Of The Few Who Remain: The Wanderer

The Wanderer walked. He placed one foot in front of another in the intentional way of one who thinks it would be a real shame to lose several centuries worth of compiled experience to careless footing.
The grass crackled sometimes, underfoot. Sometimes it was covered in a thick coating of soft, fluffy, ash. Sometimes the grass felt simply like grass, frosted with morning dew. Much of the field across which The Wanderer walked was obscured. A patchy layer of bodies covered the grass in places. One of the bodies moved. The Wanderer knelt next to a young elven woman in the uniform of the Opus Militia⁣ A straight arrow shaft fetched with black feathers sprouted from one shoulder of the woman's uniform. The arrowhead poked out from the far side of the stained uniform.
The blue cloth around the arrow shaft was dark from the woman's spilled blood. The Wanderer unwound a scarf from around his neck. He folded it in half, then in half again. The elven girl met The Wanderer's eyes. He recognized those eyes, the shape of the face. He had last seen them in the face of a tailor he had met many years ago.
The Wanderer passed the folded scarf to the young soldier, "you might want this to bite down on," he said. She did. "was one of your relatives a tailor?" he asked. The girl nodded, "your aunt, or mother perhaps?" The soldier shook her head. "Your grandmother?" had it really been that long? The girl nodded. That long? The Wanderer remembered it so clearly.
"This is going to hurt," The Wanderer said, producing a short, thin, blade⁣ of a strange make. "Your grandmother then, I knew her. Not well, mind you," The Wanderer slashed through the arrow shaft, a couple inches down from the fetching. The unnaturally sharp blade cut easily through the wooden arrow shaft. The young soldier winced, biting down on the scarf.
"Your grandmother was a phenomenal tailor. I had a lovely dinner with her. She insisted on making me a new coat. It was a truly fine coat, it saved my life once," The Wanderer paused. "This is going to hurt more," he said to the wounded soldier. His voice was soft and apologetic. She nodded bravely. The wanderer pushed the last of the arrowhead carefully through her shoulder and drew out the remainder of the shaft. The girl's scream was muffled by the scarf and her tightly clenched teeth. It trailed off when she fainted.
When he finished removing the arrow, The Wanderer retrieved his scarf, and used it to bandage the wounded soldier's shoulder. The Wanderer inspected his work. He remembered a time when infection hadn't been a real danger. Today antibiotics would be hailed as great and powerful magic. The Wanderer hoped the young woman would survive. He hoped that his scarf would save her life, just like a finely tailored coat had saved his life, all those years ago.
The Wanderer only walked a short way before he came to another body moving on the ground. A bow lay next to the young hobgoblin. One of his arms ended in a mangled stump. Perhaps this young hobgoblin had been the one to shoot the young elven soldier. More likely not.
The Wanderer knelt. The hobgoblin really was very young. Perhaps only sixteen years old, maybe a little older. Ultimately, the young man was little more than a blink in The Wanderer's eye. The Wanderer worked just the same, doing all he possibly could to save the young man's life. As he worked, he told the half-conscious man a story. He didn't know if the story helped, but eventually, he stopped. The boy had died in a pool of his own blood.
The Wanderer walked across the battlefield, stained by the blood of both sides. Surrounded by the living, and the dying, and the dead, The Wanderer was alone. As he walked, he thought of an old friend, someone who, in his youth, had looked much like the hobgoblin boy lying dead on the battlefield. That man was centuries dead. He had been very bright. They had all been very bright back then. There were so very few of them left now.