Chapter 5. Just think
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Finally, Santelli glanced toward the stranger once more. The redheaded witch or shifter was sitting on a rock, her arms around her head. Feeling the brigadier's heavy gaze, she looked back. Santelli thoughtfully tossed the axe into the air with a flip and caught it habitually. The feel of the hard handle in the palm of his hand concentrated his thoughts and cut off everything unnecessary.
The foreman was not a bad judge of character, and he knew it. Now he looked into the eyes of the tall girl and saw nothing witchly in them. Nothing at all. Wise men say the soul looks at the world through the eyes. Maybe they're lying, but the look does tell a lot. Even the most cunning man, the most dexterous "deceiver", luring convoys to robbers and cannibals, can not completely hide the second bottom of his intentions. The look will still give it away. You only need to be able to look and see.
And the foreman saw nothing dangerous in the eyes, reddened from the tears repressed, half-hidden by the red, tangled strands. It was the look of a man confused, incomprehensible, almost crushed to death by the vicissitudes of life. It was the look of a woman in her right mind but not of this world. It was the look of a noblewoman who had never fought for her life, who had never needed anything, securely protected by the walls of her father's or her husband's castle, behind the spears of his retinue.
There was a reason for this meeting... There was a reason.
Santelli sighed, gathering his thoughts. An inner voice, a gut feeling that the foreman trusted, whispered that a choice could be made now, where on one side was nothing, including bad things, and on the other side were very complicated consequences. Complicated but interesting.
"Hold it," ordered the foreman, slipping the axe behind his belt.
Shena slapped the Horse on the withers, and the cart creaked, stopping.
"I'll get her," muttered Bizo, fiddling with his crossbow.
"Did I give you orders?" The foreman was defiantly surprised.
The alchemist whimpered and fell silent, flashing his eyes resentfully.
Santelli sighed once more.
"Viall, help me out here," he commanded, pulling back the burlap with which Codure was covered in the cart. "Hold his leg."
The wounded man slipped into a half-forgetfulness that was soon to be replaced by the fever that was sure to bring him to his grave. When his leg was disturbed, he groaned loudly, his muddy eyes swiveling and clearly unaware of what was happening.
"Sarge... what are you doing?" cautiously asked Kai, who had lost all his courtesies in his confusion.
"Help," Santelli repeated through gritted teeth to Viall. "Drag him."
Codure was in great pain; he even tried to fight, but the weakness and pain robbed the poor man of his last strength. He only howled, twitching his arms and breaking his nails on the clothes of his tormentors.
"That's it, put it down," puffed Santelli.
Viall returned to the cart very quickly, staggering like cancer. Santelli missed no opportunity to emphasize once again who in the brigade was the bravest and most desperate. He stepped back only a few steps and stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. The stranger stared at Codure, who had been placed halfway between the cart and the stone where she had been sitting.
"Sergeant, that's not good," said Kai.
"Feed your own to some creature...," supported Bizo uncertainly.
Shena was silent, but Santelli could feel her gaze all over his back. Cold and angry. The spearwoman didn't like noblemen. That in itself was all right. Who liked them? But with Shena, the antipathy turned into outright hatred, which sometimes took a very strange form.
"Our own?" asked the foreman half-heartedly, raising an eyebrow sarcastically. "Did you share salt with him? Chopped the coin?"
There was nothing to say. The laws of the brigades were unwritten but hardened like iron by many years, very straightforward and not subject to free interpretation. Codure was taken for Profit, but so far, he had not proved himself, and the brigade did not unanimously accept him - he stood on his own. Subsistence and a half share of the income that's all the apprentice can count on. The foreman was acting harshly, but in his own right, when he gave the apprentice up to the undead. Another thing is that after such tricks from the brigade, people usually start leaving without payoffs. And they were in their right, too.
The red-haired witch, meanwhile, took an interest in what was going on. She got down from the stone and approached Codure, trying, however, to keep away from Santelli, whom she was clearly afraid of.
