Nolan Jareth's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

By dawn Nolan could barely stand. The wolf bite had swollen his leg to twice its size. Red streaks climbed past his knee. Sylvara walked ahead with her bow ready, her brown eyes sweeping the trees. She had kept her word. She was guiding him to the bloom that stopped rot. But the poison moved faster than his boots. "How far?" Nolan asked. His voice cracked. He leaned on the broken hilt like a cane. "Close. Through the gully." Sylvara glanced back. "Walk faster or I carry you. Neither of us wants that." He forced his leg forward. Sweat stung his eyes. The gully narrowed into damp stone walls. Then Sylvara stopped. Her hand shot up. Black shapes crawled across the rocks ahead. Spiders, each the size of a dog. Sharp horns curved from their heads. Their eyes glowed, one green, one red. They clustered over a patch of blue flowers growing from a crack in the wall. The bloom. The one thing that could save him. "They nest around it," Sylvara whispered. "The bloom draws them. I did not expect this many." Nolan counted six. His sword was a stub. His leg was failing. "Shoot them." "I have nine arrows. They move too fast up close." She drew one anyway. "We need the forge-man's help. There is a dwarf who hunts this gully. Thorin. He clears these nests for the bloom sap." "Then where is he?" An axe answered. It spun from above and split the nearest spider clean through. A dwarf dropped from the rocks after it. Red beard braided to his belt, iron helm dented, grin wide under the horns of his own helmet. He yanked his axe free and spat. "Sylvara. You bring me a dying man and a pack of biters. Generous." "Thorin. Clear a path to the flowers. He has hours, not days." Thorin eyed Nolan's leg, then the broken hilt in his fist. "A knight with no sword. Stay behind me, then." He waded in, axe swinging. Two spiders fell. The rest turned on him, horns stabbing at his arms. Nolan did not stay behind. He limped to the wall while Thorin held the swarm. A spider broke off and rushed the flowers, rushing Nolan. He drove the broken hilt into its green eye. It shrieked and curled. The jagged steel stuck fast. He left it there. "The bloom!" Sylvara shouted. An arrow dropped a spider at Nolan's feet. He tore the blue cluster from the crack. He crushed the petals and pressed the wet pulp into the wound. Cold sap burned, then eased. Thorin's axe finished the last spider. Nolan sank against the wall, breathing hard. The red streaks on his leg had stopped climbing. He would walk. He looked at his empty hand. The broken hilt was gone, buried in a dead spider's skull. His last piece of the old sword was lost now. He had traded it for his life. Whatever he carried to a forge, it would not be that blade.