Paladin’s Hope: Book Three of the Saint of Steel

by T. Kingfisher

  “Don’t think you can take another hit, tomato-man.”

  Galen gave a soft, ragged laugh. “Then let him shoot me. I’m expendable now.”

  “Not what a gnole meant.”

  “No one is expendable,” hissed Piper. He raised his voice and stepped forward. “Anyway, he won’t shoot me.”

  “I assure you, I will,” said Thomas. “Regretfully, mind you. It’s rare to find someone who appreciates the ancients as I do. But I will shoot.”

  Piper put his foot on the first stair. Galen grabbed for his shoulder and Piper shook him off. The fact that he could shake the paladin off only cemented his resolve. Earstripe had been right. Galen was in poor shape after his fight with the machine. The paladin couldn’t take another hit. Certainly not a crossbow bolt. Piper had seen what a bolt like that could do to a human body. If it hit somewhere vital, it would punch a hole and the victim’s blood would drain out like wine from a barrel with the bung drawn.

  “If you shoot me,” said Piper, “I won’t be able to tell you what I saw. I’ve figured it out. What it’s for. All of it.” Would Thomas buy that? Perhaps not. He gave a self-deprecating cough. “Well, almost all of it. I wouldn’t presume to say there’s no mysteries left.”

  Thomas lifted his head just slightly. The lamplight glinted in his eyes. “Have you, now?”

  “I have. You let my friends go, and I’ll tell you everything.”

  Galen made a small noise of protest. Earstripe didn’t. Smarter than a paladin. Mind you, when it comes to expediency, paladins aren’t known for their wit.

  Their captor clearly considered it. Piper could see him weighing the options, and risked putting his foot on the next stair. Thomas sighed regretfully. “As much as I’d like to hear your conclusions, I fear that you must think me a very great fool,” he said. “If I let these two go, they’ll just come back here with more men. I can’t risk damage to the ruins.” He sighted back down the crossbow.

  “But—” Piper began.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I will aim for your legs. Then you may be able to tell me what you know before you die.”

  “I doubt I’ll be in the proper of frame of mind,” said Piper grimly.

  “I can’t imagine a man of science would let a little thing like spite keep him from passing information on.” He smiled. Piper stared upward. Had a shadow moved behind Thomas? Was someone else there?

  Well, it hardly mattered. No one was going to save them. They could only hope that the other person didn’t also have a crossbow. Piper shook his head. He pretended to turn away, and then, because he had absolutely no idea what to do and because Galen was going to get himself killed if he didn’t do something, he lunged up the steps at Thomas.

  The crossbow bucked. Something smashed into his side. For an instant Piper thought he’d been shot and was just thinking, Oh hell, right in the vitals, I’m not going to live long enough to regret this, and then he hit the railing and Earstripe let out a scream of pain.

  Thomas collapsed. Piper clutched the railing, holding himself up and got an arm around Earstripe, who had moved faster than anyone had a right to move.

  Earstripe, who had a crossbow bolt sprouting from his thigh.

  Oh shit, no, no, if it hits his femoral artery he’ll bleed out right here oh no… Galen rushed past him but Piper couldn’t spare a thought for any of that. He lowered Earstripe down on the stairs and tore at the gnole’s clothing, trying to unwrap his leg. Where was the bolt lodged?

  Hell with that, where’s the artery? If he was a human, the floor would be awash in blood right now, but he’s not and it’s not and maybe the bolt didn’t hit but if I pull it out, I might tear the artery wide open oh god oh god…

  He applied pressure as best he could at the point where the shaft entered the leg. There was a flurry of activity somewhere at the top of the stairs and a metallic sound. It seemed very far away. Did he dare apply a tourniquet? How the hell could he apply a tourniquet when he didn’t even know where the artery was?

  Someone gurgled wetly and part of Piper’s brain said that it might be Galen and he darted a look over his shoulder to find that Galen seemed to have picked Thomas up by the throat. That was all right then. Galen would do what he did best and Piper would do the thing that he was woefully inadequate at, but had to do anyway.