Lena did not understand what was happening at all. It was as if the leader was waiting for something from her. And the rest of the gang was waiting, too, talking softly among themselves in a language that resembled both English and German at the same time. Moreover, it seemed to the girl that the travelers were no less afraid of her than she was of them. She had to make a decision. Maybe she should have done something, according to the local custom. Or, on the contrary, not to do ... Lena knelt beside the lying man, still away from the leader with his sinister axe.
The man was young and appeared to be wounded. Not even apparently, but surely. The man's already unhealthy face was covered in yellowish skin, like a wax mask covered in tiny beads of sweat. The wounded man was conscious but did not seem to understand what was going on around him. His left pant leg was cut almost to the groin, covered by a powerful codpiece, and the leg was encased in a primitive splint of narrow planks and a thick gray bandage with dried blood stains.
Lena looked up at the ringleader. He looked up at her, tucked his pigtails behind his ears, and smoothed his beard. The look in his dark eyes was still one of anticipation.
Did they mistake her for a healer? Maybe the local doctors... or healers are wearing Manowar T-shirts and denim pairs?
What have I got to lose?
She decided to try and unwind the bandage. It was hard, the knots were tight. A shadow fell overhead - the leader was leaning over a lying man, an axe in his hand. Elena recoiled, but the bearded man simply cut the first knot. It looked like the axe had been sharpened for good measure.
"She's about to start eating," Viall remarked thoughtfully. "Or leaking blood."
The brigade watched the witch unwind the bandage ineffectively, wrinkling and cocking its nose funny. Still, no one understood what Santelli was up to. At last, the witch freed her leg and carefully rolled the cloth into a roll. She carefully examined the wound.
"No, she bewitch," Bizo pointed out authoritatively.
"How will she bewitch him?" Kai reasonably objected. "We're on the ground. We're not down here."
"Somehow," Bizo said significantly.
There was nothing to say. The evil deed is simple.
Elena was afraid she was going to vomit again. But she didn't. After all the adventures of the past twenty-four hours, her perception had dulled, lost its sharpness. Merely the wounded man. Merely a leg. Simple... what the hell... Not simple at all.
The leg looked bad. Not as bad as Grandpa's huge Atlas of gunshot wounds, published in Stalin's time, with big detailed pictures, but still bad. A deep, though not to the bone, open wound ran along the thigh muscle, ending just above the knee. Inside was visible pinkish flesh and even blood vessels, grayish-like twigs in a herbarium. Just looking at the wound reminded her of the paw of a hideous cat with a basilisk's face. Only here, the claw had done more work, though it was just as sharp. But that wasn't the only trouble.
The swelling all over her thigh was visible to the unaided eye, as was the unnatural subluxation of the limb (Lena didn't know what to call it properly). Judging by what she saw, there was not only a laceration but also a fracture of the femur. Again from the scraps of Grandfather's memories - a combination extremely dangerous even for the advanced medicine of the twentieth century. Which here, it seems, is still many centuries away.
Lena rubbed her palms together, shaking off the scales of dried blood, carefully running her fingers along the edges of the wound. Instead of heat, her fingertips tingled with an unnatural chill. Something was wrong here, but Lena forbade herself to think about it. She feared that if she stepped out of her meditative state of concentration for a moment, all was lost. The leader of the gang seemed quite peaceful, but the girl was sure that he could kill her at any moment for some unknown motives.
What to do?
As if to echo her thoughts, the bearded man pressed his lips together and set his lower jaw forward in a look of slight disappointment. She had to think of something, and fast. Or run for her life.
What would Grandpa do?
Her memory threw up an unhelpful and inappropriate memory. The early childhood, an old medicine man who liked to sit in a rocking chair, reading Science and Life magazine. He can't rock - there's a cat and a little kid in the house, so Grandpa has permanently wedged the chair in with screws and bolsters. But he still likes to sit. A rocking chair from the old days, the memory of the past. His granddaughter does not let him read, crawling over Grandpa, like "the wood beast Monkey," as he likes to call her, making menacing faces, but through the net of wrinkles, his eyes look kind, with love. Sometimes, to calm down a little runaway girl, Grandfather tells his granddaughter stories from his extensive practice. Uninspired, and well-written. Then his gaze changes. The old man looks somewhere in the distance, and no one knows (and no one will know), what pictures his own memory paints. The granddaughter doesn't understand half of it. The words are terribly grown-up, smart, but the very voice of the Grandfather is soothing, it flows like a huge river, soft and deep.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Why did this one come to mind? Why?
