Silas awoke to a symphony of searing pain. The air in the tent was a suffocating, stuffy blanket, thick with the coppery tang of blood, further muddling his already groggy consciousness.
He struggled to push himself upright, his sweat-soaked tunic clinging unpleasantly to his skin. A glance at his legs and arms confirmed his fears: the edges of several knife wounds were an angry, ominous red, a tell-tale sign of encroaching infection, the skin around them tight and inflamed, as if ants were industriously excavating nests just beneath the surface.
"Damn it all…" he cursed, a low growl. The lightest touch of his fingertips to one of the wounds sent a fresh wave of blackness swimming before his eyes. In this oppressive heat, this filthy environment, infection was taking hold with terrifying speed. He *had* to get to town, procure some medicine. Otherwise, once the wounds began to fester and weep pus, he'd be bidding a swift, undignified farewell to this miserable world.
The dirt tracks of Sordin Town shimmered under the relentless afternoon sun, heat radiating in visible, distorting waves. Silas dragged himself along, each agonizing step a fresh torment, feeling as if his wounds were being systematically torn open anew. Sweat, stinging and salty, dripped from his brow into his eyes, pickling his vision in a fiery brine.
"Where is everyone?" Silas muttered, leaning heavily against a faded, sun-bleached tarpaulin that marked the edge of the deserted market area. The empty wooden tables were coated in a thin, undisturbed layer of dust. Mao Hai's stall, usually an olfactory landmark redolent of dried fish and exotic spices, was barren, shuttered; he clearly hadn't set up shop today. The entire street was eerily, unnaturally, deserted.
Then, his dulled senses vaguely registered it: a distant, swelling chorus of cheers, emanating from the direction of the town center.
"Some kind of festival today?" he mused, his voice a hoarse rasp. "Never mind. The clinic's in that direction anyway. Might as well take a look."
He hauled his protesting body towards the town square. The cheers and shouts grew louder, more insistent, each fresh wave of sound a hammer blow against his throbbing temples.
And then he saw them: the crowd. A seething, jostling mass, packed layer upon tightly compressed layer around the central square, like a swarm of frenzied ants drawn to a spilled pot of honey. As Silas, wincing, shouldered his way into a narrow gap, he caught snippets of excited, breathless whispers from the womenfolk:
"The White Dragon Knights! They're finally here! In *our* town!"
"We're saved! Truly saved! I heard they annihilated those Purity Army vermin in a single night!"
"Why doesn't the Commander take off his helmet, though? I heard tell that several of the noblest daughters in the capital are positively *vying* for his hand!"
The harsh, glinting reflection of sunlight off polished metal stung Silas's already aching eyes. A procession of over forty black-armored knights, mounted on powerful, snorting warhorses, moved with a slow, deliberate dignity through the throng. At their head, Lothlan, resplendent in his immaculate, pure white armor, was a dazzling, almost blinding figure. He was waving, with a regal, magnanimous air, to the adoring populace.
"Take off your helmet, hero!"
"Let us behold the face of our savior! Don't be shy, brave Commander!"
Several young women, their faces flushed with excitement, shrieked their adulation, forcefully hurling fistfuls of hastily gathered flowers towards Lothlan. He caught them, with an effortless, almost contemptuous grace, raised the impromptu bouquet high, and inclined his helmeted head in a gesture of noble acknowledgment.
Amidst the chaotic, jubilant procession, however, Silas also noted several figures whose expressions were anything but celebratory. Their faces were etched with anxiety, with a desperate, pleading hope, as they shouted towards Lothlan:
"Wait! Please, wait! Have… have you seen my child? My son?"
Their desperate cries were swiftly, brutally, swallowed by the overwhelming roar of the ecstatic crowd. Lothlan, Silas saw, did turn his head, a brief, unreadable glance towards the source of the anguished voices.
Silas, melting into the anonymity of the crowd, began a surreptitious search for the apothecary's shop. The last thing he needed was to be recognized by these… *knights*. That would only invite a fresh, unwelcome cascade of complications. Just then, Leon, the archer, stationed on guard duty in the second rank of the procession, stiffened, his head turning sharply, as if he'd suddenly detected something amiss. He moved quickly, murmuring a few urgent words into Lothlan's ear. Both men then began to scan the crowd, their gazes sweeping, searching.
