Tommy was a dead weight, lost either in sleep or unconsciousness; either way, Danny thought it to be a blessing, for there would only be a world of pain waiting for him on waking.
They carried him between them as well as they were able, heading down the gully. Every two steps Danny looked back, expecting to see an onrushing beast at any moment. But no attack came and after several minutes of descent, the gully showed signs of opening out into a bigger chamber. Several caves dotted the sides and the third they reached proved to be big enough, dry enough and deep enough to accommodate all of them and give them a clear view of the gully such that they would see any attack coming.
“I’ll see what I can gather that we can burn,” Danny said as they laid Tommy against the far wall. The lad was still out, his eyes fluttering wildly behind his lids, but at least the tourniquet was doing its job and there was only a small amount of blood seeping from the wound.
“Release the pressure on the belt a bit,” Danny told Stefan. “If I’m not back in five minutes, you should get on the move, get the lads out of here as best you can.”
Again, all he got in return from the shepherd was a nod, but he didn’t need anything else. With one hand on his pistol and the other on the hilt of his saber, Danny headed out in search of firewood.
Elsa trotted beside him at his heel.
- 10 -
Ed forced himself to watch as Stefan released the pressure on the tourniquet and fresh blood oozed blackly from Tommy’s wound.
“We should bandage him up,” Ed said. “Shouldn’t we?”
Stefan shook his head.
“Let it bleed a bit. You never can tell with animal wounds.” The shepherd produced a canteen from his bag and began carefully washing Tommy’s leg. At the sight of the gaping flaps of skin, Ed had to turn away, his guts roiling.
For the first time since their hurried arrival, he took in details of the cave. The roof was some six feet overhead, a sparse cover of hanging roots providing a dim light. The cave itself was twenty feet or so in depth, half again as wide at the mouth and tapering at the end where Tommy was propped against the wall. The mouth was three good steps up from the bed of the gully and away from the flowing water so was dry inside, and there was, thankfully, no sign that any animal had ever made a den there. Their view was only of the opposite wall of the gully. Ed was about to step into the mouth to check on Danny when Stefan called from the rear.
“He’s coming round.”
Stefan came to the cave mouth and swapped places with Ed. As Ed turned, he saw that Stefan already had the pistol in his hand; Ed had been standing in open view, the pistol still in its holster. Had the beast attacked, he would have been powerless against it. He knew intellectually that he had to get a grip on the situation, for Tommy’s sake if nothing else, but a fog of fear had him held tight and he was having trouble clearing it from his mind. A moan from Tommy got him moving and he hurried to the rear of the cave.
Tommy’s face looked far too white in the gloom, smooth as a piece of fine porcelain except for a puffed redness around the eyes where tears still flowed.
“It hurts, Eddie,” he said in little more than a whisper. “It hurts so bad.”
Ed saw that the shepherd’s bag lay at Tommy’s side. A delve inside came up with the brandy flask, a shake of which showed there still to be some liquor inside. He put it to Tommy’s lips and got an immediate reaction.
“I don’t like that,” Tommy said. “It smells bad. Like Dad when he’s angry.”
That almost brought tears to Ed’s eyes again, but he managed to hold them back.
“It makes Dad sleepy too, doesn’t it? You remember that, don’t you, Tommy?”
Tommy nodded, reluctantly, eyeing the flask warily.
“Just a few sips, Tommy. Come on, for me. It’ll take the hurt away.”
“You promise? Cross your heart?”
“And hope to die…” Ed said, and suddenly the tears were uncontainable, flowing down his cheeks even as Tommy took several long gulps from the brandy flask. The liquor almost choked him, bringing two coughs, but he kept it all down, all the time staring Ed in the eyes; Ed realised he was deliberately not looking at the wound.
“You’ll look after me, Eddie, won’t you? You wouldn’t leave me here in the dark?”
“Nobody’s leaving anybody,” Ed said. “You rest now, Tommy. Have a sleep, and when you wake up, we’ll be on our way home.”
