Birth

Chapter III: REST AND RELIEF

Chapter III: REST AND RELIEF“Would you send a page to the field?”

He sat on the edge of her large, canopied bed. She sat behind him, her legs splayed, one on each side of his body, as she cleansed his wound… as she wrapped and tied it with pristine white linen.

Head tilted to the left, his wounded side, Belamay nodded. “What message do ye wish to send?”

Witon shook his head, grime-filled russet hair swinging against now bare shoulders.

“No message, just…” his chin fell toward his bare chest, “… just an accounting. Of the fighting, if it still continues, of the numbers left on the field, whether or not my men made it safely away.”

Belamay finished her ministrations, tying off the cloth, tightly enough to ebb the flow of slow, trickling blood, but not too tightly as to cause discomfort. With a grunt of satisfaction, she shimmied around her lover's body and stood before him, still dressed in her soldier's garb.

Leaning down, she took his wide chin in her hand and lifted it, her large black eyes meeting his pale ones.

“I will do so if you promise to lie down. To rest, at least, if not to sleep.”

Witon looked upon the face that brought him such joy, that filled his heart to bursting, and knew it for its softness as well as for the strength behind it.

“To rest at least,” he agreed.

Belamay sniffed, with a small shrug of her shoulders. It was the best she could expect from him; she knew it as truth. But she took not one step from him, and he rolled his eyes.

Now it was his turn to shimmy, up and fully onto the bed, laying his pate upon the silk and satin pillows. He gazed at her smugly.

“Fine,” Belamay snipped, a mother to a child. “Stay there or I will tell ye naught I learn.”

Once more, Witon felt his eyes roll, but this time he found them heavy. Perhaps to close them for a few moments would not be such a bad thing after all.

* * *

“Mayhaps we should let him sleep.” A man's voice, thin and with the slightest of warbles.

“No, he would want to know as soon as possible.”

That voice he knew; the dulcet tones of his Belamay brought him up from the void.

Witon's eyes fluttered open. They stood right beside him, Belamay and Pagmav, observing him like a specimen in a cage.

“What do I want to know?” he asked, gently easing himself up to a sitting position with the use of his good right arm. He squinted at them through dusk's fading light lilting through the slatted shutters with soft, horizontal rays. Two hours he had surrendered to sleep, perhaps more.

“Your young friend,” Pagmav croaked.

Any vestiges of sleep Witon threw off like a rough, coarse blanket.

“Does… h… h…?”

“He, oh yes, most definitely a he,” Pagmav said, rubbing his face with a long-fingered hand. Witon could see the fatigue, though the Dwarf tried to wipe it away.

Nodding with satisfaction, as if an itch had been scratched, Witon asked, “Does he live?”

“He does,” Belamay said quickly. “And he should regain the use of his arm, most of it, at least.”

“And as long as he receives care and plenty of rest, he should live a long life, if his Elfish blood has any say in the matter.”

“He is… an Elf?” Witon's voice squeaked like that of an adolescent boy.

“Partly.” Pagmav waddled to the large, cushioned chair in the near corner and dropped his round body into it, feet lifting from the ground as he scurried backward to rest his small spine. “And part Human.”

“No!” The astonished exclamation resounded from both Witon and Belamay.

In this kingdom of Minra Erna there lived Centaurs and Elves, Trolls and Dwarves, Faeries and Brownies, Goblins and Humans, their co-existence in constant discord. At least as long as history had been written. To think two tender souls had risked so much, all for love, was rare… astonishingly rare.

“'Tis true.” Pagmav leaned his head back and closed his eyes, but not his mouth. “It is the only half-breed of the kind I have ever seen. It took me a while to understand his physiology.”

“But you did, as I knew only you could,” Belamay cooed, stepping to the healer and taking his hand. Witon wondered upon the sight; a Human woman tenderly holding the hand of a Dwarf. It bound them, she and Witon; one of the many bonds strengthening their love ever tighter, ever brighter. “There is a hearty dinner waiting for you whenever ye are ready.”

Wrinkled lids crinkled with a smile. “Thank you, my dear. I've just suddenly realized how hungry I am.”

Even with Belamay's assistance, it took some effort for the tired Dwarf to heft his form from the chair enveloping him with its cushiony succor. At the door, he turned back.

“I meant what I said, he will recover. But it must be under the most recuperative of surroundings… medical supervision, a clean environment, good food. Without all these, all will not be well.”

Witon stood—bandaged, eyes rimmed with smudges of fatigue—with an indisputable air. “I swear it to you, Sir, he will receive all he needs and more. By my honor.”

Pagmav nodded slowly, contented. None called the honor of Count Witon into question… not a creature alive, whatever sort of creature they may be.

“May I look in on him?” Witon asked, a step behind the elderly Dwarf's tottering feet.

Holding up a single finger, Pagmav conceded, “Look, no more. Do not wake him. He will do so when his body is ready for him to, no sooner.”

Witon followed the Dwarf out; as the healer made for the stairs leading down and to the kitchen, Witon crossed the hall, passing well-dressed and healthy-looking servants, two young men and two young women, carrying a copper tub and buckets of hot water into Belamay's room.

Witon almost turned back at the images flashing in his mind's eye, of her curvaceous body submerged in warm water, lathered and slick with fragrant soap. But he needed to see the young creature first. He needed to see he lived.

Slowly, Witon cracked the spare room door open, a drawn-out creak by little-used hinges announced his arrival. Tiptoeing across the room, he stood by the bedside once more. He smiled at profuse signs of efficiency: the cleaned skin; the perfectly measured stitches just visible through the thin linen binding the monstrous wound; the precisely sized pieces of wood bound to the arm in three places, rendering it immovable. He must remember to ask Pagmav how long the bindings needed to stay in place.

A tinge of color blossomed now on the young creature's face, a deeper shade of green, though not the dense green of a full-blooded Elf. But it was enough to gift Witon a breath of crisp relief.

Leaning down, he placed his large hand once more upon the creature's forehead.

“I know not what binds us, my friend,” he whispered, a hint of amusement in his low tone, “but bound we are. I know it. I swear fealty to you. I swear to see ye well once more.”

As he gently pushed the pin-straight hair—a dark blonde, Witon thought, seeing it through the layers of mud that sullied it—off the creature's face, he thought he saw the thin lips flicker as if in a smile.

It was enough.