Hareh took the bow and placed one end on his stirrup. When he did so, he realized there was a notch on the stirrup just for that purpose. Then he realized he’d put the bow on the stirrup upside down. The loop of the bowstring that was already attached was up top. He flipped it over so he’d be able to hook the loop to the bow’s notch at the top. Seating it in place, he tried to bend the bow so he could hook the string on the string notch. It hardly bent. Damn! he thought, his eyes going to the teenager’s arms and suddenly recognizing how muscular they were.
Thinking how embarrassed he was going to be if he couldn’t even string the kid’s bow, Hareh lifted his butt up off the saddle so he could put his body’s weight on it. With a heave that nearly dumped him out of the saddle, he managed to bend the bow, then he placed his shoulder on top of the fist that was holding it so that he could free his right hand to hook the string. He felt humiliated remembering how easily Tarc had strung the other bow. Hoping his tremor didn’t show, Hareh held out the bow, “Here it is.”
Tarc twisted in his saddle, kneeing his horse so it turned to the right, “Hold onto it, but for God’s sake, stay close to me.” Tarc let go of his reins. The fingers of his right hand went to hook the string on either side of his arrow’s nock.
Hareh frantically pushed out his ghirit. Men were hiding in the brush on the right side of the road. Oh! And a man was above them in a tree. Tarc has to have known about them for a while, and, Hareh cursed himself, I would’ve known about them too if I’d just been keeping my damned ghirit out where it belongs!
A horse shouldered out onto the road beyond the hidden men.
Tarc slid down off his horse on the side away from the strangers.
Hareh slid off his horse as well. As he landed he found Daussie beside him. He whispered to her, “I thought we were supposed to stay on the horses so we could make a fast getaway?”
Not taking her eyes off the man in the middle of the road, she grimly said, “We’re not making a getaway.”
Thinking she meant they were surrounded, Hareh swept his ghirit around them. Five more men were creeping onto the road behind them. They were at the limit of his ghirit, about a hundred meters back. “We’re trapped!” Hareh hissed with a sense of doom.
For a moment, Hareh wondered what the men were waiting for, then, just as his ghirit showed him the men behind them stepping fully out into the road, the man in front jovially said, “We’re the tax collectors. Lay down your weapons, or die!”
A bow thrummed.
A squirt of urine shot down Hareh’s thigh.
Daussie started pushing Hareh’s gelding forward.
Hareh’s ghirit showed him the men behind them were loping up the road.
The man in the tree was falling.
Screams were coming from the hidden men in the brush on the right.
The horse of the man in the road suddenly twisted its head and arched its neck. It staggered to their left, crashing into the brush and throwing its rider. Hareh’s last glimpse of it showed all four hooves flailing off the ground as the beast upended into a stand of small saplings.
Then Hareh’s eyes were distracted by several men staggering out of the brush on the right. By the way they sprawled, Hareh immediately recognized two of them must’ve had their equilibrium disturbed the way Tarc had spun the fluid in Argun’s semicircular canals. Is that what happened to the horse too? Hareh wondered.
Hareh’s ghirit showed him all the men who’d been standing in the brush were down.
Suddenly he remembered the men running up from behind. He turned, pulling out his knife.
Abruptly, his knife felt like a toy. The oncoming men were swinging machetes as they ran pell-mell, about to pass the left side of the wagon.
They’d be on him in a few more seconds.
Incongruously they appeared completely oblivious to Eva, crouched under the wagon and sliding the tent’s ridgepole across the side of the road in front of them. The other end of the pole caught against a small tree. Her end was through the spokes of the wagon’s wheel.
Unbelievably, the men didn’t notice the pole until it caught on their legs and sent them flying.
Hareh danced out of the way as of the big blades clattered to the ground at his feet.
He moved his knife to his left hand and picked up the machete.
As Hareh stepped toward the five sprawled men, he kicked away two machetes that lay within their reach. Hoping he looked more threatening than he felt, he bellowed, “Stay on your stomachs!”
