Chapter Fifteen
Starr
My foot snagged on a root beneath the snow, and I kicked to free it.
“NO!” Something slammed into me, sending me sprawling into a drift. What the hell?
Andrea and Tessa screamed, and Groman?—Loka?—shouted.
I scrambled to my feet, wiping powder out of my eyes. I blinked. It didn’t register what I was seeing.
Torg lay on his side in the snow, an arrow penetrating his torso as if he’d been skewered. Blood seeped through his kel to stain the snow red.
“Torg?” I still couldn’t comprehend. “Torg! Oh gods, Torg!” I scrambled to his side. Be alive. Be alive.
He groaned and lifted his head, his pain-glazed eyes meeting mine. His mouth worked. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I croaked. What had happened? How had he gotten shot? He needed help! Serious help. Like Terran medical facility help!
Groman and Loka raced over; the healer knelt. Tessa and Andrea crowded around. “Oh no! He’s going to die!” Tessa echoed aloud my silent worst fear.
I couldn’t stand to lose him. Where had the arrow come from? Had someone shot at a kel and missed?
“Nobody’s going to die,” Groman spoke in a calm tone, although I wasn’t sure if he believed his own words. “Let me examine the injury.”
What could a healer without medical facilities or any real equipment do? Herbs might settle an upset stomach, but they couldn’t fix this! My body shook as I sucked back my tears. The red stain in the snow was spreading. Crying wouldn’t help Torg. Instead, I grabbed his hand. He squeezed my fingers.
Groman undid the toggles and peeled back the coat. He exhaled through his mouth.
I bit my lip until I tasted the rusty saltiness of my own blood. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s better than I expected. The arrow missed his heart and lodged in his right shoulder.” He shifted his gaze to Torg’s white face. “He’s not spitting up blood, so it didn’t pierce a lung, either.” Groman peered at Torg’s back. “It went clean through to the other side, so that’s good.”
“How is that good?” I asked.
“Because the worst part has already happened. We won’t need to force it through to remove it.”
“You’re going to pull it out here?” Tessa asked.
“Not here. For right now, the arrow itself is stemming the bleeding. When we withdraw it, he’s going to bleed a lot, and we have to be ready to apply pressure. Let’s move him to an emergency shelter. I’ll work on him there.” He jutted his chin at the apothecary. “I’m going to need some supplies. A painkiller, some antiseptic, and the coagulant.”
“I’ll get it!” Loka started toward the hut.
“No! Wait!” Torg tried to sit up.
“Hey, hey. Don’t move.” Groman placed a hand on his arm.
Torg gritted his teeth. “Loka…be careful…trip…wire.” He took a deep breath.
Groman’s brows drew together. “What are you saying?
“I think…someone…set…a trap.” Even though it was cold, sweat beaded his forehead from the effort to speak. “I heard the arrow release.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth in horror. “My foot did catch on something. I-I thought it was a root or a vine.” A trip wire? A booby trap? So much for the Dakonian abhorrence of violence.
“I’ll sweep the area before I enter,” Loka said.
Torg nodded.
“Good. First, help me carry him to one of the emergency huts.” Groman pointed to the trading post. “Somebody get me a large kel hide to use as a litter.”
Torg started to protest, but Groman cut him off. “We’ve been in there already; it’s safe.”
“I’ll get it.” Loka sprinted for the trading post, retracing the path we’d followed to get here. Smart man. He wasn’t taking any chances.
He returned with a large hide and a wooden staff.
“What’s that for?” Andrea pointed to the pole.
“To check for trip wires.”
Torg gritted his teeth and blanched when the two men lifted him. Andrea, Tessa, and I spread the hide on the snow then they lowered Torg onto the kel. Loka and Groman each took a corner by his head, Andrea and I grabbed the other two at his feet.
“Count of three,” Groman said. “One, two, three.”
We lifted. We tried to be gentle, but Torg groaned.
Trying to avoid jostling, we shuffled toward the hut. I can do this. I must do this. I held a corner on the lighter side, but Torg’s weight threatened to rip my shoulders out of their sockets. Andrea didn’t seem to be having any trouble, but she was bigger than me and stronger. Didn’t matter. I had to muscle through. Torg had been shot with an arrow! Buck up, Starr! Just do it. The pep talk did little to provide the physical strength I needed. When I feared my arms would give out, Tessa grabbed my corner.
“Thank you,” I said, tearfully.
“Everything will be okay,” she whispered.
I rubbed my running nose against my shoulder. I couldn’t release the hide or set Torg down because lifting him would jar him again. He’d nearly passed out from the pain the last time—although perhaps unconsciousness was preferable.
