Vigora lapped her long lips at what was left of Draka’s hair on that side. He opened his eyes and instantly regretted it. All he saw were her big teeth and grey furred lips moving over his brow, her tongue gathering a wad of his hair as drool dripped into his eyes. He closed one eye and squinted with the other.

  He tried to swat her with his left hand, but a numbing pain reminded him not to. He brushed her away with his right. She blew hot breath in his face in a disappointed huff and turned her long head sideways, leaning her dish-faced cheek on him.

  That warmed him. He reached to scratch between her worried ears. The long hairs of her white mane fell between his fingers.

  He turned his head to see where he was. By the white tent rippling with the breeze and brightened by the sunlight above him, Draka knew he was in a pitched medical tent. He felt the center rail beneath him of the makeshift cots that were used in battlefield medical camps. He felt for his wound on his chest. It was wrapped, diagonally over his shoulder and across his chest, then snuggly around a splint down his left arm. There were oily cloths on the side of his head and face.

  One of the nuns slapped his hand from those. She clapped her hands at Vigora. Vigora snapped her teeth at her. The nun clicked her own teeth, like a horse trainer, and shooed her back.

  Draka didn’t recognize her. He started to sit up. She got behind him, shooing Vigora again—this time with more swatting—and helped him to turn so his legs could bend over the sides of the cot. They, too, sent the reminder that he had been inside a steel oven burning his flesh for far too long.

  “We’re still waiting on the Paladins to recover from healing the urgents. Might be a few days before they get to you again, since yours aren’t life threatening anymore, but they’ll have you ready in no time,” the nun reassured him from over his shoulder. “Can I get you anything? Are you hungry?”

  Draka hesitated for a moment. All around him were the remnants of what had happened. Men and women, no longer deciphered between checkered tabards and cross-bearing armors, lying on cots, side by side. Gauzed wraps on heads and across their chests, their bellies, some with stains of blood still, some with the grooves of splints going down their sides. The ones who were awake had different looks. One would expect the hazy stares, the bewilderment that often comes after the horrors of war. But many forget the smiles and laughter between neighbors able to turn their heads or sit upright enough to tell a story to the person next to them.

  He remembered the bearded man lying in the cot nearby. He was young, but old enough to be a husband and father. His leg had been amputated above the knee, nearly to his hip. The bandaging covered him like a pair of swimming trousers. His other leg was bare, half covered by a blanket. He had more bandages and salved cloths across his chest and stomach.

  One had a patch of red, shaped like a spear had grazed him to the point of disembowelment. He had been one of the Baron’s Men that a Cleric pulled out of the path of the battering ram’s plated wheels. On the cot beside him? The very same Cleric, with a splinted leg and an amputated arm, making him laugh from a story about his childhood.

  There were many more like him. Baron’s Men and Clerics, Monastic Knights, street thugs, commoners who had joined in their fight with broom handles and table legs, side by side, unrecognizable from each other. Talking. Comforting each other. There was a man spoon feeding another who was far too crippled to eat. One had the undercoat of a Baron’s Man. The other, a commoner.

  Vigora blew butterflies into Draka’s neck. Another volley of swats from the nun, followed by a threatening, “Give that back, you beast! It’s not for you!”

  He looked back to see that Vigora and the nun were in a tug-of-war with one of the oily cloths. Draka flicked her nose. She let go and the nun growled at her as she slammed the cloth into a bucket with the others she had taken from his face. He wondered why he didn’t feel those. Then, as the skin began to pull with them, he realized that she hadn’t gotten to the last layer until that moment. He hissed. The last of the cloths were dropped into the bucket.

  “Slow,” the nun helped him onto his feet.

  His knees begged him not to make them move. They didn’t want to bend or straighten. His hips cried out. His back pleaded with him. His body was rebelling. Slowly, with the nun’s help, he took his first few steps.

  She called to someone, “You, help him to the tables. He can’t wait in the lines. But he can eat with the others. It’ll be good for him to get some air.” To him, as a young man—neither a monk nor a priest nor cleric or knight—came up to him, she said with a warm grin, “I’ll have your bed ready for you when you come back. Take all the time you need.”

