He began to fear the creature didn’t understand. A little crestfallen, he looked at Mark and motioned him to back out of the thicket when the Seron finally spoke.
‘Grekac,’ it said, a hoarse whisper like late autumn corn stalks crunching underfoot.
Steven’s heart pounded as he searched his mental lexicon of Ronan terminology. Grekac did not emerge. ‘I don’t understand,’ he replied, ‘What is grekac?’
The beast motioned with one hand towards his leg. ‘Grekac.’
Mark understood. ‘Grettan,’ he said, fighting to contain his sudden enthusiasm. ‘It’s trying to say grettans did this.’
‘Ah, ah,’ the Seron barked, more adamantly this time.
‘Grettans?’ Steven asked, ‘Malagon’s grettans?’
The Seron howled, a furious cry towards the heavens, and pounded the ground with its fists. It was obviously not happy with the idea that its master had sent grettans to Seer’s Peak. Its mind, however twisted and warped by Malagon’s torture, obviously recognised that it and its fellow Seron were expendable commodities. Malagon had taken no steps to protect his warriors from his grettans, even though they were both on the same mission: to hunt down Gilmour and the Ronan partisans.
Steven wiped a hand across his eyes, trying to clear the sweat that ran in thin streams through the mud and bloodstains splattering his face. ‘May I look at your leg?’ he asked the Seron. ‘I might be able to help you if you let me look.’
‘Grekac ahat Lahp.’
‘The grettans hurt your foot. Yes, I understand,’ Steven said, venturing closer. ‘May I have a look at your foot? I want to help you.’
‘Na, na,’ the Seron said, pounding on its chest, ‘Lahp, Lahp, Lahp.’
Steven got it. ‘Of course, Lahp,’ he said, smiling without baring his teeth. ‘You are Lahp and the grettan hurt your leg.’ He reached out and began clearing the leaves stuck to the matted blood on the Seron’s injured leg. Working slowly and carefully so as not to startle the creature, he pulled apart the shredded remains of its leggings and exposed several deep, badly infected wounds that ran down its calf and across its ankle.
‘Shit,’ he whispered to Mark, ‘it needs antibiotics right away. It looks like the grettan bit him badly – it slashed right through his boot.’
‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’ Mark’s breath came in short, rigidly controlled gasps. ‘The last pharmacy I saw was next to frozen foods in the supermarket on Riverside.’
Steven tore a length of cloth from his tunic, soaked it with water from the skin and washed the Seron’s wounds, then bound the leg as tightly as he dared. When he finished, he held out the skin bottle and waited for the creature to take it from him. He knew the beast was battling an urge to kill him, an urge implanted by a twisted, evil master, but he was determined not leave the thicket until he was certain the Seron understood Steven was merciful and compassionate.
He couldn’t explain to anyone, not even himself, why he so badly needed this twisted abomination to recognise his redeeming features; maybe he needed to prove to himself that he could exercise some control over the Steven Taylor who had emerged in this strange new world, that Steven Taylor who knew terror and violence firsthand; who had inflicted death himself. He wouldn’t leave the thicket until he and the Seron had displayed mutual trust.
‘Take it, my friend,’ he said, moving the wineskin closer. ‘I know he is pushing you from inside, but I need you to take this from me.’ Steven looked the Seron in its lifeless eyes. ‘Show me you understand.’
‘Lahp ahat Glimr.’
Steven thought for a moment, then realised what he was saying. ‘No, Lahp,’ he reassured the Seron, ‘you are free. You do not have to kill Gilmour.’ Again he urged the soldier to take the offered water. ‘Take this. Drink it. You’ve lost a great deal of blood. This will help you.’
Slowly, as if he had to fight instinct to make every move, Lahp accepted Steven’s wineskin. It drew the cork, drank the skin nearly dry, then spoke again in a hoarse growl. ‘Lahp tak-’
‘Steven,’ Steven said, thumping himself on the chest, ‘my name is Steven.’
‘Lahp tak Sten.’
‘Steven.’
‘Sten.’
‘Fine, Sten it is.’
As he turned to leave the thicket, Steven placed a hand gently on the Seron’s injured leg. ‘Good luck, Lahp.’ Before he could remove it, the warrior reached down and gripped his wrist with surprising strength. The soldier’s enormous hand, although leathery and covered in thick coarse hair, was still surprisingly human.
The skin on Steven’s forearm tightened into gooseflesh. He felt something move with mercurial quickness beneath his skin: a dancing current sparked.
Lahp’s eyes widened in surprise; he watched Steven, seemed confused for a moment, then nodded. ‘Lahp tak Sten,’ he said finally and released Steven’s arm.
‘You’re welcome, Lahp.’ Something had passed between them; Steven didn’t know what it was, but this wasn’t the time to examine the feeling. He grasped Garec’s deer by the antlers and together he and Mark dragged it out into the clearing.
Once they had relinquished the carcase into Garec’s capable hands, reaction set in. Mark took Steven by the shoulders and shook him soundly.
‘Are you completely mad?’ he shouted in a whisper. ‘That thing could have killed us – maybe Garec could have killed it back, but not before he’d taken at least one of us out. What the fuck were you thinking?’
Steven was shaking. He held Mark at arm’s-length and said, ‘If it’s any help, I apologise-’ he looked around at their companions, ‘I apologise to all of you. It was just something I had to do – I’m not sure I even know why.’ He turned back to Mark. ‘Thanks for coming with me. That was an incredibly brave thing for you to do. Stupid, but brave.’
Mark pounded him on the shoulder. ‘Stupid I definitely agree with. Next time you intend playing the damnfool hero, perhaps you’d give me a bit of warning.’
While Garec set to dressing the deer, warily keeping one eye on the thicket in case the injured Seron should decide to rush the company in a suicidal charge, Sallax stalked angrily over to Steven and spat, ‘That was foolish. Let’s hope it will be dead by nightfall, because we are going to have to keep a watch going in case it gets better enough to attack us.’
‘He,’ Steven said, ‘it’s a “he” and yes, he might be dead by nightfall, but we will not have killed him. It makes a difference, Sallax. And I think we’re quite safe from him now.’
Steven looked at Gilmour. ‘He was sent for you.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it – sorry, he – was.’ The old man stared down the hillside through the trees standing like monuments to the passage of time. Gilmour was already an old man when these trees were seedlings. ‘Nerak has been trying to kill me for Twinmoons. It looks like he has stepped up his efforts.’
‘Because he’s afraid you have grown too powerful?’ Brynne asked.
‘Perhaps, but more likely because Kantu and I represent the only real threat to his dominion. With us out of the way, he could take a hundred thousand Twinmoons to master the magic necessary to release his evil master from the Fold.’
‘So having you around forces him to rush his studies and perhaps make a mistake.’ Mark ran a hand over the battle-axe in his belt. ‘And he has no idea how much you have learned already.’
Gilmour nodded.
‘It’s an interesting dilemma,’ Mark went on. ‘He knows you’re coming to confront him so he unleashes all the demons and slathering homicidal misbegotten creatures he can conjure. He has that luxury, because he couldn’t care less what level of destruction his minions do on their way to find and kill you-’ Mark nodded in the direction of the thicket, ‘-even if they kill each other.’
‘And he cannot rush his studies too much for fear that the spell table will take him.’ Gilmour nudged a group of yellow aspen leaves aside with the toe of his boot. ‘The pressure is on him. He has the greater task ahead.’