  “Don’t you dare die,” he told the gnole. He’d located the point of the bolt, which bulged obscenely from the back of the gnole’s leg, but somehow hadn’t penetrated all the way through. Had it hit a bone and been deflected? Oh god, it had. Piper palpated the gnole’s leg gingerly and felt the bone move in a way that intact bones should not move. It jiggled, in fact, which was a terrible thing for bones to do.

  Shit, shit, there’s probably splinters of bone in there, lodged in the muscle, and if any of them hit the artery, it won’t matter how much pressure I apply. Oh god, I don’t dare move him more than a few inches. It’s a miracle I got him to the bottom of the stairs. It’s a miracle that I didn’t kill him outright. Sooner or later I’m going to run out of miracles.

  He needed more pairs of hands. “Galen!” he yelled. “Galen, I need your help!” Belatedly it occurred to him that Galen was probably murdering someone, but that really shouldn’t take priority. You could always murder people later, after all.

  “What do you need?” Galen appeared at his elbow. Piper couldn’t tell if the blood was from his injuries or if he’d killed Thomas, and didn’t actually care.

  “I need bandages and hot water. Then I’m going to have to push the bolt through, open the leg up and get the splinters out, then try to splint everything back together and get the torn muscle back in place.” He took a deep breath. Opening up a wound was a horrible idea nine times out of ten and was just begging for massive infection to set in, but what choice did he have? Oh god, if only I’d ever had a gnole on the slab, then at least I’d know what I was doing!

  “Do you need me to carry him upstairs?”

  “We can’t move him until I’ve looked in the wound. He could be a quarter of an inch from losing all the blood in his body.”

  “All right.” Galen went away again. Piper heard him talking to someone and for a minute he thought that the paladin was sending Earstripe to get the bandages and that made sense because of course Earstripe was fine and walking around and would say something sarcastic shortly. The universe could not be so poorly run that the gnole in front of him was Earstripe. Then Earstripe moaned softly and Piper stopped thinking about it at all.

  “It’s all right,” he said aloud. “We’re here. You’re going to be okay.” Probably that was a lie. He didn’t even know what the muscles were supposed to look like when they weren’t shredded by a bolt. He applied pressure with one hand and tried to pick apart the wrappings on the gnole’s other leg, just to get some point of comparison. Earstripe moaned again, but didn’t sound conscious. Probably that was for the best. Nobody wanted to be awake for a bone being set, and Piper’s kit with laudanum and powdered datura was in a wagon somewhere. Hopefully somewhere very far away.

  He was focusing so intently that he didn’t hear Galen returning. “Water’s heating. I’ve got two sheets. What else?”

  “Tear them into strips,” said Piper. “I need…shit. Everything. Tweezers. Needle and thread. The strongest alcohol and the sharpest knife you can find. Honey if they’ve got it. And light, more light. As much as you can.”

  Galen’s hand closed on his shoulder and squeezed briefly. “I’ll get it. The housekeeper’s on our side, incidentally. She hit Thomas over the head with a poker.”

  “Good,” said Piper absently. That was good, wasn’t it? Yes. Probably. Where did he take a pulse on a gnole?

  Galen squeezed his shoulder again and went away, leaving Piper holding Earstripe’s life between his hands.

  Twenty-Five

  “Tweezers and more sheets’ll be upstairs,” said Missus Hardy. “Check the master’s bedroom, and the closets. You’ll be faster on the steps than I
will, belike.”

  Galen nodded grimly. He’d asked earlier why she hadn’t run, and she’d lifted her skirt to show him two heavy shackles around her legs, the skin rough and red and scaly around them. She could shuffle along, but she could not run. Thomas had made sure of that.

  The sight had made Galen want to kill the man all over again, only slowly this time. When he had seen Earstripe knock Piper aside and take the crossbow bolt instead, he had charged up the steps, knowing only that he had to stop Thomas, even if it cost his own life. The tide hadn’t had time to rise. Perhaps he’d outrun it. It had been simple human rage and terror that fueled him—that and the guilt that Earstripe had been faster than he was.

  If it had been left up to me, Piper would have been the one to take the bolt.

  The thought made him break into a cold sweat even now. Even the feeling of Thomas’s neck collapsing under his hands hadn’t been enough to slake it.