We neared the huts. “Let’s set him down here for a moment,” Loka said.
We were so close now, why stop? If I could make it, the men ought to be able to. “No, let’s proceed.”
“Better to take precautions than suffer the consequences. We should check for traps.”
“Good idea,” Groman agreed.
We lowered Torg to the ground. He bit back a groan, and I winced. Every movement hurt him, but better safe than sorry.
Loka grabbed the staff he’d placed on the litter. Approaching from the side, he swept the staff through snow in a direct line with the door. I held my breath, and maybe the others did the same, because an eerie quiet settled over the area. So quiet, this time I heard it. Whoosh!
An arrow whizzed through the air to disappear somewhere into the snow. If we had walked directly up to the hut, one of us might have been shot.
“Good gods,” Andrea gasped.
Shock registered on everyone’s face, especially Loka’s. His jaw dropped. He hadn’t expected to find anything.
With the staff, he pulled up a long vine. A bow sprang out of the snow near the door.
Groman pressed his lips together. “Keep sweeping. Make sure there aren’t any more.”
“Right.”
With even greater care this time, Loka continued poking and prodding the snow, until he reached the hut and pronounced it clear. He returned to the litter; we picked up Torg and carried him inside. Gently, we laid him on a bed.
Groman lit a couple of oil lamps. Torg’s lips were blue. I hoped it was from the cold and not blood loss. His bronzed skin tone had paled to pasty white. Little beads of frozen sweat dotted his forehead.
I hadn’t been this scared waiting in the courtroom for the verdict.
“I’ll go get the supplies now. Anything else you need?” Loka asked.
Groman patted his pouch. “I have my knife, so that’s good.” He eyed the piles of fur upon which Torg rested. “See if you can grab some thinner hide for bandages. Be careful.”
“I’ll go with you,” Tessa said. “I can get the bandages while you get the medicines.”
Loka shook his head. “Stay here. It’s not safe for you out there.”
“It’s not safe for you, either! What if something happened to you? I’m going! You can’t stop me.”
“Terran females are a lot like Dakonian ones. Stubborn.” Loka glanced at the other men.
“I understood what you said!” Tessa glared at him.
“You were meant to,” he replied.
Torg chuckled and then groaned. “Don’t make me laugh. Please.”
I hated to see him in any pain, but I was relieved he was alert enough to respond to the humor.
“Come on, then.” Loka gestured. “Step where I step.”
They left the hut.
Groman extracted his knife, and taking care not to disturb the shaft, sawed off the arrow tip. “I’m not going to remove the shaft until Loka returns. Would you start a fire, please?” he asked Andrea.
“I’m on it!” Loka and Tessa were out retrieving what passed for medical supplies, Groman would doctor him, and Andrea was lighting a fire. I felt so helpless, standing there, clinging to Torg’s hand.
Logs, kindling, and wood shavings had been stocked. Andrea knelt beside the cold fire pit, and with a piece of flint, ignited the kindling then fed the fire with larger pieces, until she had a blaze going.
“You’re good at that!” Her proficiency impressed me. She was a woman of many talents.
Warming her hands over the fire, she peered up at me and shrugged. “I had to do something with my time. I learned how to light fires when Groman and I weren’t lighting fires.” She winked at him. A blush crept over his cheekbones.
The teasing intimacy speared me in the heart. That’s what Torg and I had. What if he didn’t survive? What would I do without him? Groman could remove the arrow, but what if Torg bled out? Or developed an infection later? The arrow had gone clear through the bone. What if he lived but the wound never healed properly and he couldn’t use his arm, or he suffered pain for rest of his life? My brain found no shortage of dire possibilities. I swallowed my tears, determined to put on a brave face for his sake.
Torg wasn’t fooled. He squeezed my hand. “I’m going to be okay.” His reassurance made it even harder not to cry.
“Yes, you will.” My voice quavered. I hoped my wish would come true.
A surge of cold air heralded Loka and Tessa’s return. “We’re back!”
Loka unloaded a pack of stuff: several corked earthenware containers and a big jug. “I got some water from the tavern. I figured you might need to mix a draught.”
“Good thinking.” Groman handed me his knife. He pointed to the hide Tessa held. “Cut some pads about this thick.” He spread his fingers to the size he wanted. “Torg’s wound will bleed, requiring several dressing changes, so we’ll need quite a few, but get me a couple to start and then tear strips to tie around his chest to hold the pads in place.”
Groman undid his kel and shrugged out of it, and I realized I’d begun to perspire. The hut had warmed considerably.