The owner of the clinic, a wizened, desiccated old man, was one of the few townsfolk not caught up in the general fervor. He peered suspiciously over the rim of his spectacles from behind the cluttered counter. Upon registering Silas's blood-soaked tunic and the faint, feral, animalistic reek that clung to him, he immediately clapped a perfumed handkerchief to his nose and mouth. "Yes? What is it you require?" he asked, his voice thin, reedy, and dripping with undisguised distaste.
Silas pulled up his sleeve, wordlessly revealing the ugly, inflamed knife wound on his forearm. "I need cedar paste," he said, his voice a low growl. "Some hemostatic herbs. And alcohol, if you have it. The strong kind." He then placed his entire worldly fortune—seventeen marks—onto the dusty countertop.
"Is that all?" the apothecary sniffed. "That wouldn't even cover the cost of two grams of proper cedar paste." He still made no move to approach; the aura of grime and old blood that clung to Silas was an almost palpable, invisible barrier. Yet, the sight of the vicious, obviously untended knife wound seemed to stir some vestige of pity within his shriveled breast.
"The Purity Army, was it? Ah, well. A pitiful unfortunate, that's what you are. Here, take these."
He turned, rummaging through his stores, then produced a small selection of medicinal powders, a few surprisingly clean gauze bandages, and a small bottle of potent medicinal alcohol, handing them all to Silas.
"Now that the Purity Army has been… *dealt with*… try not to go and die from something as mundane as a festering wound." The disgust on his face hadn't entirely vanished, but it was now overlaid with a thin veneer of grudging sympathy.
"With the Purity Army gone, the Church will be back before we know it, mark my words," the old man sighed, his gaze drifting to the parading knights outside the window, a faraway, reflective look in his eyes. "Sigh. When will days like these ever truly end?"
"My thanks," Silas began, intending to say more, but his attention was abruptly, forcefully, snagged by the scene unfolding outside the shop window.
He saw the parade gradually receding into the distance. The cheering, adoring crowd was following Lothlan, a human tide ebbing away down the main street. And there, at the very tail end of the procession, Silas saw him: Mao Hai. He wasn't bound, yet the anxious, bewildered, almost hunted look in his eyes clearly indicated that his presence was anything but voluntary. A single black-armored soldier trailed closely, watchfully, behind him.
*"Why was he taken? What do they want with him?"* Silas's heart leaped into his throat. This was not a good sign. Not at all. He turned back, scooped up the proffered medicines, stuffed them into a pocket, gave the apothecary a curt, grateful nod, and then, without another word, swiftly departed.
Silas tailed them to the imposing town hall building. The area before it was still a roiling sea of humanity, the crowd surging, pressing inwards, a fanatical, almost suffocating crush of bodies. Most of the White Dragon Knights, along with a contingent of heavily armed foot soldiers, were struggling to maintain some semblance of order, forming a cordon against the relentless pressure of the mob. Mao Hai was nowhere to be seen; he must have been taken inside.
*"A frontal approach is out of the question. I'll have to find another way in."*
Silas sighed. Ever since he'd made the ill-fated decision to "find trouble" with the Purity Army, his life had become an unrelenting cascade of unwelcome surprises. He was, he realized with a grim irony, becoming somewhat numb to it all. He slipped into a narrow, refuse-strewn alleyway, following it as it wound its way to the rear of the town hall.
He uncorked the medicinal alcohol, took a quick, bracing swig, then poured the remainder liberally over his open wounds. The searing, incandescent pain of the alcohol on raw flesh made his vision momentarily black out; the last thing he needed was to collapse, half-dead, in some filthy back alley. Silas clamped one end of a bandage between his teeth, then, with a trembling but steady hand, began to apply the soothing herbal ointment.
The instant the alcohol-laced poultice made contact with his mangled flesh, he nearly bit through his own tongue. Tidal Force, a familiar, internal fire, surged through his veins as he fought to suppress the waves of agony.
