Shattered Shields - eARC (22 page)

The Old Man settled into a chair, leaned back, considered the Third. He put on his “I’m eager to hear how you’ll try to bullshit me on this” face.

Silent passed me a jar of carbolic. I put bug eggs in, then dribbled liquid onto Two Dead’s wounds. He squealed.

The Third volunteered, “One-Eye sent me to fetch food.”

Really? That little shit is not big on bacon. On the other hand, the Third would devour it by the hog side.

I worked on Two Dead. Silent watched grubs in a jar. They behaved no better than adults. The Old Man glared at the Third. The level of noise outside rose. Otto had relayed the captain’s orders.

Buzz stumbled in looking like death warmed over. His sojourn in the latrine had not helped much.

The Third said, “I was getting stuff for me. Otto spotted me before I started on One-Eye’s stuff.”

I observed, “The kid has his priorities straight.”

Two Dead managed a ghost smile. His shakes continued.

The Old Man grumped, “Watch the colonel till you’re sure he’ll be all right. We don’t hand Whisper any fresh excuses. You.” He poked the Third. “You’re with me.”

Buzz wanted to fuss over his boss. Two Dead growled, “You look like a man with the drizzling shits, Tesch. Smell like one, too.” He poked me with his unbitten hand. “I’ll live. Help him.”

I thought Buzz must have drunk some bad water. He ought to know better. I loaded him with liquids and orders not to stray far from the latrine. He was unhappy about not being able to stick close to Two Dead.

“Yet here you are alive and recuperating,” I observed after Two Dead suggested that the Company might have rigged all this. “You probably conjured those animals yourself and just accidentally got the bad end.”

That was plain chin music, ridiculousness in exchange for absurdity, but Two Dead found something curious there. Like was he supposed to get it with the rest of us?

I was tempted to pin a target on Whisper’s back. The more discord at HQ the less time those people would have to harass us out here.

I reiterated the common remark: “When is the battlefield not a battlefield?”

Two Dead eyed me. “An intriguing question, physician. Worth considering here, in these troubled times.” He cocked his head, listened. I caught a vague hint of distant wind chimes. That rattled me. It tied into my recurrent nightmare somehow. “I’m going to lie down and brood on it.” Two Dead indicated a cot.

* * *

I was snuggled into a cot and blankets myself. The captain poked me. “What’s wrong with him?” Head jerk toward Two Dead, on his back, on his cot. Drool glistened on his ugly cheek. Snot hung from the nostril on that side. Dead sexy.

“What time is it?”

“Nighttime. We got the other beasts. What about Chodroze?”

“He was his old ugly self when I laid down.” I set my feet on the cold dirt floor, rose with a groan, toddled over. Our chatter had not awakened Two Dead.

I felt the heat before I touched him.

The Captain said, “The dogs found them, unconscious from the cold. The men tinned them up and threw them in the fire pit.”

“We need to pack Two Dead with snow. He’s burning up.”

“Whatever. Keep him healthy.”

Two Dead had a weak, fast, irregular pulse and a dangerous fever. “I’ll need help cooling him down.” I started stripping him. That did not waken him. “What did the Third have to say?”

The Old Man looked like he had bitten into a chunk of alum candy.

Goblin and One-Eye
were
up to something. And he might not entirely disapprove.

Dead fierce, he snagged a bucket and headed outside. The weather had turned enthusiastically blizzardy.

He returned with a pail of muddy snow.

I indicated Two Dead’s wounded arm. Scarlet threads ran up it from the uglier wound.

“Blood poisoning?”

“Some kind of poisoning. Blood poisoning isn’t usually so aggressive.”

Skin flexed near Two Dead’s worst wound. I had not gotten every egg.

“Help me get him on the table. I’ll clear the wound. You pack him with snow. Start with his head and throat. We need to cool his brain.”

Move made. Snow packed and melting onto the floor to make mud. I dug with a scalpel. The Old Man hauled more snow.

* * *

“How about we just dump him in a snowdrift?”

“I need light to work.” I had excised two thin grubs. They writhed in an alcohol bath. I was after what I hoped was the last.

“Those bitty things caused the blood poisoning?”

“Their shit is probably toxic.”

“Ugly.”

“Life is.” In some forms, ugly for lots of us.