One of them started to push up. Hareh used a foot to sweep the hand out from under him, “Stay down!”
When a machete moved slightly, Hareh realized one of the men still held his. Hareh took one large stride and stamped on the machete, smashing the man’s fingers underneath the handle, “Let go!” The man did so. Hareh crouched, grabbed the machete, and tossed it into the brush.
Feeling stunned that he seemed to have the five men in control, Hareh quickly glanced behind him to see what Tarc was doing. He wasn’t fighting. He had a coil of rope and was stalking toward the furthest of the men.
The one who’d been on the horse.
Daussie was talking to the men lying in the trail and in the brush. Some of them were sprawled spread-eagled on their stomachs, others crouched, sobbing, coughing, and rubbing at their eyes.
Eva was walking to Hareh. She handed Hareh a coil of rope. Eyes running over the men at Hareh’s feet, she said, “Tie these guys up.” Then an upset exclamation burst out of her, “What happened?!”
Not sure what Eva was talking about, Hareh looked at her to see what she was concerned about. She’d started moving toward the man at the left side of the five sprawled figures. At first, Hareh didn’t understand why. Then he saw blood spreading beneath the man.
Eva was already at the man’s head. “Help me turn him over,” she said.
Still worried about the other four, Hareh walked all the way around to the far side of the men so he could look across the man to keep an eye on the other four. He barked at them, “Stay down!”
Eva took the man’s head and told Hareh to grasp his opposite shoulder and hip. “Okay, slowly pull him over towards you, rolling him to his back.” Hareh did so, still keeping an eye on the other four men.
He glanced down. He got a brief glimpse of a huge oblique gash in the man’s neck before Eva’s hand clapped over the wound. “Daussie!” she shouted, distressed.
Hareh pictured the guy landing on one of the machetes the men had been swinging so wildly as they ran. It was probably his neighbor’s blade, Hareh thought, thinking the man would’ve managed to keep his own blade away from his neck. Blood had been pouring out of the wound, though not pumping. With Eva’s hand there, the blood was only seeping out around her fingers. This guy’s done for, Hareh thought. I don’t know what she hopes to accomplish by putting her hand over the wound. Then he thought, What do I know? She’s the healer.
Hareh glanced up at his charges again. The furthest of the men was scooting toward the brush. Picking up his machete, Hareh strode over the sprawled bandits and whacked the guy with the flat of its blade, “Don’t move!”
Hareh felt surprised by how authoritative his voice sounded, even to himself. Then he wondered why he was trying to keep the man from running away. It’d be better to let him run, wouldn’t it? As long as he didn’t come back. He started wondering what was going to happen to them. Am I just making them hold still until we kill them? He couldn’t imagine what else they would do with the brutal kind of men these were supposed to be. If we let them go, they’ll come after us, seeking revenge.
Thinking about how Eva’d told him to tie the men up, he yelled at them again while he walked back to get the coil of rope. Striding back to the man who’d been edging out toward the bush, he squatted down and said, “Put your hands behind your back.” The man did so and Hareh quickly lashed his wrist together. Pulling his knife out of his sheath and thinking, This’s about all this little blade’s good for, Har
eh cut the section of rope binding the man’s wrist free from the rest of the coil.
Picking up the machete, he moved to the next man, sitting on the man’s buttocks while he bound his wrists as well. This time he remembered his new talent, using it to cut the rope instead of getting out his knife.
When Hareh was binding the third man’s wrists, he heard Eva and Daussie quietly arguing. Daussie saying, “You’re wasting your time.”
Eva responded, “You want to quit without even trying?”
“He’s lost too much blood. Even if you do stop the bleeding and keep him alive for now, his organs are going to go into failure.”
Sounding agonized, Eva said, “I’ve got to try!”
Daussie glanced at Hareh, but spoke to her mother, “If one of these guys gets loose while we’re trying to save his friend—a friend, I’ll remind you, who was about to kill us—one of us could still end up dead.” Daussie’s eyes were roaming around as she said this. Now they focused just beyond Hareh. “Hareh, the guy you first tied up almost has his hands free.”
