However, Grallik knew Montrill and knew the man would instead be grateful to the priest who had saved his life. He knew Montrill was the kind of man who would shrug off his bad luck and simply learn to wield a sword with his other hand. The wizard released Montrill’s wrist and nodded. “I am witness,” said Grallik. “Do what you can for him and the rest. See if the trader, Thomas, can salvage some herbs to ease the pain. I will speak with the commander when he is awake.”
The wizard stood and brushed his hands on his robe, smearing some of Montrill’s blood. Then he took another look at the wounded and dying and the chaos all around him.
“Then, if you and your men have anything left,” Grallik said after a moment’s hesitation, “any spells or supplies, do your best to see to the wounded slaves. We lost a considerable number, I am sure, and we need the rest healthy so they can reopen the mine and help rebuild the camp.”
The Skull Knight replied with a noncommittal grunt.
9
It was shortly past midnight, nearly eighteen hours since the quake struck, before a priest tended to Grallik’s eyes. And that had been at the priest’s insistence, not the wizard’s. The Skull Knight had noticed Grallik furiously rubbing his eyes and argued that the man currently in charge of Steel Town needed to properly see the devastation so he could best determine how to deal with the crisis.
His eyes felt much better, and the horrid headache he’d nurtured throughout the day was starting to recede. His ribs still throbbed, and the priest worked on them too; the faint orange glow that had spilled across Montrill’s broken arm flowed over Grallik’s side and chest. The warmth was so soothing that that the wizard had to struggle to stay awake.
“Broken,” the priest pronounced. “Three or four ribs. But they should not trouble you any longer. Go easy, though, lest you undo my work.”
In truth, the pain was gone, as though there’d never been a problem. Again, Grallik was amazed by the divine magic.
“Thank you,” Grallik said. “I appreciate your diligence, brother.”
The priest was mildly surprised at the comment. He was not used to being commended for his healing.
“And I also thank you for the hours you’ve spent with the wounded men. No doubt you’ll be spending hours more before you’ve a chance to rest.”
“Aye, indeed, Guardian. I suspect I’ll drop from fatigue while there are still patients to see to.”
The wizard wondered if he, himself, might keel over at any moment. He had spent hours organizing a better place for the wounded, away from the barracks wall that he feared might topple; ordering the laborers and their families to comb through the rubble for salvageable clothes and furniture; directing the blacksmiths to recover any steel, iron, and raw ore that was salvageable; commanding slaves to get to work on the new well; dispatching messengers to Jelek and Neraka to inform Dark Knight commanders about the disaster of Steel Town. His letters, written on soiled and rumpled pieces of parchment-that was all he could find-detailed requests for men and supplies, especially clothes and wood.
In those hours, Marshal Montrill showed no visible sign of improvement, though the Skull Knights seemed encouraged by his stability and assured Grallik that in time he would indeed recuperate. The priests believed that two knights with even worse wounds would also survive.
“The best medicine is a tincture of time,” Grallik recalled the Ergothian priest saying. Montrill had had a close escape from death. “He will show definite improvement in a few days, perhaps. A week or more at the longest. But he will not be getting up out of bed right away. We all will look to you for orders until the marshal is able to resume his command.”
Days and days in charge of this chaos, Grallik translated the prognosis.
The responsibility he once so craved had dropped in his grasping hands. He watched as a detail of knights and laborers, their clothes dark from sweat despite the coolness of the early day, dug graves and laid their fellows into the ground. Another grave-digging shift would take over later in the morning, and the burials could take some time, given the number of the dead and the protocol the Order demanded for burying knights. One of the Skull Knights was with the burying party, reciting words Grallik knew he would hear far too often before the cleanup of Steel Town was completed.
The bodies had to be washed, as part of the ceremony, and dressed in their finest armor and cloaks. Knights had to be buried with their weapons all polished. But Grallik had ordered the water conserved for the living, and he set even more hobgoblin and goblin slaves to work in earnest on three new wells, supervised by the former tavern owner and his wife. One of the three would have to strike water soon or their situation would become precarious. Water was a priority. The Skull Knights were too fatigued to create any with their enchantments-all their energy had been devoted to the injured. Commanding the men and slaves to perform all those odious tasks was far preferable to working alongside them, Grallik realized. He knew that if Montrill were healthy and giving orders, he would either be aiding the wounded or sorting through the ruins right alongside the others. Montrill could be counted on to give example in dire times.
It wasn’t as if Grallik had been resting, though. He’d been on his aching feet for hours, moving about restlessly, kneeling sometimes at the side of a wounded knight; one of his talon died and another lay grievously injured and likely would not survive his wounds. All he wanted was to sit on one of the chairs or benches that had been pulled from the demolished buildings, close his eyes, and sleep for a few minutes or have something to drink. After all, he was entitled to whatever water he wanted-he was in charge.
His feet hurt from walking over the rubble. His soft-soled slippers were not much protection from the sharp stones and broken furniture and jagged tools. He didn’t wear the hard-soled boots that his fellow knights did; that wasn’t the footwear of wizards. But Grallik had been eyeing the dead, and when he found a man of similar build, he intended to appropriate the man’s boots to cover his own feet, and damn those who thought him ghoulish rather than pragmatic.
He would rest briefly when he was finished there, perhaps sleep an hour or two if things looked in order. A spell that could stave off exhaustion for days was lost at the bottom of a crevice. He could not recall it without his precious spellbook.
He was so terribly, terribly spent.
Grallik walked toward the slave pens, feeling the slaves watching him. There were only a handful of knights standing guard at the pens. The wizard worried that the slaves might figure out that his wards were absent. If they rushed the knights, they would have a good opportunity to vanish into the wilderness.
But up to that point, the slaves had made no move to escape, so conditioned were they to their horrid existence. The wooden slats of the pen were like the steel bars of a prison to them. The slaves probably still believed that all the wards and glyphs were intact and thought they’d be incinerated by columns of flame if they tried to escape.
Fifty yards to the east of the pens was a mound of goblin and hobgoblin bodies, looking like a big earthen hill in the darkness. They were slaves who had died in the pens when the quake struck, had been carried out of the mines by their fellows, or were killed by the hatori. Some had died quickly, succumbing to their dire injuries. The priests would not be seeing to the goblins for a while, so undoubtedly more of the injured slaves would breathe their last soon.
There were hundreds more dead slaves in the mine, Grallik suspected, and some knights among them. Something would have to be done about all their bodies and the stink building up in the shafts. The shafts would have to be reopened, ore production continued. But clearing the mine was a goal to consider after sunrise. Dealing with the mound of bodies there and then, Grallik had to focus on that problem.