THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY

CHAPTER 9 (CONCLUDED)

Palomides the Saracen

“You have to hit it with the flat of your sword,” Vergil said. “Hard. The arrow’s pressed up against the bone,” and here he held his index finger against the fingers of his left hand. He pushed and the finger slipped naturally between the fingers of his left hand. “Hopefully, it turns, and slips between the bones and the muscle,” Vergil was saying.

“Hopefully?” Lamorak said, sounding dubious.

“A lot can go wrong—it most likely will—but what choice do we have?”

“How hard do I have to hit it?” Lamorak asked, looking at Palomides.

“Hard,” the man said, looking at Godfrey, who nodded. “You’ll probably pass out with the pain. Let us hope you do. That will make what has to come after, a lot easier for all of us.”

“I just want you to know, I’m not looking forward to this,” Godfrey said, the pain written on his face and echoing through his words.

“Let’s get this over with,” Lamorak said, picking up his sword.

“Wait!” Palomides said, and walking to one of the bags on the smaller pack horse, came back with a wooden bound book, three fingers deep. “Put this against the arrow. That way, you won’t miss.”

“What if the arrow goes through the book?”

“If you hit it hard enough, it shouldn’t matter.”

“That doesn’t sound too promising,” Godfrey said, struggling against the pain.

“Don’t talk. Ty not to think about it,” Palomides said, holding the book a fraction away from the arrow and looking up at Lamorak. He nodded. Mustafa the Immortal, held the other half of the book, helping to steady it as Lamorak raised the sword and swung.

Hard.

Godfrey gasped, and screamed, as the arrow inside his body cavity snapped, the arrow head pressing against the bones and the barbed tip sticking out fractionally, as the shaft slipped partially out through the bones above the arrow’s tip. A slow streak of blood dribbled from the new wound, and then started to flow.

“That doesn’t look good,” Vergil said softly.

“What happened?” Lamorak asked.

“The arrow snapped,” Palomides said.

“Snapped? How?”

“Probably damaged before it was released,” Mustafa said, pulling Godfrey back and looking at the wound. He shook his head at the sight.

“Do I hit it again?” Lamorak asked.

Palomides shook his head.

“It still has to come out,” Vergil said.

“I will pull it out,” Mustafa said.

“Pull it out? How?” Vergil asked. “What are you going to pull that out with?”

“I have tools for that,” Mustafa said.

He called out to Amal, the second Immortal, who was quick to run to one of the other pack animals and returned with a long leather roll-up pouch Mustafa untied and spread out on the grass in front of him. There were several varieties of instruments, from scalpels, scissors, pliers, and tongs, to vials of potions and lotions, astringents and ungeunts. He said something to Amal and the Immortal ran through the water to the forest’s edge.

“Where’s he going?” Lamorak asked.

“We’ll need to make a poultice.”

Mustafa reached for a scalpel, testing its weight before slicing the flesh around the arrow without warning. The blood flowed quick. He dropped the scalpel and selected a slender pair of pliers he was able to force around the arrowhead, pulling it out in one quick motion. The arrow came out with a section of splintered shaft behind it.

“What about the rest of it?” Lamorak asked.

“It has to come out,” Mustafa said. “We cannot leave it inside the body cavity.”

“How do we get it out?”

“We dig,” Mustafa said, and Lamorak made a face, thinking of the pain.

“You can’t know where to dig,” he said.

“What do you suggest?” Palomides asked.

“Pull it out through his back. The barb’s not there. It should come out easily enough.”

“Nothing is ever as easy as you think it should be,” Palomides said. “If you pull it out, it may kill him.”

“Either way, it has to come out. How do you expect to pull it out of his chest? The arrow’s split. To be honest, I don’t think it matters if you pull it out from the front, or the back, he probably won’t last the night.”

“If the arrow is split, I might leave a sliver inside.”

“We have to do something,” Lamorak said. “We can’t just leave it there. He’ll bleed to death. If you pull it out from the back, maybe everything will slide back into place? If you pull it out from the front—not knowing where the shaft is split—it could be worse. I’ve seen a lot of arrow wounds. I say, pull the arrow out, cauterize the wounds, and pray to that demon God of yours that he lives.”

“From the back?” Mustafa asked, leaning Godfrey forward and seeing the tiny piece of wood still sticking out of his back.

“Can you do it?” Palomides asked.

Mustafa looked at the wound; rubbing his fingers along it, he nodded. He looked at the rolled-out pouch and took a long slender rod with a thin, silver thread. There was a small loop at the end of the silver thread and he was able to slide it about a finger’s length down the shaft. He pulled on the thread and felt Godfrey call out, his voice a muted cry of pain.

