“Does it matter? You're the one who woke me,” he chided. “Let me do my job. You know it won't kill me.” His hand pressed a little harder on my forehead but not enough to hurt me. I could almost feel the pain starting to ebb away as he hummed soft, tuneless notes.
It wasn't long before I realized that the pain was receding. My face felt less swollen, the itchy cuts that covered my arms and legs no longer bothered me, and my sore chest and stomach relaxed into blissful normality. At the same time, I watched as the Medicine Man's face started to contort and bloat. Angry red lines opened on his arms, and his eyes narrowed as he stifled a groan of pain. Almost as fast as the injuries mysteriously blossomed on him, though, they faded away and left him looking the same as when he walked in.
When he finally removed his hand from my brow, I felt better than I had before Hawke and I had entered the Madness. I sat up, looking over myself, but couldn't find the smallest hint of the punishment the demon had inflicted on me.
“What did you do?” was all I could manage to say, still amazed over my recovery. The Medicine Man, however, collapsed onto his backside, sighing as he massaged his temple.
“That never gets easier, no matter how many times I do it,” he complained. “But it's always worth it to see what a difference it makes.”
At that moment, Hawke staggered into the tent. He looked far worse off than I had originally thought now that I could see him clearly. Bloodshot eyes darted around inside a face pale and slack, his hair matted with sweat. He gasped in pain, clutching at his bandaged arm. Even from a distance, I could see the blood and pus oozing through the wrappings and down his arm. When his eyes landed on the Medicine Man, he took a deep breath.
“It's you, isn't it? I knew I felt the pull coming from here. You have a piece of my essence.”
I looked to the healer, surprised. Was he really like Claudio and Apollo and the demon Scab Kahlot? Was he going to fight against Hawke like those others?
The Medicine Man dragged himself to the feet with Jo's help, his gaze fixed on Hawke. “That blonde hair, those glasses…it really is you. Lord Hawke has really returned.”
Hawke took a step back at the name as if attacked. “I'm surprised you could recognize me so easily.”
“How could I not?” The healer stepped forward slowly as he spoke. “You helped me with your own two hands when I was at my lowest. You don't forget the face of someone who saves your life, and yours hasn't changed even after three decades. There's no one else you could be.”
Hawke reconsidered the man, who had stopped several feet away, then clasped his uninjured hand to his head dumbfounded.
“Lord Ordained? Is that really you?” he managed to wheeze out. The Medicine Man chuckled weakly.
“Now that takes me back. I haven't held that station in ages. People around here just call me the Medicine Man. Or Old Man, for those lacking tact,” he added with the slightest glance at Jo.
“You're looking well,” Hawke said, almost accusingly.
“Much better than I should be. You, on the other hand, look like you've seen better days. I'm glad I dragged these old bones out of bed tonight.”
His words were very confusing. There was no way the man who had healed me was any older than Hawke; not a single gray hair or wrinkle marred his plump, boisterous body.
“What is all this?” Hawke asked as he glanced around at the surplus of cots filled with injured and sick. “You running a hospital out at the edge of the Madness?”
“Close enough,” the Medicine Man said. “There's no end to people who need help in such a dangerous place, and you'd be surprised how much good you can get done with a pack of bandits at your side.”
“So you're a common thug now?”
“I heal the common thugs, as well as anyone else who needs my treatment. A man who serves a higher purpose doesn't refuse a call for help because of a person's mistakes.”
Hawke looked like he was going to retort, but instead, his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell forward. I cried out and bolted off the cot, pushing past the Medicine Man and Jo to kneel at his side.
“Please, heal him! He'll die!” I begged the Medicine Man as I cradled Hawke's head in my arms.
“That'll be no trouble, little one,” he assured me as he started towards Hawke. “He's very lucky to have found me. It's true, I do have a piece of his soul, left to me quite some time ago. I assume you know of his condition?” I nodded.