  When he had seen the kitchen and the long chain that Thomas had kept Hardy on when she was cooking—“So that I didn’t try anything with a knife, y’see,”—he’d wanted to drag the man’s corpse out of the stables where he’d dumped it and stab it a few more times for good measure.

  “I told your friend to run,” Missus Hardy said. “On the wagon. Was afraid I wouldn’t make it back to the house in time, but I warned him off. The master was suspicious, but I said he drove off on his own.”

  And thank the gods for that. Brindle will bring back help. I hope.

  They didn’t need any more muscle at the moment, but they sure as hell needed doctoring supplies. It had only taken one look at Piper’s stricken face to see that Earstripe was in bad shape.

  He found tweezers and a razor in the master bedroom upstairs, balanced on the edge of the sink. Every other room was empty, the furniture gone or hidden under dust cloths. There were more sheets in the closet, and he grabbed an armload of those as well, wondering how many sheets were required to make a bandage at all.

  By the time he got back downstairs, Missus Hardy had laid out needle, thread, a bottle of brandy and a jar of honey. “Thank you,” said Galen. She nodded, meeting his eyes with her unnervingly flat stare.

  “Wasn’t able to save any of the others,” she said. “Might be able to save your friend.”

  “You could have gone with Brindle,” he said.

  She shook her head. “He’d have gone after. And if he didn’t find me, he’d like have killed you three. Don’t know what happens down there, but nobody comes out but him. Thought maybe if your friend came back with help, they might be able to get you out in time.”

  Galen nodded in recognition of the grim calculus involved and went to raid the rooms for candles.

  By the time Piper was ready to operate, the wine cellar was a sea of wicks and flame. Galen knelt beside him, ready to lift a lantern or hand him items as required. Piper’s face was gray but his hands were steady as he took the razor and made the first cut.

  “Lady of Grass,” he murmured, picking fragments of bone out with the tweezers. “White Rat. Four-faced One. Forge God. Dreaming God…” On and on he went, a litany of the names of gods, repeating over and over. It was as sincere a prayer as Galen had ever heard, and he wondered if the doctor even knew that he was doing it. Occasionally he would interrupt himself to give orders—“Hold the lamp higher.” “Pour a ladle of water over the wound.”—but then he would start up again within a minute or two. “White Rat…Lady of Grass…”

  “I’ve got as much out as I can,” he said finally, sitting back. “We have to push the bolt through and then break the head off. If I’ve missed a fragment, or if there’s another major vein back there, then…” He trailed off, shaking his head. Galen didn’t need him to say the words aloud. Then Earstripe will die.

  Piper took a thimble that Missus Hardy had included with her sewing kit and set his fingers to the end of the bolt. He took a deep breath and then began to push the shaft down. “If he thrashes, hold him down.”

  Earstripe cried out, a shrill yelp of pain, and his eyes came open. His teeth snapped at thin air. “Just a little more…” said Piper. Galen pinned the gnole down, prepared to use his full weight, but he didn’t need to. The gnole’s eyes rolled back and he slumped again in a dead faint.

  Probably for the best. Nobody wants to be awake for this part. Or any of the other parts.

  “There. It’s through. Can you break the head off?” asked Piper. “I doubt we’ve got a very fine saw lying around.”

  Galen felt for the point and scowled. It was bladed and not particularly easy to grab. He had to wrap his hand in the bottom of his chainmail hauberk and snap the shaft. He opted for speed rather than finesse. Earstripe whimpered as the wood broke, but that was all.

  Piper extracted the bolt and flung it aside in disgust, then set to work again. Galen felt anxiety like a live animal clawing at his chest. He infinitely preferred battle to this horrible balancing act between life and death.

  “It’s as clean as I can make it,” said Piper finally. “If there’s some fragment lying up against the artery that’s going to kill him, I can’t see it. Hold his leg and pull when I tell you, and we’ll get the bone set.”

  This bit, at least, Galen had done before. He hauled the gnole’s leg straight when told and maneuvered as needed. Piper had to stop partway through and feel Earstripe’s other leg to check something. Judging by the almost inaudible cursing, gnoles were built just differently enough to take years off the life of any human attempting to administer first aid to them.