“It must be done quick,” Mustafa said. “As soon as I pull it clear, hold the knife above the would and count to five before placing it on the flesh itself.”

Lamorak nodded.

“Do it.”

Mustafa the Immortal

Locksley and Brennis rode into the camp with a second horse in time to see Mustafa pulling the arrow’s shaft out of Godfrey’s back, a sickening red length as long as a man’s forearm and as thick as a finger. He tossed it to the side, and Palomides picked it up, rinsing it with water and looking at it closely as Mustafa held his hand on the wound. He was pressing hard. Palomides ran his fingers along the bloody shaft and Mustafa looked at him. He nodded his head and Mustafah turned his attention back to Godfrey’s wounds.

“Is the knife ready?” he asked Lamorak.

“What are you doing?” Locksley asked, jumping from his saddle with a practiced ease.

“Cauterizing the wound,” Lamorak said, watching the knives where they rested in the embers.

“To be honest, we’ll be cauterizing two,” Palomides said. “And remember Lam, the one in the front is far more worrisome than this one.”

“Just tell me where to lay this,” Lamorak said.

“Here!”

Mustafa lifted his hand, drew a circle in the blood on Godfrey’s back, and raised his hands out of the way as Lamorak held the red hot blade over the wound, his lips moving as he counted before pressing the blade down.

“And press hard. Lean into it,” Mustafa said, looking at the second blade.

He was on his knees looking at the small glass vials. He pulled three of them out of the pouch and made a thick paste using a small vial of what looked like regular water.

“What’s that?” Lamorak asked, feeling the heat of the blade.

“Virgins’ tears.”

Lamorak looked up as Amal returned, holding a large clot of mud and herbs in his hands. Mustafa told Amal to place the mud clot on the ground, taking two clean pieces of silk from a pocket somewhere in the pouch. He dug his hands into the ooze, laid it on the first cloth, then tied the four corners closed and repeated the same process with the other one. When he was done, he had two pouches about the size of a man’s palm.

Lamorak pressed on the blade, and the slow, lazy tendrils of burning flesh invaded his senses as he grimaced, holding his breath until the blade gave up its heat. Muustafa spread the paste on the burned flesh, and placed another clean rag over the paste.

“His chest! Quick!” Mustafa said, and Lamorak helped lay Godfrey on his back. Mustafa placed the poultice underneath Godfrey, hoping the man wouldn’t move too much. Lamorak grabbed the second knife and looked at Mustafa.

“Do the same thing,” Mustafa said, and Lamorak nodded.   

Lamorak stood above Geoffrey, looking down at the man’s crushed leg and the bone sticking out below his knee. Geoffrey looked up and tried to smile. Lamorak could see it hurt just to breathe. He could understand that kind of pain. They’d all of them had at least one life threatening injury over the last ten years, the kind of injury where your mother is on your mind and you wonder if you’ll ever see her again, he reminded himself.

“It has to come off,” Palomides said, looking at Lamorak.

“Don’t tell me,” Lamorak smiled. “And to be honest, I think Geoffrey already knows it. The bone sticking out like that would probably be a pretty good indicator; anytime I’ve ever seen a bone sticking up like that, the man lost his leg. I think he knows.”

“He’s going to need a drink,” Palomides said.

“Just one?” Lamorak laughed, giving his sword to Vergil. “See if you can get a fine line on that, will you? I don’t want to have to do it more than once. No man deserves that,” he added.

Locksley stood transfixed, watching as Lamorak stood off to the side, resting the large blade on his shoulder and waiting for Geoffrey to take one last swallow of the whiskey Palomides had hidden in his saddle bags. He’d tested the blade with his thumb continuously, nodding his silent approval.

“Are you ready?” Lamorak asked Mustafa. The man sat on one side of Geoffrey, holding him down; Amal sat on the other side. Mustafa looked up at Lamorak and tightened his grip before nodding.

Locksley listened to the blood curdling scream as Lamorak swung the sword with all of his weight behind it. There was a sickening, bone-crunching snap, and Palomides pulled the severed leg out of the way, dousing the last of the whiskey on the stump of flesh; igniting it. Palomides quickly picked up the broadsword resting in the embers, and sealed the wound. Mustafa was there smearing his paste on the leg, wrapping it tight with a bolt of silk.

“We can’t take them with us,” Lamorak said. “We’ll have to find some place to leave them.”