Egelric wakes in the dark

Egelric sat up suddenly. All five of his senses were crying out, “Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!” And his head ached so… and his lungs burned…

His eyes too hurt him. His eyelids felt stiff and swollen, but he forced them open and looked around. In the first moment, he thought he knew where he was. This was a familiar place. But then he knew he could not explain where he was or how he had come to be here.

He was in a sort of cave, he thought. There was a wall close at hand that had not been carved by men, and shadows all around that were deeper than night outdoors. He lay on a skin. There was a low fire in a pit in the floor beside him, and had it not been there, he knew that there would not be enough light for the devil himself to see, but still its light frustrated him, seeming only to deepen the shadows beyond.

His eyes burned like the low fire and cast a ruddy film over all he saw. His lungs ached. He did not know how he had come to be here. He had set out into the light, beneath the moon, and had awoken in the dark, beneath the earth.

The weird, bulging masses of rock that formed the walls of the cave were repulsive to him – like tumorous growths, compared to the smooth, straight, healthy stone walls he had been building for months.

Nor was there the sky he craved, but only blackness overhead: a long, low night blank of stars; nor was there the sky’s sighing in the pines, but only silent currents of cold air and the distant slow drip of water into still water.

He had awoken in a nightmare. He had been blotted out of the world. He fell back onto his elbow and groaned.

Before the sound had ended, he heard a rustle from the shadows opposite the fire.

He sat up again, all of his confused senses alert now.

With patient effort he convinced his bleary eyes to focus on the cave wall beyond the fire. There was a shape there that did not seem to be part of the rock. His mind could not perceive the faint movement of its breathing and the beating of its blood, but his body could. It was alive.

One stealthy hand crept down to his belt, but his long knife was not there. Slowly, silently, he unfolded his leg from beneath him and felt down his boot for the small, bright knife his cousin Colban had given him. It too was gone.

He had been robbed. Nor did he believe that he had built the fire. He certainly had not provided the deerskin on which he had been lying. The creature he saw was a man.

Slowly, silently, he rose and crossed the cave. Slowly – he had time. The man slept. He might yet kill him with his bare hands.

He did not believe he made a sound, and indeed he moved so slowly he doubted that any mind could have perceived the faint movement – but the man’s body had. Just at the moment when he realized that the man was small enough to be a boy, he leapt to his feet in one quick and graceful bound.

Egelric stopped where he stood. Nor did the boy make a move. They stared at one another for a long while, and Egelric knew he had the advantage of having the light at his back. He also had the advantage of his height, his strength, and his experience.

The boy, he doubted not, had the advantage of Egelric’s knives, as well as a fuller understanding of how they had both come to be there, and anyone who could leap from his back to his feet as the boy just had must have some feline dexterity that Egelric could not hope to match, even if his body were not aching. They were, perhaps, equals after all.

The boy looked to be about thirteen, and his clothes were strange. In his leaf-​​green eyes Egelric saw mingled mistrust and curiosity, such as one saw in the eyes of young wild animals when they encountered men.

Egelric thought he would let him speak first. His grim silence was no doubt unnerving to a boy, and the lad would feel compelled to break it.

But Egelric would have a long wait.