Thankfully the bandit group that rode in with me didn’t follow me out. I didn’t have that much food left for myself, so if they did demand I take them, we would be eating gabo. I traveled all day, not seeing any animals along the way. Either the area had been over-hunted, or the animals had anticipated the snow that just started to fall and were in hiding. As the snow started to pile up, my horse had to slow down, and I didn’t make it to the town of Ironsource until the sun was already setting. I paid the stable to look after my horse and protect the wagon, then went to the guardhouse to ask about the POWs.
The Dwarf man that was on duty didn’t seem to want to help me but informed me that, indeed, there was a caravan seized by them, and all of the wagons and employees had been brought here. After the slaves were released, the men were indentured to work on some of the farms here, though one of them did manage to escape before they got him here. Anything of immediate value in their carts were seized and distributed to the people, but the luxury goods and strange potions were just put in a warehouse.
I explained to him my agreement with the Governor, and he sighed. He didn’t like having to release prisoners, but he wasn’t going to argue with a governor’s orders. He had someone escort me to the farm where the men were being held. There was a lot of noise and conversation coming from the barracks they were it, but the manager of the farm let me enter.
The men were sitting around eating. They didn’t recognize me at first, but when they saw the healer’s robes I was wearing their memories seemed to come back. “Hey, aren’t you the owner of that clinic in Starshine? Persy’s master?”
“Yeah, that’s me. I came to an agreement with the governor of this territory to release you and for you to pay certain taxes and bring in certain goods. Speaking of Persy, though, is she here?”
“Unfortunately, women aren’t allowed in the men’s dorm.” said one man, before another punched him on the arm.
“Not sure where she is.” said the man that punched him. I’m pretty sure he was the caravan master, but he’s dressing like a farm hand now. “Robert and Wally stay here as paid farm hands, so they’ll be here later.” Right. Robert was that Dog-man. I had forgotten his name. “Persy stayed and helped with the animals for the first few days, but then she started healing people in town and I haven’t seen her for four days now.”
I nodded. “Well, I’ll go talk with the farm manager and see about your release.” They waved, and I went to the main house. There I explained the deal with the governor, and the manager explained that it would take the farmhands another week to clear the land of tree stumps and stones so that it could be planted when the spring gets here. With the snow on the ground, it will be hard to find the stones, but clearing stumps should still be possible. Unfortunately, they were supposed to be released immediately. The manager sighed and signed the papers.
When I returned to the barracks the two beast-men were there handing out packages to the men. “Ah, Sir Starshine.” said Wally when he saw me. “What brings you out here?”
“I actually just got these guys released. We just need to get Persy and grab the wagons tomorrow morning and we can head back to Starshine.”
“Oh, about that.” he said, setting down the packages. “Persy isn’t actually in town.” Many of the men looked surprised at this. “You see, she was healing people in town when a midwife showed up from a nearby village and said that she needed a healer to treat one of the women in the village that was having a really bad pregnancy. She left four days ago, and isn’t back yet.”
I rubbed my eyes. “She always was the kind to run off to help people. At least the countryside around here is safe, and the crime rate is remarkably low. I doubt anything happened to her, she probably just got caught up healing people and lost track of how many days it’s been. I’ll head out tomorrow morning.”
Wally nodded. “What about us? Now that you freed these guys do we need to come with you?”
“Do you not want to?”
“Actually,” said a former caravan guard, “I don’t particularly like pulling stumps, but the people really seem to need it. And we don’t really need to go with you to just go pick her up.”
“You want to stay here?” I asked, confused.
“As paid hands, but sure. Just for the next few days, until we finish clearing the stumps.”
“And the rest of you?” I asked.
“Well,” said another man, “staying here and earning some coin for a few days sounds better than following you on a pointless trip going the wrong direction.” Several others agreed with him, including Wally and Robert.