Think about it, whispered the phantom of the old army doctor.
Right. Now she remembered.
Granddaughter sits on her lap, putting aside a thick magazine. And Grandpa says:
When you save a man's life, minutes are a factor. Often it's seconds. That's why a good medic is trained for years. He shouldn't sway. He shouldn't hesitate. Hands should act on their own. But if you don't know what to do... which, unfortunately, happens.
The girl curled up on her lap and almost fell asleep. But only almost, so the adult tale must not be interrupted. The palm, arthritis-stricken but still strong, gently slips into her blond hair, which in time is destined to turn a bright copper color.
If you don't know what to do, sit down and think. Just think as if there's nothing around. It's hard. The patient may die. But it's better than doing anything.
Just think.
Lena sat down, Japanese-style, on her knees, folding her hands on her stomach, and closed her eyes. She tried to detach herself, as much as possible, from everything beyond her thoughts and memory. There was nothing. Nothing at all. No debilitating thirst, no pain in her arm, no danger, no obvious bandits nearby.
Given - a wound. Deep, nasty. But the guy hasn't bled out. The inflammation hasn't developed yet. She thinks they call it "localized." There's a chill, but again not severe, and it's not clear whether that's good or bad.
Given - a fracture. What to do with it - again, it is not clear, but it is closed, and the bones do not stick out. That's a good thing.
Given - she is not a doctor and has no idea how to treat wounds and fractures. Even as a paramedic, she can't help a wounded man.
It's hopeless.
Well, what if she didn't try to become a medic? She took fencing, hiked, and listened to Gramps. They were taught how to deal with bruises and fractures until the ambulance arrived. What could one do for a wounded person, if only to alleviate their suffering? No, not like that. Wrong question. What can be done in the order of first aid for which no education, no medication, and no special tools are needed?
Santelli had already gotten used to the idea that he had wasted his time. It turned out to be a bad choice. The brigadier had gained some prestige by standing unarmed next to the witch, but that was not enough when you consider the lost time. All that remained was to decide how best to end it.
The redhead was only moments away from being struck in the skull with the axe when she suddenly rose to her feet and began to act. Santelli, in furtive confusion, smoothed his beard again. The girl was very determined, not at all like before, when she looked like a frightened rabbit.
To begin with, the witch (or maybe not a witch?) freed Codure's leg from the bow, looked carefully at the planks, and set one aside. She showed the other to Santelli and measured the same amount through the air with her hands. It seems she was trying to say that she needed a longer plank. The foreman thought it over, and the redhead looked straight and open.
"Throw her a plank," ordered the foreman without turning to the cart.
The order was immediately carried out, carefully planting a pole as tall as a man to push the cart out of the mud. In fact, what was going on grabbed all the attention of the brigade. The life of the "tarred men"[1] is full of dangers, but except for the descent into the dungeons, it is very monotonous. That's why they are so fond of all sorts of bards and other conjurers at the Gate. That is, of course, if they are truly entertaining because if a singer doesn't do a good job, he usually goes back to his land without money and forefingers. But something interesting was definitely going on here, and for free.
The redhead put the long stick along the body of Codure, who had conveniently lost consciousness. She estimated something, nodded to herself, and tapped the pole with the edge of her palm. The gesture was understandable, and Santelli, shrugging, with a single blow of the axe, cut off the required thing. Along the way, he noted how the girl did not feign a shudder at the loud clatter of steel on wood. Whoever she was, the witch was afraid of weapons.
The smaller part the girl put aside, or rather carelessly threw away, as if the wood almost two palms long had no value. And the big one...
And this is where Santelli realized he had made the right choice.
