[Child of the 7th Age]

Guthwine:

By the time Guthwine reached the pond and returned to camp bearing his son in his arms, darkness had settled over the land. The boy lay stretched out on a blanket inside Kirima's vacant tent, the one place where their few herbal remedies were stored. Ian's skin felt warm and eerily dry to Guthwine's touch. He could see that the lad was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The accident had happened early that morning in a dense thicket near the pond. A group of hunters, also from the camp, had mistaken two of the children as deer they were tracking and shot the perilous arrow. The arrowhead and its shaft had quickly been removed from the boy's hip with the aid of a sharp dagger. Yet it had left behind a jagged wound. The women had tried to cleanse it, but they'd been compelled to use the brackish waters of the shallow, muddy pond.
By nightfall, the wound was festering, threatening to spread its poison through the boy's whole body.

The woman tending to the child looked over at Guthwine and shook her head, "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. I am not a healer. There are herbs that might help, but we have none of those." She stopped a mement and added, "In Bree such medicines are probably available."

"But where is Kirima?" Guthwine bellowed.

"She has gone to Bree to help tend the sick children," the woman responded.

Scowling and cursing his son's ill fate, Guthwine took a scant second to swallow his pride and make the decision to seek help in Bree. He looked up at Lotar, who had come over to see if he could help and was standing at the entrance of the tent, and spoke directly to him, "I will not have the witch women of Bree tend to my son. But Kirima I trust. Let me ride there now and seek aid for Ian."

Lotar shook his head, "What you suggest is dangerous. Send your wife instead. The Breelanders are more apt to welcome women than a bandit with a price on his head."

Guthwine bellowed back, "Confound these Breelanders! I will not place another member of my family in danger. It is enough that I go. If they put me in prison or slay me, so be it....as long as they have some pity on my son. He is but a child, just eight years old."

Lotar had gone outside to speak with Rudgar and Soran. He returned with the two men by his side and spoke directly with Guthwine, "I will not have any of my men go into danger alone. We are in this thing together. Rudgar and Soran have volunteered to come with you. They will stay in hiding and try to find out more. But if you need help, they will be there."

A fleeting memory flashed through Guthwine's mind of how he had let Soran fall wounded at the farmhouse and not gone back to aid him. Though red with embarassment, Guthwine accepted the offer of aid, and the three men set out on horses towards the hole in the hedge, with the boy wrapped tight in a blanket.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 12:50 PM February 07, 2004: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]