  “There,” said Piper, at least an hour later, straightening up. Earstripe’s leg was shaved to the skin in a thick line, layered with dressings. There was a shorter, matching line on the other side where the bolt had come out, and a splint along the side. “It’s in the hands of the gods now.”

  “He’s still alive,” said Galen. “You’ve done wonders.”

  The doctor looked up at him wearily. The circles under his eyes were as dark as bruises. “I may have killed him trying to save him. The infection will likely be massive, even with honey and alcohol to treat it. He’s going to run a fever and I have no idea what to give him for it. Even if I had my kit, the treatments I’d use on a human might kill a gnole outright.”

  “Are we that different?”

  “Physically? We might be. Pigs can eat things that would poison a human. Humans eat things that would kill dogs. If I tried to give him something as simple as willowbark for the fever, it might kill him. I just don’t know.” His voice broke on the last word, and Galen wondered how he’d ever thought that Piper stifled his passions.

  Obviously he was just saving them for the important things.

  There was a smear of blood on his cheekbone. Galen wanted to wipe it away, but it somehow felt like a greater intimacy than stroking the man’s cock had been. That had only been sex, after all. It couldn’t compare to keeping a vigil over the body of a friend.

  He did it anyway, with the pad of his thumb. “What do you need?” he asked.

  Piper closed his eyes and leaned into the touch for a moment before pulling away. “I need a gnole doctor,” he said. “And the nearest one is likely in Archon’s Glory.”

  “I’ll go fetch one, then.”

  Piper made a small noise of frustration. “We’re three days away. You won’t be back for a week, and I don’t know if I can keep him alive that long.”

  “We’re three days away by the world’s slowest ox,” countered Galen. “That’s two days’ march in the infantry, and I can shave time off that. And once I’m there, I’ll requisition a carriage, and we’ll be back in a day.”

  Piper looked up at him with a sudden gleam of hope. “Maybe. If I can keep his fever down with cold compresses…maybe.”

  Galen nodded. “I’ll carry him upstairs,” he said. “Then I’ll go at once.”

  The gnole weighed no more than a large child, but large children tend to be remarkably heavy. He didn’t stagger under the weight, but his injured calf throb
bed where the scorpion-device had stabbed him. He got Earstripe laid down on a couch in the parlor where they had eaten several hundred years ago. Possibly thousands.

  Piper immediately knelt beside the gnole, one hand on Earstripe’s chest, muttering softly. “Heartbeat’s still strong, I think. But I can’t tell if it’s fast or slow. It would have to be faster than an adult human, but what’s the baseline?” He rubbed his face with both hands and gave Galen a rueful look. “Why on earth did I never ask Earstripe what his resting heartrate was?”

  “It’s not the sort of thing that comes up in casual conversation.”

  “It should.” His gaze suddenly sharpened. “My god, Galen. You look like hammered shit.”

  “But sexy hammered shit, right?”

  That got a rueful laugh out of Piper. “Always. And I doubt I look much better.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That tunic really brings out the color of the circles under your eyes.”

  “Nevertheless, you’re not going anywhere until I’ve patched you up. I’m sorry. I should have paid closer attention.”

  “Yes, between being shot at and having to perform medicine on a different species, you absolutely should have made time for my scraped knee. It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”

  Piper folded his arms, his lips compressed into a flat line. Galen had a strong urge to kiss that line and see if he could soften it. “I appreciate that you’re trying to be strong and paladinly, but if that gash on your leg gets full of dirt and you fall down of a fever halfway to Archon’s Glory, you won’t do Earstripe any good. Now sit.” He snapped his fingers. Galen sat, feeling somewhat like a dog.

  “You’re very imperious when you’re being the doctor.” Piper didn’t reply, being too busy inspecting his calf. He heard the hiss of air between the man’s teeth and thought it was probably worse than he he’d hoped.

  “How the hell were you walking around on this?”

  “The Saint of Steel’s chosen tend to be thick-skinned.”

  “Well, his chosen’s going to need stitches.”