Everyone has a moment in life when they think, "Why haven't I done this before? It's so easy." It's much rarer when the thought changes to "Why has no one done this before? it's just...".
That's exactly what Santelli was thinking right now.
Broken legs were always encased in a bowtie the length of the leg itself. Always. It was done in the military, in orders, in drugstores, in barbershops, and simply in peasant huts. Simply because it was the way it had been done for a long time, and it was obvious. What else could it be? But the redhead did things differently.
She put the short plank in place on the inside of the maimed leg and placed the pole on the outside, all the way from the heel to the armpit. Then the witch began slowly, not too skillfully, but diligently to tape the bowstring with a cloth and in such a way as to leave the wound open. The redhead seemed to know what to do but had no practice of her own, repeating step by step the advice of others.
Suddenly Kai intervened, bringing another bandage and a roll of soft linen rope. Santelli frowned because he didn't give the order. On the other hand, it played into the foreman's hands, so Santelli just made a note for the future. Talk to the swordsman. Carefully, without going overboard.
With Kai's help, things got a little faster. It wasn't so easy to move Codure, after all. But in the end, it worked, and the leg was securely immobilized. The brigade watched in silence, glancing around more as a matter of order. None of them had ever seen anything like this before. The miracles, however, did not end there. When she was done with the harness, the witch ran her hands along the edges of the open wound once more. From the look on the redhead's face, she was surprised, as if she had never seen a simple spell work before. The witch gestured that she needed another bandage and got what she required. Then she frowned and thought for a moment. She looked at Santelli, or rather at his belt, and pointed her finger vigorously toward the codpiece. The foreman's jaw dropped a little, and Viall couldn't help but chuckle.
"Not only a witch, but a whore," Shena summed up.
"A healing ritual, I suppose," Bizo forced out, blushing with restrained laughter. "So to speak, over the body of a dying man, to infuse him with the life force flowing from..."
The alchemist could not finish; the laughter broke out, and Bizo fell inside the cart, dropping his hat.
"Sergeant," Kai said, as usual, softly and judiciously. "She needs the flask on the belt."
"Ahhhh..." stretched out a confused Santelli, but after thinking about it, and decided he probably would have had a couple of good sips in a similar situation.
The redhead, however, would not drink. She sniffed the open flask of bluish glass, dripped it on her finger, and licked it. She didn't seem to like the wine, so the witch shook her head and returned the flask. The emboldened healer strode along the uneven line of the brigade, peering for their flasks.
"Give her a lick," commanded Santelli, but more for the sake of order, since everyone was already wondering what else the entertaining stranger was up to.
Viall joked again about what should licking the redheaded lady, but that was all. But there was an obvious hiccup - all the wines that the tarred ones were drinking were deemed unsuitable for their unknown purposes by the witch.
"Bizo, show her the chest," ordered Santelli.
The alchemist grimaced as if he'd been given dung instead of meat, but he complied. Strictly speaking, he could have refused, and he would have been within his rights. What the alchemist uses is up to him, and rightly so, because if he doesn't work well, the rest of the brigade is free to not take him to the Gate. But Biso had always been afraid of the Brigadier, and he remembered the shit that Santelli had pulled him out of. So he didn't argue.
Slowly, showing that he yielded only to the commander's authority but that he would not allow his valuable equipment to be tampered with, Bizot took out the treasure chest of decocts and unlocked the latch. The redhead scrutinized several rows of assorted bottles in wooden honeycombs lined with straw. Mostly empty - the alchemist had already used most of his inventory on his protracted quest. Then she took and sniffed each one, pulling the cork just far enough so that the faintest trickle of scent seeped out. Apparently, the medic sensed Bizo's nervousness and tried not to aggravate it unnecessarily. The alchemist, despite his obvious antipathy to the witch, appreciated this approach and did not let the redhead sniff the last round vial of "green mist. He took it away and made a scary face, shaking his head.