I removed my coat and set about performing my assigned task, glad to have a productive way to help. The stone blade of the knife had been honed to a sharp edge on both sides. I gripped the hefty dagger by its wooden hilt and sliced through the leather. Worry weighed as heavy on my heart as the knife in my hand.
Groman sprinkled powder into a cup and mixed in some water. He helped Torg rise up on one elbow. “Here. Drink this.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“A draught to dull the pain.”
Torg emptied the cup. His mouth drooped. “That was awful.”
“You’ll be wishing you had more in a moment.” Groman settled him back down. He dumped powdery contents from a different vial into another cup and added enough water to make a thick paste. He uncorked a jug, poured some of the liquid within over his hands, and rubbed them together. An alcohol smell permeated the hut.
“You can make alcohol?” I asked.
“You had some today in the tavern,” he replied.
“You’re using ale?” I didn’t smell yeast.
“We further distill the ale and purify it for medicinal purposes.” Groman shook his hands to dry them. “I’m going to remove the shaft then sterilize the wound, apply the coagulant, and then the pads. We’ll need to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.”
“Do you need my help?” Loka asked.
“No. I think Starr can help me. Why?”
“I have a hunch. I want to check on something.” He moved toward the door.
Tessa followed him. “I’ll come—”
“No.” Loka’s firmness brooked no argument. “This time, you stay here.”
She crossed her arms and pressed her lips together. I wondered if they’d had a disagreement when they’d left the first time, but my sole consideration was for Torg.
Loka left, and Tessa joined Andrea by the fire. I moved to Torg’s bedside. “How can I help?”
“Hand me the stuff as I need it.” Groman grasped the arrow shaft and looked at Torg. “This is going to hurt.”
“Do it,” he said.
Groman planted a hand on Torg’s chest. The healer’s biceps bunched as he extracted the arrow. Torg didn’t utter a sound, but he clenched his teeth so tight his jaw would probably ache in the morning.
Groman tossed the bloodied arrow shaft onto a table. “Help me remove his coat.”
Together we eased Torg out of his kel. Blood darkened his tunic. We stripped that off him, too. “Hand me the antiseptic—the alcohol.” I passed the jug.
He doused the wound.
My implant offered no translation for Torg’s curses. I didn’t need one. He jackknifed to a seated position, his hands balled into fists.
“Whoa.” Groman stepped back.
“Sorry.” Torg gritted his teeth.
“I still need to disinfect the exit wound.”
Torg grabbed ahold of the kel hide. “Do it.”
I pressed a knuckle to my mouth to keep from crying out myself.
Groman splashed alcohol over the back of his shoulder. This time Torg made not a sound, but sweat beaded on his forehead. Blood ran down his chest and back.
“Hand me the paste,” the healer directed me. “And then two pads.”
I passed him the mixture, and he smeared it into the wound. “This will help to stop the bleeding.” Next, he applied a folded pad over the arrow’s entry and motioned for me to do the back. Together, we applied pressure.
“How are you doing?” Groman eyed him.
“All right.”
“Would you like another pain draught?”
“No.” Typical man, he attempted to macho it out.
“Yes,” I said.
“I don’t need it.” He shook his head, but I could tell that small movement pained him.
“Give him the pain draught.” I overruled his stupidity.
Torg started to protest, but I cut him off. “Take it for me, okay? It hurts me to see you in pain.”
“You don’t play fair.” Torg exhaled. “All right.”
“Can you press on both sides?” Groman asked.
“Yes.”
I maintained pressure on the wounds while Groman mixed up another pain potion and handed it to Torg who gulped it down. Stubborn man. I know when I’m right.
About the time the lines of pain eased from Torg’s face, the pads had soaked through, but the bleeding had almost stopped. Groman maintained pressure while I retrieved two fresh pads, which we applied, and then he wrapped the long strips around Torg’s torso and tied them into place. Next, he fashioned a sling for his right arm. “We must immobilize the limb to prevent it from pulling on the shoulder and reopening the healing wound.” He stepped back and eyed his handiwork. “I think that will do.”
Torg started to get up.
“Not so fast.” Groman pushed against his good shoulder. “You shouldn’t travel. You should spend the night. At the earliest, you might be able to travel in the morning.”
“I must get to my camp; I’m tribal chief.”
“Exactly. A tribal chief cannot afford to bleed to death.”
“I’m fine now.”
“We’re staying,” I said.
