We all blinked painfully as we emerged into the sunlight.
“Ah! No. No!” Makanna said, covering her eyes. “C’mere, I’ll… you know. Here,” she said as she waved the two others in.
The humans gathered. There was a pulse from Makanna, then she seemed to draw that golden glow out of them, and they all blinked a few times and then were fine in the light. She’d undone whatever spell she had cast when they went in.
It was around noon, judging by the sun. We had entered the mine in the morning, so the whole thing had taken at most four or five hours. It felt like it had been much longer, though, and everyone looked as tired as I felt. My injuries ached, too, especially my head wound. At least the woozyness had passed quickly.
“The job is done, and well done at that,” Valmik said a few minutes later. We were all inside the administrative building. I hadn’t exactly been invited, but neither had they said anything when I came inside.
“A far worse outcome was possible, and almost came to pass,” he continued. “You have our thanks, Lady Draka.”
“Yeah, well, de nada,” I said. “I mean, you’re welcome.”
“Only, well,” Herald cut in, “you were there last night too, right? That was you in the dark.”
“Oh, yeah, it was,” I replied. I had a feeling that I knew what was coming.
“So, why? How did you know we needed help?”
There it was.
“Well,” I started, and stopped. I was not going to tell them that I’d stalked them for a whole day. I was pretty embarrassed about that, to be honest. It had felt like a good idea, and obviously it had worked out pretty well, but now that I actually knew something about these people I felt just plain bad about how I’d gotten here. Still, I figured that being selective with the truth was better than lying.
“I saw you on the road,” I admitted, “and heard some of your conversation. It sounded like you were in over your heads. I thought you might need some help.”
“Right,” Herald said, “but–”
“And,” I continued, “I thought you would be willing to make it worth my time.” There. I’d read about con-artists. I knew the drill. Kind of. Always give them a good, selfish motivation. Even better if it’s true.
“Oh,” Herald said. She seemed satisfied with that. No disappointment, no, ‘I hoped you were better than that.’ They were basically short-term contract mercenaries, and they understood taking a chance to make a buck.
“And fortune was with us that you did,” Valmik said. “Death by ambush was certain otherwise. Instead we took only relatively light injuries, most of which are healed already.”
“About that,” I said and touched my head. I should not have done that. I hissed and pulled my hand away. “You said that Makanna could do something about this, maybe?”
“Perhaps. But rest is needed, and food. To put it simply, she is drunk and starved from the potion. She needs focus and energy to attempt a spell like that. You also will need to eat, to fuel the accelerated healing should it work. We brought rations, but…” He trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
“But you didn’t plan for guests. I get it. Don’t worry. I ate a lot a couple of days ago, and that should keep me going for another couple of days. I guess I’ll get hungry earlier, that’s all. But what I’m hearing is that it’ll be a while.”
Herald was forcing Makanna to drink from a water skin. Makanna was protesting loudly between gulps, but she obediently drank everything Herald poured in her. It looked like this wasn’t the first time Herald had taken care of her sister, and I wondered if it was always healing potion related or if young women here liked to party as much as me and my girlfriends back home.
“Mak,” Herald said with authority, “needs to eat, and then sleep the potion off. It will be a few hours.”
“‘m tired,” Makanna confirmed. It was the middle of the day and she had one hell of a drunk going, but it looked like those potions really drained you. So Herald and Valmik forced a considerable amount of bread, cheese, and fruit into Makanna, and then Herald put her to bed in the foreman’s bedroom.
I could hear snoring almost as soon as Herald exited the room. Herald and Valmik had some lunch while I relaxed on the floor, and then I asked Valmik to help me with the loot while Herald kept an eye on her sister.
I dumped all the belts on a table. Getting the very literal weight off my shoulders was a relief. “I could just tear all the bags open,” I explained while showing off my claws, “but I’m going to need to be able to take the good stuff with me somehow.”
“I understand,” he said. “Bags must be opened, and contents sorted and repacked.”
“Right. Except I can’t really…” I tried to untie a bag and failed, my thick, clawed digits not being nearly as clever as my old fingers. “You see the problem.”
Valmik nodded and started untying bags from the belts. “Just get the bags loose before we take anything out,” I told him. “I can smell that you won’t like what’s in some of them.”
“In all honesty, Lady Draka, the smell is noticeable. I had not wanted to say anything.”
When he’d gotten all the bags off the belts I gathered the ones that smelled like death and dumped them outside, a distance from the house. Some of them opened up when I dropped them, and a rotten human hand missing two fingers fell out of one of them, an ear from another. That made me feel much less bad about not feeling bad for killing the gremlins.