At last, the witch seemed to find what she was looking for. Her choice was an interesting and obscure-a vial of "dead water" from triple-distilled wine. In this mixture, Bizo infused some herbs, used a shot of pepper to cure colds, and simply added it to beer or plain wine for extra strength. The witch also tasted a drop on her tongue, then, to be sure, took a tiny sip, squinting and coughing. She looked at the alchemist with a mute question. May I? After some hesitation, Bizo nodded. "Water" was expensive, but not excessively, so the brigade could afford it.
But the witch didn't apply the potion to Codure. She applied it to herself first. She rolled up the sleeve of her funny jacket, took several deep breaths, and, clenching her jaw tightly, splashed it over the wide cut. Bizo gave an involuntary gasp - he knew how such things worked on scratches. It wasn't acid or fog, of course, but it would hurt. The witch hissed like an angry cat, and she danced around like a dancer at a fair, bouncing. And then, when the pain had subsided a little, she repeated the beastly procedure.
"It's a good idea," Santelli thought aloud. "You can torture your enemies."
Now it was clear what the uninvited healer, who most likely was not a healer, was up to. It looked creepy, but... well, so far, she was doing rather useful things. The foreman drew a glove from behind his belt and placed it over Codure's face. Kai grinned crookedly, and, understanding without a word, he gripped the bowstring tightly.
And the witch tipped the vial directly onto the wound. [3]
Codure recovered instantly and apparently thought he'd gone to hell. Santelli muffled the howl from his throat with a glove-no need to let the neighborhood know there were people here. Kai was the strongest man in the brigade, but even he could barely hold back a man who was writhing in pain. And the redhead was tossed aside, despite her height and weight. Santelli stepped on the wounded man's chest with his knee and deliberately stabbed him in the forehead with the hilt of his dagger. It helped. The screaming faded, Codure's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
"It's not a cure, it's an atrocity..." muttered Bizo, but Santelli was sure the alchemist had remembered exactly what she was doing. Why the redhead was pouring "dead water" into the wound was unclear, but judging by the bows and general determination, she certainly knew what she was doing. Though given Codure's condition, there was certainly nothing that could damage him beyond what he had.
She poured the rest of the "dead water" onto a cloth and wrapped it around the wound, taking care not to tighten the knots all the way so that the bandage lay loosely enough.
Lena did what she could and stood in front of the ringleader. Her hand, drenched in alcohol (though it would probably be more accurate to call it moonshine), was tearing unmercifully with the claws of a sharp pain. It felt like her wrist was being slashed with a red-hot razor. Her legs were shaking, struggling to hold the girl up. Her arms, too, from both fatigue and nerves. After all, immobilizing a broken femur from memory, without any practice, was not for the faint of heart. And trying to disinfect the wound as best she could, Elena expected that now they would start to kill her for bullying their comrade. She had to thank the creepy "cat," for without his claws, she wouldn't have been able to show so convincingly that she wasn't torturing the poor man.
The bearded man was silent and stared at her, almost point-blank. It was the very attentive gaze of a clever and deadly man. There was no anger, no mockery, nothing to be afraid of. The chief simply looked like a supreme being, absolutely certain of his right to decide the fate of others. And if before he seemed to be a little afraid of the stranger himself, now he clearly looked down on her. Lena disliked the fact that someone looked down on her, even if not physically, especially a man. She disliked being evaluated like a pig in the marketplace, tweaking the balance of benefits and costs - and that was clearly read in the clever, tenacious eyes of the bearded man. She didn't like the prospect of being left alone among a gang of outright thugs with weapons accustomed to violence.
Except that the alternative to the bastards was a wasteland of gray grass, of crooked gray trees, populated by nightmarish creatures. And even the graves here had to be protected by grates. It was unclear whether from robbers or from whoever was buried under the stone slab. So Lena tried her best to keep a straight face and look openly into the face of the leader. Not a look in the eye. That was beyond her strength. But at least not to lower her eyes like a submissive sheep, either. The girl instinctively felt these were the seconds that truly decided her fate.
The bearded man grinned crookedly and tapped the glove he had used to gag the wounded man on his own hand as if to knock the dust out of it. He grinned again and waved the gauntlet toward the cart.
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