Broken Bonds: Chapter 3

The infection had ravaged Abel’s young body. He was strong, but illness was always somehow stronger. Atalia had stationed himself with Abel at all times, knowing that the worst of the ilk who lived on the compound would gladly take the opportunity to rid themselves of an eyesore and a thorn in their paws at the same time. If Atalia was unavailable, he would ask Aldwit or Iketatu to take his place. The kelpie was the least enthusiastic about the task, but he would do as he was asked if only because Atalia had been the one to ask him.

When Abel woke on the third day after he’d been found out in the forest alone, Aldwit had been with him. He had woken in agony, straining to find a less painful position to lay in, only to collapse into exhausted sleep soon after his eyes had opened. Aldwit had told Atalia this once he returned from a hunt. They’d both had to work hard to comfort Nathaniel. They drakling hadn’t spoken a word since Atalia found him, and no one could blame him. He was too young to understand why Abel couldn’t get up and play with him, but he at least knew it was something bad.

That evening, Abel had stirred again, and this time Atalia had stood sharply to place a hoof on his shoulder.

“Stay still,” he had said quietly, keeping his voice even and confident so as not to alarm the younger drakiri. “You’re safe, but you’re hurt. If you move too much you might tear your stitches.”

“St-itches?” Abel had grunted, clearly uncomfortable but doing his best not to move. “What d’you mean? What happened?”  

“Well I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that,” Atalia said. “I found you in the forest. We heard a lot of squealing and screaming, looked like trees had been uprooted out there.”

Abel’s face screwed up and he held his breath as pain seared through him, his toes curling until his claws unsheathed. It took a moment before he could find his voice and said, “Pig…bigger than any I ever saw.”

Atalia frowned as he tried to imagine the animal that could have done this. Abel wasn’t a prolific hunter, but he at least knew how to defend himself from an animal.

“A boar?” he asked.

Abel shook his head and bared his teeth in a pained grimace. “Bigger,” he said through his teeth. “Came outta nowhere.”

So they’d been ambushed. Sounded more like a javelina than a boar. He glanced toward the door, knowing that Shasia and his apprentice were out gathering what herbs were left to be found this late in the season.

“Why didn’t you just run?” he asked, moving so Abel could look at him more easily. When Abel refused to meet his gaze or answer the question he lowered his voice and asked, “Is it because you took Nathaniel with you?”

Abel’s gaze snapped up to meet his, expression tight with mistrust and challenge. “You can’t prove that.”

Though he understood Abel’s hostility, Atalia would not entertain it. He shook his head and said, “I’m probably the only one on this compound who can prove it, as I found him in the tree above where you had apparently been gored by an absolutely massive javelina.”

Abel growled, but from how he stiffened and lashed his tail, it was clear how much pain the expression of his anger had caused him. He tried to sit up, but Atalia reached out once more to put a hoof on his shoulder, and that was all the pressure required to force him to lay back down.

“Calm down, I’m not going to tell anyone,” Atalia said. “You make questionable decisions, but I know you’re not fool enough to have tried to take Nathaniel away from here. I told Rizan he followed you into the forest while you were hunting.”

“That moron knows?” Abel demanded, his voice strained. His breath came in fast, shallow pants and his cheek hit the floor as his head hung off the thin mattress.

“He only knows what he’s been able to piece together from what I had to report,” Atalia said. “He will tell Marcus what he believes happened, but if Marcus comes to investigate himself he will speak with me directly. I’ve inserted myself into this too much for him to ignore me now.”

Silence filled the room, punctuated only by the shallow, pained breaths from Abel. After a long moment the younger drakiri asked, “Why’re you doin’ this? Why d’you care?”

A question Atalia had asked himself every day since he dragged Abel back to the compound. He had invited all kinds of trouble into his life by helping the son of the most violent drakiri in this hemisphere. He still hadn’t found the right answer to the question, but he thought he was close.

“I don’t like bullies,” he said finally. “Your father fosters a community that encourages and celebrates bullies.”

“You have to have fought someone to earn a place here,” Abel rasped, glaring up at him from the floor. “Why’s that make you any better than any of the other bullies here?”