Back inside I put all the bags that smelled delicious in one pile, and all the ones that didn’t smell like anything in particular in another. Since we still had a long time before Makanna would be rested, I started with the less interesting pile. Those bags mostly contained what could best be described as knick-knacks and baubles. Pretty rocks of no value, pieces of metal like nails or a belt buckle, buttons, things like that. But there were also a few useful things, most interesting among them a tinder box complete with a piece of fool’s gold and flint. I wasn’t sure if I could use them, but I could sure try. I kept that for myself and left the rest to the others if they wanted it.
Then came the good stuff. I emptied all the bags in a pile on the table, and smiled at what I saw. The boss, of course, had the most and best pieces, but almost every gremlin had at least one and usually more pieces of silver. Jagged, square, thready or lumpy, many of them were melded with pieces of stone, or lumps or crystals of some other metal. I didn’t care that it wasn’t pure, shiny silver. They looked and smelled wonderful. As I looked at them, handled them and smelled them, my aches disappeared for a while. I tried to estimate how much there was, and taking the stones and other metals into consideration I estimated that I had between three and four kilos of silver here. I was almost giddy with excitement, and had to fight the impulse to take it all right now, somehow, and fly back to my cave to add it to the box of gold coins. But I forced myself to be patient. I could hopefully get some medical attention here, and I wanted to talk some more to the adventurers.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Valmik helped me gather all the silver and the tinder box in a few of the largest bags, and then tied them to a double loop of rope that he sized to my neck. It was considerably lighter without all the junk and I wore it from then on, even if a couple of kilos around your neck is not nothing.
I had gained treasure and experience here, but the third big gain was that I had actually gotten to spend a few hours with people, talking and doing stuff with them. After almost two weeks of one meeting that was lost in translation, and one with a rude child, spending a little time with Valmik and Herald had reminded me how much I missed having people around. Makanna didn’t really count yet, since she’d been so blitzed for most of it that I wasn’t sure if she’d even recognize me when she woke up. She had been pretty damned drunk.
It had been nice to see Herald taking care of her big sister. I wondered if anyone was taking care of me. Which of my friends and family would visit me at the hospital, if that was where I was? My roomie Andrea for sure, and my big brother David would probably show up once a week at least… I pushed those thoughts down. It hurt a lot, and I was not prepared to start crying in front of these people. The dragon does not blubber.
----------------------------------------
We rested. I went back to the tree I had spent the night in and enjoyed the gentle swaying as I napped. I guessed that Herald and Valmik ate and took care of their equipment, and probably talked about me. It didn’t seem arrogant to assume that. Hopefully they wouldn’t try anything. Except for the silver they didn’t have much to gain from attacking me, anyway. If they did… The smart thing to do would be to kill them, but there was no way I’d even try. I had my treasure on me. If I had to, I’d do the least harm I could and fly away. It wasn’t like they could stop me. And, greed-induced paranoia aside, I couldn’t see them doing that. They didn’t seem like the kind of people to turn on someone who had bled with them.
I managed to sleep in fits, but my head was burning, flies were buzzing around, and I was getting worried. It was a huge relief when I heard Herald calling for me from the building.
Herald held the door open for me and I entered carefully. “Does she remember this morning?” I asked her. “She doesn’t have her spear or anything near her, does she?”
“No worries,” Herald said. “She knows that you are coming.”
“She was supposed to know I was coming last time, and she nearly broke my nose,” I reminded her.
“You do not have a nose.”
“You know what I mean. It hurt. She got a good swing in!”
Herald actually rolled her eyes at me. “I will go in first,” she said, and walked into the bedroom. I followed, and when I saw Herald sitting on the bed between Makanna and myself I entered.
Makanna was sitting up against the wall, a blanket over her legs. When she saw me come in her eyes got a little bigger and her mouth a little tenser, but there was no other reaction.
“Hey,” I said lamely. “How’s your head? And your gut, I guess.”
“Mercies bless the alchemists for healing potions, and the Sorrows take them for not dealing with the hangovers. I think I have rocks grinding together in my brain. At least the drunk passes quickly. But I’m alive and likely to stay that way, thank you.”
She paused for a moment. “I thought I dreamed you, you know? When Herald told me what to expect I thought she was having me on. But here you are. Draka, right?”
“Here I am,” I agreed. “And yeah, Draka is right. And you’re Makanna. Think you can do anything about this?” I turned my head to show her and heard her hiss in sympathy. I’d not seen the wound myself, but from the humans’ reactions it was probably as bad as it felt.
