This Is Going To Hurt (I)
They were busy, going from one hunter to the next. Doing what, Masood didn't exactly know. But the shouts of pain turned to pleas and then gratitude. He crawled closer, through the wall of pain that tried to hold him back, ignored by everyone. Ma'Tocha glanced at him once, from a distance, and turned away from him. He wasn't dying, so the disciple let him be. It was nearly impossible to get anywhere with a spear hanging from his knee, its point stuck so deep into the bone of his kneecap that he couldn't pull it free. He tried to break the weapon's haft in vain: he was too weak and he couldn't find his knife. Without a disciple's help, he knew he'd never walk right again. The idea of being hobbled for the rest of his life scared him worse than death, and that's what pulled him forward, a few centimeters at a time, over the bodies of men and around dead appalons, through dirt stinking like the blood it had drunk so deeply.
The reddened earth was nearly dry wherever the sun could reach, but it stained his sweaty hands, arms, and legs, drawing corpse flies that buzzed around him, searching for their first and final meal as adults. The cursed pupae lived in the soil everywhere, waiting for the scent of blood to wake, eat, mate, and lay their eggs. The larvae gorged on decaying flesh, then buried themselves as soon as they were fat enough. As soon as food was available again the pupae would open, freeing the adults to fly, their narrow bodies flashing yellow and green, and gorge themselves one last time. Wherever corpse flies bloomed, the birds and small mammals soon followed, then the snakes and bigger birds who preyed on them. Finally, the big predators would appear. This much life spilled all at once would bring all the desert's denizens out of hiding. There would be good hunting here for days.
The first sense of loss came when he found his mount, Sandstalker. Until then, all the bodies he'd navigated wore Kashmari uniforms or harnesses. He had traded many skins and much of his allotted garden goods for five calves, all products of Broken Ode's best husbandman. He raised them all into fine mounts, but Sandstalker grew to be the largest and best able to carry him. A man owed something to an animal he called his own, and Masood wanted to cut a lock from her mane for later weaving. But he still couldn't find his knife.
Sandstalker lay on top of three Kashmari, one of whom was still alive, barely breathing. His leg was crushed under the appalon's great weight, and he'd lost a lot of blood, but the toughened fighter still wasn't done. Masood took the Charger's knife for his own and ended him as the prince had tried to end Masood: with a blade to the neck. He used the same knife to cut three braids of soft hair from Sandstalker's mane, enough for a weaver to work into a new belt.
Masood steeled himself to press on while Ma'Tocha kept ordering his healers about. (He was a pretender, but a good one. Masood scarcely remembered he was otherwise.) He pulled his uncooperative body past more dead Chargers, all his handiwork, and wondered how his hunters fared. If each of them killed only half as many as he had, then … the numbers didn't work. Most of the Chargers had escaped. The fight had gone poorly.
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The first dead Calique Masood found was Sangar: they had climbed trees in Running Flox together as children. Then Gorbat: an old spear who taught Masood to track properly. Baseer: a young man who barely started shaving and was wooing a girl from Emerald Pool. Then Freydoun, Milad, Pouria, and many others mingled with the bodies of their enemies. There were more Calique on the ground than Kashmari. Masood craned his neck, trying to see how many men were on their feet, but he couldn't get a good view from the ground. He crawled closer until he could recognize their voices. Exhausted, Masood propped himself up against the body of a spotted appalon and watched. Every able hunter was helping the healers. They dribbled water into wounded mouths, held men down while bones were set, and wrapped the dead in their cloaks before the corpse flies could get to them. Bulwarks stood at the lake's rim, above them all, watching the desert for threats.
The maul was shocked the first time the saw came out. Two seconds: that's how fast they could take a man's limb. They left the patient lying on the ground unconscious afterward, moving on to the next. There were men among the healers who barely tried to pretend to be women. They wore their hair down and covered like women did outside the garden, and dressed their eyes and lips in Red Tower's women's colors. But they moved like men and spoke to each other like men. Yet, when they spoke to the wounded they were very much like women, and Masood couldn't make sense of it. Were they pretending or not? Couldn't they just decide, and stick with their decision?
"Masood! He's alive!" Two of his hunters ran to crouch by him while the others kept to their work. His many injuries didn't bother them as much as the spear. The bronze point extended through his unresponsive knee, with the shaft still dragging behind him. The point was bent, locking the weapon in place. "We need a healer here!" they called.
"He's in no danger. Leave him." Ma'Tocha stood over all of them, expressionless. He reminded Masood of his father, who was outwardly most calm when he was inwardly most angry. "Go on."
The hunters returned to assisting healers, leaving the maul alone with Pasha Phillip's right hand.
"You've made a real mess of this." The disciple squatted next to Masood, concentrated for a second, and pinched off the spear tip like he was molding clay. Then he braced the knee with one hand and jerked the spear free with a stab of white pain, causing Masood to cry out in agonized relief. The shock of it put tremors in his hands and voice that he couldn't control.
"How bad is it?" Masood wanted all the bad news over with.
In reply, Ma'Tocha grabbed him by the armor straps and hauled him to flat ground like a sack of wet coir fiber. "There's nothing here that won't heal, but you won't fight again for a week." Masood tried to protest, but the disciple wasn't interested. "Be quiet when I'm working." His hands weren't gentle, nor were they needlessly rough. They held a practiced confidence as they laid out the maul's body, straps loosened, boots removed, head and neck straight, shoulders against the ground, hips even, legs and arms extended.
He straddled Massod, hands on his chest, and looked him in the eye. "Your garden will take years to recover. This is going to hurt. Try not to tense up, or it'll be even worse." Energy he'd never felt before flooded into Masood's body, found all the punctured, broken pieces, even in the organs he was only dimly aware he possessed, and set a silver fire to all his wounds. Everything he'd suffered played in reverse, without the benefit of a battle rage to mask the pain.
Masood passed out. Even the giant of Broken Ode had his limits.