I fit puzzle pieces while I worked, hoping I was fooling myself, but afraid I was looking chaos in the crimson, googly eye.

“How come the tourniquet?”

“Keeping the poison contained. To avoid amputation if I can.”

“That wouldn’t be good.”

No. “I should ask what he wants, worst case, but he won’t wake up.”

“We need more hands. Maybe Silent can get to him.”

“I can’t go. Where the hell is Buzz?”

“Buzz is in his rack, down and out and soaked in shit. He’d be dead if you hadn’t given him that tea. Poor Corey is babysitting. I’ll get another bucket, then head out on a recruiting tour.”

So. Old Buzz came down with the drizzling shits right when his principal started dying from an infestation of supernatural parasites. That wanted a closer look. The timeline might tell us when Buzz picked up what was trying to kill him. Also, maybe who was there when it happened.

I winkled the last worm out. The Old Man brought more snow. I mused, “When is the battlefield not a battlefield?”

The captain eyed me oddly, shrugged, took off with his trained-bear shuffle.

The day’s puzzle might have an explanation hidden inside the recurring question. That might put me eyeball to eyeball with a repellant cousin question that could have multiple readings as well. “When is my enemy not an enemy?”

* * *

Otto and his pal Hagop turned up. The captain had caught them trying to sneak off to town to help Markeg Zhorab get a little bit richer. They hauled snow.

We did not see the captain again right away. He went and stole a short nap. When he did turn up he had the Third in tow, all decorated with light shackles. “He’s all we got. Silent is missing now, too.”

The Third shook his wild shock of curls, lost in the insanities.

Answers had to wait. Two Dead was not improving. Snow packs were not enough. I told the Third, “I need the colonel awake. We need to talk. Amputation may be his only salvation. I can’t decide that for him.”

“Why bother? We could get shot of him.”

“I save whoever I can.” Not that I have not made exceptions. Not that Two Dead was insufficiently despicable to make the “he needs killing” list. “And he’s Whisper’s pet.”

“Don’t smell like that special a relationship to me.” The Third eyed Two Dead. “It’ll be tough. Feels like Silent put him in a coma for the pain.”

“You can’t bring him out?”

“Didn’t say that. Said it’s gonna be tough. Get ready for some serious screaming. His arm is gonna feel like it’s on fire.”

“Hang on then.” I slathered Two Dead’s forearm with topical painkiller. “All right. Go.”

* * *

Two Dead surprised us. He did not let the pain unhinge him. He was creepy normal, disinclined to shed any limbs unnecessarily.

He was short four already, you asked me.

“I won’t do it casually,” I promised.

He was caught in a cleft stick. I had no reason to wish him well, but he did realize that I would not just maim him when death by inattention would be so much easier.

He played through the pain. “If it’s the best choice, do it.” His speech slurred. I kept feeding him painkiller tea.

The captain talked to him steadily, gently, casually, like he was Two Dead’s cousin. He wanted to slide inside the sorcerer’s head while he was addled.

I set up to cut, ever more sure that it could not be avoided. I listened. Two Dead made no sense. He was old, hard core, and stubborn. The Old Man was unlikely to get much.

Then he did get something that I missed. He buttoned up and hit the weather and was gone for fifteen minutes.

I got Two Dead strapped down. The Third whined, “Can I go? I don’t want to see this.”

“You’re going to be Company, you’d better get used to blood.” Which sparked memories I would rather not have recalled. I have eaten a lot of bone candy with the Company.

* * *

There was no choice. Two Dead’s body could not resist the poison. “Sorry, Colonel.” Our senior sorcerers might have helped, but they were unavailable. Best not mention that. Two Dead supposedly had a fecund bent for paranoid violence.

He glared at the Third. The Third said, “I am sorry, sir. I’ll do my best, but medical sorcery isn’t among my skills.”

Pain kept Two Dead from helping himself.

I asked the captain, “How goes the search for our favorite duo?”

“Still missing.” He eyed Two Dead like he suspected a connection.

I asked, “Go ahead, Colonel? Final decision time.”

Two Dead nodded grimly, probably rehearsing cruelties he would visit on those who had brought him to this, deliberately or otherwise.

“Would you like to remain awake during the procedure?”

