[Tr'etram]

The awful day was over.  He walked slowly, supporting Lashan as the boy
limped toward the Med Center.

"Are you going to be okay?" Trey asked, knowing the dragons would
translate.

The nomad boy nodded, then grimaced as he leaned away from Trey's support
and put too much weight on his leg.

>From what he had been able to piece together, the boy had sprained his
ankle dodging a charging horse and had spent the rest of the battle
playing dead on the green.

He frowned at the carnage in the Med Center.  Both soldiers and warrenfolk
were arranged on mats in the hallways, while staff walked between them.

"What have we got?" a staffer asked Trey.

"Just a sprained ankle.  If you can get me some wrappings, I can take care
of him."

The staffer nodded appreciatively.  "I can do that."

Trey found an empty spot on a bench and sat Lashan down, took the
profferred wrappings, and set to work.  "I didn't realise it would be this
bad.  I kinda thought they'd take their injured with them."

The staffer shook his head.  "Only the ones that could walk.  I here we're
getting supplies from them, though, to make up for it."

"Can I help?  I don't know much more than first aid, but it looks like
anything would help."

"Right now, we could use your brawn more than your brains.  We've got dead
to move to the morgue to clear out space."

Trey swallowed hard.  "Um.  Sure."

******

"Step... step... one more."

He stepped back off the stairs and onto the dry stone floor of the morgue.
"Where to now?"

"All the way back.  We're going to be packing them in pretty tight."

Trey glanced behind him and started to take another step, stopped and
looked back again.  "It's gone!"

"What's gone?"

"The box with Diana's... remains."

The staffer frowned.  "Let's get him set down and look.  Maybe she...
it... got moved."

******

[A couple hours later]

Trey stumbled woodenly into the Dining Hall and sat numbly at a table.
She was gone.  Someone had taken the box with Diana's heat-shrunken skull
and charred hand.  What sort of barbarians were those soldiers?  Was
nothing sacred?

It was bad enough that she was dead.

Why?

He could bear it no longer and dropped his head into his hands and cried.

"Are you okay?" a voice asked.

He looked up into the face of a dragonrider he didn't know.  She was
dressed just a little oddly, in a style of clothes that didn't quite fit
in.  "No," he answered, but could say no more.

Respectfully submitted,
 Lynette R. F. Cowper
  Tr'etram and Koroth

NRPG: Tag, Jill... ;>

 # Lynette R. F. Cowper        o       INWO Line Editor & Goddess      #
 # lcowper@indy.net             <><     Circle of Janus Secretary      #
 # lcowper@io.com                  o       Captain, USS CALYPSO        #
 # http://www.io.com/~lcowper/  ><>     Warrenlady, Telnor Warren      #