The silence didn’t last long. It was broken within minutes by the squalling of the station cats as they were hunted down and sent packing. The arrows wouldn’t kill them — he mice had too few remaining— but they’d be painful enough to keep the cats away for a good long while.

Once the cats were seen off, the tiny warriors raced to the side of their fallen champion.

Fitupitro was the first to reach him. He immediately laid hands on him and began casting intermediate healing, greater. At his rank of twenty, it was the strongest healing spell he knew.

Sharamandro reached him next, and began his own casting of the same spell.

Even with the both of them together, they knew that it was a losing battle. They hadn’t the mana to heal something as large as he was of as many wounds as he had. The best they could hope was to stave off his death for a few moments longer. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try.

Jupitorano and Elonardo arrived together and made as if to cast, but Fitupitro ordered them off. “Find some thread or something, and a needle. We need to begin closing these wounds quickly! Check the stationmaster’s cabin.”

The two of them dashed off.

Luciandro hobbled up, leaning heavily on Meynardo. “Have a care you don’t touch that stick,” he warned them unnecessarily. They’d seen what it could do and weren’t about to get anywhere near it.

“Meynardo,” Luciandro ordered. “Go to the cabin and see if you can find any potions or elixirs. Have a care to stay clear of that rank eighteen. I’m not sure he’s dead.”

Meynardo nodded and ducked under the old wizards arm, pelting off across the station yard.

Meynardo found Jupitorano and Elonardo crouched beside the cabin’s door.

“The big one is still alive,” Jupitorano whispered.

Meynardo barely slowed. “Into the back room,” he called over his shoulder at the other two as he veered around the dead mage and his magic circle. “Find bandages and medical supplies if they have any.”

He swung wide around the other bloody lump against the far wall beside a cabinet and an overturned chest. It rolled its head and stared owl-eyed at him as though it couldn’t quite decide whether to believe what it was seeing or not.

He ignored it as he went up the far side of the rough hewn cabinet beside which the body lay. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. The humans apparently stored their potions differently than his people, and none of them bore labels he could decipher. The lot of them had very colorful names, but none was particularly informative.

Then he saw them. Scattered and broken, a number of empty bottles surrounded the groaning figure of the bandit leader, whose eyes were still fixed on him. Meynardo made a rude gesture, which caused the eyes to widen.

There were still a number of similar bottles atop the cabinet. He chose the largest one there that contained red liquid, the typical color of healing potions. This one was of a deep, almost burgundy hue. Hopefully, that meant a higher order potion. He took it up. It was heavy!

Now, how was he to get it down without breaking it? A quick search revealed nothing on the cabinet’s surface with which he might fashion a sling. Glancing over the side, the only thing that looked like it might cushion the fall was the bandit leader, and he was mostly covered in steel plate armor. “Hey!” he called down. “Reach up here and I’ll hand you down a potion!”

The bandit looked to be thinking about whether he believed what was happening for a few seconds, and Meynardo saw his arm twitch, then quiver. Then fall back to the floor.

“Good!” Meynardo grinned. Then he grabbed the bottle, spun 'round a couple of turns, and hurled it with both hands onto the dirty mop of the bandits hair, where it bounced free with a hollow ‘tonk’, and clattered to the floor. He followed, leaping clear of the bandit, who was now struggling to move his other arm to catch at the spinning potion bottle. Hah! As if! Meynardo caught up the bottle and was off across the floor, heading for the door.

He met Jupitorano coming out of the back room, a human-sized spool of rough thread held in both arms. Elonardo was hot on his heels with a long needle that looked none too clean. The three of them nodded to one another and scampered out into the mud with their prizes.

Bear the Mauler stared out the empty doorway for awhile after they’d disappeared. Did that... was that real? He wondered. He allowed his head to flop around on his neck, taking in the array of vials, bottles, and charms scattered about and atop of him. He’d never taken so much of so many different things all at once before, and was feeling quite strange.

His eyes went back to the doorway. That must be it, he thought. Side effects. Heh. Talking mice of all things. He wondered which of the poorly understood concoctions was doing it, or if it was a combination. Later on, if he lived, he’d have to ask— No, he’d not be able to ask Hurgus, he supposed. Maybe he’d find another, better mage. Hurgus hadn’t been worth much in the end.

