Vong looks up from his cleaning and grins also. I don’t think he has any idea what he is grinning about but is simply glad for the opportunity to do it with others. Voella’Tien is still attending to the man as we crowd around his unconscious form.
“I think we should take him back to town,” says Vong. “He’s starving. Maybe he hid out here when the orcs attacked. He might have family back in town who think he is dead.”
I disagree. This man is lean but not actually wasting away. He appears to have been out here long before the Horde invasion, based on the state of his hair and beard. That means that he has been surviving for years alone in the wilderness and is in no danger of running out of means to continue. This man is fine here, even though he is mad.
I even say so, “I do not think he needs our help. He has been doing fine for himself here.”
“I think he is mad though. He needs treatment back in town. If he wants to go live in the wilderness again afterward, then at least he can be of a mind to make that choice,” Vong seems pretty adamant.
Voella’Tien keeps quiet and Rakatha might still be basking in his own prowess and doesn’t seem to be paying attention. It is only me to argue and I don’t really care. But for posterity I clarify something.
“So we are to abandon tracking the goblins and escort this patient back to town?”
Vong, apparently, hadn’t quite put two-and-two together and furrows his brow in thought so hard that his eyes nearly cross. After a moment he appeals to the group.
“What do you guys think?”
What leadership.
Rakatha is pulled from whatever musing he was caught up in, “Huh?”
Voella’Tien stands and addresses the group solemnly, “I agree that this man is suffering from mental afflictions. I would like to care for him.”
At hearing that, Rakatha chimes in, having obviously only heard the first bit, “This guy is nuts. Let’s be rid of him.”
The wheels of confirmation bias grip Vong for several long moments. Finally, though many seconds after I knew what he would say, he declares, “Okay, we’re going to take him back to town and then hurry back out to find the goblins.”
I don’t know if he recalls that we are an aggressive day’s travel from Nodkis at this location and that we wasted an entire day at the start. Now most of the way through our third day of seven, we will only be able to get back here on the sixth day if we do not waste any time in town, and then have a few hours to patrol before needing to hurry back on the seventh. By then, the group will need a couple days’ rest from the forced march. I will not be surprised if Corporal Level dismisses Vong from the Corps entirely.
Of course I don’t say this out loud.
Vong covers the man in his own cloak, but binds him so that he won’t hurt himself or anyone else. Eventually he comes-to and starts to panic again. In the pursuit of wanting to not be constantly agitated for the next twenty-four hours, I dose him with a mild sedative that dulls his mind and makes him docile.
The irony that mind-affecting magic is illegal and this tonic isn’t is not lost on me.
The trip back to Nodkis might have been uneventful had it not been for the rain of rats. The arcane storm sends a deluge of rather agitated rodents down upon our immediate vicinity on the morning of the fourth day. Even under the effects of the tonic, the wild man panics when the nasty things take to biting us and manages to break into a run before anyone is able to react, considering we are all fending off rats of our own. Rakatha tackles him this time and knocks him out by accident. It might have been considered an improvement except that now Rakatha has to carry him in order to keep our pace. I don’t mind.
Voella’Tien easily manages our scratches and bites from the rats and we make decent time back to Nodkis.
The man is deposited at the clinic where Voella’Tien works but it is evening so Vong declares that we will stay in town rather than set back out. I find a cheap inn and spend several glorious hours away from those people. We meet at the usual spot the following morning and miraculously set out on time. It is now day five of seven. Just two more days until I am in charge.
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
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