“Well, it so happens that this piece of him I have contains a miraculous power: the ability to regenerate from any injury and return the body to when it was its healthiest. Just look at me – 83 years old, yet as strapping as I was in my twenties!” He patted his rotund belly and chortled. “All I have to do is give him this power back and he'll be better than new.”
“Wait.”
I startled as Hawke spoke. His eyes fluttered as if it took all his strength to keep awake, but they were firmly frozen on the Medicine Man.
“You have my power to regenerate, but that power doesn't explain why Micasa is perfectly healed. I saw how bad her wounds were; she should be worse off than me. My regeneration can't be used to heal others. What did you do?”
The Medicine Man looked over the injured man before him, brow knit in thought. He took a deep breath through his nose. “You're right, it's not such a convenient power. At least, by itself. I have a power of my own.”
Hawke's eyes widened ever so little. “Since when?”
“A few years after last I saw you.” The Medicine Man's face darkened. “I was tired of watching my patients dying in front of me, one after the other. Most I couldn't do any more than ease their pain as they passed, but every death was another needle in my soul. I prayed to the Almighty that I could take on their pain, that I could pull the suffering from their flesh and bones and bear it myself. One day, as a young woman lay dying from a stab wound, those prayers thundered in my head as I desperately tried to keep her alive…and they were answered.”
Hawke tilted his head in confusion, but after a moment he let out the smallest of gasps. “Empathetic healing,” he said quietly. The Medicine Man nodded.
“It almost ended up killing me, but the young lady had not a blemish to show for it. The forces that be had given me my wish, but it was much harder to bear than I had expected. Now I could heal broken bones or bleeding wounds in moments, but in exchange, I had to spend weeks at a time recovering from the same debilitation. Even then, fatal diseases were still out of the question. If I died to heal one person, many more still would perish without me to tend to them.”
“…unless you could heal immediately from any wound or illness.” Hawke shook in my arms, but I couldn't tell if it was the pain or his deduction that caused it.
“Can you imagine how I felt when this was handed to me?” He pulled out a necklace he had been wearing underneath his robe. At the end of it was a shinestone giving off a gentle green light. “My youth restored, the ability to shrug off any ailment I suffered? With my own power and this, I became like something out of legend. A healer who can work miracles! An immortal Medicine Man! What servant of humankind wouldn't want such a gift?”
Hawke stared at him, his eyes occasionally darting to the many who still lay moaning or whimpering nearby in their beds.
“Looks like you've been slacking,” he shot. Jo grimaced and reached to her sword hilt, but the Medicine Man waved his hand in dismissal towards her.
“You're right. My power is far more exhausting than I ever expected. I heal a person in moments and I recover in about as little time, but it drains me heavily. More than once, I've passed out in the middle of my treatment. The worse the condition I'm healing, the faster I tire. Even the vigor of youth can't help me when it comes to this.”
“Stop!” I cried out, taking everyone aback. “Even if you get tired, please, just heal Hawke! Then you can sleep all you want!”
“Micasa,” Hawke said, “if he touches me, he won't heal me like the others. It's like with the other
s: my power would return first.”
“But then you'd heal like he did when he made me better, right!?”
“Yes, and he would lose that power.”
I went silent as I understood what he was saying. I looked back and forth between the Medicine Man and the man who saved me from a life of slavery as he died in my arms. What was the right choice?
The answer came from a large, calloused hand that alighted on Hawke's forehead.
“You idiot!” Hawke cried out as a flash of light filled the tent.
When all had settled, I looked to Hawke and watched as the color seemed to bleed rapidly back into his pallid skin. His bruising faded to a healthy skin tone, and through the holes in the back of his robe, I watched as the punctures Scab Kahlot had left bubbled and sealed until not a trace was left. His right arm convulsed, and Hawke wheezed as he tore the bandages from it, watching as the last remnants of his infected injury faded to nothing. Aside from a thick sheen of sweat still embracing him, Hawke looked as good as new.