With them preferring to stay for the few days I would be gone, I talked to the manager again. With no outside trade, there was more than enough coin in the town’s coffers for the men to get paid for the next few days. I swung by the Healer’s Union in town, an apothecary/doctor couple’s store that mostly treated mining accidents, and offered them some nutrient potions to hand out. The apothecary countered by asking for Essence of Nutrition, so I taught her how to extract it from some of the inedible mushrooms that grew in the mines. It was a fairly basic Essence extraction, but a slight change was needed from the textbook mushroom example that she had available. That essence was the reason you needed an alchemist to make the potion. Now that she knew enough about alchemy to properly extract the essence and make the nutrient potions herself, she offered to let me sleep in her son’s old bedroom.
The next day I got my wagon from the stables and set out for the settlement where I was told Persy had gone to. About three hours later I pulled up to a palisade wall manned by a Minotaur, a Satyr, and a twin goblin men with crossbows. “Halt.” said the Minotaur. “Who wishes to enter the village?”
“I am Viscount Cameron Starshine of Farin, here as a hireling of the church of Keshan.” I said, handing him my documents, mostly the pass issued by the shrine of Keshan and my Healer’s Union card. “I come offering free medical care to all that need it.”
The Satyr spit. “Falin noble. We heard of you. Though I don’t know why she would still want to talk to her old master. She said you’d come for her, but she didn’t say anything about you working for the church.”
“Oh, Persy talked about me? Well, I didn’t used to work for them, but signed up because I figured if I was coming to rescue some people, I might as well heal all of the sick people along the way.”
“Plus it gets you free passage through the territory.” said the goblin on the left.
“That’s true. The only bandits I came across insisted they were there to protect me and ate my food, but they didn’t attack.”
“Fair enough.” said the Minotaur. “You can enter, but don’t cause trouble.” He handed me back my documents.
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“Oh, I won’t. One thing about working for the church is that I have to be on my best behavior.” I put my documents away, thanked them, them had my horse go through the now-opening gate.
The town was pretty small, maybe one hundred and fifty people here in total. I parked in front of the local apothecary’s office, as this town was too small to have a doctor or a Healer’s Union, and started setting up for the healing. As I was working on setting up the medical tent by myself, a goblin boy of maybe seven years walked over. “So, are you like miss Persy?” he asked. “She fixed my broktened arm.”
“Yes, actually, Persy and I learned healing together, and she works for me. How do you know Miss Persy?”
“She and Mama are helping aunt Tulip. Aunt Tulip is going to have a baby, but it’s hurting her.”
I stopped what I was doing. That sounded serious. “Can you take me to them?”
The boy thought for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Ok.” Then he ran down the street. I chased after him, but he stopped only fifty meters away in front of a house with a woman moaning inside. As he couldn’t open the door I opened it for him. “Mama, I found another healer man.” he called out and a goblin woman poked her head out of the kitchen to see me.
“Fancy one, too. I take it that sunflower means the church sent us a priest to heal our sick finally?”
“Actually, I’m just a doctor that signed up as a hireling at the Healer’s Union Shrine in Starshine. My name’s Cameron.” I held out my hand.
“You mean the Cameron Persy talks about?” she asked.
“As far as I know.” I said shrugging. “She works at my clinic in Starshine.”
“Imagine that, a noble came to my house to treat my sister.” There was a scream of pain from the neighboring room, and she ran over to check on her sister. “Acorn, go play outside.” she called as she ran into the room with me following.
Inside the room was a goblin woman that was clearly in labor laying in a bed. The fact that Persy was constantly healing her meant that this birth wasn’t going as planned though. “Cam? What are you doing here?” asked Persy, still channeling mana into the spell.
“I’ll explain later.” I said sending my detection threads into the mother. I quickly found the issue. The child had horns, and one of them had somehow grabbed the wall of her womb.
“The child is half Minotaur.” said Persy. “It’s horns are abnormally large, though, and are getting hung inside her.”