  Draka nodded. No, ‘My Prince, or ‘Your Majesty,’ or ‘Paladin,’ attached to it. As the young man took his arm over his shoulder, relieving some of the weight on his legs, he found himself grinning at that. Basking in the relief of not having to be anything more than just a man for once. Just…him.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Outside the tent, the sun was blinding at first. Draka squinted his eyes to adjust to it, slowly seeing that he was being guided between two tents in a long line of them. Vigora’s hoof clops—of course—followed them from behind the one they emerged from. Draka gave her a wink before finally taking stock of where the young helper was taking him. He nearly jerked the young man to a stop for a moment instead of softly squeezing his thin shoulder like he meant to. Draka gaped.

  They were in the square between the Cathedral and the Palais Rohan. There were still stretchers of moaning wounded in rows outside the lines of tents, waiting for their turns to be brought in as nuns and Clerics with bloodied robes tended to them as best they could. There were other rows of mounds covered by sheets pinned down by rocks the shapes of men in the distance. Knights and Clerics, still armed and armored, were careful to keep the bodies covered as they carried each one to the backs of oxen wagons for wherever they would be buried. Priests moved through the lines, hearing confessions and giving communion.

  Beyond them, the ruins of the Palais Rohan still billowed with smoke from piles of rubble. Knights and helpers dowsed in soot were climbing out of it in twos to add to those rows of sheeted bodies while others rushed surviving wounded to nuns and Clerics waiting nearby. Vigora leaned her head over Draka’s shoulder. She cooed and rubbed her cheek into him. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the wreckage. Was it worth it?

  The young man looked up to him, “Quite the sight.”

  Draka nodded.

  “I was with my father in the hall when you took the Palais,” the young man drew Draka’s gaze.

  He sensed a heaviness in the way he said it. He didn’t remember seeing the boy. Maybe that was a good thing.

  “I know who you are, your Majesty. We all do.”

  Draka looked around him. There weren’t many eyes on them, but there were a few. Faces he had never seen, faces that were strange, beaten, traumatized, wounded. He didn’t know what he could say if he were allowed to.

  “For what it’s worth,” the young man said, adjusting Draka’s arm to take more of the weight and look toward their destination: a line of tables filled with capable wounded feasting on bowls of stew, “I think they’ll think twice before crossing you.”

  Draka put a hand on his chest to stop him from taking another step. He tried to motion for the young man’s father. Where was he now?

  “My Pa?”

  Draka nodded.

  “He—well,” the young man turned his eyes back to where he was taking him. “Sometimes, we make choices we can’t take back, I s’pose. He chose to grab a spear.” He shrugged, pinching his lips to one side with a furrowed brow, “I ran with Ma to the back with the other staff.” He finally looked up to Draka, “You didn’t hurt us when you found us. Didn’t lock us in so the fires burn us up. The Monastics smashed through the walls to get us out in time. All of us. Ma’s been coughing cause of the smoke. But she’s alive. And so am I.”

  Draka grinned. He was wobbling. He tightened his grip on the young man’s shoulder. The young man returned the grin with a squinted gaze.

  “We all know the truth. We all know that if you didn’t have a weapon in your hands, you lived. That was the way of it. And there are a hundred, maybe more, who are well aware of it and have come, like me, to help make right what we did wrong. Just because you only made the devil comfortable while he did the crimes doesn’t mean you’re innocent of them.”

  Draka had never heard of that one before. He blinked at it. The young man twisted to get back under his arm before he collapsed. The tables weren’t far. The young man got him to the closest part of the bench and eased him into it.

  “Do you want me to let them know who you are so they give you a little extra? The stew lady is really good at what she does. I never feel like I get enough, myself.”

  Draka shook his head.

  “Alright then.”

  Vigora came to the end of the table and began nibbling on Draka’s head, lapping raw skin from where the fire had burned his hair off along with it. He giggled a little and reached up around her neck to rub her white cheek. I missed you, too, he wanted to say to her.

  Across and beside him, people were taking their seats with bowls full of steaming stew and wide smiles. They nodded to him. He nodded back, scratching Vigora’s coarse fur. She nibbled at his head again. A coughed whinny.

  Yes, Draka leaned into her cheek while he watched them eat, beaming. I think everything will be better now.

  The smell of the stew made his stomach grumble with a fierceness.

  A familiar fierceness.

  Rabid, starving, fierceness.

  Draka’s eyes focused on those bowls of stew. Wait…