Garinor stared hard at the prince and realized that the man would defeat him in a one-to-one conflict. He wasn’t a trained fighter anyway, and so Garinor decided to hurry off to the east before he was discovered.
He was haunted as he left the scene of the battle and the cries and shouts of pain that echoed from behind him, but there was nothing he could do to help them until the fight was over. He waited patiently off in the brush as the sun sank out of the sky and the battle was called to a cease with a blow of the prince’s horn.
He waited until he heard the two groups of fighters breaking apart and then hurried down toward the group that had been fighting against the prince’s men. They were weary and badly beaten and Garinor felt sad that he couldn’t have helped them.
Running toward them, arms outstretched in friendship, he approached a group at the rear who were carrying the dead from the battle site. “Can I help at all?”
A woman with a broken bow strapped to her back looked at him briefly and nodded. “Put your hand on the litter and lift.”
He did so and reverently followed the troop to their camp. It didn’t take long for them to plod along the road and reach a smattering of tents that couldn’t possibly house the lot of them. A cook fire was set up in the center of the camp with a cauldron of stew bubbling noisily. He followed the litter-bearers beyond the campsite to a trench that had been dug earlier for the casualties. He stared down at the pile of men and women who had given their lives in the battle, and he wondered what they had been fighting for.
“Come along, here, and have a bite,” said a young man in his early twenties. He pushed a bowl of stew into Garinor’s hands and motioned him over to the side to eat. “Your assistance was noted and so you eat, then you will face Chief and explain yourself.”
The man was silent after that and he took Garinor’s empty bowl to a water-filled barrel and brought Garinor to meet the bearded leader of the troop. “What brings you to us, lad?”
He trembled under the penetrating glare, but Garinor recounted the various steps of his journey and explained that he was headed north to find the king to seek answers for why he was recently wrested from his house.
“So, Hand is dead,” Chief commented and then grumbled. “You will remain with us this night under guard. We will speak further tomorrow. But be warned that if you try to leave you will be slain.”
Garinor’s face went white but he nodded his understanding.
“You will sleep in there,” Chief said, pointing to a small tent where two other guards were lingering. “We’ll sort out the rest tomorrow.”
Clearly dismissed, Garinor trudged over to the tent, where the two fighters barely acknowledged him. He crawled inside and tried to set himself to sleep, but as soon as he was comfortable two men entered the tent and shifted him over. “You’re in the middle,” one of them commented.
He didn’t have an easy time falling asleep after that, for the two men had been injured in the conflict that afternoon and they periodically moved about and struck a wound, which prompted a cry of dismay and often a quick jostling. The tight quarters meant that Garinor felt each movement and he was thoroughly grateful when sheer exhaustion overtook him.
His sleep was not a peaceful one and he was plagued with strange dreams all night long. In them he saw the prince up close laughing at him for cowering away when he had had a chance to act decisively. When Garinor thrashed about, he realized that he was bound with a heavy rope with a spear was aimed at this throat, poised by the bearded Chief in the camp where he was sleeping. He cried out that he was innocent and he should be left alone. They all should be left alone. The children at the orphanage had done nothing wrong and they should be given peace. At this the prince laughed aloud and strapped Garinor to the front of a wagon that propelled itself in his dream. He was driven into the orphanage, taken down to the dark cellar and there the prince and his men sent the room of boys ablaze with innumerable torches after drowning them all in lantern oil.
He was thoroughly grateful when the warrior next to him flipped over and woke Garinor up with an accidental punch to the face.