“Put me out. Tesch won’t shit himself forever. Anything goes wrong, he’ll see that I don’t walk the road to Hell by myself.”

I smelled bluster and some graveyard sneaking-past, whistling.

“As you wish, sir.” I soaked a bandage with pale green fluid. “Third, hold this over his face. Lightly! He has to breathe it.”

The patient went under in seconds. “Third, Captain, watch me close in case there are questions later.”

The Third narrowly avoided messing himself. He got the subtext.

I started. I talked while I worked. “Do Goblin and One-Eye being missing have anything to do with our beetle-infested weasels?”

No reply.

“There is something going on. I’m not blind.”

“They could be up to something illegal,” the captain said, carefully. “More likely, though, you’re seeing something just because you want to.”

The Third protested, “They were just trying to get the straight skinny on Two Dead and Buzzard Neck. They aren’t what you think. Goblin knows Buzz from the Battle at Charm.”

I suffered a half-ass flashback to my nightmare. It did not affect my work. That was old, familiar labor. I could hack off a limb while dead drunk or ready to collapse from exhaustion.

The captain shrugged. He was playing it close.

When is the battlefield not a battlefield? The enemy of my enemy is what and who?

When did those two wizards turn invisible? Right after Two Dead showed up. Because of Buzz? Was he more than just Two Dead’s lifeguard?

All this drama, and our empire still controls half the world.

The Lady loves the chaos. While her underlings are backstabbing and undercutting each other they are too busy to move on her. She can focus on keeping her husband underground.

* * *

The Old Man wakened me again. “Going to sleep your life away?” He did not roll out the old saw about sleeping all I wanted after I was dead. He made a hand sign. Four men shifted Buzz from a litter to a table.

I asked, “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“Thought I heard wind chimes. Really faint.”

“Maybe you’re still dreaming.”

Crap! I had been. The nightmare. The Lady was in there with somebody who moved in wind-chime tinkle…
Was
it a dream? Or something from the Tower?
She
does touch me strangely, at the oddest of times.

No matter. I was awake now. It was gone, and what was happening in the waking world seemed less rational than any dream. I had cooked up a fresh stew of weird ideas while I was off in slumberville.

I had a client. “Couldn’t you clean him up before you brought him in? I’ll need a month to air the place out.”

Buzz might have been belly up now if I had not worked on him earlier. His situation was that grim.

Corey had helped bring Buzz in. The kid was dead on his feet. “I tried to keep him hydrated, but whatever I put in the top end came out the bottom like there was a pipe straight through.”

“Let me check some stuff.”

Buzz’s pulse was fast and feeble. His temperature was fierce. I peeled back an eyelid. His pupil was a pinpoint. That did not add up. I smelled his breath, risky even when a patient is healthy considering the general disdain for hygiene. I said, “Poke.” Surprised.

That raised me a crop of blank looks.

“It’s everywhere. Big, waxy-leafed plant. Has shiny purple berries in bunches kind of like grapes. Nasty hard on your gut. Alkaloid. But they taste so bad you shouldn’t be able choke enough down to do this.”

Corey asked, “So how did he get past the first mouthful?”

That would be the question. “I’ve never actually seen poke poisoning, but I’m sure this is it. Maybe it started out as something else. He didn’t smell like poke before. There are stains on his lips that weren’t there before. Somebody forced the juice down him.” He must have been dead unconscious. Even a groggy Buzzard Neck would be hard to force.

I saw nobody looking so innocent he must be guilty, but the question was less who than why. Nobody hated Buzz.

Was the point to eliminate Two Dead’s protection?

* * *

I set Buzz up so we could dump fluids in as fast as they left. I turned sleepy again. The captain observed. The Third assisted me, sort of. Corey snored his lungs out on a cot I wanted for me. Two Dead barely breathed on, awash in painkillers.

The Old Man asked, “You had a good dream? That why you want to get back to sleep?”

All I had left was a lingering nostalgia. “It was something about the Lady and the Tower.”

“You don’t usually dream about her, do you?”

I was once a prisoner in the Tower. I spent a lot of time around the Lady then, and that has cost me years of merciless teasing.

“I don’t. No. Why?”

“Maybe she was trying to tell you something.”

“Maybe,” I admitted, reluctantly. The Lady randomly and wickedly flings fuel into the fire by contacting me.