A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 79  The Cruelty of The Gods - Part 4

"Nah… It's fine… I needed to get some new clothes anyway," Beam said, his eyelids closing for half a second, but reopening again once Nila squeezed his hand.

At his instructions, Nila's mother cut his leg. That fact that she didn't gasp upon seeing the amount of blood that stained his calf was evidence of her experience in treating the wounded.

"Mama, what's happening? Is he dying?" A little boy asked, his little sister peering curiously over his shoulder.

"Hush now, David. If you want to help, can you go and find me the honey that Nila forgot to bring?" The lady said.

Nila grimaced at that, only just realizing that she'd forgotten. Seeing that, her mother reassured her. "Don't worry, I need your help – can you clean the blood around the wound as best you can? I need to stitch it."

Nila nodded and after soaking her rag in the pot of warm water, she began dabbing at the area around the room, continually looking up at Beam's face to see if she was hurting him. But he betrayed no reaction. He merely gave her a drained smile. "Thank you," he said, so quietly that it could have been the whisper of the wind.

Nila felt herself tearing up again as she looked at him. It was a terrible burden. If he died now, after saving her, she'd live with it for the rest of her days, she knew. She'd remember his face and curse herself.

"That's perfect, I'm going to begin stitching now, okay?" Nila's mother said, having threaded her needle. "This is going to hurt a bit, but bear with it, if you can. Try not to move too much – I'll finish it up soon enough."

Beam nodded, clenching his fingers around the hands of the chair. The wood creaked from the pressure. And in went the needle and out again. Nila watched, her heart in her stomach, as she expected to see the pain run across his face. But he looked so calm, so peaceful, that it was worrying. Nila had to continually reassure herself that he hadn't died yet.

"Goodness… You take pain like no one I've ever seen," Nila's mother said, as she put in the last of her stitches and tied it off so that it wouldn't come undone.

"Is it done?" Beam asked.

Nila nodded, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Guess I'll live then," he said.

"Hah... You sure know how to worry people," Nila told him off with a smile.

David returned a moment later and offered up a pot of honey to his mother. "Mamma," he said, reaching up with it to get her attention.

"Thank you," she said, taking it with a smile. Then she turned to Beam. "I'm going to clean out your wounds and run honey through them, okay? It'll keep out infection and help them seal back up a little quicker."

"I'll pay you back for it – but thank you," Beam said, knowing just how expensive honey could be.

Nila shook her head. "Stupid. Let us at least do this much. You saved my life, after all."

Her mother turned her head at that comment, her face betraying a question. Nila answered it before it was asked. "Goblins," she explained. "I went off to hunt a deer and got attacked by Goblins. Beam came and saved me once I shouted for help."

She saw her mother pale as she told her story. "Goblins?" She repeated, turning to Beam. "Goodness… No wonder you're in such a state. How many of them were there?"

"Seven," Nila said.

"SEVEN!?" Her mother shouted. After all the calm she had shown up till now, that ridiculous number broke her cool. "The two of you managed to get away from seven Goblins? All by yourselves?"

Nila nodded seriously, reassuring her mother that it was no word of a lie. "It was Beam, mostly. He drew the worst of their attack. I managed to get two with an arrow, but Beam took out the rest of them."

It was only then that her mother seemed to notice the sack they'd been carrying and she dared to pause her work to peek inside. "Seven… Not only did you survive an attack from seven Goblins… you killed them all?" She looked at Beam in a renewed light, before nodding to herself twice. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"David," she said, turning to her youngest. "Go and take your sister Stephanie and get me the second jar of honey – Beam will be needing it to change his dressings."

She then turned to Beam with renewed seriousness. There was such an intensity in her eyes, that Beam almost felt scared. He might even have looked away, had he not seen the tears beginning to form in the corner of her eyes.

"…Thank you," she said quietly. Though few in words, those words contained more than enough emotion to get across their meaning and she took the cloth from Nila to continue cleaning the rest of the blood off Beam's torso.

Nila watched her mother work, feeling her heart ache as she felt her mother's gratefulness. 'If I had died… It would have broken her,' she realized, finally understanding the worth of her life. More than just her, in saving her life, Beam had saved her entire family from the suffering that would have come with her death.

From her mother's perspective, he'd done a hero's work. He'd stood up against seven Goblins basically alone and he'd put his body on the line to do so. There wasn't a single other man in the village that could have achieved such a feat – perhaps except Judas. The number of wounds he received seemed to tell the story of his struggle.

But it wasn't that, and Nila couldn't tell her. The boy had managed to slaughter the Goblins with hardly a scratch. It was a Hobgoblin that did that to him. A Hobgoblin that he'd managed to wound.

It was too incredible a feat for such a small village.

Beam sat there, his eyes half-glazed, looking by all rights as dead as a dead man should be. Yet he sat there with a calm and contented smile on his lips. It was strange for Nila to see. He must have been in agonising pain. Yet, even covered in blood as he was, he sat like an old tomcat warming himself in the sun.