He toppled like a tree, but forward, on top of her, and they both went do the ground. He seemed to be holding on to her, angry perhaps, and technically not “dead,” only having lost his leg, but if she remembered right, it was against the rules to grapple on the ground. She felt a crushing blow to her chest, a fist perhaps, or a knee, which was also against the rules.
“Separate!” yelled one of the armored marshals, shoving his staff between the two. “Come on, back up and resume!” When the big man didn’t move fast enough, the referee whacked him on the helm with his hardwood staff, a sound much sharper and stronger than those the taped rattan weapons made. “I said get off! No rhino-hiding! Last warning!”
Now Cal saw why the marshals carried those staves. A two-handed blow could break bone, maybe knock someone out even through a steel helm.
The opponent finally released Cal. She stood up, staggering away and panting like a bellows. Her vision clouded with effort and pain.
“Are you well?” the marshal asked.
“Yeah, fine.” Cal jerked away from him and looked around for her next target. The battle was both more chaotic and quieter than she had anticipated. Used to gunfire and the explosions that were endemic to war movies and thrillers, a fight with just swords and shields was remarkably free of sound effects, even with the shouts of the fighters and the spectators. And yet, it roiled all around her, and she wasn’t sure what side anyone was on anymore. She tried to orient herself to the field and remember the heraldry and colors. Her side was supposed to have red armbands, theirs blue, but everything was hard to see, to remember which way she had been facing and advancing. The clarity brought on with the adrenaline rush had abandoned her.
Was there a goal? She remembered something about killing the opposing commander, or capturing the standard-bearer’s banner.
“Cal! Cal, over here!”
Cal did the now-familiar full-body turn to find the source of the voice. Manson was backing up from an attack by three, and Meat was nowhere in sight. Maybe he’d been killed already. Cal jogged over to him, all the while worrying she might be hit again, unable to see anyone approaching her from behind. She clubbed one of the attacking knights from behind, body-checked him sideways with her shield, and then managed a hit to his thigh that sent him to the ground.
Guiltily, Cal hoped she hadn’t seriously injured him. Between the adrenaline of the fight, her confusion, and the chaos of the battlefield, she was losing hold on the reality that it was a game, not a true life-and-death battle. She turned her attention from the man she’d dropped to the next one attacking her bodyguard.
This one had spotted her, though, and whirled with savage speed. She lifted her sword to block, but his blow slammed into her hand—her left hand, her stronger one, of course, as her weaker right was buckled firmly into her shield grips—and she suspected from the blast of pain in her knuckles that he had broken at least one of her fingers. She could barely hold onto her sword now.
The knight was tall and broad, his helm decorated with handsome gold trim. Their swords and shields clashed together, and he was just about to kill her with an overhand blow when Manson managed to get his shield in the way.
The golden knight reversed his swing, using the bounce off the shield and snapping the sword back around to strike a clean blow to Manson’s helm with a perfectly sharp clang. Manson retreated and, after a pause to think, sank to his knees and fell over, recognizing his death-blow.
Cal backed up and reset herself. Clearly this man was a skilled fighter, and given his further advantages in size, strength and reach, she would probably follow Manson to her “death,” but she was determined to do her best. Hell, she’d already done better than most newbies, she figured.
But she couldn’t catch her breath. She felt as if she were drowning, and a tightness seized her chest.
Suddenly, a curtain fell across the world.
There were a few impressions of the battlefield after that, disjointed images that Cal tried to put together, but couldn’t gather into a coherent whole or proper timeline.
“Cal! California!” The hoarse, urgent voice came from far away.
“Is she okay?”
“Help me get this off.”
There were people talking and yelling, bright sunlight breaking through the crowds. Cal felt incredibly uncomfortable, plates of armor sticking into her and pinching tender places. Her helm had been removed, but her vision still seemed restricted, tunneled and spotty. She tried to open her eyes and look around, but her head was muzzy, her eyelids heavy.
“Cal? Can you hear me?”
“I don’t like the sound of her breathing. How’s her pulse?”