“That sounds nice,” Tommy said, but now his voice was so weak as to be almost inaudible. His eyes closed and his head slumped forward onto his chest. For a panicked minute, Ed thought he’d gone, but putting his head down next to Tommy’s he was able to hear a labored hiss and gurgle of shallow, rapid breathing, and on testing for a pulse he felt his brother’s heart racing at his wrist.
“It’s best if he sleeps,” Stefan said from the cave mouth. “But we need to keep a close eye on him.”
The shepherd sounded grave, and Ed was reluctant to question him, for he knew in his heart he would not relish the answer. He made sure Tommy was fully asleep then went to the entrance to join the shepherd.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he said.
Stefan nodded.
“You have to prepare yourself, lad. Your brother may die before we leave this cave. It’s in the Lord’s hands now.”
“We can bandage him up, get him walking, and…”
“Walking on that wound isn’t an option. It would bleed too much and he’d be gone all the sooner.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We wait. If he wakes up, we will see about that bandage.”
Ed didn’t like the sound of that “if.”
He didn’t like it at all.
Further conversation was curtailed when Danny arrived back. He carried two armfuls of dried roots and dumped them unceremoniously at Ed’s feet. Elsa came along behind him, looking very pleased with herself as she dropped the carcass of one of the rabbit-things beside the firewood.
“There’s another cavern down the slope,” Danny said. “A big one. More firewood and more of the rabbits there too. Get a fire going. We’ll be back.”
Without another word, he’d turned away again, and again Elsa followed close at his heel.
For the next few minutes, Ed managed to concentrate enough to, with the help of Stefan’s flint and tinder, get the fire going while the shepherd went out to the gully to gut and clean the rabbit in the water. Stefan made up a rudimentary spit and by the time Danny returned with another load of wood, the rabbit was cooking over a well-established fire.
“The breeze is going to take the smell back up the shaft,” Danny said, frowning. “But that can’t be helped. The beastie already knows where we are if it wants us. Let’s just hope we gave it enough of a fright to keep it at bay for a while.”
“It did not look particularly afraid to me, my friend,” Stefan said, and Danny laughed grimly.
“Nor to me. But it has not returned as of yet. We must take good signs where we can find them.”
Ed was only half-listening. Most of his attention was on Tommy. He had to stop himself from going back to the rear of the cave again; it had only been a minute since he’d last checked for signs of breathing. Danny saw his agitation.
“Let him sleep, lad. That’s all we can do for him just now.”
“He should eat,” Ed protested.
“We’ll save him some. Sleep and warmth, and time. Especially time.”
“Does he have enough blood left in him to give him that time?”
Danny didn’t answer but Ed had seen his eyes before he turned away. A wash of helplessness in the face of Tommy’s predicament came over him, and again the tears flowed. Elsa took note and came to Ed’s side, offering herself for petting and companionship and for a time, she helped his state of mind. But his gaze kept turning to the rear of the cave, and the tears were never far off.
Danny made two more forays for wood, and Elsa went with him the second time, once again returning wi
th a rabbit.
“You say there’s a larger cavern below?” Stefan asked.
“Aye,” Danny replied. “The breeze is stronger there too. Mayhap we are getting closer to an exit. When the lad wakes, we shall see what can be done about making our escape.”
Ed had a feeling that last sentence had been for his benefit, an attempt to raise his spirits. He wasn’t sure anything was capable of doing that at that moment. He had no appetite, ending up feeding most of his share of the rabbits to Elsa, who seemed none the worse for wear for her encounter with the beast. The same could not be said for Tommy.
The older brother was still asleep, slumped on the ground right at the rear of the cave, which was rapidly warming as the hot air from the fire circulated. His breathing was now punctuated with moans, high wails that seemed to come from deep in his chest, and every one of them tore at Ed’s heart.
