The Keep of Fire (17 page)

Durge staggered to his feet. He reached over his shoulder and drew his Embarran greatsword from the harness strapped to his back. Blood streamed down his face, but he stood straight, and his motions were quick and deliberate. Grace understood; when he fell it was not because he was severely wounded, but rather as a defense mechanism. Bears wouldn’t attack creatures they thought were already dead—wasn’t that how it worked?

Except there was something wrong with this animal. Wild bears were supposed to be afraid of people, but this creature opened its maw, exposing gigantic teeth as it roared. It started after Blackalock, then abruptly turned to face Durge. That was when Grace saw the bare patches in its pelt. Over large parts of the bear’s body the thick fur had been scorched away, and the skin beneath was blistered and oozing. So it was injured, burned in a brush fire, perhaps. And there was no telling what an injured animal would do.

No more than ten seconds had passed since the bear had burst from the underbrush. It took a lumbering step toward Durge. The Embarran backed away. Garf approached cautiously from behind the bear, sword raised, face grim.

Whether it smelled or heard the younger knight
was impossible to say. The bear spun around, hackles raised, and roared at Garf. Grace could see past its monstrous teeth into the deep pit of its throat. Garf lifted his sword.

“No, Sir Garfethel!” Durge shouted. “Don’t move!”

Durge’s words came too late. Garf thrust with his blade. The sword sank deep into the bear’s chest—so deep it seemed the animal should have died instantly—but the bear did not fall. It let out a horrible shriek, then lunged forward, ripping the sword out of Garf’s hand. Garf stared as the bear fastened its jaws on his shoulder.

Then the young knight screamed.

The world ceased to move except for the bear and Garf. The bear shook its massive head, and Garf fluttered limply, like one of the little string men Grace sometimes saw the village children playing with. The bear tossed him to the ground, placed a paw on his stomach, and almost casually tore at his flesh. His screaming stopped.

Just when she thought it would drive her mad, the moment shattered. Durge rushed forward and with both hands plunged his greatsword into the bear’s back. A cold part of Grace appreciated the surgical precision of the blow. Yes—between two ribs, angled toward the midline, past the lung. She could see the moment the tip pierced the bear’s heart. The creature’s entire body went limp, and it rolled onto the ground. The bear gave one heaving breath. Red foam bubbled around both of the blades embedded in its body. Then came the stillness of death.

“My lady …”

The words were not shouted, but they caught Grace’s attention all the same. She tore her eyes from the carcass of the bear. Durge knelt beside a crumpled, bloody form. He looked up at Grace.

“My lady, I think you had best come here.”

Everything had changed; the idyllic ride through summer had vanished. Durge started to reach toward Garf, then pulled his hand back. Grace understood. There was nothing the knight or his sword could do. This was her battle now.

She slipped from Shandis’s back—the motion was easy, as if she had known how to do it all along—and approached the two knights, one kneeling, one lying on the ground. She was aware of Lirith following after her, and of Aryn sitting atop her mare: rigid, staring forward, her face as white as surgical gauze. Then Grace reached the two men.

Fear clamped her heart like a pair of cold, steel forceps, but only for a second. If Garf was to have a chance, then he could mean nothing to her. He was just another nameless victim pulled from a wrecked car or an overturned bus and wheeled on a gurney into Denver Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Department. She would put him back together, then head for the Residents’ Lounge to have a cup of bad coffee and watch Elizabeth Montgomery’s antics in a rerun of
Bewitched
on the blurry television. She crouched beside the patient, and the metallic scent of his blood filled her skull, triggering a chain reaction of instincts.

“Get me four units of O-neg.
Stat.”

“My lady?” Durge said, his brown eyes confused.

She shook her head. Of course. This wasn’t the ED. This was a wooded valley three miles from a medieval castle on another world from Earth. But it didn’t matter. It was what she and the doctors, nurses, and PAs did that mattered, not the walls, not the trauma rooms, not the name of the place.

“My lady, I don’t think he’s breathing.”

Grace bent over the patient. She was aware of a great deal of blood, and of wounds to the right shoulder as well as the chest and abdomen. However, she did not focus on these things.