There were sirens, and people yelling things that didn’t make any sense. ‘He’s dead!’ and ‘He’s bleeding out!’ She wanted to take them by the throat and point out that she wasn’t a “he” and that she didn’t think she was that badly injured, but she couldn’t decide what had happened. And it hurt too much to move, much less shake some sense into anyone.
Sense…none of it made sense.
Chaos washed over her and she was sure she’d been lying there on the ground for hours on end. She faded in and out of consciousness, unable to explain her thoughts or to open her eyes and sit up like she wanted to.
“Miss Corwin. Cal, can you hear me?”
Cal focused on the woman’s voice. Who was it? Starlight? She couldn’t figure it out without opening her eyes, but someone was shining a light into them, so her lids wouldn’t stay open. Was it night? Was that why the woman was aiming a flashlight at her face? Or was it Jenna speaking, from the light at the end of the tunnel? Was she dead and passed on?
Cal shifted her position and realized that she wasn’t dead, nor was she on the ground anymore. Her armor was no longer biting into her body, and she rested on something comfortable. She sighed a little, melting into the softness and drifting, drifting...
“Cal. Miss Corwin. I need you to wake up and talk to me now.”
Cal tried to push the flashlight away. Her arm moved clumsily and didn’t make contact, but the light shifted. She tried to force her eyes open. “Who are you?”
“Dr. Ortiz. We met last week.”
Cal’s thoughts jelled around the young Latina doctor. She could remember the woman’s face, even if she couldn’t focus on it yet.
“Doctor.”
“Yes.”
“Am I okay?”
“We have you stabilized. How’s your pain level? Tell me from one to ten.”
“Um, five. Was it…the bomb?”
“Bomb? No. No bomb.” Dr. Ortiz sounded confused.
“She was caught in a bomb blast years ago,” a familiar male voice said. “That’s why…the scars.”
“Oh, I see.” The doctor’s fingers fluttered over Cal’s neck and face. “It wasn’t a bomb, Cal. You were participating in a mock battle. Do you remember?”
The memories started to trickle back, but everything was happening in the wrong order, and Cal still couldn’t put them right.
“Yes…Golden Gate…”
“That’s right. Golden Gate Park. You sustained some injuries in the fight. Do you remember that?”
Cal remembered the pain in her hand after being struck by a rattan sword. “Um…my hand.” She tried to move the fingers to see how bad it was, but again felt clumsy and restricted in her movement.
Dr. Ortiz pressed her arm back down to the bed. Cal blinked a couple of times. Ortiz’s face was blurred, but Cal could at least squint at her and follow her movements. By the smells and lights, she was in a hospital. That made sense. Ortiz wasn’t going to come see her in her office, after all. No, that was silly. What was she thinking? Not very well, obviously. All so confusing…
Dr. Ortiz smiled with her voice. “Well, yes, you did break a couple of phalanges, but those aren’t serious, just painful. Do you remember getting hit in the head?”
“Which time…?” Cal focused on her thick, pounding skull. It felt like someone ha
d beaten her over the head with a bat, which was more or less what sword fighting with wooden weapons was. More disturbing than the bumps and bruises on her scalp was the feeling of growing pressure inside. Her sinuses hurt like she had a bad cold. Her eyes felt swollen. Her ears felt blocked or like she was under water. “I had a helmet.”
“You did, but there’s only so much they can do. I’ve seen a few of these before, just like in football—concussions. Which is what you have. This sport you’re engaged in causes more injuries than people like to admit.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry. Tirade over. But we’re going to have to do surgery if your intercranial pressure gets any higher.”
“It was just…for fun. I don’t understand.”
“Me neither. I’m not sure exactly what happened out there.” Dr. Ortiz sighed. She tugged at Cal’s blanket, pulling it aside to examine her chest, reaching under the sheet. When she probed lightly, Cal gasped at the white lightning-bolt of pain that shot straight to her heart. She had problems catching her breath.
