Sir Aldric winced as he knelt before the fire, his sword arm crackling like dry kindling. The scent of crushed herbs filled the smoky hut as Leonhardt measured out his remedies with the precision of a man who had mended a hundred warriors.
"You want to wield steel again?" Leonhardt asked, not looking up from his mortar. The pestle scraped against willow bark, releasing its sharp scent. "Then you'll follow my words as strictly as you once followed your lord's commands."
Aldric's jaw tightened. He had endured battlefields, sieges, and the surgeon's saw without complaint. But this—this slow crumbling of his body—terrified him more than any enemy.
"First," Leonhardt said, pressing a warm poultice to Aldric's swollen knuckles, "you'll anoint these ruined joints each night." The mixture burned like a smith's forge before settling into a deep warmth. "Willow and boswellia to quiet the fire in your bones. Comfrey to mend what's frayed."
He handed Aldric a clay jar. "Thirty nights without fail. Miss one, and we start anew."
"Second," he continued, pouring steaming liquid into a cup, "you'll drink this at dawn and dusk." The brew smelled of earth and iron. "Turmeric to cool the flames, devil's claw to loosen what's locked."
Aldric gagged at the first sip, but already, the vise-like grip on his spine eased.
"Third," Leonhardt said, his voice sharpening, "you'll move when every instinct tells you to stay still." He guided Aldric's arm through slow circles in a basin of rosemary-steeped water. "Salt to draw out the stiffness, heat to make the sinews pliant again."
Aldric hissed as long-frozen tendons began to stretch. "How long?"
"Until the moon waxes and wanes twice," Leonhardt replied. "No sparring. No swordplay. Or would you rather your grandsons hear how the great Aldric Blackthorn lost his blade to a potion-maker's orders?"
The old warrior's laughter turned into a cough. "You bargain harder than a Varangian merchant."
Leonhardt's smile didn't reach his eyes. He pressed a final remedy into Aldric's palm—a twist of cloth holding pungent mushrooms. "Last: eat these with bone broth when the pain wakes you screaming. They'll let you sleep without drowning in poppy's deceit."
As Aldric turned to leave, Leonhardt called after him:
"The herbs can mend a warrior's body. But only time—and obedience—can mend a swordsman's pride."
Thirty days.
He could endure thirty days.
For the chance to hold his sword without weeping.