‘Allaigna’s Song: Chorale’ ~ A New Novel by JM Landels!

It was Rennielle and I who washed and dressed Goffree’s body, after the four of us who remained took turns in pairs carrying him down the mountain pass. We had buried Olenbry in a makeshift cairn of stones and snow in Oburakor. It pained me that we could not bring her body with us, and now Goff would not make it home either. We were back in the Ilmar at least, but far to the north, in a mining town set low against the mountains of eastern Holc. He would not lie beside the heroes of Brandishear, where his heart belonged.

His ribs stood out in the pale winter light of the candleless room. We were all thinner than when we had met, but the lack of warm blood beneath his skin made him seem as if he had been a corpse for longer than these two awful days. As I sponged the dirt and blood of Oburakor from his body, I ran an inventory of his scars: the jagged tear on his calf he had earned in his first days as a squire; the whitened pucker above his clavicle from an Ilvani arrow; countless small and large lines criss-crossing his arms and legs, some old and some far too new; and of course, the one I’d given him, shallow but long, from left shoulder to right hip, so many years ago. 

Rennielle watched me run my fingers along it, her sharp, pale brows sunk in a deeper frown than usual. Was she jealous still?

“What do you suppose that is from?” she asked.

I was taken aback. They’d shared a bed, these two. How had she not seen it, not asked him?

“Did he never tell you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “He would not say.”

“It was me,” I answered, memories clogging my throat with more sadness, wishing that thoughtless act had not robbed us of eight years of friendship. I didn’t elaborate. Let her ask. 

But she said nothing, only continued her meticulous job of washing the left side of his body.

When we had dressed and arrayed him, I took my father’s knife and removed two locks of his hair: one for her, and one for me to carry back to Rheran, along with the ashes from the fire we would build that night.