“Sorry,” Ortiz apologized. “Looks like we could still increase your painkillers. You have a serious chest contusion. We’re doing everything we can to reduce the inflammation. Your heart needs to be monitored for a few days, too. It may have been bruised.”
Cal wasn’t in any position to be worried about how long she would have to stay at the hospital. Everything hurt far too much. She closed her eyes, wincing.
“Something more for the pain?” Ortiz asked. “Something from modern medicine?”
“Yeah. That’d be good.”
“Glad you feel that way. Too many of the reenactors I get here want some kind of period-authentic painkiller. Whisky or opium or white willow bark. I tell them we live in modern times, take advantage of modern medicine.”
Cal chuckled once. But it hurt her chest and her head too much. “I’ll take modern painkillers any day.”
“Good girl.”
Cal concentrated on her breathing while Ortiz injected something into the Y-port of her IV drip. She tried to breathe deeply enough to get the oxygen that she needed, but not deeply enough that it made her chest hurt even worse.
“You treat a lot of the reenactors?” she asked.
“Do you know how many of you people come around here with broken bones? The repeat ones, I thought they were domestic abuse cases. Cuts and bruises and contusions every few weeks, each of them. Now, I recognize them for what they are. Crazy. I should get my cert in sports medicine just from the OJT.”
Cal suppressed another laugh. The male voice spoke from beside her bed. “They may be crazy, but it is a lot of fun. I’m gonna do it again.”
She turned her head very slowly, a fraction at a time until she could see who is was. “Manson?” She had to ask, because although the voice was right, he’d dropped most of the urban accent. Well, most of one of the several accents the M&Ms affected.
“You had fun, didn’t you, Cal? I mean, until you got knocked down, you looked like you were having a good time.” Manson transferred his gaze to the doctor. “Where else can you go out and bash heads and it’s legal? I haven’t had such a blast since high school football.”
Ortiz gave him a pitying look and shook her head. “It’s people like you who keep me in business.”
“I’m all right. A few bumps and bruises, maybe. Not like Cal or…” He trailed off.
Cal suddenly became aware of Meat’s absence. She had assumed at first that the hospital would only allow her one visitor at a time, but as Manson shrugged and looked away, her painful heart started to thump harder and faster.
“Manson… Where’s your brother? He not…?”
“He’s…”
Cal remembered the few stray lines she had processed after her collapse. “He’s bleeding out!” and “He’s dead!” A chill sliced through her at that thought that they had been talking about Meat. She’d put her bodyguards through dangerous circumstances before. They’d both risked bullets or broken bones for her. But the thought that she might have lost one of them…
Ortiz was back beside Cal. “Hey, Miss Corwin. Take it easy.” Dr. Ortiz was holding Cal’s wrist and looking at the machines beside her, which were making alarming noises. “Everything is fine. Is the pain increasing? Any nausea?”
“No. No, it’s just…” Cal gulped. “What happened, Manson? What happened to him?”
“Whoa, no, no.” Manson held up his hands. “No, Cal. Meat, he fine. He had some…investigating to do. That’s all.” Manson looked in Ortiz’s direction again. “He’s okay. A little roughed up. We both are. But nothing that’s gonna sideline us.”
“Oh.” Cal breathed out. “Okay, then. That’s okay.” She nodded her head, which made her dizzy and her head pound harder. “You scared me. I thought you were saying…”
“I didn’t mean to make you think anything. I’ll tell you all about it later. Or he will.”
“What’s he investigating?” As soon as the words left Cal’s mouth, she waved them away, realizing that Manson had been trying to avoid just such a question in front of other people. “I mean…” She addressed Ortiz rather than Manson. “You said you didn’t know what had happened out there. I thought, when I was unconscious out there…that I might have heard… Did…somebody die?”
Ortiz was still holding Cal’s wrist and watching the heart and blood pressure monitor screen. “Yes,” she said curtly. “A man died out there. Totally preventable. It’s just a game, and for someone to die because of it…that’s just inexcusable. And you’re lucky we didn’t lose you too, with a blunt force chest injury like you have. Don’t you people think about what could happen?”