Hareh looked over and saw she was right. For a moment he dithered between tying the guy he hadn’t tied at all and tying the one who was actively getting loose. Deciding the guy showing initiative represented the greater danger, Hareh picked up the machete and strode to the first man again. Pricking him in the back with the point of the machete, he said, “If you keep trying to untie yourself, I’m going to have to kill you.”
The man sagged.
Hareh strode back to the one who hadn’t been tied at all yet. He made quick work of tying the man’s wrists. This time he bound the man’s wrists tighter than he’d done the others. Then he went back to the first man and tied a knot around the bindings of his wrists to tighten them.
He checked the bindings on all four men, then, foregoing his tremendous curiosity about what Eva and Daussie were doing for the man with the wound in his neck, Hareh went to see if Tarc needed any help.
By the time he got there, Tarc had finished tying all of them and was out in the bushes helping one of the men to his feet.
“Can I help?” Hareh asked.
“Take this guy out and sit him with the others.”
Hareh turned and looked. The men sitting in the road were scattered here and there. “Do you want me to move them closer together?”
Tarc shook his head, “Don’t want them collaborating on an escape.”
Hareh took the man out and seated him two to three meters from the closest of the others. As he was doing it, he wondered again what they were going to do with their captives. If we’re going to kill them, why aren’t we just doing it?
He walked back into the brush to collect another of Tarc’s captives. This time he followed his ghirit to one that was lying in dense brush. When Hareh pulled the brush aside, he immediately saw the man’s hands weren’t tied. Hareh grabbed at his knife in fear, then realized the man was strangely twisted.
And wasn’t breathing.
It wasn’t until then that Hareh noticed the arrow through the man’s chest. His mind went back to the thrumming sound he’d heard at the beginning of the fight. Tarc shot this guy, he thought. Why this one, and not the others, he wondered. Then Hareh saw the quiver of arrows at the man’s belt and the bow lying beneath him. This guy was the one up in the tree, Hareh realized. Tarc shot him because he was a bowman and could endanger us from a distance.
Hareh didn’t want to touch the dead man, but decided he didn’t have to. The man wasn’t a threat. He looked for another of Tarc’s captives to round up.
The next one was coughing. His eyes were red and watery and he was blinking and trying to rub them on his shoulders. Curious, Hareh asked, “What happened to your eyes?”
“I don’t know!” the man said hoarsely. “Something wet hit my face.” He coughed, “Then my nose and eyes were on fire. I couldn’t breathe. When I tried to take a breath it set my throat on fire. I couldn’t see. It was horrible.”
Daussie splattered him with a drop of cayenne pepper extract, Hareh realized, thinking about how this was something he was supposed to be able to do himself. I didn’t think it sounded like much of a weapon when Daussie just made me sneeze, he thought with sudden respect, but it sure took this guy out of the fight.
Hareh frowned, thinking about how Daussie had taught him to port stuff from one stationary location to another. Why would this guy say it “hit” him in the face? His first reaction was that he needed to ask Daussie how she’d done it. But he was tired of asking the girl so many questions. He stood puzzling over it for a moment. I wonder if she ported it to a spot that was moving toward the guys face?
Hareh bent over and picked up a small pebble. Grasping it with his ghirit, he ported it to an imaginary spot that was traveling rapidly toward a tree trunk about ten meters away. With a feeling of great satisfaction, he saw the pebble appear in the air about a half-meter from the tree, flying on to strike hard against the trunk and bounce away.
When he and Tarc had moved all the men out in the road and rechecked their bindings, they walked down to see what Eva and Daussie were doing.
To Hareh’s astonishment, Eva was holding a curved needle in a small silver gripper tool that looked like little pliers. She was passing the needle in and out of the bloody mess of the man’s neck wound, cinching down a thread being pulled by the needle. The thread pulled the wound’s tissues together. She wasn’t touching either the needle or the thread with her hands, instead, she was using another little pliers-like device to grasp the needle once it had been pushed through the tissue and came out the other side. The second pliers pulled the needle out while the first one went back to tighten up the thread.