“We need to do something for him,” he said, addressing Danny. The old soldier had stood away from the fire and was at the mouth of the cave smoking a cheroot. When he turned back his face was in shadow, but his speech was grave.
“It’s out of our hands, lad. Either he lives or he dies, and either way it’s not up to us.”
“But the wound. We should at least bandage it…”
“It wouldn’t do much good,” Danny replied, echoing Stefan from earlier. “And here’s another thing you don’t want to hear. We may have to amputate.”
That knocked all the wind out of Ed, the word and the thought of it almost too large for his mind to hold.
“Take his leg? No. I won’t allow it.”
“We might not have a choice. Animal wounds can fester fast if not tended properly. I’ve seen strong men taken in a matter of hours. And your brother is currently not a strong man.”
“I won’t allow it,” Ed said, softly, almost to himself, just as another of Tommy’s moans echoed around them.
- 11 -
If anything, Danny thought he’d gone too easy on young Ed. He’d gone to the rear of the cave just five minutes previously to relieve some of the pressure on the tourniquet, and the leg had taken on that grey, bloated look that Danny had seen too many times on battlefields thousands of miles from this hole in the deep. But Africa, India, or here, the outcome was likely to be the same. Without a doctor, the lad was more likely to die than live.
“We should leave this place,” Stefan said from his seat by the fire. “It feels wrong.”
“That it does, my friend, that it does. We’ll give the lad another hour then we’ll see about moving him.”
“We will not be able to carry him far,” the shepherd said, keeping his voice low so that Ed, who had moved to the rear of the cave again, would not hear.
“I know,” Danny replied. “But we may be able to rig up some kind of litter; there is more vegetation and dried root strewn in the next chamber. With that and the rope, we should be able to get something made to lie him on. I am more worried about corruption.”
“I heard you mention amputation to the young one. Do you have experience of performing this procedure?”
“Once, on the battlefield,” Danny replied, remembering the blood and screams. He patted his sabre. “We have the blade, we have a fire to cauterize it quickly. I think I could get the job done swiftly. But then we’d need to get him to a doctor fast. It would depend on how quickly we can get out of here.”
Stefan didn’t reply to that. He didn’t have to; both of them knew the odds were stacked high against them. There were just too many things that could go wrong and too many that needed to go exactly right.
And we haven’t been doing very well on those so far.
The decision was taken out of their hands some time later.
Tommy woke and immediately began to scream, his howls as loud as those of the wyrm had been earlier.
“Oh, God, Eddie. It hurts. It hurts so bad.”
Danny was at Ed’s shoulder as they went to Tommy’s side, and they saw the state of the wound at the same time. It looked almost as if someone had frothed-up soap and applied it to the leg; a white scum bubbled the whole length of the cut from knee to ankle.
“Bloody poison,” Danny muttered, and turned to Ed.
“Can you hold him? It’s going to have to come off.”
Ed’s eyes were still fixed on the wound, and he didn’t reply until Danny shook him by the shoulder.
“Lad, can you hold him?” he said more urgently. “Otherwise, fetch the shepherd. This has to be done now. Even then, if it’s in his blood, we may be too late.”
“What’s he talking about, Eddie?” Tommy wailed, but Danny ignored him. He drew his saber, returned to the fire and plunged the blade into the center of it, leaving it there for a count of twenty before removing it and striding back to the rear of the cave.
“Hold him,” he said, his voice carrying enough command for Ed to finally move. Tommy’s eyes went big when he saw the sword, and he thrashed in Ed’s arms.
“Hold him still, for pity’s sake. This has to be done swiftly if it is to be done at all.”
Danny steeled his resolve and focused on the leg, trying not to think of it as something attached to a human being, trying to make himself believe it was as simple as chopping wood.
The blade went up, came down, Tommy howled, Elsa wailed in sympathy, and Danny looked down in horror to see that the job had been botched; he’d only managed to partially sever the leg at the kneecap. Tommy thrashed like a wild beast and it was all Ed could do to hold him down. Even despite the tourniquet, blood flew in an arc that splashed the cave wall.