“The gate guard? Shouldn’t he be here?”
“No, his brother, who’s away on a mission.”
The woman screamed again. “Right, well, the contractions resulted in the tip of one horn penetrating the uterine wall. I’m going to have to do surgery to remove the child. Have you learned how to stop labor yet?”
Persy shook her head. “That’s an advanced spell. I haven’t learned it yet.”
“Me either. Well, this should work.” I held my hand towards her and suddenly she stopped moving.
“What was that?” asked Persy.
“Relax. It’s an intermediate combat spell that paralyzes opponents by making all of their muscles relax. It will make it hard for her to scream, so we’ll need to monitor her pain levels, but it should also stop the contractions for now. Do you have any surgical equipment?”
“No, I’ve always used my dagger if I have to cut a patient open.”
“This is too sensitive for that and I didn’t think to bring a surgical kit.” I looked at the pregnant woman’s sister. “I’m going to need the sharpest filleting knife you’ve got. If you don’t have one, go ask the butcher or a chef. Just hurry.”
The woman ran out of the house, and I looked at Persy. “So, I’ll get to work cleaning everything. You make sure she isn’t bleeding internally.” I flipped up the blanket and started cleaning the sheets and the woman’s side where you could see the bulge created by the baby’s head pressed against her, including the tip of the horn.
“Yes, sir.” she said, and got to work.
“So, why was the sister in the kitchen when I got here? Getting hungry?”
“I had her boiling sheets. She’s a midwife, but she had nothing to do and was getting anxious, so I gave her something to do.”
“And how were you planning on delivering the child with these complications?”
“I was just going to keep healing her as the sister delivered it. I didn’t know their was a horn caught in her, just that it was having a hard time getting out, so I figured it was like a baby just having a big head. I figured I’d help her through the pain with a spell or two and keep her healed up until it passed. Which reminds me.” She cast another pain resistance spell on the woman.
“Unfortunately that would have killed the patient, but we caught it now. You really need to work on your detection threads. The contractions are probably what caused it to punch through the wall, but you should have double checked when the pain got worse.”
“Yes, Sir.” she said.
The sister ran into the room with a sharp knife and I switched to sterilizing the my hands and the knife, even running a fourth level fire spell over the blade to make sure no germs survived. “Ok, Persy, you ready?” Persy nodded and I made the first incision.
It was delicate work, and I had to recast Relax at a lower level on her to keep her from moving from the pain, but I got the horn untangled and healed her up in less than an hour. “Congratulations, it’s a girl.” I said, handing the green-skinned baby with a cow face to the mother after tying the cord.
I spent the next several minutes cleaning the blood off of the sheets with a quick cleaning spell. I didn’t cast it at too high of a level due to the exhaustion of concentrating on the surgery, but it was enough to make the sheets look clean even if they weren’t. Once she had enough energy to stand her sister could change the sheets.
The sister thanked us both and shook our hands. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.” she said.
“Not a problem.” I said. “I do need to get back to my wagon, though. Please come by the tent in a little while, so I can perform a proper medical examination and give her some nutrient potions. We need to make sure she doesn’t have malnutrition issues after surgery or while nursing, as that could mean that there isn’t enough milk for the baby.”
She nodded and agreed to bring her sister and the baby by after they had a nap. The healing meant that they didn’t need to recover from the ordeal more than the exhaustion it caused.
Persy left with me, leaving it up to the sister to teach the first time mother how to deal with a newborn. The first thing I noticed was that, while my stuff and the potions hadn’t been touched, most of the gabo were gone and Acorn and another child were in the back of the cart stuffing some into a bag as a woman shoved several into her apron. I shook my head. I was planning on giving them away anyway, so they can take them, I just wish they’d have asked first. There was no way they were going to get equally distributed like this. “I was planning on giving these away anyway.” I said. “So if you haven’t gotten any, get in line and you can have them. Just please ask next time. I might have needed to ration them if there weren’t enough.”