How does she even know what she’s sticking the needle into? Hareh wondered. Then he kicked himself. She’s using her ghirit to see what’s beneath the blood!
Hareh glanced at Daussie. She was on her knees, bent over near the man’s hip as if she were praying. Deciding that was uninteresting, Hareh leaned down to get his head close enough so his ghirit could better show him what Eva was doing.
Sure enough, the needle passed unerringly down into the blood, stuck itself in one bit of tissue and pulled it towards another bit of tissue that the needle subsequently passed through. Then the needle was grasped by the second small pliers and pulled up out of the wound, cinching the tissue together. His ghirit showed him the deeper layers of tissue had already been sewn together. He quietly asked, “Can I ask questions?”
Eva nodded, “As long as they don’t have to do with why I’m trying to save this guy’s life.”
“I was wondering how you stopped the bleeding.”
“He was bleeding from the jugular vein, a large blood vessel in the front of the neck. It can bleed a lot but it isn’t under a high pressure like an artery. So, I held pressure on the vein until Daussie could get me this needle and suture kit—”
“Sorry, held pressure?”
“Pushed on it hard enough to squeeze the vein shut and stop the bleeding.”
“But doesn’t a vein have to have blood flowing through it? Isn’t it bad to pinch it off?”
Eva shrugged, “The blood just makes its way back to the heart through other veins.”
Though he didn’t really understand, Hareh was too confused to ask another question. After a moment Eva continued. “Once I was ready to suture, I had Daussie put pressure on the vein higher in the neck and lower in the neck—above and below the wound—collapsing it in both locations so it was empty and barely bleeding where it’d been cut. Then I put some suture in the walls of the vein and more suture to hold the tissue together that’s just around the vein. Now I’m sewing up the tissue just under the skin. I’ll sew the skin next.”
Hareh’s ghirit found the big vein with the stitches in it. He was wondering whether he’d ever be able to do something like that. “The vein’s narrower where it’s been sewn up,” he said. “Is that a problem?”
“Not as much of a problem as bleeding to death,” Eva s
aid dourly. She looked over the rest of her patient, “Though Daussie may be right. He may have lost enough blood his organs’ll fail and he’ll die anyway. Or, since machetes are usually filthy, this wound in his neck could get infected and he’ll die from that.” She kept sewing a minute or so, then said, “Since you’re a teleporter, you should go down and learn what Daussie’s doing. She’s the one who’s saving this guy’s life at present.”
Speaking in a near whisper, Hareh said, “She isn’t praying?”
“No,” Eva said with a little laugh, “she’s teleporting sterile saline into his femoral vein in an effort to replace some of his blood loss.”
“Sterile?”
Eva sighed, “You have so much to learn, don’t you? ‘Sterile’ means all of the germs in the saline have been killed so they won’t cause an infection.”
“Saline?”
Eva gave another little laugh, “Saltwater. Water with the same amount of salt in it that blood has. She’s porting it into his bloodstream out of that big jug she’s kneeling over. And, no, saltwater isn’t as good as blood. Ideally, we’d give him blood from someone else. But, so far we haven’t learned how to test blood to make sure it’s the right type. People have different types of blood. You can only give someone blood from someone who has the same type. If you give them the wrong type of blood it’ll kill them almost immediately.”
“How many types are there?”
Eva snorted, “You’re the man of a thousand questions. Go bug Daussie a little while. Get her to show you what she’s doing and see if you can do some of it.”
Once Hareh knelt beside Daussie, she started explaining before he asked any questions. Obviously, she’d been listening to what Eva’d been telling him. She said, “Now, what you’re going to want to do is a one-way port. You want to move saline into his vein, you do not want to move any blood out of him and back into the jug, right?”
Hyllis Family 06 - Sisters Page 12
