When Ajax cried himself out, Hakon kept hold of him, rocking him slightly as the lad cried himself out. He would have thought it childish if Ajax were a soldier, but the lad was a musician who had just been through what was clearly the worst thing that had ever happened to him. In a way, Hakon was cheered by that. This was not the sort of event that should be commonplace. Mages should not be free to terrorize ordinary people like Ajax. The report had said other people had gone missing from this place, and after seeing what they'd been up to, Hakon had little doubt that they'd been snatched, tortured, raped, murdered, and eaten. It made his stomach twist just to think about it.
He hadn't been dispatched to save them, but someone should have. He was grateful he'd gotten to Ajax in time.
When Ajax fell asleep on him, Hakon was surprised, but not upset. He wondered when Ajax had last truly rested. He imagined it had likely been before he'd been snatched off the road. A few days of terror and torture had a way of catching up to anyone. So Hakon moved the lad so that he was supporting him in a bridal carry and stood up with the sleeping boy in his arms. Ajax roused then, and made a questioning noise, but Hakon shushed him, and repeated that process when he laid him down in the mercifully clean bed. It was the only thing in the entire cabin that wasn't filthy.
"Rest up, lad," Hakon said quietly in Ajax's ear. "I'll be here. Just rest."
With that, he set to work. He couldn't just leave the place looking and smelling like this. He expected to be in it for several more hours if not overnight, and the competing odors of mold, rot, dried blood, and unwashed bodies did not sit well with him.
First, he opened a chest and found a spare change of clothes for the big guy, and used that to wrap his gaping torso wound, then dragged his corpse outside. He repeated the process with the little one. Then, using a rusty shovel he found in their former hovel, he set about digging a shallow grave for the two of them behind the hovel, where there were other piles of disturbed earth. Presumably, this was where they'd disposed of whatever remained of some of their victims.
It was tempting not to even bury them, but ultimately he decided it was better to do so. They had been vicious killers, but if he let them rot, their bodies would attract animals and who knew what other sorts of unpleasantness. Digging a hole big enough for Lukos in the silty soil was thirsty work, but Hakon was nothing if not physically strong and resilient, so he persevered. He dumped the little one in first, then pushed the bigger one in on top, counting on his dead weight compressing the smaller body of his brother. They had not yet started to stiffen, fortunately, so he could still arrange their limbs and position them optimally. Then he put the disturbed earth back on top of them, compressed it with his shovel and by stomping his feet, and covered them with a small boulder that obediently enough into place.
He returned to the cabin to check on Ajax: still asleep. So he grabbed a bucket from the house and went in search of water, finding a footpath down to a small stream. He supposed if it had worked for them, it would work for him.
Returning to the cabin, he grabbed the lone bar of soap and used it to make suds in the water. That would be important later. Then he proceeded to gather up various disgusting debris: pieces of Alecto's wings, clumps of what might have been Ajax's hair, bloody splinters of wood that may have been from when Lukos punched the table, and of course, bits of blood and the occasional missed piece of viscera from their fight earlier. All of it, he piled on to a torn and bloody table cloth he'd found while making his initial search for useful supplies. Then, he put all of that into a corner and checked his bucket: nice and soapy.
"Good," he said aloud, before starting to scrub the everloving shit out of every part of the cabin.
He picked a spare corner in which to start and starting scrubbing the walls, cleaning them of smoke, ash, grease, and who knows what else. When his rag became filthy, he tore a fresh piece off of the unsoiled table cloth and began again. When his water became soiled, he emptied it outside gathered more water, and started to soak the soap in the fresh bucket, digging a hole to make a midden while he waited. After a few hours, he had a clean cabin that smelled like soap, with no grisly traces of its former occupants.
Their stuff, he'd categorized and put on a small counter by the hearth according to its monetary value. He recognized the necromancer's kit and some of the jewelry as clear keepers, as well as some fine clothes, soiled though they were with blood and other fluids, and a few hundred farthings all told, mostly in the moderate denominations travelers favored. Most of the rest seemed to be sentimental trinkets, which he tossed on the basis that the people who valued them were clearly dead, or just complete garbage, like old bones that one of Ajax's kidnappers had been keeping for some awful reason.
Ajax's belongings were relatively easy to pick out: they were still neat and together in a pile near where the table had been when Hakon entered. He did his best to give them a wash and hang them up while the lad slept, because he deserved clean clothes if Hakon could manage it, and that proved to be his downfall. With one arm full of Ajax's sodden clothes and the failing light of day to guide him through the unfamiliar forest paths, Hakon missed a snakelike tree rot, and tripped. He didn't want to soil the clothes again, so he twisted his body on the way down, making sure they didn't hit the forest floor. He was successful in this manner, but his freshly mended ankle let him know its displeasure in his foolish decision when he tried to get back up and just... couldn't. It felt weak and would not bear his weight.
He sighed heavily. "Of course," he murmured. "Of course this would happen when you have no vitescence left to heal yourself."
At a loss for what else to do, he conjured his kite shield and used it as a makeshift crutch to get off of the ground. He could level off of it onto his good leg, and then hop the remaining distance to the bare tree branch that he assumed Alecto had used as a laundry line. He hung up Ajax's clothes standing on one leg in the manner of a water bird, and then hopped back to the cabin, feeling ridiculous.
It was only then that the full exertions of the day caught up to him. He made a frantic beeline for the chair, and barely got there before his other leg gave out on him. This one wasn't injured, as far as he could tell. He was just spent.
Deliberately, he stood on his good leg and dragged the chair over to the bed. He wasn't above sleeping in the straw if he had to, but, well. He would prefer to sleep where Ajax was, though he wasn't certain there was room for both of them.
"Lad, any chance you could help me?" Once he was mostly certain Ajax was awake and listening to him, he continued: "I've injured myself again cleaning up, and I've no reserves left to help me this time. Do you think you could help me into the bed?"
