Uhtred: Old Fear.

The fever was crippling. Beads of sweat seeped from the weight of a weary brow, glistening in the painfully dull glow of lopsided candles. The crust that latched to the corner of his mouth dried his lips, splitting them and congealing blood along parallel lines. Uhtred’s ruined body shivered on the table, suffering the draft of cold that radiated from the damp and muddy floor of the tent. An easterly wind billowed the canvas that surrounded him. It seemed to crush the air around, beating an awful tattoo into his pulsing skull and throbbing in the bandages on his chest.

The examination had been ruthless. All physicians were basically evil, but this contingent was a rare breed. They had bled him to inspect the colour in whole veins. They had collected fecal waste and urine and held them to the light as though there were messages written inside. He’d been probed in the wound, had maggots put into the cavity of mangled flesh to eat away infection, and had painful rings upon his stomach and chest where glass had been put over candles to lift fever away. He’d been poked, prodded, abused, and now he was left alone to deal with the agony himself.

Yet he knew that in a moment, another terrible man who reeked of liquor would be back, to cause him pain and fear that he would die there on that table. Worse was the influx of well-wishers. They came and filled his fevered head with words he could not understand, touched him with appalling familiarity and sought favour from him; as though to torture him was to deserve thanks. All of these things made Uhtred afraid.

It was a little fear, at first, but lying now on this table it had blossomed into something consuming. He could see that boar spear plunging into his chest, see the horror upon the faces of men that had once treated him with blessed ambivalence. They thought him a monster. None spoke it, but they all thought it. Uhtred was certain of that fact. A man with no heart was no man at all.

The cold made every muscle in his body seize as a particularly violent gust pounded at his little contained world. Tears welled up in his young eyes, tears that led to sobbing convulsions. If only his mouth was not so dry, he would slide his tongue into his throat and choke on it. It would be a relief. It would be a miracle. Then those people would not come and beat him down with their wants, their needs, their undeniable wills.

To remember these things made his pulse race. Blood-encrusted, white-knuckled hands gripped at the table and threatened to put holes in it as he found his voice enough to seep out a wrenching cry. Uhtred Valenti, son of a king and an arrogant fool, was afraid.

He would never cease.