“Damn you!” he panted at the Medicine Man. “How could you put that on me!?” I didn't get what he meant, but the Medicine Man must have because he puffed up in anger.
“I put that on you!? It was your lady friend who put this on me! I didn't ask to hold onto this trinket for so long, but she made me swear to keep it safe! She was the one who said to let no one else use it until you came back for it! If you have a problem with this, take it up with her!” Hawke's mouth opened in shock, but he remained silent.
“Now, you two might be healed, but you still need rest,” the Medicine Man said with a tone that brokered no argument. “I, for one, could use a good nap too. Find them some place to sleep if you would please, Jo.”
The healer waddled towards the exit, muttering just under his breath, “We'll need all the energy we can spare. Things are going to be a lot harder around here from now on.”
Chapter 9: The Conflicted Man
I didn't see Hawke for several days after the encounter with the Medicine Man. The bandit camp was much larger than I had thought, and the more I looked for him the more I got the feeling that he was actively avoiding me. The only assurance I got that he hadn't moved on without me was from Jo, who insisted he was still around.
“Sometimes people need a little time ta think things out, hon,” she told me after she spotted me one day checking inside another random tent on my hunt for him. “Give him some breathin' space, and I'm sure he'll show eventually.”
With nothing else to do, I took to tailing the Medicine Man, who spent almost all his time in the sick tent. When he caught me loitering about while watching him tend the patients, he decided to teach me the basics of treating various injuries. I learned to set a broken bone, how to disinfect a wound and dress it, and what symptoms pointed to what illnesses. Through all his treatments he never once used his power, but his skills with medicine were more than adequate in its absence.
On his rare breaks, he was willing to entertain my questions. “Do you always have so many people to look after?” I asked one afternoon while we ate under a gazebo not too far from the hospital tent.
“Sadly so, child,” he sighed as he took a small bite out of some buttered bread. “You've seen how dangerous the Madness is. A man can find himself broken quickly around these parts. It's why I decided to stay here.”
“Aren't these people scary, though? I thought they were thieves.”
“They are,” he said with a slow nod, “but a simple label is never enough to define a person. They do steal, true, but they tend to prey only on the other bandits that attack those traveling through the Madness. They also help those who would otherwise die in that horrible desert. You and Hawke would know that firsthand.”
I looked into my rapidly cooling porridge, thinking hard. “So there are such things as good bandits?”
The Medicine Man sighed and tilted his head in thought. “I suppose if there was such a thing possible, these ruffians would be as close as they come. There's no denying their experience with the Madness, and they know how to survive and travel it better than anyone. They even call themselves the Mad Riders. Like a bunch of children, they are.” He shook his head, but he couldn't hide the smile that crept onto his face. I decided it was the best time I would find to ask about what was bothering me most.
“Medicine Man, do you know what's wrong with Hawke?”
His smile faded immediately. “The man has more than a little wrong with him, child. He's a good man at heart, and powerful in many ways, but even I wouldn't know where to start to ease the suffering he's been through.”
“So you can't heal him?” I hung my head in disappointment. If he wasn't capable with all his expertise of helping Hawke, who was?
“I'm sorry, child, but his ailment is far beyond my capabilities. Even my power couldn't fix him. Everything I could do for him was done the other night.”
His mention of that night reminded me of something else that had been bothering me. “Who gave you Hawke's power?”
He paused for a second, looking at me. His brow furrowed, and I could tell he knew, but something kept him from answering straight out.
“I'm afraid that's not a question I should answer,” he finally said. “If he hasn't told you yet, then it means he probably isn't ready to face the truth himself. You'll probably meet her eventually if you continue with Hawke, so just let it be for now.”
He finished the last of his bread and dusted the crumbs from his hands. “Now, if there are no more questions, I should be getting back to my rounds.”
“Oh! There is one more I have!” I suddenly remembered. “What is a Lord Ordained?”
