but could cause unsteadiness in larger doses and could kill effectively in a strong dose. A fist sized piece of bark could (and has) poisoned to death a score of soldiers if placed in their evening stew. In fact the only time I normally ever used it was cure a morning hangover after a night of over-indulging our local camp grog.

"You realize that your leg is infected and is seeping?" She casually remarked. Another quite obvious understatement. I had cleaned and bandaged my wound twice during the night but it wasn't healing up the way I had hoped. My very sparse herb kit was quite out of antiseptics. She grumbled and dug into her pack and pulled out some dried berries and some other leaves and ground them up and made a paste of them.

"Let me clean it and put this on before stitching it up. Obviously, you're not going to do the job right and watching your wound slowly fester is getting annoying." I moved over next to her and let her clean, poultice and sew up the wound. It was a very nice stitching job as her fingers were smaller and nimbler than mine. It might have also helped that she possessed a good sharp needle and some very fine thread of strong gut. Much better quality than the similar items I had in my kit.

"Alright," she grunted "looks like you'll live." Frankly I had never expected otherwise. I'd been hurt far worse and I never seemed to heal up quickly anyway.

Next there came the expected long awaited comment that everyone who sees me for the first time utters.

"You have some old terrible burns. You must have faced some nasty magic."

Hello General Obvious! The left side of my face, left arm and side all were marked by the searing of a Warlock's hellfire. It hurt like the Seven Hells at the time and never did properly heal, even with the help of a good healing priest. It certainly never made my looks more attractive to the opposite sex but at least I lived to tell about it and the prickling of my scarred skin is an excellent indicator of sudden weather changes. My sainted mother always told me to find something good to say about any bad experience. I must admit that it took a very long time to find even this minor silver lining to what was for me at the time a very black cloud.

I didn't answer her. There was no point in saying that one of my own realms' Warlocks had done this to me. It was fully intentional with every possible effort made to burn me to a crispy cinder. Our paths had never crossed again but my Oath to never 'commit murder' did not apply to that man. If I'd known the warlock's name, I'd have even saved us both some time and hunted him down to kill him and not rested until I'd fed what was left of him to the river delta wildlife ... lots of dangerous and hungry critters there who would even crunch up all of the bones for me. Someday...