It took three of them to get the potion into Jack’s mouth. Even then, laying on his side as he was, Luciandro had to throw a spark at his Adam’s apple to trigger a swallowing reflex and get it to where it would do some good.

“Meynardo!” Luciandro gasped. “Elonardo! Find his fingers! The middle, ring, and small fingers of his right hand.” He waved vaguely about the yard. “They’re out there someplace. If we’re quick enough, we should be able to reattach them.”

This was the tableau that Cable and Tiarraluna beheld as they emerged from the trees beside the road, having left the speedwagon well clear of the camp and come in on foot.

Tiarraluna cried out at the sight of the bloody blue lump in the center of the yard, hiking her robes and racing heedlessly across the mud, splashing it liberally across the white and magenta cloth. His health bar looked completely empty! The only reason she could be sure he yet lived was that it remained visible at all. And there were vermin crawling over him!

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She brought up to an ungainly halt when she spied the small, maroon robed figure in the tall wizard’s hat blocking her way. It was holding a staff aloft, the jeweled end glowing brightly.

“Make your intentions known!” the high-pitched, but no less ominous voice demanded. “You will not approach our hero—”

“He is my hero,” she shot back, bringing her own staff to full light and holding it before her. “And you will not keep me from him!”

The tiny figure took a step back with a gasp, and then leaned forward, eyes going wide. “Lady Luna?” it demanded. “How are you still—?”

“I am Tiarraluna Galbradia,” she told it, chin going up. “And I am Jackson Grenell’s party leader.”

The glow from the creature’s staff dimmed. “Then go to him,” it said, stepping aside. “But do not touch the staff. Nor my people who are helping him.”

“I know full well about the staff,” she growled as she passed, breaking into a run. “I helped to create it!”

“Do not touch it!” he called to her retreating back. “It is the only thing keeping him alive!”

She was at Jack’s side in an instant, barely pausing as the mice made way. “You had better not die, you fool,” she wept with quiet intensity as she laid a hand upon his chest and the glow of Lesser Greater Healing began to enfold him. “Do not dare to die! I forbid it!”

Another pair of mice came out of the darkness, bearing his missing fingers. Without addressing her, and careful to avoid the still-glowing staff, they gently laid them against the bloody stubs from which they’d been sundered..

Cable, meanwhile, raced immediately for the tree from which the naked girls were hanging, drawing his belt knife.

The nearest of the girls also looked to be the strongest, so he saw to her first, and had her feet on the ground swiftly, ignoring her nakedness for the moment. She seemed largely intact and was still able move on her own.

She helped him with the others, who were farther gone. They worked together to cut them down and lay them as gently as they might in the mud of the yard and the rain.

His healing spells weren’t anything like as powerful as Tiarraluna’s, but they would suffice for such wounds as the girls had suffered, at least for the moment. His helper shrugged into the rags the bandits had so recently torn from her while he attended the others.

That done, and again with her help, he got them, one by one, into the cover of one of the open shacks and out of the weather.

He was searching for dry clothing when he found Bear the Mauler in the cabin, slumped in a corner near a rough cabinet and an overturned chest, surrounded by a scattering of potion bottles and healing talismans. Several of the potion bottles nearest him were dashed open and empty. A number of the talismans lay against his bruise mottled skin, glowing softly. Some of them were two deep.

The Mauler wasn’t in much better condition than when he’d managed to overturn the chest. Worse, come to that. Even powerful potions took awhile with injuries as severe as his were. Even left alone, it would yet be some time before he could move well enough to reach the remaining potions or healing aids. Longer still before he’d be able to move or fight. All time which he was now not going to get.

“Well, then,” he coughed, frothy blood dribbling from his chin as he looked up at the rank thirty standing in the doorway. “This’ll be it then, I suppose.”

“Suppose so,” Cable nodded. “Well past due, I’d say.”

“You catch those bloody cowards lit out and deserted me?” the Mauler wondered, his head lolling against the wall.

“One of ‘em,” Cable nodded again. “Not much fight left in ‘im, though.

“You the lot sacked Weilei’s Crossing?”

