To his left, Soterius saw Mikhail engage another of the madmen, while across the way, Tadrie and one of the other refugee fighters were holding their own against the last of the attackers, keeping him at bay until a third refugee hurled a large rock at the madman's head. The madman fell and lay still.
Soterius looked around. From the position of the moon, barely a candlemark had passed since they attacked the Margolan soldiers. "Check the bodies!" he shouted. "Don't leave any of our own!" Grimly, the men still on their feet began to check the fallen, dispatching one or two of the badly wounded Margolan soldiers who had not yet died with a merciful sword strike.
One of the fighters was already calming the horses, and after carefully checking the box that was still hitched to the harness, he waved for his fellows to begin the grim work of bringing the dead and those too badly wounded to walk into the wagon.
"A little assistance, if you please." Mikhail did not even sound winded, although he pinned the last of the berserker fighters in his grip. Soterius, Pell, and Tabb ran to help him, grabbing rope from the soldiers' packs. They trussed up the struggling madman from shoulders to ankles, taking no chances. The man struggled and bucked with his full might, but where Soterius should have expected a captured soldier to curse them and spew profanities the berserker raged incoherently. Up close, the madness in the captured man's eyes was even more disturbing, as if his humanity had been stripped away, leaving something feral in its place. Soterius noted as they bound the man that the prisoner was badly wounded, with deep gashes that would have disabled a normal soldier.
"Let's get them to the healers," Soterius sighed, wiping the blood off his hands in the snow. Mikhail lifted the trussed-up madman with immortal ease; the wagon shuddered when Mikhail dropped his cargo in. Pell counted as they loaded bodies and wounded men into the wagon, while Sahila took roll among the surviving fighters. Three of their own were dead. Three more, including Tadrie, were too badly wounded to walk back to camp.
"Let's get that arm bound before you need the wagon, too." Mikhail stood next to him, with strips of cloth Soterius bet the vayash moru had torn from one of the dead men's shirts. As usual, he had not heard his friend approach. Soterius let Mikhail bind up his arm, just now becoming aware of how much it throbbed, and that he could no longer feel his feet in the bitter cold.
