Chapter 8 #3
She's already there, on her knees beside the trapped leg, Kestria crouched next to her pulling herbs from Melori's pockets, laying out the waterskin, clearing space. Working together without talking—Kestria handing things before Melori asks.
Melori's fingers find the trap and she studies it for one second, two.
"I need to open this before I can treat the leg. Keer—can you reach the release?"
"I'm holding its head."
"Axan?"
"Little busy."
She looks at the trap, looks at the release lever, wraps both hands around it and pulls.
The jaws loosen and the bear convulses—every muscle at once. My grip slips and I wrench it back, and the trap falls open and the leg drops free. The bear thrashes so hard Axan gets thrown sideways. He rolls, comes back, pins the shoulder again. Blood running down my forearm, dripping.
"Hold him." Melori's hands are on the leg now and the wound is—I can see it from here. Crushed. Infected. Skin split to the bone. She pours water over it and the bear bucks against us.
"I know," she tells it. "I know. I'm sorry. Almost done."
Kestria passes her a fistful of packed herbs and Melori takes them without looking, her hands in the wound—cleaning, draining, packing.
The bear's head thrashes against my grip and its eye rolls, white and wild and terrified.
I press harder, close enough to feel its breath. Hot and rank and desperate.
Claws catch Axan's ribs. He grunts, doesn't move. Blood spreads across his shirt.
"Mel." Through my teeth. "Faster."
"Don't rush me."
Holding a bear's head to the ground, bleeding from both arms, and she's telling me not to rush her.
Kestria tears a strip of cloth and hands it over, and Melori wraps the leg—fast, tight, practiced. Same hands. Wolves, stew, that damn chicken. Now a bear.
"Okay." She sits back and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, blood smearing across her hairline. "Okay. Let him go."
"Back up first," I tell her.
She scrambles back. Kestria with her. Axan and I reset our grip, put the trap and the open ground between the bear and the women.
"Now."
We release and shove off the shoulder at the same time, jumping clear, and the bear is up before we land. It twists, staggers, and runs—hard, fast, crashing through the underbrush away from us, the freed leg dragging and catching and propelling it anyway. Not a look. Not a pause. Just gone.
Silence.
My ears ring and my forearms burn, blood dripping off my fingers into the dirt. Three parallel lines on the left arm, two on the right.
Axan sits against the nearest tree, winded, one hand pressed against his ribs where the claws caught him. His shirt is dark with it. He looks at the blood, looks at me, shakes his head.
Kestria is still on her knees and her hands are shaking, her eyes going from the trap to Melori to me.
Melori stands up and wipes her hands on her dress. Blood, dirt, herb paste, bear. Her sleeves are soaked and her braid has come half undone. She looks at my arms and her face changes.
"You're bleeding."
She steps toward me.
I don't step back.
I want to. Everything in my body wants to. But Axan is watching and Kestria is watching and Melori is a healer offering to do what healers do, and refusing her here would be louder than anything I've said all day.
"Let me see."
I hold out my arms.
She takes my wrist. Her fingers are cool and steady and covered in bear. My pulse is not steady. I can feel it kicking against her fingertips and I know she can feel it too because she pauses, just a half-second, before she turns my arm to the light.
"Deep." She's already reaching for her pack with the other hand, still holding my wrist. "Not to the bone. Lucky."
"Lucky."
"I'm going to clean it. It's going to sting."
"Okay."
She pours water over the cuts and it does sting, but that is not what I am focused on.
What I am focused on is the top of her head, inches from my chin, the braid half-undone, a streak of bear blood across her hairline.
What I am focused on is the way she hums under her breath when she's concentrating.
What I am focused on is that she is holding my arm in her hands and I am not allowed to do anything about any of it.
Her thumb strokes once across my wrist. Unconscious. A healer's checking-for-pulse gesture. It might as well be a brand.
"Other arm."
I give her the other arm. She works through the second set of cuts the same way—clean, pack, wrap. Her hands are fast. Her hands have been fast all day.
"Done." She steps back and wipes her hands on her dress. "Try not to fight any more bears this week."
"I'll think about it."
Melori turns to Axan. "Show me your ribs."
"Thought you'd never ask." He lifts his shirt—three shallow cuts across the lower ribs, already closing. She examines them and his eyes move to me over her head.
I look away.
Kestria's standing now and she looks at Melori—at the blood drying on her hands, the paste under her nails.
"You're insane."
"He was dying."
"He almost killed you."
"He didn't, though."
"Because they held him down."
"Yes." Melori looks at her, looks at me, looks at Axan. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Don't ever do that again."
"I probably will."
"I know. That's the problem."
Axan stays beside me, doesn't speak for a long time. Our boots on the trail. Birds above.
Ahead of us, Melori and Kestria. Melori is talking—explaining the wound, the infection, what she packed it with, how long recovery takes for an animal that size. Her hands move when she talks.
Always.
Kestria listens, nods, doesn't interrupt.
Axan clears his throat.
"Twenty years." He's watching the trail. "Not once have I seen you take an order from anyone."
"She didn't order me to do anything."
"She just walked. And you rearranged everything around keeping her alive while she worked." He glances at me.
My back straightens.
"She was right, though. Bear would've died."
"I know."
"That bother you?"
"What bothers me is she didn't stop."
He's quiet for a few steps, then, low: "Yeah. That's the scary part."
We walk without talking for a while. The trail narrows through a stand of birch and widens again.
"The trap." I keep my voice down. "That's close."
"Closer than the last ones. By a mile, at least."
"Have Rhen take two wolves and sweep the perimeter around camp. Anything staked within a half day's walk, I want to know about it."
Axan nods. No argument. Humans set traps, we find them, we pull them. But not this deep. Not this close to camp.
Ahead of us, Melori laughs at something Kestria says. The sound carries back through the trees.
We walk back.