“Hey, now,” said Manson.
“I’m sorry, I’m supposed to be neutral,” said Ortiz. “It’s hard to be dispassionate when I see things like this, or kids that get hurt because they aren’t belted in, or wearing bike helmets—”
“I’m not actually one of them,” Cal interrupted. She could feel her face flushing and hoped that it wouldn’t be immediately apparent to Ortiz. “I was looking into what was going on. I was told—” At Manson’s warning look, she closed her mouth. The concussion and the painkillers were affecting her and she had to stop talking before she spilled something she didn’t want to. “I was just checking it out. So what happened to the man who died?”
“I didn’t get a good look at him, but he was DOA. I only saw him for a few seconds before he was taken downstairs. The EMTs said exsanguinated. Bled out.”
“Bled out?” Cal opened her eyes wider, trying to keep herself awake and focused. “How? No sharp weapons are allowed. Everything’s made of rattan. They can’t do any real damage.”
Ortiz glared.
“Well, I mean, I guess they can,” Cal backtracked, “but not like a sharpened sword. People can’t be stabbed or cut.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Something cut him, or he wouldn’t have bled to death before he got here.”
Cal struggled to keep her breathing slow and steady so that her heart would not speed. “But that would mean...” She didn’t finish the statement. Unless it was an accident—a piece of a metal shield rim or a handguard that broke and stabbed someone in the neck or artery…but that was unlikely.
Far more likely to be murder.
Manson nodded. His earnest expression told Cal that he had already figured that part out. That’s why Meat was out investigating while Cal was sidelined and Manson was stuck babysitting her.
Neither of the M&Ms was supposed to be investigating. They were her muscle, not trained detectives, and given their propensity for intimidation, they might scare off any witnesses trampling around like…like rhinos? That made her laugh inside.
Cal struggled against the muddle-headedness and the painkillers. “Manson, Meat really shouldn’t be…”
“Somebody’s got to, Cal. You have to investigate early, before evidence is lost or witnesses disappear. That’s what you always say. And he’s the most mobile one right now.�
��
“The most mobile?” Cal tried to sit up to get a good look at Manson. Had he broken something?
Ortiz grasped Cal gently by the shoulders, and helped her to lie back down without collapsing. Cal hadn’t realized how hard it would be, with her whole front bruised and weak.
“I’m okay, Cal,” Manson assured her. “I just sprained my ankle. Tripped over you, to tell the truth. Nothing broken.”
“You need to have it looked at before you can be sure of that,” Ortiz warned, sounding like she’d been over this ground already. “You need an X-ray to rule out a fracture.”
“I wouldn’t be able to walk on it if it was broken,” Manson said with the false certainty of the healthy young male. “I’ll get it checked out if it swells up or gets worse. Otherwise, I’m fine just hobbling around until it heals.”
“Did you get something for the pain?” Cal asked.
“I don’t need anything.”
Ortiz looked at Cal, making a helpless gesture over at Manson. “At least take some ibuprofen. It’ll help with the pain and the inflammation.
“It’s not because he’s in the Society,” Cal told Ortiz. “He’s just stubborn and macho. Right Manson?”
Manson folded his arms across his chest and nodded.
“You’re not going to be eating any…” Cal tried to remember the painkillers that Ortiz had mentioned. “Weeping willow bark?”
“White willow bark,” Ortiz corrected. “That’s basically just aspirin. Your friend here’s more in line with the ones who ask for opium. Like I have opium around here. Morphine and Demerol are much purer and safer. Opium has a whole range of alkaloids and crap in it.”
“Those are opiates, right?” Cal pointed to the IV drip running down into her arm. “Morphine, Demerol?”
Ortiz lowered her voice, even though the hospital room door was shut. “Sure. But I don’t have opium itself. That’s what these Society people want. Authentic for the time period. They think it’s a panacea. A miracle cure, all-natural. Well, redcap mushrooms or belladonna are natural too, but they’ll kill you anyway.”
The Girl In the Morgue Page 16