Murtagh

Even in his addled state, Murtagh felt like vomiting. The pain from the arrow in his shoulder came to the forefront with crippling strength, and he gasped without meaning to. He wanted to deny the evidence of his eyes, but he was too practical-minded for delusion. He knew what his hands had done.

No, not his hands. Him.

He looked at Thorn, and found the dragon staring at him with a haunted expression Murtagh recognized from their time imprisoned in Urû’baen. The fires died in Thorn’s nostrils, and he shuddered and let out the faintest whine.

Thorn started to take a step forward, and from his back, Grieve barked, “Stay!” Thorn froze.

As Grieve slid to the ground, Thorn and Murtagh continued to stare at each other, hopeless to break the compulsion that bound them.

Bloody snow crunched under Grieve’s boots as he walked over to Murtagh. He studied the arrow in Murtagh’s shoulder. “It would have been better if they killed you,” he said in a flat tone. Then he took a bird-skull amulet from within his robe and pressed it against Murtagh’s shoulder and pulled free the arrow.

The pain caused Murtagh’s vision to fade out, and his knees buckled.

He came to on all fours. He looked: no blood spurted from his shoulder. The wound had sealed over and was red and puckered, as if a week of healing had taken place. He sat back on his heels and moved his left arm. It still had little strength, but the muscles seemed to work.

He shivered again.

“Back on your feet, wormling,” said Grieve, and turned away. To the warriors on horseback, he shouted, “Gather the supplies that the dragon may carry them, and be quick about it. Bachel grows impatient. When we are gone, take what horses you can and bring them to Nal Gorgoth.”

As a group, the men responded: “As it is dreamt, so it shall be.”

***

Murtagh sat next to Thorn and watched as the cultists piled bundles of supplies—food, clothes, skins of drink—before them. Grieve had spared him the task of helping, not out of mercy, but because Murtagh’s injured arm meant he could be of little use.

His gaze returned to the bodies lying in the trampled snow. Then he dropped his eyes to his bloodstained hands and to Thorn’s gore-splattered feet.

He pulled his cloak tighter. He still hadn’t stopped shivering.

Thorn’s snout touched his shoulder. The gesture seemed as if it ought to have provided a sense of comfort, but Murtagh felt no improvement. The only thought that came to his mind was: No. A statement of denial, of rejection. Not toward the dragon, but toward the circumstances that bound them.

The cultists used ropes to tie the supplies together. Then Grieve had Murtagh climb onto Thorn’s back—as did Grieve himself—and Thorn grasped the ropes between his reddened claws and took off with labored beats of his wings.

***

The flight back to Nal Gorgoth was cold and silent, and no slower than before, despite Thorn’s additional burden, for the wind was at their backs and it eased their progress.

Murtagh wished it wouldn’t.

Fingers of dull orange light were extending beneath the clouds to the west and filtering between the jags of the mountain peaks by the time the village came into sight.

Thorn landed in the temple courtyard, and Bachel came out to greet them along with her litter-bearers, warriors, and attendants. Alín stood near the witch, face pale and drawn, and her eyes widened as she saw Thorn’s paws and Murtagh’s hands.

Also with Bachel and her retinue were the recently arrived guests, and among them the man Murtagh couldn’t place, and—

“Murtagh! You look as if you slipped and fell in a butcher’s killing yard! Rather clumsy of you, I say!”

Lyreth. Lyreth in all his embroidered finery, a chalice of wine in one hand, the other pressed against the waist of a female cultist. Once his words would have bothered Murtagh. Now they were as chaff in the wind.

When Murtagh dismounted, Bachel had her warriors relieve him of his sword. Then, at her order, they took him to be washed and, after, dragged him back to his cell beneath the temple.

As the cultists left, one of them brushed against the lantern at the end of the dungeon hallway, and the breath of air snuffed out the flame, leaving the cells in pitch-black.

Murtagh lay on the stones, cold beads of water dripping from his hair onto the back of his neck. The darkness felt like a tomb for his guilt; it wrapped around him with horrifying strength, turning his insides and strangling his breath.

The force of it froze him in place for a boundless span, the gut-wrenching sense of wrongness as painful as any wound.

From it, a truth formed in the center of his clouded mind, a hard core of inescapable reality: he could not continue as he was, but neither he nor Thorn could change things. Doing so was beyond them.

A gritty scrape sounded across the hall, as of a heavy weight shifting across the flagstones. Then: “Murtagh-man, what is wrong?”

It took all of Murtagh’s newly acquired mental acuity to force a word from his mouth. And he said:

“…help.”

CHAPTER XX Qazhqargla