Atalia thought about that for a long moment, a wry smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “The beautiful thing about being alive is that you have ample opportunity to change who you are. A drakiri can be a bully one day, and the next a changed man. You don’t have to trust me, but don’t make my life more difficult by doing stupid things, as you are so often found doing.”

Abel snorted derisively and strained to lift his head, ears flat against his head as he looked around, lifting his arm and trying to look toward his chest. “Where’s my brother?” he asked, voice suddenly tight with worry. “Where is he!”

“Aldwit took him for a walk,” Atalia said, understanding the panic in the older brother’s voice. “Don’t worry, Iketatu is with them.”

“I don’t know either of them,” Abel said, and Atalia had to reach out and place his hoof on his shoulder again to keep him laying down. “Let me go, I’m going to get Nathaniel.”

“No, you’re not,” Atalia said. “Those two are perfectly capable of taking Nathaniel for a walk to get him some fresh air, and they’re both far better fighters than you are, and twice your senior at least. If you get up you will tear your stitches and hurt yourself all over again.”

“If you don’t let me up I’ll give you stitches,” Abel growled.

“I mean it with all sincerity when I say I wish you could,” Atalia sighed. “You may not be able to feel it, but you are burning with fever. It’s been decided you’ll need to fight the fever off yourself.”

“Without herbs?” Abel asked, incredulous. “Whose dumbass decision was that?”

Atalia didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. He glanced toward the door when he saw movement there, expecting to see Shasia or even Aldwit and Iketatu with Nathaniel, but no one entered the medical bay.

“He can’t justify killing me himself so he’ll just make it impossible for me to get better,” Abel said, the words slow as he finally understood the position he was in.

“I doubt he needs justification to kill you,” Atalia said, knowing it wasn’t helpful but feeling it necessary to make sure Abel was under no delusions of his father’s capabilities or feelings toward him. “But that’s about the extent of it.”

Abel clenched his teeth, but he finally laid back on the mattress, his muscles relaxing. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal and he seemed to be in significantly less pain. The sour smell Atalia had noticed that morning had become stronger, and when he looked to the wounds that were held together with little more than crude string, he thought he could see puss leaking from the ragged edges.

“Aldwit and Nathaniel should return soon,” Atalia said, settling down and folding his legs to make himself comfortable. “Once they’re back, I’ll leave you to rest.”

He expected some kind of rebuke from Abel, a snarky or mean-spirited comment at the least. It would have at least told Atalia that Abel had begun to recover even if his wound wasn’t healing. But when he looked to Abel, he saw the young drakiri staring at the door, his eyes glassy and unfocused.

Sighing quietly, Atalia closed his eyes to rest them. Abel would take no comfort in conversation, that was clear to him now. So he took the opportunity to rest while he had it.

What Atalia hadn’t expected was to wake up to painfully bright mid-afternoon sunlight and the quiet murmurings of voices around him. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, his breathing slow as he listened.

“It’s not right,” Anakaros said, his voice low and almost hesitant. “He’s going to die.”

“I agree with you, Anakaros,” Shasia said, his voice distant and defeated.

“Then why won’t you do anything? Let me go out and find the herbs for him,” Anakaros argued. “I could leave the territory, find what I need and bring it back. That way if anyone raises a fuss over it they won’t be able to say I stole from Marcus.”

“Do you truly thing Marcus would differentiate between herbs gathered on the territory he had marked versus the territory he hadn’t?” Shasia asked. “The scent markers only determine where we patrol. I doubt Marcus sees the world outside of his territory as belonging to anyone but him.”

They fell quiet for long enough that Atalia considered lifting his head so they would know he was awake, but he wanted to hear more of what they had to say. The two medics were so secretive, it was rare to hear anything from either of them.

“When you took me on as your apprentice you made me swear to do everything in my power to heal those under my care,” Anakaros said, sounding troubled. “No matter allegiance, no one deserves to be ignored when they need help. That’s what you said, and I repeated it back to you. Why did you make me say it if you weren’t going to uphold it?”