“Oh ho!” he exclaimed, raising an eyebrow. “I didn't realize one as young as you would have any interest in the workings of the Holy Tenet! It's been dwindling for years, so seeing children still interested in the Almighty's teachings does my heart good!” He beamed down at me.
“Oh, I was wanted to know because I remember it from The Sandwich Man.”
His smile instantly soured. “Oh. Well, I suppose I can explain it later if you'd like. If you'll excuse me.” The Medicine Man stood abruptly and took his leave, muttering about “damn insipid children's rubbish.” I decided not to broach the topic with him again.
As for the subject of Hawke, the healer said nothing more after that talk. He would only make light conversation about the camp or different uses for medicine, and though I still helped him with his work, I found myself wandering away from his company more and more.
The only other person I spent any considerable time with at the camp was the bandit named Blake, whom I remembered from the wagon ride to the encampment. Ze found me one day as I was sitting idly on a fallen log and watching the various people bustle about as they tended fires and unloaded things from the carts constantly coming to camp, among other things.
“Hey, it's Micasa, right? You want to come help me tend the camels?” ze asked. Up until now, I hadn't heard them say a word, so as soft as their voice was it startled me.
“What's a camel?” I asked.
“You've never seen one before?” Blake chuckled. “Well, in that case you have to help me. Come on.” Ze took me by the hand and dragged me all the way across the camp, towards where Hawke and I had originally been brought in. Near some unused carts was a gazebo that had been erected as a sort of makeshift stables, and under those stood some of the most bizarre animals I had ever seen.
“What are these lumpy horses!?” I exclaimed as I started towards them excitedly. Blake held me back.
“Careful now! They bite if you surprise them.” Blake led me carefully towards the camels, who watched our approach with heavily lashed eyelids drooping languidly. Once we had refilled their troughs with bales of hay, Blake let me brush their fur and pet them while they were distracted chewing on cud. I could have spent all day with them, but Blake insisted that there were other fun things to do in the camp. I grudgingly allowed them to pull me away but silently vowed to weasel a
ride out of one of the animals before I left.
After our brush with the camels, I was feeling a lot more comfortable around Blake, and ze took the opportunity to suggest a slightly more robust activity.
“Hey, ever throw an axe?” ze asked as we weaved between the tents and cooking fires. I shook my head, which made them grin wickedly. “You'll get a kick out of this then.”
Blake took me by the hand again and forced me towards a small grove of trees that had been scored full of holes and large gashes. Some distance from them stood several weapons caches full of bows and arrows, swords, axes, and many other weapons I had never seen before.
“Go on, give it a try,” Blake encouraged. I walked to one of the caches and grabbed a small hatchet. I was familiar with using axes to chop firewood but had never had any reason to throw one. I gripped it in both hands and swung it sideways, sending it flying wildly a short distance before it bounced against the trunk of a tree off to our left and landed with a dull thud. Blake broke into a fit of giggles.
“No, that's so wrong,” ze said. “It does no good if you don't hit with the head. Here.” Ze strode to a different stash of weapons and hefted out a beast of an axe, with a haft half the length of Blake's body and a double-headed blade large as a melon.
“This one's my favorite. I call it the Twins.” There was a touch of pride in Blake's voice. “Now check that tree there.” Ze pointed to one particular tree covered mostly in massive gouges.
With a grunt, Blake hauled the axe over their right shoulder, gripped it with a single hand, and pivoted their whole body as ze whipped their arm forward. The monstrous weapon pinwheeled through the air, filling it with a deadly sounding hum, before embedding itself deep into the meat of the trunk with a resounding thunk. I gasped and clapped with enthusiasm.
“I've never seen someone do that before! Amazing!” I exclaimed to Blake, who wore a wide grin and crossed their arms. My compliment made them turn away, cheeks flushing a bit.
“It's not that big a deal, just takes practice,” Blake tried to downplay it, still looking very pleased.
Broken Soul (The Scholar's Legacy Book 1) Page 11