I pulled my backpack out from under the seat and shoved an armful of gabos into it, so that the pregnant woman would have enough. “Hey, Acorn. You want a job?”
“What kind of job?” he asked.
“I want you to give everyone that asks for them ten gabos. Can you do that?”
“Sure I can. I can count. How much are you paying?”
“How about a copper and this?” I said, pulling out a small bag of dried cherries I had brought with me.
“Fruit in advance?” he asked. He’d make a good merchant one day with the way he negotiated.
“Sure.” I said, tossing him the bag. There were probably only another hundred or so gabos in the back of the wagon, but I wanted to somehow make sure no one was hording them. Who would fight a seven year old over such a thing, especially when I hired him?
“Ok, people, listen up. Ten per cusomer.” he called out, getting everyone’s attention. He had probably heard some merchant say the same thing at one point and was copying him. “Get in line. I’m in charge here.” The seven people that were coming to clean out my cart lined up and he counted out ten gabos for each of them.
Persy helped me set up the tent, and soon she was doing checkups on the females of the village inside the tent while I was doing checkups on the males of the village behind the tent. It wasn’t exactly private, but at least the people in line couldn’t see us. I also got a bit of practice with telepathy, asking single or few word questions and getting a yes or no response from the men. It was still fairly difficult for me to encode meaning into a mana thread, but for basic concepts like “Pain” and “Where” I was good enough. The process was supposed to be similar to imbuing an effect on one, but making it a concept and not an effect was the hard part for me, so it seemed more similar to detection threads, which deal with concepts.
Acorn soon ran out of gabos, and I promised him another copper if he passed out shots of nutrient potion to everyone in line, after I explained what it did to everyone, and made sure everyone I checked had some as well. I would leave the rest with the apothecary to hand out when I was gone, but Persy and I were both busy checking out patients so we couldn’t do it. The people in this village weren’t that malnourished, but I wanted them all to have some anyway.
After sunset, I paid Acorn his two coppers and walked him home. “Mama, look! I got a job!” he yelled, running into the house. There was a banging noise in the kitchen and his mother stumbled to the kitchen opening. “Oh, a job huh?” she said quietly. “How about you stay quiet so your aunt Tulip can sleep and tell me about it.”
He enthusiastically told her how I paid him with “candy and some money” to hand out gabos and a potion as his mom picked up a chair that had been knocked over. I explained to her that it was two copper and a bag of dried cherries that I carry because I love dried cherries, and pulled the gabos out of my backpack, placing the thirteen of them on the kitchen table along with a little over a liter of nutrient potion that was still left after giving the rest to the apothecary to hand out. “I figured you were really tired, so I set you some aside.” I pointed to the potion. “I want you to drink a shot of this, then give one to your sister every week until it runs out or goes bad.” Since I hadn’t packaged it properly I didn’t know how long it would take to spoil. “She’s still eating for two, after all.” The woman, who was named Rose, nodded.
One of the farms volunteered to let me leave my horse and wagon in their barn, and the mayor loaned us a guest room at his house. One guest room for both of us. Not that it was a problem. Persy and I had been sharing a room since we were children. The problem was that we couldn’t treat it as a bunk bed because this bed didn’t have an “underneath”. It was solid all the way to the floor. “Well, this might be an issue.”
“I don’t think this is what your father meant when he told you not to ‘bed’ me.” she said, removing her shoes. “Now hurry up and take off your outer clothes. You’re not going to sleep well if you sleep with that coat on.”
Soon I was wearing simple linen pants and a shirt that people wore under their main clothes, with shorts under that. It looked like what farmhands or other manual laborers wore, but they would cover these clothes with a thicker, heavier, clothing made of the same material. Then I had to climb into bed beside a woman that I used to have a crush on. Nothing weird about that. Thankfully we were so exhausted that no anime hijinx and misunderstandings could occur, even if she did steal all of the covers.