Knights of Ferlonia

CHAPTER III

The torch that Anker had seen in the distance was nothing more than the crackling fire of a fireplace burning beyond the window of a modest wooden farmhouse. Anker rushed to the door of the building and started knocking on the shutter, praying that they would let him in. After about a minute, a rough old man, bald and bearded, covered in furs, appeared at the door, visibly surprised by the appearance of guests at such a late hour, during a snowstorm. But as soon as he realized the state of the visitors, he rushed to let them in, and before asking any questions, he prepared a bear skin in the anteroom on which to lay Madja's inanimate body.

He was unexpectedly at ease with first aid maneuvers, and after examining the knight's vital signs, he said: <<She's in bad shape, but she's breathing and still has a pulse.>> Then he slipped into a dimly lit room and emerged with a leather suitcase, saying: <<Almost no one ventures up this God-forsaken peak anymore, but in this shelter, just in case, I always keep a first aid kit... let's see what I can do.>>

He took off Madja's uniform coat, then extracted a steel needle from a sterile package and with great skill cannulated a vein in her left arm, despite the severe volume depletion. Talking practically to himself, since Anker had stood in a corner watching the operations with a serious expression on his face, he said: <<Let's see, I have a one-liter vial of Venemesta's Lily cerulean lymph, to which, since the wound is certainly infected, I can add a vial of Ectinocillum Rabariense spore suspension. That should be enough for now...>>

He screwed a rubber tube onto the vial and waited for a couple of drops to drip from the other end, then pinched it with his fingers to stop the flow. Before proceeding, however, he began to look at Madja's body with a thoughtful look, as if he wanted to ask something but was weighing his words. After a few moments he turned to Anker and said: <<Judging by your uniforms, you look like knights. I've happened to rescue a couple of them, one thing and another. Usually before each mission you receive a vial of personalized magically treated stem cell extract, to be used in emergency situations once regenerated with cerulean lymph. Tell me, does the girl have it?>>

<<I... I think so, in her belt. It's just that, well, we lost all our medical equipment on the way, so we didn't have a chance to use it...>>

Hearing that statement, the man looked at Anker in amazement. Then he sighed and attached the IV, saying: <<Well, let's start with this, in an hour we'll do another half liter of lymph plus the stem cell extract.>>

Then, getting up from the sickbed and hanging the vial on a nail protruding from the wall, he added: <<The stem cell extract clashes with the Ectinocillum spores, you can't do them together. And there's no hurry: she'll make it, but her arm won't grow back for sure. I wonder how a frail little girl like her became a knight. I've seen it all now.>>

Anker felt slightly offended by those words, but he was certainly not in a position to make remonstrances, so he stood in silence like a child who knows he has messed up and endures the sermon hoping it will end soon. <<But you must be hungry. Come this way, I was just having dinner,>> said the old man, as he covered Madja's body with a second bearskin and walked into the next room.

Anker followed him into the living room with the fireplace, which was rather bare and furnished with essential and rough furniture: a sideboard, a table, a couple of chairs. In the stone fireplace hung a cauldron in which a vegetable and legume stew was boiling and, in front of it, on a deer skin rug was a stool on which the old man sat down; <<Take a chair and sit next to me,>> he said to Anker.

Anker obeyed the orders and the old man handed him a bowl of steaming minestrone and a glass of wine. The smell of the stew was pleasant and the consistency thick and full-bodied. The taste, despite the frugality of the meal, was also surprisingly complex and satisfying. The wine was sweet and went down like grape juice.