Torg’s scowl revealed more acceptance than protest, for which I was grateful. What if he collapsed on the way home? What would I do? Torg could bleed to death out there. Without Groman’s support, convincing Torg to remain would have been difficult. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “If he remains still and quiet and allows the coagulant and his body’s defenses to work, I think he’ll be okay to travel in the morning. Andrea and I will stay in the other emergency hut. If he starts bleeding in the middle of the night, come wake me.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Loka entered with four bows slung over his shoulder. He struck the hut floor with his wooden staff. “I uncovered two other traps rigged with trip wires—one at the other emergency hut—the other at the trading post. How all of us managed to step over it, I’ll never know. It was pure luck none of us triggered it.”
“Good gods!” Tessa clapped a hand over her mouth. “One of us could have been killed.”
One of us almost was. Do you still think your people aren’t violent? If Torg wasn’t injured, I’d shake him. He and the rest of his people needed to wake up and deal with reality. Armax had beaten Yorgav, Icha had poisoned me, and now this. How much more proof did they require?
Loka slipped the bows off his shoulder. “I collected the weapons for examination.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Andrea asked.
“Why would they?” I countered. The why would tell us who. Had this been a random act of a sociopath who sought to hurt somebody and didn’t care who? Or had an individual been targeted? Everyone I’d met had seemed very pleasant, except for…
Good gods…what if Icha was the perpetrator? Maybe I had been the target! Would she go that far? She’d poisoned me, but the wheestile’s toxicity wasn’t fatal; if I’d been Dakonian, it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. If she’d intended to do me in, wouldn’t she have given me something deadly?
If it hadn’t snowed, we might have been able to follow the tracks left by the assailant.
“We must notify Enoki and warn the others.” Torg’s face hardened like a Dakonian ready to kick some ass. If not for the dressing and the blood smeared on his bare torso, you wouldn’t have realized he’d been severely injured.
“Perhaps this was an act, not of malice, but of poor judgment—someone unwisely placing a hunting trap,” Groman suggested.
The man might know about healing, but he needed to wise up.
“No.” Torg shook his head.
“No,” Loka agreed. “Multiple traps were set to release when the person entered the huts.”
“The perpetrator intended to inflict great harm,” Torg said. “I’m sure your search was thorough, Loka, but in the light of day, we should repeat it to ensure all the traps have been found. We need more sweepers.”
That’s why my mate was a tribal chief. Even injured, he knew what to do and how to take charge. And he knew a little something about people.
“My camp is the closest to the meeting place, a quarter tripta away,” Loka offered. “Tessa and I will go back tonight. I’ll talk to my chief, and we can return in the morning with additional helpers.”
The closest camp, huh? Icha crept back into suspicion. She lived in Loka’s camp. She could have sneaked out and booby-trapped the meeting place. My camp had been aware I planned to meet my friends from the ship. Everyone in Tessa’s camp probably knew the same about her. So Icha would have known I would be here today. “How is Icha with a bow and arrow?” I asked.
“I see where you’re going with this.” Torg shook his head “Icha may be hotheaded and vengeful, but she is not a cold-blooded killer.”
Hotheaded and vengeful sounded like motivation for killing to me! “She poisoned me.”
“She made you sick. She didn’t try to kill you.”
“Maybe she tried but failed.”
“I don’t believe that, Starr. I would stake my life on it.”
“You already have—and it almost killed you.”
Torg held up his good hand. “Without more information, we can’t settle this, and it’s getting late. Let’s deal with this in the morning.”
The lines of pain bracketing his mouth halted my protest. He needed to regain his strength and begin healing. We couldn’t solve the problem tonight. In that, he was correct.
“Good idea,” Groman said. “Remember, I’ll be in the other hut.” He looked at Loka. “You checked them, right?”
“I did. They’re clear,” he answered.
“If you need anything, come get me,” Groman told me. “If he requires another pain draught, the powder is there. Mix a scoop with some water.”
“I’ll be fine,” Torg said.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” I promised.
“Tessa and I will leave now, too.” Loka still had a hike ahead of him, albeit a shorter trek than Torg and I would have had.
The four of them donned their kels, and I hugged Andrea. “We’re the next hut over if you need help,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Tessa and I embraced. “Be safe!” I worried about her tromping around in the snow. At least she didn’t have far to go.
“You, too!” she replied, hugging me hard. “Stay in the hut, and you’ll be fine. Don’t worry. We’ll see you in the morning.”
As they filed out, the fear that lurked in the background rushed to the forefront. Torg had almost been killed! I was defenseless on a primitive planet inhabited by dangerous people, present company excepted. The supplies Andrea and I had ordered couldn’t arrive fast enough to suit me.
I turned toward Torg and pasted on a smile.