ABC. Airway, breathing, circulation
.

She had repeated the words so many times during her internship and residency that they might as well have been cut into her brain with a scalpel. What she did in these first few minutes would affect everything that came after—whether the patient lived or died, whether he would be whole or paralyzed, whether he would be himself when he woke up or a braindamaged vegetable.

Grace moved through the prescribed steps. She stabilized his head between her knees, tilted his head back, and forced his jaw open. She slipped a finger into his mouth, past his pharynx, into the trachea. Just before the larynx her fingers encountered a soft, wet mass. His airway was obstructed with a plug of blood and mucus. That wasn’t good—it meant injury to his lungs—but she couldn’t think of that, not until its time. She freed the plug and heard the rasp as air flowed into him—he was breathing again.

Next step. She pressed her ear against his chest and listened. There were no breath sounds on the right. Her suspicion was correct; the right lung had been punctured and had collapsed. She needed a chest tube, but she didn’t have the tools. Maybe in the castle she could fashion something, but not here, not now. Fortunately, the breath sounds on the left were good. One lung was working. That would have to be enough until they got him back to the castle.

Grace turned her attention to the source of the blood. Third step: Breathing did no good if there was no blood in his arteries to carry oxygen. She had to stop the bleeding. Now.

She pulled aside his shredded tunic and examined
his chest. He drew in a labored breath, and crimson foam bubbled from a puncture wound. Air was seeping between two ribs: That was the source of the collapsed lung. Otherwise, the wounds to his chest and stomach appeared superficial.

“Give me your hand.” She looked up at Durge when he did not respond. “Your hand!”

The knight blinked and held his hand out. She grabbed it, took his index finger, and stuck it into the puncture. The little boy and the dike. It wasn’t exactly elegant, but the bubbling stopped.

“Keep your finger there.”

Grace knew her voice was hard, but it had to be. The others had to follow her orders without question. Durge nodded, holding his arm stiffly so he could keep the wound plugged.

Grace turned her attention to the right arm. Barely a minute had elapsed since she had reached the patient, but as she worked instinct had told her that she had to hurry, that the arm would be the worst. Damn her instincts for always being right.

But maybe it’s not just instinct, Grace. Maybe it’s more than that. Remember what Ivalaine said. What you did in the ED wasn’t so different from what witches do.…

There was no time for that thought. She concentrated on her patient.

It was bad. The arm had been completely dislocated from the shoulder joint. She could see the white ball of the proximal humerus, and the surrounding muscle had been torn to shreds. The arm was attached to the shoulder by only a thin thread of skin and tendon. Blood pumped from the torn end of the subclavian artery and soaked into the bed of pine needles.

“Sister, his lips are blue,” Lirith spoke in a soft voice. “And his fingernails. I have seen such in drowned men, but he yet breathes.”

He
is
drowning
, Grace wanted to say.
He’s drowning in his own blood, and what little oxygen he’s managing to take in is pouring out of his shoulder and into the ground
. But Grace didn’t have time to teach a lesson about the consequences of a collapsed lung to a medieval witch, or to explain the meaning of words like
cyanotic
and
hypotension
. She grabbed the severed artery between two fingers and pinched it shut.

“We have to stop the bleeding,” she said. “It’s the loss of blood that’s making him blue.”

Lirith met her eyes. “What do you want me to do, sister?”

“Hold this.”

She brought Lirith’s hand to the wound and guided her fingers, until the witch had the torn artery firmly in her own grip. Grace leaned back and considered options. There was no hope of reattachment in these conditions. Even with an ice chest for the severed limb and a waiting helicopter it would be difficult. Here there was no question. The patient would lose his arm. Grace could accept that. Life was always better than death; that was what Leon Arlington had taught her. But the patient would not lose his life. That she could not accept. Amputation, then. Stop the bleeding, and get him back to the castle.

“Aryn!” she called out. “Bring me the saddlebag from my horse.”

There was no response. Grace looked up. Aryn still sat on her mount, her gaze fixed forward and distant, her left hand white as it clenched the reins. No—no one could do this to her, not now. She needed everyone.