The rough-hewn gray stone of the town hall wall felt coarse, abrasive, under his palm. He gathered his remaining strength, then, with a grunt, launched himself upwards, his fingers finding purchase in a narrow fissure, and began to climb. Upwards, hand over hand, gripping crevices, finding footholds, each movement sending fresh, sharp stabs of protest from his abused, protesting wounds. From the darkened windows of the lower floors, the sonorous, rhythmic snores of drunken revelers conveniently, if unknowingly, masked the faint, scraping sounds of his ascent.
The third-floor window ledge was higher, further, than he had anticipated. Silas clung precariously to a rusted, groaning drainpipe, the ancient metal protesting ominously under his weight. Just as his fingertips, straining, finally brushed the cool stone of the windowsill, a wave of dizzying vertigo assailed him. His wounds, he realized with a fresh stab of alarm, had begun to bleed anew.
Through the grimy glass, he saw Lothlan, casually stirring a teacup with an ornate silver spoon. The Knight Commander's noble nose had, indeed, been reset, Silas noted with a flicker of grim amusement, but its swollen, misshapen bridge was now a lurid, purplish-red, bearing a striking resemblance to an overripe eggplant. *If his adoring fans in the street below could see him now,* Silas mused, *I wonder how many hearts would shatter?*
His adjutant, the short-haired woman, Leonora, also appeared remarkably young. Her tanned, brownish skin, in this predominantly pale-complexioned region, lent her an exotic, almost feline beauty. She would have been, Silas judged, quite striking, had not the harsh, unforgiving rigors of a long military career etched their indelible, hardening mark upon her features. She was, at that moment, meticulously peeling an apple with a wickedly sharp military dagger, the crimson peel coiling away in a single, unbroken, impossibly long strip—a testament to her unnervingly steady hand.
"...So, you discovered the brigands' encampment whilst on a routine patrol?" The town mayor, his hands clasped tightly, respectfully, before him, looked utterly intimidated, almost comically constrained, as if *he* were the unwelcome supplicant, and not the other way around.
Lothlan set down his teacup, the delicate porcelain clinking with a sharp, precise clarity against the silver tray. "More accurately, fleeing townspeople, desperate and terrified, guided us to its location," he corrected, his voice now much softer, much smoother than it had been the previous night, imbued with that characteristic, effortlessly polished intonation of the high nobility.
"I profoundly regret not being able to inform you of our presence in advance, esteemed Mayor. The oversight, I assure you, was entirely mine."
"This gentleman…" Lothlan abruptly turned his attention to Mao Hai, who, Silas now saw, was present in the room, trembling like a leaf in a high wind. "We found you, I believe, on the outskirts of the aforementioned encampment. Perhaps you could… elucidate…"
"I was looking for that fool boy!" Mao Hai burst out, his voice so loud, so unexpected, that it startled even Silas, perched precariously outside the window. "He blathered on yesterday about going to find trouble with the Purity Army! I… I merely intended to intercept him! To talk some sense into him before he got himself killed…"
The short-haired adjutant's paring knife stilled in mid-air. The apple peel, a perfect crimson spiral, snapped.
Silas's heart skipped a beat. *That reckless, thrice-damned fool! He actually went looking for me? Alone? What if he'd been captured? Was he planning to subdue them with a barrage of dried fish?*
"To dare to venture forth alone, into such peril? Both you, and this… *gentleman*… you speak of, possess a rather… admirable… degree of courage," Lothlan purred, gently, almost lovingly, stroking his still-swollen, eggplant-hued nose with his fingertips. "This valiant warrior you mention… where might he reside?"
The very air in the room seemed to solidify, to congeal. The mayor, sweating profusely, began to dab at his glistening forehead with a handkerchief. Mao Hai, looking profoundly uncomfortable, scratched his head.
"Well, truth be told, Your Excellency, I'm not entirely certain. The lad… he's an elusive sort. Keeps to himself. I heard tell he'd made a camp for himself deep in the forest, but as to his current whereabouts… well, your guess is as good as mine."
"A great pity. A truly great pity," Lothlan murmured, his expression one of profound, theatrical regret. "Might you, at least, be able to furnish us with this brave warrior's name? The White Dragon Knights, you see, hold such selfless, righteous men in the very highest esteem."