Kavrash looked down at the bloody wounds on Lyric's arm and then shifted her gaze back to her daughter’s face, her expression somehow precisely between worry and rage. “What were you thinking?” she hissed softly as she reached into the pouch on her hip and promptly produced a roll of cloth bandages and a small, stoppered glass vial.
“He was killing the chickens,” Lyric sobbed, “I had to do something.”
“Did you have to go and put your arm directly into his mouth?” Kavrash shot back, uncorking the flask and shooting Lyric a steely look. “Hold still.”
When the astringent liquid hit the wounds, Lyric cried out in pain and tried to jerk her arm away, but her mother held her tight. Kavrash then dabbed at the mixture of blood and alcohol that ran down the girl’s arm with a cotton cloth and, when she was convinced that the injured area was dry enough, she began wrapping the wound with the bandages all the while ignoring the tears and soft whimpers that accompanied the task.
When she was done, Kavrash admired her handiwork for a moment before turning her attention back to her daughter. “You foolish girl, a hairs breadth one way or another and that dog might have hit a nerve or an artery, and then we would be having a completely different conversation right now.”
“I couldn’t let him kill mo…”
“Yes, you should have stopped him,” Kavrash interrupted. “Hitting that dog with a rock or shouting and making a ruckus would likely have been enough. You d…”
“I did shout,” Lyric protested. “He didn’t stop.”
“Shout louder. Make yourself bigger. Make it where he can’t ignore you. Don’t go and put your noodly little arm in his mouth!”
“It had a chicken in there, I was trying to save her.” The tears started back up again.
Kavrash’s tone softened slightly, “Did you? Did you save her?”
Lyric looked down at one of the soft white forms lying crumpled and still in the field. “No,” she answered softly.
“Then you should have focused on saving the next one.” Kavrash saw Lyric about to interrupt and powered on, “Look child, the world is a cruel place. The strong kill the weak. The predator kills the prey. The hunter kills the predator. It is the nature of things.”
“I had to do something,” Lyric protested. “She was still alive in its mouth; I could hear her…” She trailed off.
“She was already gone. Not in that moment maybe, but she was gone. She would not have survived that and even if she did, her remaining short life would have been one of agony.” Kavrash stared at her daughter and held her gaze for a long moment. “You need to toughen up. Your soft heart is a weakness in this world. It is the hole in your armor that your enemies will exploit.”
“I don’t have any enemies!” Lyric retorted, “Why do you think everything is terrible and wars and fights are everywhere? Harrying is a safe place, and we have the m…”
“Every place can become dangerous - will become dangerous – given enough time. I have seen wh…”
“Not every place is where you came from. You never even tell me about it; you just hint at how awful and dangerous it was. You came here for a reason. Because it is safe. We are safe here.”
Kavrash gave her daughter that look, the one that basically said she knew better and had seen things and knew exactly how things were going to turn out. Lyric hated that look. “You need to toughen up for what is to come. Your soft heart is a blessing in times of peace, a luxury gifted to you from your father…” Lyric wondered if she meant her stepdad Landrick - the only father she ever knew - or her real father, the mysterious figure Kavrash promised she would tell her about in time but somehow that time just never seemed to come. “…but it is a gift you must discard when times are tough or else it will be used against you.”
Lyric tensed and began to form a rebuttal, but her mother powered on. “If you wanted to stop that dog and save more of the chickens you could have killed the dog with the pitchfork or bashed it with a shovel.” Lyric started to interject, but Kavrash pushed on, “I know you wouldn’t do that. So, you could have scattered the other chickens and scared the dog off, sacrificing the one in its mouth but saving the rest. Instead, you tried to reach into its mouth, and you got yourself hurt. If that had been a wild dog instead of just an onery one, he might have done some real damage to you and still gone on to kill the rest of the chickens.”
Kavrash gestured around her at the half dozen dead birds and then over to a sad-eyed mollified mastiff chained to a post. “Know when the battle is lost. Save who and what you can but be prepared to write off what you can’t. This is a hard lesson, but it is a lesson. Secure the coop, strengthen the fence, make it so the predators can’t get back in here so easily next time.”