“You speak of what you don’t know,” Shasia retorted, his voice curt and words clipped now. His hooves shifted on the concrete floor and Atalia imagined the medic rounding on his apprentice, fury in his eyes.

“I know what I observe,” Anakaros said. “And what I see is a medic too afraid of what might happen to him if he went against arbitrary orders that are killing drakiri.”

“I didn’t realize I had taken on an apprentice with no eyes,” Shasia snapped, his voice loud enough that Atalia’s fin-like ears twitched. The medics must have been too involved in their argument to notice, though, as Shasia continued as if nothing had happened. “If I ignore Marcus’s orders to let his son fend for himself and give him herbs to kill the infection and strengthen him, that takes herbs away from someone else who may need them. That is gross negligence in the eyes of Marcus and those who support him. I would be chased out at best, killed at worst and you would be forced to take my place. You are by no means ready for that responsibility. That leaves the drakiri living on this compound without a proper medic. Without herbs and someone to distribute them, drakiri get hurt during squabbles over borders and prey, and they die from infections I could have prevented with the very herbs that would have gotten me chased out or killed to begin with.”

Atalia couldn’t have argued that Shasia was correct in his reasoning, he did more good in his current position. But he also understood Anakaros’s side, as he shared the frustration that the apprentice expressed. He didn’t have the knowledge to find the herbs that were needed, or he would have done so himself. Anakaros seemed eager to disobey, but where would that put Shasia? Surely anyone looking into the matter would realize that Anakaros was Shasia’s apprentice and acted on Shasia’s orders. Who would believe the quiet, timid apprentice would act of his own accord to disobey?

The medics had fallen quiet once more, the words they had for one another clearly no longer worth saying. They both looked at him when Atalia lifted his head and yawned enormously, his whiskers trembling with the force of it.

“How is he?” he asked, pushing himself into a sitting position and flicking his tail fins to settle them more comfortably beside himself.

“His fever is worse,” Shasia said, interrupting Anakaros with a pointed glare. “He’s resting now, but it isn’t looking like he’ll recover.”

Atalia looked from Shasia to Anakaros and back, his brow furrowing with concern. There was something they weren’t sharing with him. “How long do you think he has?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” Shasia said, and though Atalia waited, he didn’t elaborate.

Atalia glanced down at Abel, his nose scrunching up at the stench radiating from the young drakiri’s belly. It was clear that his wounds were swollen, the edges an angry red and puckered where the stitches couldn’t hold the irritated skin in place.

“Has Aldwit returned with his brother?” he asked.

“They came back for an hour and went out again,” Anakaros said. “Nathaniel kept trying to wake Abel up, and he was getting progressively more upset so Aldwit took him hunting.”

“Hunting?” Atalia asked, raising a brow. “Hasn’t the child been traumatized enough by hunting?”

“Beetle hunting,” Shasia grunted as he stood, his tail flicking behind him with irritation. “There are more eyes than ever on the boy, taking him off the compound would be foolish.”

That would complicate things if Nathaniel did truly try to run away. Someone would end up taking the blame for it, and with how directly Atalia had put himself in the middle of this family squabble, the blame would likely land squarely on his shoulders.

“Hard to hunt for beetles when the frost has likely killed them all off,” Atalia mused.

Shasia snorted as he turned away, “As long as it keeps him out of my mane, I don’t really care.”

The medic walked away from them then, leaving the bay entirely. In his wake, Atalia could feel tension radiating from Anakaros as much as he could feel feverish heat coming from Abel.

“Are the herbs that would save him difficult to find?” Atalia asked, looking to the apprentice.

Anakaros glanced at him and then looked sharply away, his lips set in an angry scowl. He was quiet for a long moment before he finally said, “Not during spring or summer. They’re more difficult to find in autumn and never seen in winter. We usually have dried stores of them, but they aren’t as potent for strong infections.”

“So the worse the infection gets, the harder it will be to cure,” Atalia said, looking again to the wound on Abel’s belly. His breathing was shallow and uneven, but the younger drakiri’s eyes had remained firmly closed. “It seems to me that it would be less trouble to heal him.”

