Chapter Thirteen #2
“Can ye set that man’s bone?” Thomas asked, motioning to a man holding his arm, face pale from the pain.
The healer’s voice sounded hoarse with exhaustion as he wiped his hands on a blood-stained cloth.
Waiting for Camden’s reply, Thomas’s shoulders sagged, the lines of the long day carved deep into his face.
“I must seek something to eat, and perhaps a bit of rest before ye head back.”
Camden shook his head. “Go and eat, then sleep.” His gaze swept the room, taking in the groans, the bandaged limbs, the smells of sweat and iron from spilled blood interwoven with the scents of crushed herbs. “I will stay as long as I am needed. Unless I send for ye, dinnae return until the morn.”
Thomas hesitated, studying him for a moment, then relief spread on his face. He nodded and walked out of the infirmary.
The man with the broken arm watched Camden warily as he approached, his good hand clenching the injured arm across his chest. “What did ye say to Ruari?” he asked, his voice low, untrusting.
Camden paused, then answered truthfully. “I gave him two choices and promised to follow through to ensure his wish was done. He had to choose to either live without the use of one leg. Or to cease living at all.”
The warrior held his gaze, searching his face as if trying to measure the weight of such words. After a long moment, he nodded once, slow and solemn, and said nothing more. He accepted the tincture he was given along with a deep swig of whiskey.
It was not easy to set the bone. The warrior did his best to keep his composure, but in the end he cried out in pain as Camden set the arm.
A young lad, who was Thomas’s apprentice, brought poultice and sticks to set the arm, then together he and Camden wrapped it, using great care not to jostle it more than required.
By the time all was done, the injured warrior was barely able to keep his eyes open, the mixture of the tincture of herbs and whiskey taking effect.
Camden inspected the bandaging around the splint before straightening and going to the next cot.
After rinsing his hands, Camden checked a man with the deep wound to his midsection, pressing gently around the bandages, frowning at the heat of the man’s skin and the sheen of fever on his brow. He murmured instructions for cool cloths and small sips of water to the apprentice.
The next two men were not happy to be there, and they grumbled loudly, insisting their injuries were nothing more than scratches and bruises, yet the layers of bloodied wrappings told a different story.
Both of them had been cut deep, and the wounds had begun to smell.
“If yer wounds fester, ye can die. We will cleanse them. Just another night should be long enough to ensure ye will be well,” Camden said to them. Both seemed mollified and were silent.
Then he came to the last bed.
The archer lay unnervingly still. He was called Wallace.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths, each one a fragile thing that looked as though it might be his last. His skin was pale beneath the grime and dried blood, his lips tinged with a faint, worrying blue.
The noise and movement of the infirmary seemed not to reach him at all, as if he were already halfway gone from this world.
Something in Camden’s chest tightened. He lowered down to his haunches, beside the bed.
The young man’s face was drawn, sharper than he remembered, stripped of the easy grin and quick humor that usually clung to him like a second skin.
Camden reached out without thinking, brushing his fingers lightly against Wallace’s wrist, searching for the faint, stubborn pulse beneath.
There it was. Weak, but present. A memory stirred, unbidden.
A year ago, almost to the day, Wallace had been carried into this very room with blood matting his hair and a gash across his ribs.
He’d been laughing even then, through clenched teeth and pain, cracking some foolish joke about how he’d only stepped in front of the intruders because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it properly.
He’d taken a blade meant for a villager, standing his ground as a protector.
Camden had stitched him up that night, his hands steady, his heart pounding harder than he cared to admit. Wallace had looked at him afterward, pale but grinning, and said, “I knew ye would nae let me die, healer. Ye’re too stubborn for that.”
Now, it seemed, the stubbornness had to come from Wallace alone.
“What happened to him?” Camden asked quietly, not taking his eyes from the still form on the bed.
The apprentice turned to look at Wallace for a long moment, something like respect and fear softening his expression. “Cut clean across from his left arm to his chest. ’Tis a deep cut. His injuries should have left him dead out there in the field,” he explained.
One of the men who’d been grumbling looked over. “If he’s still breathing, ’tis because Wallace will nae die. Too stubborn to.”
Camden lowered the blanket that had been placed over Wallace.
He’d been bandaged across the chest. His left arm was also wrapped in strips of cloth.
He adjusted the blanket around Wallace’s shoulders, a small, careful gesture, as if the young man might feel it even in the depths where he now lingered.
“Ye will live Wallace.” Camden went to the table where herbs and bottles of tinctures were set out.
He broke willow bark into a mortar, then added mug wort, grinding it with the pestle, and mixed the herbs with spiced wine.
He brought the cup to Wallace and slowly dribbled the liquid between the sick man’s lips.