“We are,” the Mauler tried semi-successfully to nod. “An’ Tullbury. An’ Ch-Cheslisston. Piney Grove. Few others.”

“I figured,” Cable’s voice came flat.

“...the chaos was that thing?” the Mauler asked after a tortured breath or two.

Cable chuckled, though there was little humor in it. “One of them other world heroes,” he informed the bandit leader. “Sentinel, this one is.”

The Mauler’s eyes widened. “Sentinel, is it? Well, now, ain’t that just my luck. Did I kill him at least?”

“Not that I noticed,” Cable shook his head. “Healer’s working on him now.”

“Damn,” the Mauler let his head flop back against the wall. “Well, get it over with, then,” he told the tall man. “Too late t’do it painless or quick, so just get on with it.”

Cable didn’t answer. He simply stepped forward, raising his spear.

“One last thing,” The Mauler asked, staring up at the poised spearhead, his voice calm. “You seen any talking mice about? Wearin’ coats, ‘n’ hats ‘n’ little bitty swords?”

Outside, Tiarraluna was crouched over the still form of Jackson Grenell, struggling to assay the extent of his injuries without relaxing her concentration on the spell. There were so many, though. Too many. How had he kept moving long enough to acquire such an array of wounds?

His armor was shredded, his helm split. The shaft of an arrow protruded from a gaping hole in his thigh, as though he’d stirred it around after it had buried itself in his flesh.

“Uncle was right,” she sniffed around her tears. “You are an idiot.”

A faint shadow fell over her and she looked up. It was a bedraggled girl of about her own age, rain-slicked black hair stuck to her head, dirty rags hanging from her shivering body. One of the captives, obviously.

“What are you doing out here?” she demanded, her voice ragged. “You should be out of the rain, at least, lest you catch your death.”

“Not until the hero is safe,” the girl’s voice was no less ragged.

The girl dropped to her knees opposite Tiarraluna, reaching down to begin undoing the buckles and straps of the armor with shaking hands. She managed to get the brigandine opened and moved aside, but the mail was problematic. There was no way to get it clear without moving him, which was obviously not a good idea. Then one of the strange mice she’d been seeing crawled within the torn mail and stood, holding it clear of his skin. Another moved to the other side, and did the same, giving her room to work.

She settled back and hunched over to shield the needle and thread she’d brought with her from the drizzle. “T-Those animals,” she sniffed as she fed a length of thread through the needle’s eye under the bright glow of the jewel in Tiarraluna’s staff. “They didn’t even bother to search our wagon. Aft-after they’d murdered my parents for it. Just parked it t’other side of the corral. S-so I fetched papa’s doctoring kit.

“That... that awful man, he cut this one up something fierce while they was fighting. He’ll need t’be sewed up, I think, even with your magic, won’t he?”

Tiarraluna was struggling already with her task and the unfamiliar spell, and neither the girl’s talking nor the presence of the strange mice was particularly helpful. But nor was she wrong.

“It will help,” she said through clenched teeth. “The less blood he is losing, the sooner I may begin to heal him.”

Before long, the former captive was tying off the thread she’d used to stitch the first wound. The deep one in his middle. She’d had to sew it together in two layers, like her father had taught her to do with particularly deep wounds, and leave the stitches loose to allow weeping. She’d done it often enough over the past year, although only on cattle before this.

Cable showed up as she began on the second of the deeper slashes, crouching and laying a number of talismans and potion bottles beside the still form they were working on. “Found these in the cabin,” he informed them. “Along with a little girl, tied up in a corner. Put her in the shack with the others.”

“That’ll be my sister, Juniper,” the girl with the needle said without looking up. “Is she alright?”

Cable took a second to answer, observing as she leant close over Jackson Grenell’s body, struggling to stitch him up through the rents in his mail. Raising an eyebrow at her assistants.

“She’s about as fine as can be expected, I suppose,” he allowed. “She says they never messed with her or anything. Just kept her tied up and let her know she was to be sold.”

“Could you find something to cover him, please, Cable?” Tiarraluna asked then. “We dare not move him just yet, and the rain is not helpful.”

“Right,” he nodded and moved off to try and find a tarp or something.