CH 37

“Was anyone injured?” Gareth asked. 

“No, sir,” Giggs replied. 

Gareth carefully looked over his men before rummaging through Elena’s belongings. “Go ahead and have breakfast. I’ll be back,” he said, then went on to fish through his belongings for some food. The 11 knights watched as Gareth disappeared back into the forest with Elena’s clothes in hand.

“Oh, my God. The suspense was killing me,” Giggs said as he let out a long sigh of relief. He could now relax slightly knowing that Elena was alive, given how Gareth had taken some of her clothes with him.

“The crisis has passed,” Hansen murmured softly. He recalled the event that had taken place last night and how Gareth had swiftly disposed of four people. He could smell a strong stench of blood coming from Gareth and knew that he had been agitated. The rest of the men who had wandered around with Gareth for years could immediately sense this as well. 

Hansen had been worried ever since he had left Gareth and Elena alone to go search the forest. Like Giggs, he did not hold any particular feelings towards Elena; rather, he was worried about Gareth. The man’s job was to carry out murders, but he had never killed an innocent person. That was a rule Gareth had established for himself and what made others call him a mercenary rather than a murderer. Not only was Elena a woman, she was an innocent person as well. Hansen didn’t even want to imagine what would have happened if Gareth broke his own rule. 

“Oh, I’m starving. I should eat now.” Giggs grinned as he searched through his belongings for some dried meat. He pushed the little amount of jerky he could get his hands on into his mouth and continued to search to see if he had anything else. At that moment, he came across an unfamiliar object. 

“What’s this?” Giggs observed the object in his hand, then realized it was the ointment Elena had dropped last night. Giggs had picked it up so that he could return it to her later. He stared silently at the small bottle. Gareth had always prohibited him and the rest of the men from using any unknown medicine for safety reasons, and Giggs had never violated his order. However, he immediately squeezed Elena’s ointment onto his hand and rubbed it on his neck while vigorously chewing the dried meat. 

‘Whatever she did, she managed to survive a night with a bloodthirsty Gareth. That means she will continue to accompany us.’ Giggs felt there was some sort of meaning in Elena’s survival. She somehow felt like one of his comrades, and he trusted his comrades.

Giggs continued to squeeze the ointment out of its container and rubbed the medicine on his neck. As soon as he did so, a cool sensation overtook the itchy, stinging feeling on his skin. ‘This is good,’ he thought approvingly as he squeezed even more medicine out and repeatedly rubbed it against his neck. 

“This is good. It leaves a cool sensation on your skin,” Giggs praised. 

At his words, Hansen approached him and reached out to him. “Give me some, too. The itching is killing me.”

“This isn’t boss’ though,” Giggs warned Hansen, looking at him as if to ask if he wanted to be an accomplice, then offered Elena’s ointment. Hansen hesitated for a moment when Giggs informed him that the medicine wasn’t Gareth’s. Almost everyone in their party suffered from skin disease. It wasn’t anything serious, but something they were constantly plagued with as a result of their occupation, since they all used the same water and were always around each other. Hansen took the ointment from Giggs’ not long after and applied it on his elbow pit. Soon, he could see Giggs holding out his hand again to use more of the ointment.

By the time Gareth had brought Elena back down to the camp, both Giggs and Hansen had already lathered the ointment all over their bodies.

* * * 

Night fell on the forest once again. Gareth stopped his horse when darkness thoroughly blanketed his surroundings. He dismounted the horse first and helped Elena, who had been sitting on the horse on top of Gareth’s folded blanket, down by lifting her by the waist. It had already been a week since they had departed from Count Townsend’s castle, marching forcefully from dawn to dusk.

Elena observed her surroundings as Giggs started a bonfire. Earlier in the day, Gareth’s arrow had caught an unlucky boar and the men were planning to grill it for dinner. It was going to be the first time she would have fresh meat in a while, so, if she could, she wanted to help prepare a delicious meal.

Gareth watched as Elena searched around the ground in the dark for a while, then approached her with a torch. “What are you looking for?” he asked as he lit up her surroundings with a torch. 

“Some herbs that will make the smell of fat go away. I want you to have a delicious meal,” Elena answered as she smiled faintly up at him.

Gareth didn’t respond to her words. He simply continued to illuminate her surroundings with his torch in silence. Elena turned her head back to the ground as Gareth’s gaze instinctively shifted to her small shoulders and back. She was becoming terribly thin due to their forced march back home. Although she was forcing herself to eat, the emergency food was not helping her build enough stamina to endure the journey. Every time he held her in his arms, Gareth could feel that Elena was getting thinner. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable by this fact, so he thought it was extremely fortunate to have found a source of fresh meat. He was confident that she would at least be able to eat the grilled boar.

Gareth watched as Elena leaned close to the ground and fished through the weeds he had no knowledge about. Her shadow merged with his and shook together. His torch also began to dance in the wind. As they got closer to his home in the north, Gareth could feel the wind changing. Before he knew it, winter had come without warning as if the weather had decided to skip over the colder months of autumn. Soon, the northern wind was going to blow consistently and the swirling snow storms were going to approach.

Gareth decided that the harvest season was probably over by now, since the frigid climate in the northern regions required harvests to be completed a month earlier than other regions. He shifted his eyes from the shaking fire on his torch to Elena. She was now digging up the ground, as if she had finally found something.