Adrift
"Lord Graves is dead."
Something heavy thumped into his lap, and Waldor opened his eyes to the painful glare of torchlight and saw the sergeant, his face rag-wrapped and crusted in blood, looming over him. The man leaned back, then offered Waldor his hand. "I found his sword, I think. His or another's - hard to say. Thought you'd want it, what with your fancy papers and all. Not that it's business of mine."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Waldor replied, already uneasy, and tried to bring his hand up to grasp the one offered to him, but a stabbing pain in his shoulder caused him to groan and slump back, a knot twisting in his stomach. "The paper? It was our contract. Where are we?"
"Thought that was obvious," the man replied, then hunkered back down on the wooden bench he'd been sitting on. "We're on a boat. Not sure exactly where, though. Our coast or theirs - been drifting. But gods be good, it'll be ours." He nodded back over his shoulder where what looked to be a pile of corpses stirred, and Waldor realized what it actually was: injured men, some of them tended to, others struggling with broken oars, one-armed or with crude bandages hiding their eyes. His men. "Drug out who I could, left the worst. Managed to give them all the slip come night, you over a shoulder, Bret under my arm, and the rest staggering along after. Found a boat on the beach that still had its oars and we shoved off, but the fleet weren't there. Some current took us couple of hours ago, and we've been drifting since."
Flashes of the battle came back to Waldor - bloody fragments, screaming faces, the sound of arrows and snort of horses. He felt a surge of adrenaline, then exhaled raggedly and reached up with his good arm to probe around his shoulder, finding bandages and then crude stitches in place of a gaping wound. His other arm was splinted.
"Bret," he murmured, wincing again as he felt the crude work. "Good. That's... what's the total tally? You, me, him, the others?" The self-examination became too painful, coupled with the roll of the longboat in the water, and he dropped his arm across his lap, fingers tracing the pitted metal edge of the longsword lying across it. He wondered if noblemen really did name their swords, as he had heard in stories, and wondered if this blade had one - or if it was his to name.
"Eighteen, including you and me. And Bret. Most of the rest's the new bunch from the docks that we put on before leaving the city. One or two of us veterans left. Some of them ain't even ours, but they aren't enemy. The company's gone, Walt. Don't even know if we can bring it back." The sergeant - Ranulf, Waldor remembered, his name was Ranulf - cleared his throat noisily, then spat congealed blood and pus onto the bottom of the boat. Waldor noticed splinters and wadded cloth pooling down there in the waste water, but declined to comment on them. "All things considered, you did good though. Trying to break for the woods - it could have worked. But fate wasn't for us. Plain and simple."
"I don't want the new ones now," Waldor murmured, still tracing the contours of the sword with his numb fingers, "but I won't turn them away, either. Nor the fellows that didn't sign on with us. If they're willing to stay, they can. Nobody's pursuing us?" He could feel the rolled papers pressing against his chest, and hoped they hadn't gotten too bloody during the fight. They were his ticket to glory, and if those were ruined, he was ruined.
Ranulf shrugged, twisted at the hip to confer with a painfully thin young man, then faced his captain.
"Take who we take, I suppose," he echoed without much feeling. "You going to tell me what you're planning, boy, or am I going to have to beat it out of you?"
"Later." Waldor snapped, feeling his strength ebbing again, and slunk back against the bench boards of the boat, eyes lidding. He hooked his good arm around the sword and drug it closer, cradling it like a lover against his battered armor. "I promise - later. Let's get home first."
Sergeant Ranulf grunted and felt at his bandaged face, then lowered the torch he'd been carrying and snuffed it out unceremoniously in the waste water below. It hissed and stunk, but he smiled.
"Alright, boys, we sail by the light of the stars. First man to spot something that proves we're coming up on home, and not the 'kirks, gets ten silver and this fancy hat."
A dented pothelm was rusting beside the torch, upside down and full of puke.
