Page 57 of Paladin's Hope
The thought made him break into a cold sweat even now. Even the feeling of Thomas’s neck collapsing under his hands hadn’t been enough to slake it.
When he had seen the kitchen and the long chain that Thomas had kept Hardy on when she was cooking—“So that I didn’t try anything with a knife, y’see,”—he’d wanted to drag the man’s corpse out of the stables where he’d dumped it and stab it a few more times for good measure.
“I told your friend to run,” Missus Hardy said. “On the wagon. Was afraid I wouldn’t make it back to the house in time, but I warned him off. The master was suspicious, but I said he drove off on his own.”
And thank the gods for that. Brindle will bring back help. I hope.
They didn’t need any more muscle at the moment, but they sure as hell needed doctoring supplies. It had only taken one look at Piper’s stricken face to see that Earstripe was in bad shape.
He found tweezers and a razor in the master bedroom upstairs, balanced on the edge of the sink. Every other room was empty, the furniture gone or hidden under dust cloths. There were more sheets in the closet, and he grabbed an armload of those as well, wondering how many sheets were required to make a bandage at all.
By the time he got back downstairs, Missus Hardy had laid out needle, thread, a bottle of brandy and a jar of honey. “Thank you,” said Galen. She nodded, meeting his eyes with her unnervingly flat stare.
“Wasn’t able to save any of the others,” she said. “Might be able to save your friend.”
“You could have gone with Brindle,” he said.
She shook her head. “He’d have gone after. And if he didn’t find me, he’d like have killed you three. Don’t know what happens down there, but nobody comes out but him. Thought maybe if your friend came back with help, they might be able to get you out in time.”
Galen nodded in recognition of the grim calculus involved and went to raid the rooms for candles.
By the time Piper was ready to operate, the wine cellar was a sea of wicks and flame. Galen knelt beside him, ready to lift a lantern or hand him items as required. Piper’s face was gray but his hands were steady as he took the razor and made the first cut.
“Lady of Grass,” he murmured, picking fragments of bone out with the tweezers. “White Rat. Four-faced One. Forge God. Dreaming God…” On and on he went, a litany of the names of gods, repeating over and over. It was as sincere a prayer as Galen had ever heard, and he wondered if the doctor even knew that he was doing it. Occasionally he would interrupt himself to give orders—“Hold the lamp higher.” “Pour a ladle of water over the wound.”—but then he would start up again within a minute or two. “White Rat…Lady of Grass…”
“I’ve got as much out as I can,” he said finally, sitting back. “We have to push the bolt through and then break the head off. If I’ve missed a fragment, or if there’s another major vein back there, then…” He trailed off, shaking his head. Galen didn’t need him to say the words aloud. Then Earstripe will die.
Piper took a thimble that Missus Hardy had included with her sewing kit and set his fingers to the end of the bolt. He took a deep breath and then began to push the shaft down. “If he thrashes, hold him down.”
Earstripe cried out, a shrill yelp of pain, and his eyes came open. His teeth snapped at thin air. “Just a little more…” said Piper. Galen pinned the gnole down, prepared to use his full weight, but he didn’t need to. The gnole’s eyes rolled back and he slumped again in a dead faint.
Probably for the best. Nobody wants to be awake for this part. Or any of the other parts.
“There. It’s through. Can you break the head off?” asked Piper. “I doubt we’ve got a very fine saw lying around.”
Galen felt for the point and scowled. It was bladed and not particularly easy to grab. He had to wrap his hand in the bottom of his chainmail hauberk and snap the shaft. He opted for speed rather than finesse. Earstripe whimpered as the wood broke, but that was all.
Piper extracted the bolt and flung it aside in disgust, then set to work again. Galen felt anxiety like a live animal clawing at his chest. He infinitely preferred battle to this horrible balancing act between life and death.
“It’s as clean as I can make it,” said Piper finally. “If there’s some fragment lying up against the artery that’s going to kill him, I can’t see it. Hold his leg and pull when I tell you, and we’ll get the bone set.”
This bit, at least, Galen had done before. He hauled the gnole’s leg straight when told and maneuvered as needed. Piper had to stop partway through and feel Earstripe’s other leg to check something. Judging by the almost inaudible cursing, gnoles were built just differently enough to take years off the life of any human attempting to administer first aid to them.
“There,” said Piper, at least an hour later, straightening up. Earstripe’s leg was shaved to the skin in a thick line, layered with dressings. There was a shorter, matching line on the other side where the bolt had come out, and a splint along the side. “It’s in the hands of the gods now.”
“He’s still alive,” said Galen. “You’ve done wonders.”
The doctor looked up at him wearily. The circles under his eyes were as dark as bruises. “I may have killed him trying to save him. The infection will likely be massive, even with honey and alcohol to treat it. He’s going to run a fever and I have no idea what to give him for it. Even if I had my kit, the treatments I’d use on a human might kill a gnole outright.”
“Are we that different?”
“Physically? We might be. Pigs can eat things that would poison a human. Humans eat things that would kill dogs. If I tried to give him something as simple as willowbark for the fever, it might kill him. I just don’t know.” His voice broke on the last word, and Galen wondered how he’d ever thought that Piper stifled his passions.
Obviously he was just saving them for the important things.
There was a smear of blood on his cheekbone. Galen wanted to wipe it away, but it somehow felt like a greater intimacy than stroking the man’s cock had been. That had only been sex, after all. It couldn’t compare to keeping a vigil over the body of a friend.
He did it anyway, with the pad of his thumb. “What do you need?” he asked.