Raya slept in again that day, though it was a restless sleep. She had spent most of the day following their battle in a daze. Half of her mental standstill was an emotional shock, and half of it a medical one. Lotha spent most of the time at Dondar’s bedside, that day, while Erek nursed his broken arm in a sling. Lotha later explained that Dondar had been bleeding internally, badly, but by the third day after the skirmish, he was walking around and swinging his arms fine. Today, Lotha held Erek’s hand, easing his pain and strengthening his muscles with her imperceptible magic.
Raya, meanwhile, was holding an unfinished arrow shaft, and looking at the people labouring to rebuild the inn. It was an old gatehouse, built into what remained of a city wall—now the survivors were building a wooden front to the structure from debris they had found. Raya held the arrow in one hand, having just cut notches in its rear for feathers. She looked down at the knife she had used, now stuck into a scorched wooden floorboard. These arrows had been used to cripple people, not provide someone’s meal. She forced herself to continue her work, as grim as it now seemed.
“We’ll leave after we eat, then?” Dondar asked, leaning against the stone wall near Benn.
Raya looked up at him. The guard’s scruffy beard had become curly and messy after their weeks away from home. He didn’t notice her eyes, and took a bite of an apple he had brought. She looked aside again, but this time at the stone plague they had made across an ash-strewn street from the inn. They had placed Hemsten beneath the crumbled road stones there, and marked with a large, scraped H.
The earth suddenly rumbled, another tremble that had Raya pause her work once more and look up at the smouldering mountain.
“Still shaking in aftershock…” mumbled one of the old women that was knitting repairs into the clothes of the disaster survivors. It was true: each day, the big mountain shook the ruins that surrounded Raya, and the smoke pouring out hadn’t faded one bit.
Lotha stood up from where Erek sat. “Probably for the best,” she said. “I need to speak with my friends in Vagren, I think, so we will pass through there again.”
Raya slid the knife from the floorboard into her belt sheath again. “I want to stay,” she said, while Erek and Dondar both stared. “Hemsten told me to learn what happened here.”
“There’s more answers to be had in Vagren, then in this ruin,” Lotha replied. Her brown hair was bound behind her head now, and she had not worn her usual facial art in days. “The men we killed were not the only cutthroats here, and they weren’t the most dangerous either.”
“Sten didn’t tell me to find out what happened somewhere else,” Raya said. “Will any of you stay with me and carry this out?”
Dondar scoffed, and looked at his fellow guard’s smirk. Erek spoke up: “Hemsten wouldn’t want us to stay here and die.”
“If you’re staying, I will,” Benn said. “But I can’t promise I’ll be of much help in a fight. I can handle a tavern brawl, but not a sword fight.” Her friend was of a gaunt build, but he was a hard worker and his smile reassured Raya. She nodded to him.
Lotha paused. “I cannot stay,” she said. “This Mount Lukar requires my immediate investigation in other regions than these ruins. Erek’s arm isn’t ready for combat yet, either.”
“Then take him with you,” Dondar said, disregard for Raya’s decision fading. “The young ones want to stay, I’ll watch their buttocks like I did the whole hike here.” He gave them a wink, like he usually did when he attempted such a joke.
“Dar!” mumbled Erek, standing up. “You’d stay?”
“I’m going to,” Dondar said. “Ganner girl is right, Sten wants us to help these people.”
“Sten’s dead, friend,” Erek said, flushed red. “Our duty is to guard Olston, not this wall shack.” He shrugged before Dondar could reply and stepped away. “Stay then. Lotha?”
The two of them stepped away and Lotha mumbled her farewell as she passed. “Return to us in Olston, Raya. You’re important.”
Raya smiled. “If that’s true, it doesn’t matter where I go. But Olston is my home, that isn’t changing.” She watched the two of them walk away through the ashes. Mount Lukar rumbled again, and Raya started working on another arrow.
Dondar chuckled, as though his tense farewell had been a joke, and sat down next to Raya. “You’re pretty good with that thing, girl.”
Benn smiled and opened his pack to fish out a few almonds. “You are,” he said, when Raya didn’t accept the compliment.
She rolled her eyes and listened to the world thundering away as she prepared another arrow, wondering all the while if it was a weapon or a tool. For Sten’s sake, and for her survival, she tried to tell herself it didn’t really matter right now.