Kavrash helped her daughter to her feet and looked back down to the bandage on her arm. “I know this hurts, and you want to help, but learn from this. Be smart. Be brave too but be smart first.” She gently wrapped her arm around Lyric’s shoulder, and they began walking back towards the house. “I’ll get Lannie to clean up the mess out here, so don’t you worry about that.” Kavrash pulled her in a little tighter and continued, “But don’t you think this little injury gets you out of training tomorrow. Quite the opposite. We are going to spar for twice as long as usual, and I will have to show you how to use your other arm and fight through the pain and lack of mobility - there’s a good lesson here.”
As they reached the farmhouse she playfully added, “Looks like we are having chicken tonight.” To which Lyric pushed her mother away from her with a groan and a plaintive “Mommmm…”
The memory trailed off as a fresh wave of pain washed over Lyric. The small boat she was in was rocking in the rough waters, the gentle churning creating a ball of sour bile in the pit of her stomach. She could handle that, but the pain…the pain was like nothing she had ever felt before. Her neck and arms were covered with angry, blistered burns and the smell of charred skin and burnt hair assailed her nostrils. A cursory examination revealed crude bandages wrapped around her in a handful of places, each one soaked through with crimson blood.
How she had not died, she had no idea. Eros must have found her in time, that was the only thing she could figure. The masked man sat at the prow of the small ship staring off into the distance, his shoulders set in a manner that suggested he was taut with anger and resolution.
Thankfully Arnie and DD were also in the small ship, both of them looking as bad as she felt, though the brawny kender looked almost serene despite her bandages, like she could have kept on fighting. DD on the other hand, was either asleep or unconscious. Much of his clothing, the parts that weren’t burned away at least, were coated in dried blood and mud. Lyric panicked for a moment thinking that the squire might be dead, but the man emitted a weak, raspy cough that heralded his tenuous attachment to the living world. For the moment.
There was no sign of Donnie, and Lyric hoped that the shadowy elf had managed to slip away from the carnage unseen and was safely on another boat somewhere, but for some reason Lyric thought that the man had used up his last escape. She had seen the huge ball of fire explode on the beach at the exact spot where Donnie had been heading and, while she hadn’t seen him fall, she could not imagine a way where he could not have been caught in the inferno given the enormity of the blast. She hoped that her foreboding feeling about Donnie's fate was wrong, because if anyone could have found a way free of the massacre he certainly could have, but the morbid lingering suspicion remained .
The only other person on their small boat was an Ironclad mercenary - what was his name? Jave? Jeyev? He had a haunted look on his face as he clutched a horned helmet in his hands and was staring off the stern of the craft. Lyric followed his gaze and saw the dark spirals of black smoke rising lazily into the air from the remains of the small fishing town of Vogler.
She watched the billowing smoke for a long time, reliving the events that had led up to their current plight. There were scores of other fishing boats and small merchant ships in the water around them, each carrying wide-eyed and bedraggled survivors of the recent attack. Lyric was glad that so many had escaped the slaughter, but she could not still the part of her mind that fixated instead on how many had been left behind to die. Could they have done more? Acted more quickly? Fought better? Fought smarter? Or should they have fled sooner in order to fight another day? Regroup, strengthen the fence and rebuild the coop more securely for the next time?
Sure, she had stuck her arm right into the dog’s mouth again, and she was again suffering the consequences of her rash actions. But their efforts had saved many if not most of the townsfolk, surely? What was the lesson to be learned here? Save only those who are safe to save? Flee from your enemies and try to find a more secure location to fend them off next time, leaving the slow, weak, helpless, or infirm to their fate? That just didn’t sit right with her.
One lesson that she did glean from this painful lesson was that in a cruel world full of predators and prey, it was beyond doubt better to be the hunter instead. And next time this particular predator came after her flock, she promised herself that she wouldn’t hesitate to reach for the pitchfork…
The small boat then hit a light wave which caused it to lurch slightly, the motion generating a fresh spasm of pain exploding through her body. When the agony finally subsided back to a manageable level, Lyric returned to her ruminations and, bolstered by the painful reality of the aftermath of such heroics, she certainly saw - and felt - the wisdom in running away.