“Let’s go in the common room, shall we?” Makanna suggested, and I backed out through the door. The bedroom was small enough that there wasn’t room for me to turn easily.
Makanna’s loose trousers and shirt were stained and crusty with blood, and there was a cut a hand long in the fabric around her waist. Either they hadn’t planned for a change, or Herald hadn’t wanted to go through with the ordeal of getting a drunk woman into a clean set of clothes. I guessed this was just a situation that came up sometimes, because no one seemed bothered.
“You should relax,” Makanna told me. “Would you sit or lie down, please?”
I obediently lay down with my head resting on the floor.
“This is going to sting,” Makanna warned, and then it hurt like hell when she started washing the blood off. I hissed and tensed my neck, forcing myself to keep my head in place. I had enough experience getting patched up by my parents, and later my friends, that I was pretty good at suffering the consequences of my behaviour with minimum fuss.
“I’m sorry,” Makanna said. “I need to see the wound, and get as near it as I can.”
“No worries,” I choked out. “At least you don’t have any damned peroxide.”
Makanna didn’t answer but clearly took that as assent to keep going. An eternity of pain later I felt a soft cloth drying my eye and the side of my head.
“Oh, hells, that’s nasty,” Makanna said under her breath.
“Not being very reassuring there, nurse,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, ”it’s just… I’ll see what I can do. I need you to keep still and relax now. I need to touch the wound, which will hurt, but otherwise it should be painless.”
I did as she said. I looked up at her as she herself settled in on her knees next to me. She gently put one hand on each side of my horn, then closed her eyes and relaxed, her breathing becoming deep and regular. Her lips moved, almost completely silently, and I could see the glow gathering in her chest. It was like a small ball of yarn, growing layer by layer as barely visible strands came in from every part of her, hovering right where her heart would be. I wondered if the magic travelled through the blood, somehow. The strands looked like they might be following her veins, so if it was going to gather anywhere the heart made sense.
Her lips stopped moving. Then she whispered, “Be whole!” and the ball swirled and several layers came off it, drifting out to and down her arms until I couldn’t see it anymore. I felt a pressure, but for a moment nothing happened, and I saw Makanna screw her face up in concentration as she pushed more light into her hands. The pressure built gradually, and it felt like something popped. The effect was like getting a shot of anaesthetic: first a sting, and then a slow, welcome numbness, a wonderful absence of pain. The difference was that here the numbness faded quickly, but the pain never returned.
It was pretty awesome!
“Wow,” I breathed in wonder. “That was great.”
Makanna sighing wearily, then chuckled. “Wasn’t it? Stay there and I’ll look at your side and back, too.”
She repeated the process for my other wounds, a deep puncture in my side and two long, shallower cuts in my back. When she was finished she sat back against the wall, panting and obviously exhausted.
“It’s not instant,” she warned me between breaths. “There should be no pain or fouling, but the wounds will need a few hours to heal properly. You might get pretty hungry, and tired. The healing will eat your body if there is nothing else to draw on.”
“Understood, doc,” I told her. “And thank you. That was amazing.”
“Happy to help, especially after you helped us.” She smiled, but looked pretty wrung out..
“Healing really takes it out of you, huh?”
“It really does. The healing itself comes from the patient, but it must be started by the one casting the spell. It’s not perfect. It will leave scars, and much more powerful forms than I know are needed for lost limbs or other parts. But it saves lives and relieves pain, so it’s worth getting a little tired. I really had to push this time, though. You,” she pointed at me, her voice rising in mock accusation, “have some magic resistance.”
That was news to me. Was that a good thing? I wanted to ask, but just looked back at her enigmatically.
Herald and Valmik had been sitting in their chairs, watching silently. Now Herald got up, and brought Makanna even more food. “Here,” Herald said. “Eat up. Val and I can do half rations tonight. I’ll get you some water, and then it’s back to bed for you.”
Makanna accepted the food without argument. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, little sister,” she said, clapping Herald on the calf.
Herald shrugged. “Most likely, drown in a puddle of your own sick. Now, eat before you pass out!”
While Herald made sure that Makanna ate everything she’d been given, and Valmik went back to taking care of their gear, I excused myself and returned to the tree. The healing was already making me tired, and I needed a nap. And while they all had shown me nothing but respect, I still felt like I was intruding on them. Besides, the dragon didn’t trust them to sleep where they could easily reach me or my treasure, and I felt it, too. The dragon always leaked in when it felt something strongly enough. I wondered if it could ever trust someone else, especially when something shiny was involved.
If not, I’d just have to be stronger.