Aryn! Do it now!

Grace had meant to shout, but somehow it was not her mouth that formed the words. The baroness blinked and stared at Grace. Then she climbed from
her horse, grabbed Grace’s saddlebag, and ran toward them.

Grace turned back to see Lirith watching her, the witch’s dark eyes intent. Lirith nodded, but she said nothing. Whatever had happened, she had noticed it. Grace didn’t know if that was good or bad. It didn’t matter. She had other things to worry about.

Aryn knelt beside the patient. As she did, Grace grabbed his left wrist for a pulse check. Rapid and faint. His heart was working too quickly, trying to make up for the lack of blood and oxygen by beating faster. Grace didn’t need a clock to feel the seconds draining away along with his blood.

“Aryn—the knife.”

The baroness pulled a small knife out of the saddlebag—the very same knife Aryn had given to Grace what seemed a lifetime ago. It wasn’t a scalpel, but it was sharp. Grace took the knife and, with precise strokes, finished amputating the arm. She was dimly aware of the horrified gazes of the others—Aryn clutched her own withered right arm—but Grace kept her attention focused on the wound.

“Needle and thread.”

Aryn pawed through the bag and came out with the embroidery Grace had been working on. She still hadn’t gotten any better at the noble lady’s art, but she was glad she had carried it with her. The tools were inadequate for the job, but Grace made up for the lack with skill. She stitched shut the worst bleeders and closed a flap of skin over the stump of his arm. Then she turned to the puncture wound and sutured it shut. Infection was going to be a problem, but that was something to deal with later.

Lirith and Aryn had torn a blanket to strips, and Lirith had rubbed some of the strips with pine sap. That was good—it would be sterile. Grace took the makeshift bandages. By the time she looked up, Durge had already cut two saplings for a litter. He had
tied another blanket between the poles and was even then lashing them to Blackalock’s saddle.

Grace made a quick inventory of the patient. His color was better, and his breathing was regular if still labored. However, even at that moment he was slipping into shock. They had to get Garf back to the castle.

Garf. She had thought of him not as a stranger, but as someone she knew. However, maybe it was a good sign. Maybe it meant he was going to make it.

Durge led Blackalock closer, positioning the litter alongside Garf. On Grace’s count they lifted him onto the vehicle, then they used more strips of blanket to lash him into place.

Grace glanced at Durge. “Ride as fast as you can without jolting him too much.”

The Embarran nodded. “I will do my—”

“Grace! He’s not breathing anymore!”

It was Aryn. Grace snapped her head around. The baroness knelt beside Garf, her eyes wide.

Grace crouched beside the young knight. Aryn was right. His body was rigid. She groped for his pulse, but she couldn’t find it.

“What’s happening?” Lirith said.

Grace shook her head. She didn’t know. Damn it, she needed a heart monitor.

Or was there another way?

Before she could think about it further, she shut her eyes and reached out to touch the Weirding. She gasped, and for a second the rich web of life almost entangled her. She forced herself to gain control, to pick Garf’s thread out from those belonging to people, horses, trees. Then she had it: so thin and weak it seemed like a strand of gossamer in her imagined hands. She followed it down to his body.

“Yes, sister,” a voice whispered. Lirith. “Yes, use the Touch. Ivalaine was right. It is your gift.”

Grace hesitated. But hadn’t she done this a hundred times before in the ED? Perhaps not consciously, but all the same she had used this power
—her
power—to assess what was wrong with others in a way no monitoring device could. She gathered her will, then forced herself to reach down into his chest.

His heart fluttered against her phantom hand like a wounded bird trapped in a cage.

Grace’s eyes flew open. “He’s fibrillating! I need point-five milligrams of epi, IV push!”

Lirith regarded her with unreadable eyes. “I do not know these words you speak, sister.”

Grace shook her head. She had discovered the problem, but what use was that to her? There was no crash cart, no adrenaline. His heart was beating madly in a last desperate attempt at life, and in a few seconds it would fail.

“My lady, can you not … do something?” Durge made a small motion with his hands.

Grace glanced at him, and only then did she realize what he was asking of her. Her jaw opened.