Halt's Test (Gone Wrong)

Chapter 13

Healer Adriel was working on one of the pieces of a window frame he had been asked to make by his son, who, like just about everyone else in town, was out in the harvest with his wife and kids. No one stayed behind, except for Adriel and the two Rangers, as far as Adriel knew. Even mothers with young children went, as everyone who could come came to gather the harvest.

Except for Adriel. He was busy working on the window frame, his son needed it done for the next day, it was a very urgent job, and Adriel would be better fixing the window than harvesting anyway, so he offered to stay back and join them the next day.

He was cutting the last part of the frame out of the wood he'd been provided with when he heard a cry of pain. He frowned, rising from his seat, putting the wood down as he grabbed his basket. Maybe someone else stayed, someone who was elderly or sick perhaps? It wouldn't be the Rangers; they were in the inn.

He strode quickly to the front door, opened it, and saw the body in the street. He instantly recognized it to be the Commandant, and broke into a run, not seeing the black figure that slipped into the inn through the door Crowley had left open.

When he reached Crowley, he knelt by him, quickly checking his pulse, relieved to find it still going strong. From the side Adriel could see, as Crowley was lying face down on the road, Crowley looked unharmed, so Adriel tried to roll him on his side and instantly saw the problem.

The dagger was just above his heart, embedded in his chest, and Adriel looked around, realizing that something was badly wrong. Someone had done this, and it needed to be treated somewhere inside, where there was lest dust and dirt.

Then he realized something else. If Crowley was coming to find him, that meant Halt had taken a turn for the worse. That meant that both could be dying. Adriel half-straightened, not certain what to do. If he ran to Halt, Crowley could bleed out here on the road or get his wound infected, and if he stayed with Crowley, Halt could pass the mark of no return with his fever. He needed to take Crowley with him to Halt.

As soon as he made the decision, Adriel grabbed Crowley's arms and began to drag him, with the wound facing up, back the ten feet he had traveled to the inn, then up the stairs. It was a challenge, but Adriel had been a lumberjack in his younger days, and still helped his son sometimes, and he still had the strength required to drag Crowley back to the room where Halt was, though it tired him. It also helped that, like most Rangers, Crowley was not particularly tall or wide, and that made him easier to drag.

Adriel had just dragged Crowley into the room, shutting the door behind him to keep out the flies that were sure to follow, when a voice stopped him in his tracks.

"Put your hands up."