“Damnit, lad,” Danny shouted. “Hold him bloody still or it’ll be your leg that I take next.”
The roar of fury from the old soldier stunned both younger men into temporary silence which Danny took advantage of at once. A second strike with the saber finally did the trick. The bottom half of the leg fell away. Tommy wailed at the sight, then his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he fell into Ed’s arms, a dead weight.
“Tighten the tourniquet,” Danny said to Ed. “We have a matter of seconds now.”
He strode back to the fire, retrieved a stretch of root that was only burning at one end, and quickly returned to the stricken youth. He applied the burning end to the stump, forcing himself to hold it there even as the skin turned black and the stench of burnt meat filled the cave.
“At least he wasn’t awake to suffer that,” Danny muttered. “A small blessing.”
He tossed the root away and bent to Tommy’s side. For a terrible few seconds, he thought that the shock had already killed him, then he felt for a pulse and found one, thin and fast but there. He checked the eyes, finding that they were still rolled up in the sockets, eyelids fluttering.
Ed sat to one side, his face pale. He was still staring at the severed portion of Tommy’s leg. Danny kicked it away into a dark corner and grabbed Ed by the shoulders, looking him in the eyes.
“Come on, lad. That’s the worst of it done. Get your head into the present. Your brother needs you more than ever.”
That appeal to duty did the trick. Ed’s gaze focused, seemed to realize where he was, and the youth nodded.
“What do we do now?”
“I think we should move, while he’s asleep. We need to get him to a doctor, and we need to do it soon.”
Stefan was already kicking out the fire and gathering up their belongings as Danny and Ed struggled to get the dead weight of the unconscious Tommy upright.
“At least he’s lighter now,” Ed said, and laughed, a high, frightened thing that spoke of near madness.
“Steady, lad,” Danny said. “Remember, you’re all he’s got.”
Finally, they got Tommy steadied between them. He did indeed feel lighter, much lighter, as if there was little more than a wisp of him left. As they started to walk out of the cave, Ed turned back.
“His leg…”
“Do you want to carry it?” Danny said, rather more harshly than he’d intended. He softened his
voice. “It’s of no use to him now, lad. Leave it be.”
With Stefan and Elsa taking the lead, the small band made their way out of the cave and turned to head down the slope.
As if aware that its prey was once more out in the open, the great wyrm howled somewhere high above at their backs.
“Just keep going down,” Danny said when Stefan turned to ask for directions. “It opens out in twenty yards or so, as I said, a bigger cavern. We’ll see about getting a litter made for the lad there.”
They reached the opening and looked over a wider cavern. Like the others, this too was lit by the hanging, luminescent roots, but here the vegetation on the cavern floor was more vigorous and more varied than they’d previously seen. Larger bushes, almost trees punctuated the landscape, interspersed by large patches of wispy, pale grasses. In the distance, several hundred yards down the slope, Danny saw a herd of a score and more of the horse-like things and the sound of furtive scurrying in the grass told him that there were more of the rabbits for Elsa to hunt if need be.
“Put him down, lad,” he said to Ed. “Gently now. Let’s see if we can get a litter made for him; it’ll be easier going dragging him rather than carrying him.”
Ed did as he was bid and they laid Tommy out on a soft patch of grass, then Danny left Stefan on guard duty as he went to forage.
Once again, Elsa followed at his heel.
- 12 -
Ed couldn’t shift his gaze from the blackened stump and the empty space below it where his brother’s leg used to be.
“We shouldn’t have left it behind,” he said, more to himself than anything else, but Stefan heard.
“Left what behind?”
“The leg. What if that wyrm should come upon it and eat it?”
Stefan laughed bitterly.
“Then we will have fed it, and mayhap it will leave us alone. It is only a leg, young sir. Be thankful that is all that is lost.”
The Lands Below Page 6
