The Sceptre of Samnos

New Friends Part 3

     Thomas came to on a bed of coarse woollen blankets, and burst into a fit of coughing that left him doubled over and helpless until the attack had passed. The room swam around him and he swayed dizzily as consciousness faded in and out. For a moment he had no idea where he was or what had happened, and he lay still, waiting for his head to clear, before carefully sitting up and looking around.

      He was in a small log cabin, furnished with crude wooden furniture and carpeted with overlapping animal skins. A fire roared in an open grate and oil lamps smoked lazily where they hung from ironwood hooks hammered into the wall. A couple of medium sized ironwood swords, a longbow, and a quiver of arrows tipped with obsidian hung on another wall, next to the stuffed head of a ferocious looking forest animal with tusks and long, wickedly curving horns. The one window was merely a hole in the wall, with two slatted shutters fastened back from it, and a door in the opposite wall led to the next room, apparently a kitchen.

     Lirenna and Jerry were lying next to him, a single blanket covering both their bodies. Their skins were an ashen grey colour, but they were both alive and breathing, and as he saw them the memory returned, along with the full horror of their desperate landing. Lirenna had bandages wrapped around her left arm and was badly bruised around her face, but Jerry seemed more or less unharmed. They were both asleep, and Thomas thought it best not to disturb them just yet. He tried to sit up and suffered another wave of dizziness that defeated him for the moment, but a couple of minutes later he was able to fight it down enough to rise from his bed, gathering a blanket around himself to cover his unclothed body.

      He found that the bed was, in fact, a large table, padded with half a dozen blankets. Another wave of dizziness swept over him and he almost fell, but he was caught by a large tubby woman who rushed in at the sound of his movements. "There now, there now," she said, helping him to a chair. "Darris! Darris! They be waking up!"

     A large, heavily muscled man came in, wearing coarse woollen and leather clothes and with his long dark hair tied in a ponytail. "Glad to see you be up," he said. "We were getting worried."

     "Did you..." A sudden attack of coughing took him and he had to wait until it was over before he could speak again. "Did you get us out of the lake?"

     "Me and my two sons. Miriam, my good wife here, saw you come down, hell of a splash you made, and she came running to get us. There were only the three of you, were there not? Only we weren't sure we'd got the all of you."

     "Yes, just the three of us. Thank you for saving us." He tried to think of something to say that would adequately express his gratitude, but failed. Fortunately, more words didn't seem to be necessary.

     "Twasn't nothing," said Darris with gruff indifference. "We all be good swimmers, and the water was clear and shallow. We could see you lying on the bottom. Simple thing it was to fish you out. You'd all taken in some water, but started breathing again once you were out. Except the little feller. Took my son, Tarrin, a long time to get him to start breathing again."

     "Where are your sons? I'd like to thank them as well."

     "Tarrin be out seeing to the goats. He'll be in soon. My other son, Ralph, has gone to the village to get the cleric. He'll be back tonight."

     "I do hope you don't mind us laying you out on the table," said Miriam, wringing her hands nervously, "but the beds aren't fit for us humble folk to sleep in, let alone highborn wealthy folk like you. We gave you all the blankets, though, so we hope you weren't too uncomfortable."

     "It was fine," said Thomas, wondering what she meant by highborn wealthy folks. "You've been very kind and generous, and I hope to be able to repay you some day."