Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

“Let’s get this arrow out of you, Clyton,” Maia said, “and then perhaps you can get closer to the ground so I can get her down without dropping her.” She looked at the arrow in his leg and frowned. “This looks like one of mine,” she remarked, grasping it firmly below the fletching and pulling it straight out. The horse cried out in pain, and Maia stared in horror at the arrow she was holding. It was one of hers, but the last time she had seen it the shaft had simply been sharpened to a point. Since then somebody had added metal barbs to the tip, and it had not slid out as she expected it to. Instead, it had ripped a chunk out of Clyton’s leg.

“I am so sorry,” she gasped. “It didn’t have barbs when I saw it last!” She snatched up a cloth she used to wrap supplies in and pressed it against his leg to stop the bleeding.

:It’s not that bad,: Clyton said, although she suspected him of being less than truthful. :At least we’re far enough into Sorrows that the bandits aren’t likely to track us here.:

“Probably not,” Maia agreed. “My brother won’t even come in here.” Still keeping pressure on the leg, she twisted to look at the woman on his back, who had at least four arrows in her. “Bandits?” she asked. “There are usually no bandits anywhere near here.”

:There are now,: Clyton said grimly. Suddenly she found herself looking through his eyes. She recognized the road leading to her family’s farm, not that it was much of a farm since her parents had died and her brother had sold all the animals and stopped working the land.

As Clyton and his Herald approached the farm, men fired arrows—all of them barbed—from the trees on both sides of the road and then moved into the road to surround horse and rider. She saw her brother’s face clearly for a moment as he reached to grab the left side of Clyton’s reins, but then everything blurred as Clyton put on a seemingly impossible burst of speed and broke out of the trap.

Maia blinked and found herself back in the present and seeing through her own eyes again. “Was that real?” she asked. “What I just saw, I mean.”

:Yes. That’s what happened to us. You obviously have Mindspeech if you can pick it up from me like that.:

Maia lifted the cloth carefully and looked at his leg. The bleeding had almost stopped. “I think you’ll be all right for the moment if you don’t try to move much,” she said. “I’ll just have to lift Samina down as carefully as I can and hope for the best. I can see four arrows in her back—do you know if there are any more?”

:I don’t think so, but check before you try to move her. And be careful removing the arrows!:

“Don’t worry,” Maia assured him; “I learned my lesson with the one in your leg!”

:Better my leg than her body,: Clyton sighed.

Maia felt around Samina’s body to check for additional arrows, but she didn’t find any more. She wriggled her arm and shoulder between Samina’s body and the saddle, took most of the woman’s weight, and went to the ground in something between a slide and a fall. At least Samina landed on top of her, and none of the arrows hit the ground. Maia positioned the Herald carefully so that the arrows were still pointing away from the ground. “I’ll need to cut them out very carefully,” she murmured, looking around for the knife she used to trim arrow shafts.

:There should be a medical kit attached to my saddle.:

“That would help,” Maia agreed, moving to examine the saddle. An impressive variety of items was attached to snaffles on the skirting. “It might be more to the point to ask what’s not attached to your saddle,” she remarked as she searched for and finally found the medical kit. In addition to a clean knife, there was a needle and thread to sew the wounds and cloths to bandage it after she was done. There was also a jar of something Clyton said should be put on the wounds to help clean them, and a powder that could be made into a tea to lower the fever that Samina was undoubtedly going to have. At the moment she was still unconscious, which made cutting out the arrows and cleaning and sewing her wounds easier, but Maia could feel Clyton worrying about Samina’s lack of responsiveness. She could see that the woman had lost a lot of blood.

But there was nothing she could do about that, so she unsaddled Clyton and put the saddle on a fallen log.