The first real thing that brought Rose down out of her haze was Emrys. “Oh… oh, no. I didn’t. I’m so sorry, I didn’t think.” Rose finally got herself disentangled and turned around to see him, but he wasn’t talking to her. He was talking to the dirty mess that used to be a woman on the ground. Rose muttered an “Oh, shit” as she glanced down. The woman wasn’t a woman, she was a body. The stones from the wall were not small. Dwarvish make. Big thick stones hewn by hand. They had slid out at head height and done the thing that big thick stones moving at velocity do to heads.
Rose panicked for a moment. She yelled to Emrys. “There’s a kid. Go check …” wait. Was there? The woman had seemed so honest and desperate, but Rose hadn’t seen a kid. And that voice. The way it changed. Was there a kid? She looked down at the other woman, visible around the pile of stones – don’t look too close at the stones – and inspected her.
She was not tall, but she was armored more heavily than Rose had thought: a mail shirt could be seen under the brown clothes she was wearing; poofy pants of some sort, overshirt, and a black hooded cloak. Her skin was almost the same brown as the shirt and her hair was black and short. Her leg was broken. Not a little. Under the knee it was bent at such an angle that there might be no saving it, let alone walking. The boot that had been on it was wedged between Rose’s back and the back of her chair. She reached back and pulled it out, laying it down beside the woman slowly.
The woman was staring at Rose, she realized with alarm. Warily. And when Rose made contact with those warm brown eyes, she moved. Rose had no idea how she did it. She must have been in agony, but she pushed hard with her arms and rose onto her one good foot, while drawing a blade that Rose hadn’t even seen and holding it out before her defensively. Her face – she WAS in pain – but she was also scared and angry and too many emotions happening at once for Rose to keep up. Everything stopped. Even Emrys stopped whinging.
“Who do you work for?” the woman demanded in a rich voice with an accent that Rose couldn’t immediately place. The blade – a short, fat number that tapered in the middle with a blade much wider than the grip – didn’t waver in the slightest. It was an impressive feat.
Emrys looked on the verge of tears. Rose felt her pulse rising – the fight would be short. But she didn’t want it. She spread her hands to the side, not that it would slow her down. “We’re not with her. Look, I didn’t know. I’m …. I think she lied to me and I bought -” Rose paused for a moment. The woman’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t move to strike, so Rose gambled. “There isn’t a kid here, is there?”
The warrior’s face told her everything, but it took the idea longer to go from ears to mind to tongue. “Of course not. She doesn’t even -” and then she got it. She closed her eyes, let out a breath, and sheathed her sword. She leaned her body against the stones and slowly let herself down easily, though when her heel touched the ground again, she grimaced. No crying out. A small grunt was it. A hard woman. Rose would have been screaming in her place.
Emrys walked off, but Rose was more concerned about the woman before her. She bent over to look at the leg. It was …. okay, Rose was not any sort of trained healer. She’d helped birth a few calves and she was pretty certain that there were no baby calves happening here. Her mother, as much as she hated to admit it, would have known what to do, but she wasn’t here because she’d let some fucking cultist take her, so it was just Rose and in Rose’s opinion this leg was fucked.
About five inches above the ankle it was soft looking and already swelling and turning red. When she’d been standing, letting it hang, it had been pointed at a deeply upsetting angle there, but now that she was laying down it had straightened back out a bit. Was that because of the swelling? Probably. Rose had absolutely no idea what to do.
“Needs something solid,” came the gravelly voice of the woman through clenched teeth. Stick or something. Stronger is … better.” She was casting her eyes about but it was clear that her vision was swimming now.
“Got it,” said Rose, and then, feeling as if that were inadequate, “Be right back.” Rose spun and pushed herself back a bit, getting a look around. Plenty of trees, but all those branches looked pretty well connected to the rest of the tree and Rose hadn’t exactly brought an ax (and she wasn’t likely to reach the top branches anyway). She was casting about, wondering if she could pull a support post from the chair maybe, but then her eyes settled on a round shape: the ball mace. Sure, it was super heavy. Way too heavy for a broken leg, but Rose wheeled over to it and picked it up and looked at the structure of the thing. Stout wooden haft, heavy metal ball, held in with a bolt on top. Perfect. She closed her eyes for a moment and took the thing in, letting her hands move about it to get a better idea of the shape and materials. She touched the bolt and thought at it, “sand” and rewrote it. Turning the thing upside down, she poured sand out and the ball simply pulled off – well, after some twisting and cursing. It was on there tight.
Rose took the stout wooden stick back to the woman, unwinding the leather wrap as she did so. They could use that wrap. The woman’s brown flesh was starting to look a bit dusty. “Okay, now what?”
No answer. The woman was out cold. There was even a little bit of drool happening. “Fuck.” Okay, well, Rose was no fool, she could sort out some of it. It was for holding the leg straight, right? So she’d just need to tie it on there, somehow. “Fine. Fine. Just …. fine.”
A few minutes later when Emrys returned carrying a crossbow, a leather case, and a rucksack, Rose was on the ground beside the woman. She was sweating pretty heavily, having torn four long strips from her blanket. She’d tied the wooden stick to the woman’s leg at the top and bottom and on either side of the knee, using the leather strap to do the ankle because it was the only place it fit. This lady had some seriously muscular legs! Anyway, she figured the four points would be best for stability. “What the hell, where did you go?”
Emrys was puffy and red. Redder and puffier than he usually was, especially around the eyes. Oh, right. Rose got that. She’d have been a mess, too. She probably was now. What he wound up saying, after a sniffle was, “I thought she might need her things,” indicating the unconscious woman Rose nodded as if she bought that.
“Okay, look, we’re going to have to take her with us. Can you ask your spirits or whatever if there’s a healer around here? This …. umm, look, I did a great job, no doubt, but she should still see a real healer, right?”
To his credit Emrys seemed to pull out of it a little. “I cannot summon an elemental that will last long enough to carry her the whole way. Their time here is limited by a series of energy laws that increase factorially after …. “ he paused, having lost focus and got it back. “An hour or two at most before they vanish.”
“Well, shit. Okay, see if you can’t rig up a … whatever. A something to hold onto her. We’ll have to put her across the armrests or something. I read a story once where they dragged a man on a blanket behind a horse, but a: I’m not a horse and b: I think that would only make things worse. And slower.”
Emrys nodded, but he was still looking at the body. “Hey, Emrys. You did the right thing, okay? She was bad. She was trying to kill her and probably she would have killed me if she’d been able. You did the right thing.”
He shook his head. “No. I got lucky. I told the stone spirit to stop her, but …. understand, I wasn’t clear. I didn’t say how. I didn’t even really say which her. It could just as easily have been this woman.” he looked away, back toward the wall. “It could just as easily have been you.”
Rose didn’t have a clever comeback for that so she said, “And Emrys.” He focused on her. “You’re going to have to push.”
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