THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY
PALOMIDES, THE PAGAN KNIGHT (CONT'D)
Lamorak rode out to the field with heavy feelings of guilt. Vergil was following close behind; both of them were splashing through the water and putting their horses through a manic pace. The wind was beginning to pick up, the clouds scattering across the sky and letting the sun break through. The sunlight hit the rippling water, and speckled shafts of light caught the burnished metal of his chaussons. He lifted his visor, revelling in the feel of fresh air rushing around his ears, down his neck and cooling his back. He knew he’d have to stay armoured all the time now. Like Locksley, he thought.
Where is the boy? he wondered. It shouldn’t take him that long to run an untried Squire into the ground. Unless it was a ruse.
Did he think it was a ruse?
The more he thought about it, he did.
There’s little I can do about it now, though. Geoffrey’s likely to have suffered broken ribs and maybe an arm, or a shoulder, or possibly even his head. Right now, he had to concentrate on both Geoffrey and Godfrey. He didn’t have a clue what they’d find once they reached the broken man, but there was no doubt in his mind the man was broken. He’d been kicked at least twice as Modred and his horse galloped over him the first time; the second time, when he left the field, was the one that had done most of the damage.
Somehow, Geoffrey had managed to wrap his arms around his head and bring his knees up to protect his chest. But his knee shattered on the first pass and he found himself sitting up, hugging his knee and screaming. He looked through tear-stained eyes, voiced a pain-laden scream and then the horse rode over him a second time, as Modred prepared to leave the field.
Lamorak guessed something had happened to Geoffrey’s leg. Geoffrey was unable to stand. Lamorak found Geoffrey staring at the whiteness of the bone sticking out of his leg. Vergil came around Lamorak’s horse carrying two full lances and several broken pieces he’d picked up along the way.
“Fuck Geoffrey!” Vergil said, coming to a sudden stop, trying not to look at the grizzly sight. He dropped everything he had. “I’m gonna try to make you a litter—the kind the Celts use,” he said, setting about the task.
“Are you going to tell me that you used to ride with the Celts? I thought you were a Saxon?” Lamorak laughed.
“Godfrey’s the Saxon,” Geoffrey somehow managed to say. Lamorak bent down to look at the leg, and then looked at Vergil who shook his head.
“Have you looked at Godfrey, yet?” he asked.
“I did. The arrow’s not all the way through,” Vergil replied.
“It’s not? Damn. How far do you think it needs to go?”
Vergil held up his index finger, running his thumb along the inside of it, stopping at the middle knuckle of his finger.
“If it were all the way through, I could burn the tip off and pull the shaft back.
“You could kill him doing that,” Lamorak said with a slow shake of his head.
“It’ll certainly kill him if we leave it in there, won’t it? You can’t pull something like that out, and you know it. The arrow will rip him apart. You pretty well have to tie him down and drive the arrow through with a single blow.”
“A single blow of what?”
“The flat of your sword?”
“No. There’s no way of not causing more damage doing it that way,” Lamorak said.
“Have you got a better idea? Because I’m all out of them. My father told me a long time ago, if you don’t have the solution, then don’t argue the point.”
“A smart man, your father. What about Geoffrey?”
“The leg’s gonna have to come off.”
“And who’s going to do that?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Have you ever taken a man’s leg off before?”
Lamorak shook his head. He’d maimed and killed men before; he’d even taken a man’s head off with a single stroke once, but he’d never deliberately taken a man’s leg to save his life. He didn’t know the first thing about it.
“I take it you’ve done it before?”
Vergil shook his head. “Me? No. But I’ve seen it done, and there’s a lot more to it, than simply chopping it.”
“Like what?”
“You have to stop the blood, for one thing.”
“And how do you do that?”
“We’ll have to ablate the wound.”
“And what does that mean? I swear, the more you listen to Grummer and his strange ways of talk—how do you propose to do that…whatever it is? Put his leg in the fire?”
“How about we put a sword in the fire and heat it up until it glows? When you lop the leg off, I’m going to press the blade against it, and hopefully seal it off. After that, we pray he lives through it.”
“That doesn’t sound very optimistic; it might if I were a praying type of man, but you know I’m not.”
“It doesn’t sound very optimistic, does it? But it’s a far cry better than running him though and leaving him for the wolves.”
“And who do we help first? Godfrey or Geoffrey?”
“We can sit Godfrey up and do it right now if you want. I can break off part of the arrow’s shaft. You swing the flat of the sword, hit the shaft, and hopefully the arrow doesn’t break as it penetrates through the chest plate.”
“Again,” Lamorak said. “Not very optimistic.”
“What do you want from me? I’ve never done this before. You might want to make sure I know what I’m doing, because this could be you I’m doing it to one day.”
“Point well taken,” Lamorak said, looking at Godfrey in the distance, laying in the camp. He decided to help Vergil with the litter—anything to take his mind off of what had to be done—tying small pieces of hide to hold the broken and split lances in place. It was big, and awkward, and wasn’t something they’d be able to drag behind a horse. They’d have to pull it themselves, both of them holding a lance and dragging the contraption back to the campsite.
“Somehow, I don’t think this is something the Celts would make.”
“It’s better than a kick in the nuts,” Vergil said, picking up his end. Geoffrey cried out in pain as Lamorak picked up his end.
They tried to move slow enough so Geoffrey wouldn’t suffer, but the ground was soft with the recent rain, and puddles of water covered the little holes and hillocks the galloping horses had turned up.
Palomides returned with his Squire and the two remaining Immortals.
“What can we do to help?” the Saracen said.
“We have to get him back to the camp,” Vergil said.
“Mustafa! Amal!” Palomides called out, and he said something Lamorak didn’t understand. The two men jumped down from their saddles, each opening a saddle pouch and displaying several instruments Lamorak had never seen before. He understood that Persians were said to be knowledgable about Science and Medicine.
Lamorak looked at Vergil and then turned to Palomides. “You can help us?”
“We’re Parthians,” was all he said.
