Champion of the Last Battle

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When once his assistants had, under his supervision, administered the drugs and departed the chamber, the old, wizened Zahrtohgahn physician stood beside the massive bed for long and long, just observing the old, dying man who lay thereon. Master Ahkmehd was, himself, but a bare score of years the junior of his patient and had been his personal physician for nearly twoscore years, his friend and trusted confidant for almost as long.

Unconsciously, the stooped practitioner wrinkled his nose at the stench of corrupting flesh from his patient’s inflamed arm, that arm which he had not been allowed to amputate properly after a wounded bear had so torn and mauled it that it would never have been of real use again even had infection not set into it.

“Ah, Bili, my dear, old lord,” he sighed at last in his own guttural language. “Yes, you surely were a stark warrior and were well named Bili the Axe by friend and foe alike. But you were so much more, as well; you brought true and abiding peace to a much-troubled land in the near fifty years you ruled it.

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