Chapter 29: Shadows of War

A blue and flickering gleam of light, dim, yet persistent, seemed to enhalo a woman’s face; and as Stern’s weary eyes opened under languid lids, closed, then opened again, the wounded engineer smiled in his weakness.

“Beatrice!” he whispered, and tried to stretch a hand to her, as she sat beside his bed of seaweed covered with the coarse brown fabric. “Oh, Beatrice! Is this--is this another--hallucination?”

She took the hand and kissed it, then bent above him and kissed him again, this time fair upon the lips.

“No, boy,” she answered. “No hallucination, but reality! You’re all right now--and I’m all right! You’ve had a little fever and--and--well, don’t ask any questions, that’s all. Here, drink this now and go to sleep!”

She set a massive golden bowl to his mouth, and very gently raised his head.

Unquestioningly he drank, as though he had been a child and she his mother. The liquid, warm and somewhat sweet, had just a tang of some new taste that he had never known. Singularly vitalizing it seemed, soothing yet full of life. With a sigh of contentment, despite the numb ache in his right temple, he lay back and once more closed his eyes. Never had he felt such utter weakness. All his forces seemed drained and spent; even to breathe was very difficult.

Feebly he raised his hand to his head.

“Bandaged?” he whispered. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re to go to sleep now!” she commanded. “That’s all--just go to sleep!”

He lay quiet a moment, but sleep would not come. A score, a hundred thoughts confusedly crowded his brain.

And once more looking up at her in the dim blue gloom of the hut where they were, he breathed a question:

“Were you badly hurt, dear, in--in the battle?”

“No, Allan. Just stunned, that’s all. Not even wounded. Be quiet now or I’ll scold!”

He raised his arms to her and, weak though he was, took her to his breast and held her tight, tight.

“Thank God!” he whispered. “Oh, I love you! I love you so! If you’d been killed--”

She felt his tears hot upon his wasted cheeks, and unloosened his arms.

“There, there!” she soothed him. “You’ll get into a fever again if you don’t lie still and try not to think! You--”

“When was it? Yesterday?” he interrupted.

“Sh-h-h-h! No more questions now.”

“But I want to know! And what happened to me? And the--the Lanskaarn? What about them? And--”

“Heavens, but you’re inquisitive for a man that’s just missed--I mean, that’s been as sick as you have!” she exclaimed, taking his head in both hands and gazing down at him with eyes more deeply tender than he had ever seen them. “Now do be good, boy, and don’t worry about all these things, but go to sleep--there’s a dear. And when you wake up next time--”

“No, no!” he insisted with passionate eagerness. “I’m not that kind! I’m not a child, Beta! I’ve got to know--I can’t go to sleep without knowing. Tell me a little about it, about what happened, and then--then I’ll sleep as long as you say!”

She pondered a moment, weighing matters, then made answer:

“All right, boy, only remember your promise!”

“I will.”

“Good! Now listen. I’ll tell you what the old man told me, for naturally I don’t remember the last part of the fight any better than you do.

“I was struck by a flying stone, and--well, it wasn’t anything serious. It just stunned me for a while. I came to in a hut.”

“Where I carried you, dearest, just before I--”

“Yes, I know, just before the battle-ax--”

“Was it an ax that hit me?”

“Yes. But it was only a glancing blow. Your long hair helped save you, too. But even so--”

“Skull cracked?”

“No, I guess concussion of the brain would be the right term for it.” She took his groping hand in both her own warm, strong ones and kissed it tenderly. “But before you fell, your raking fire along the wall there--you understand--”

“Cleaned ‘em out, eh?” he queried eagerly.

“That’s about it. It turned the tide against the Lanskaarn. And after that--I guess it was just butchery. I don’t know, of course, and the old man hasn’t wanted to tell me much; but anyway, the ladders all went down, and the Folk here made a sortie from the gate, down the causeway, and--and--”

“And they’ve got a lot more of those infernal skeletons hanging on the poles by the fire?” he concluded in a rasping whisper.

She nodded, then kept a minute’s silence.

“Did any of ‘em get away in their canoes?”

“A few. But in all their history the Folk never won such a victory. Oh, it was glorious, glorious! And all because of you!”

“And you, dear!”

“And now--now,” she went on, “we’re not prisoners any more, but--”

“Everything coming our way? Is that it?”

“That’s it. They dragged you out, after the battle, from under a big heap of bodies under the wall.”

“Outside or inside?”

“Outside, on the beach. They brought you in, for dead, boy. And I guess they had an awful time about you, from what I’ve found out--”

“Big powwow, and all that?”

“Yes. If you’d died, they’d have gone on a huge war expedition out to the islands, wherever those are, and simply wiped out the rest of the Lanskaarn. But--”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” he interrupted. “No more killing from now on! We want all the living humans we can get; we need ‘em in our business!”

Stern was growing excited; the girl had to calm him once more.

“Be quiet, Allan, or I’ll leave you this minute and you shan’t know another thing!” she threatened.

“All right, I’ll be good,” he promised. “What next? I’m the Big Chief now, of course? What I say now goes?“

She answered nothing, but a troubled wrinkle drew between her perfect brows. For a moment there was silence, save for the dull and distant roaring of the flame.

By the glow of the bluish light in the hut, Stern looked up at her. Never had she seemed so beautiful. The heavy masses of her hair, parted in the middle and fastened with gold pins such as the Folk wore, framed her wonderful face with twilight shadows. He saw she was no longer clad in fur, but in a loose and flowing mantle of the brown fabric, caught up below the breast with a gold-clasped girdle.