The lack of response from Anakaros spoke volumes more than the noncommittal, “Yeah, you’d think,” that the smaller drakiri. The apprentice stood sharply and stalked away, his tail lashing angrily behind him. He clearly felt very strongly about his inability to help, but wasn’t willing to risk his mentor’s life by disobeying.

Disappointment burned in Atalia, making his pelt itch. He couldn’t blame the apprentice, but he still felt frustration because the boy had refused to act. Now it came down to Atalia and the limited resources he had available to him.

He stayed with Abel until Aldwit returned with Nathaniel. The boy looked crestfallen.

“No luck?” Atalia asked.

“He caught a beetle but it scuttled away too quickly for him to get the killing blow,” Aldwit said. “But his hunting crouch was solid. I think he’ll make an asset to any patrol he’s sent with once he’s older.”

Atalia watched as the boy puttered toward Abel’s mattress and collapsed against his throat, burying his face in his brother’s unkempt mane. Was that exhaustion from the day’s activities or sorrow for his brother’s state? How much did Nathaniel truly understand of what was going on here?

“Neither of the medics will do anything,” Atalia said as he leaned toward his friend, his voice hardly above a whisper. “They fear retaliation if they disobey.”

“Rightly so, I imagine,” Aldwit said, studying his claws as they spoke. “So the boy dies.”

“If Abel dies, Nathaniel dies,” Atalia sighed, “I cannot live with both of them on my conscience, and I cannot protect Nathaniel against all those who would see him dead. His father being one of them. The apprentice refused to tell me what herbs they would use to heal the infection but I know they have a store of them.”

“You intend to steal from them?” Aldwit asked, raising a skeptical brow.

“Do you think Marcus audits the herb store?” Atalia challenged. “I doubt he cares that much.”

“I’m sure he’s not half-witted enough to not wonder how his son miraculously recovered from an infection that should have killed him,” Aldwit pointed out. “If you were going to try to find herbs to help him, they need to come from outside of the territory. And from the looks of it, they need to come sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t know what the herbs are,” Atalia growled, beginning to lose patience with both the conversation and the situation he found himself in. “I could force Anakaros to give me the information.”

“And if he told you the wrong herbs? What then? He could argue that he did it to ensure Marcus’s orders were carried out and you were the one at fault.”

“At least I would be doing something,” Atalia snapped.

Aldwit moved his tail to place it over Atalia’s back, his gaze soft with understanding. “Your frustration is admirable,” he said, “but don’t misplace blame. It is not your fault that Marcus doesn’t care about his family.”

“You’re right, it’s not my fault, but I’ve made it my problem,” Atalia sighed, shaking Aldwit off. “I need help. I need someone to go out and find the herbs that we need.”

“We need to know what they are first,” Aldwit reminded him.

“We?” Atalia asked, frowning. “You’ll help?”

“I’m not going to let you do something hare-brained without involving me,” the older drakiri chuckled. “This may be the last adventurous thing I do here before I get chased out or killed off for being too old and slow to provide. Let me help you.”

The thought of losing one of the few drakiri he considered to be friends made Aldwit’s heart ache, but he understood the other’s desire to help. He wasn’t in a position to be able to refuse, either.

“I may have an idea,” Aldwit said, and Atalia felt a flicker of hope. “We’ll need to bring Abel away from here though, if he recovers suddenly in the medical bay someone will know he was helped.”

“I’ll bring him out into the forest,” Atalia resolved. “We’ll need to find somewhere for Nathaniel to go in the meantime, Shasia said there are many eyes on him now. We can’t have him following us out of camp.”

“Rizan knows you’re involved in this,” Aldwit said, shaking his head slowly. “Let me take Abel out into the forest, they are less likely to be watching me. Besides, if they catch me I’ll tell them I’m bringing him to where I’ve dug his grave so it’s easier when the time comes. They care so little for him, I’m sure they won’t argue.”

Atalia didn’t care for the thought, and the amount of trust he had to put into knowing what Marcus’s supporters would do didn’t sit well with him either. Still, he couldn’t argue.

“I will stay with Nathaniel, do what you must,” Atalia said with a nod.