Slumped forward, in a daze, Eathel awoke to men shouting his name.

Though he heard the men calling out to him, such were the depths of Eathel’s woe that he didn't even bother answering them.

He only dimly comprehended they were calling at all, his mind was seeming to leave him, and he felt very light throughout all his limbs.

And that part of Eathel that could comprehend that these voices sought him wanted to never face these men again.

He hated to sleep, but now he yearned more than anything for that smooth black, oblivion that took away all the cares that burdened him. Sleep was the elision of pain.

Over the past week the men under his leadership had failed so thoroughly to contain a brazen attack on a vassal state that three towns were burned and dozens killed, all innocents. Some children.

The men that did it had slipped through his grasp. He had only barely been able to track down one of them, and even that one had shared nothing about their origins.

Dazed as Eathel was, he nonetheless remembered that his attacker had said just before the man expired. Rather, it was something the man had tried to say. Speaking was far harder when the voice had to find its way around a dagger through the neck.

Fa? Wool? Allow Ig? What were those words? The man had said something, but the knife in his neck, as tends to happen, made speech difficult.

And just then, Eathel passed into the grasp of his men.

“My Lord, thank God that you're all right,” someone said.

“Lord Marshall, you cannot run off like that,” said another.

“Unprotected, lord”

“My Lord, you're bleeding.”

Someone grabbed Echo’s reins a bit too hard and she jerked. Eathel tried to bat the man’s hand off.

“Come with us, Lord Eathel,” said one of the men.

“Get him space to breathe. Stand back,” said another voice.

“Make space for the Earl of Darren.”

Lord, Marshall, Earl, Darren and Eathel. He had so many names.

“Where were you Casselton?” asked someone in a rage. “Aren’t you his squire?”

Eathel had hands on him.

“I chased after him the same as did you, my lord,” said Casselton.

Many arms grabbed at him and attempted to convey him from Echo.

They were out of the forest now; it was wide and open field.

“His leg has fast lost its blood,” said a man.

There were so many men around now, far more than the few who had brought him out of the forest. It was an encampment. An army was mobilizing.

The knights, men-at-arms and soldiers watched Eathel being carried in on the white horse. Some came over to help. Some walked along with the little troupe. Most merely gawked.

Hundreds of soldiers and horsemen moved in formation off to his right.

“You are supposed to be nearer to him than his very sword,” said the enraged man to Casselton.

Someone brought a stretcher.

“Have the bleeding at the leg stopped, lest Lord Eathel lose it.”

Now he floated off his savior, Echobella the Blue, his white horse who was now streaked with her rider’s blood.

Eathel moaned to go back to her.

“What saith he?” said someone.

“I think he hath not his faculties about him my lord,” said another.

Four sets of arms got Eathel off of Echo; he walked with all of their eight legs to the stretcher, like an insect and laid him down upon the bands that wove together its back.