The Poisoned Throne

Chapter 40

 Raynor

The sea stretched out ahead of him, a crystal blue desert. On the other side of the waves, the vague coastline of low, sandstone houses could be made out against the bright sky, and just beyond that, the real desert stretched out.

It surprised him how peaceful this view made him. Hi’taab was not his home, but it felt like he was returning to something that was close to it. Of course, Tibera was built by Hi’taabnese settlers centuries before the pale, North-Western tribes took over Etheron, and Raynor had family in Tibera, but he had grown up in Westhall, at court. Still, he felt more and more that the Hi’taabnese life fit him better.

“Your Excellency?”

Raynor turned around, still not quite used to the title of address that had been given to him now that he was an emperor.

It was the young doctor’s apprentice, a man named Jonah, who had appeared. His paleness was bordering on sickly, and red lines of tiredness, and his eyes revealed the ghosts he had seen as a physician in the field of battle. At the age of twenty-one, this man had already helped amputate close to a hundred limbs, and now he was treating a patient whose screams kept most on board awake all nights and who most likely would not survive much longer.

“I am so sorry,” Jonah began. “I think he might be in his last hours.”

Raynor blinked, stepping down and away from the railing. “Are you sure? Have you tried washing it out again? Burning?”

The young man chewed his lip and nodded. “I am afraid there is nothing much left to do.”

When Hans had been hit by an arrow in the heat of battle, it had seemed like luck. He had been hit in the shoulder, brushing past any lethal veins. However, the mud had infected the wound and a piece of the arrow along with grease and small stones were so deep inside his flesh that it would take a skilled doctor to get it all out.

Jonah had been the apprentice of another doctor before he went to Etheron. This man was skilled in treating war injuries, and had once cut into the head of a man to remove a piece of a morning star that had stuck. This was why Raynor had brought Hans with him, hoping he might make it to Hi’taab, to this doctor.

“Take me to him,” he said.

Hans had been laid in a cabin just below deck, close to Raynor’s quarters. It was terrible to listen to his screams, just a couple of walls away, but it was only worse when the screams became further and further apart. Hans was weakening; everyone had known that for a while.

Jonah stood rigid beside the door, in the strange way he always has about him. His back was straight and his hands hung by his hips. His fingers were clenching and unclenching, and he looked entirely uncomfortable with everything. However, his voice was kind and truthful when he spoke.

“I promise you, we will continue to do all that we can to prolong his life, if that is what you wish.” It might have been just an illusion, but it seemed that he leaned forwards a little in confidence. “But, if you wish, there is a remedy, if not for his illness, then for his pain. We call it morphine, and it dulls the mind and the senses. Critics say it makes it harder for the patient to fight off what is killing him, but it might be… well, it might be better for him, if he is to die, to at least do it in comfort.”

Raynor considered it for a moment, then nodded once and entered the room.

Hans lay in a large bed in the middle of the room. Although the shutters of the windows were opened and light spilled in, the room seemed dark. The sheets around his body were drenched in sweat, and his eyes were tear-filled and faraway in a land of pain. As always when he entered this room, Raynor’s stomach clenched up and his throat grew sore.