Tarc glanced at Daussie, but she had whirled to go up the stairs. He looked back at his mother thinking that the revulsion and self-pity he’d felt when killing those men earlier in the night paled in comparison to what his mother and sister must be feeling now.
Eva was blinking her eyes, squeezing them shut to get the tears out of them. She turned and with a trembling voice whispered in Tarc’s ear, “Pull the loop of bowel with the hole in it out through the wound in his side.”
Tarc blinked at the idea.
Pike slurred, “You guys don’t need to whisper. I know I’m gonna die.”
Eva cleared her throat and with a suddenly clear voice firmly said, “Not if we have anything to say about it.”
Tarc used his ghost to tug on the wound it was holding shut, pulling the bowel loop the wound was in toward the opening in Pike’s abdominal wall. Even doing it himself, he found it somehow grotesque when the loop appeared in the opening and bulged through like a portion of a fat worm.
Eva nodded, then said, “Now let’s get a stitch in it.”
With it there in the wound Tarc wondered if… “Are we going to use your ‘needle grabber’?” he whispered.
Eva shook her head and made a motion with her hand indicating he should go ahead.
Tarc blinked a couple of times then grasped the needle with his ghost and pulled it to the wound in the bowel. He looked down at the diagram Eva had laid out for him. Taking a deep breath, he led the needle through the two sides of the opening and then back the other way.
Eva had diagrammed a knot holding the two sides together. Tarc found it relatively easy to wrap the tail of the suture around the part with the needle to form a half hitch. Eva nodded, then said, “Make another half hitch and pull it tight.”
Tarc did so. Eva had him throw two more hitches to make it secure then she leaned to his ear and whispered. “Now, let go of the opening to see if it leaks.”
Tarc let go with a sigh of relief, suddenly aware of how tired his ghost had been, holding back the intestine’s contents. Eva leaned forward and splashed some of her sterile salt water over the wound. A ripple worked through the loop of bowel that Tarc recognized must be the “peristalsis” he’d read about that pushed food through the intestines. When it did, a small amount of brown material oozed out through the corner of the hole next to the stitch. His stitch had been a little off center and the material leaked from the end it was farther from.
Eva splashed more saline on it, washing away the brown stuff, then whispered, “Put another stitch there where it’s leaking.”
Tarc stared at the wound, puzzled. He didn’t know whether he was supposed to cut the tail off what he already had and put in an entirely new stitch.
Eva picked up her paper and dipped a quill in a tiny bottle of ink Tarc hadn’t noticed. She diagrammed the needle continuing over to put another stitch in without being cut loose.
Turning his attention back to the wound Tarc sent the needle back through each side of the wound on either side of the spot where it had leaked. He tied that back to the tail still hanging off the first knot. He wondered what to do about the tails. Eva washed more saline through the wound. Another spasm of peristalsis went through it, but nothing leaked out.
Eva unwrapped a pair of scissors which Tarc assumed she had sterilized. She carefully reached over and cut the tails off the stitches then leaned to his ear. “Let’s wash everything out, then we’ll check one more time to be sure it isn’t leaking.” She started pouring saline into the wound, then stopped and leaned to Tarc again. “You’ve got to guide the saline into his abdomen, slosh it around and then pull it back out. That way it will wash out any of the stuff that spilled from his intestine.”
Tarc tilted his head, trying to grasp the idea. Eva started pouring again and Tarc used his ghost to funnel the fluid in through the wound. This pushed the loop of bowel back into Pike’s abdomen. Tarc ran the fluid around inside Pike, washing it over any areas where he thought some of the spillage might have gone. Eva stopped pouring for a bit and Tarc brought the fluid back out the opening.
They repeated this over and over. Eva pouring it in. Tarc sluicing it around and pulling it back out. They both checked the bowel wound repeatedly, but it didn’t leak again.
Eventually Eva unwrapped another needle and thread, saying, “Use this one to suture the wall of his abdomen.”
Tarc said, “Why aren’t we just using the rest of the one we did the intestine with?”
“Because it’s contaminated from going in and out of his intestine. We want a new, clean one for this. Besides, this is heavier suture.”
Tarc used his ghost to pass this heavier suture once and tie the first knot, then began looping it along closing the wall of Pike’s abdomen. Pike moaned a little as he did it, suggesting that he had more feeling in the wall than he did in the intestine itself. Once Tarc had the opening in the inner layer of the wall closed Eva opened another cloth bundle and pulled out her needle grabber. She said, “I can tell you’re getting tired. I can take it from here.”
Tarc sat back with relief and watched as Eva deftly stitched up the next layer and the one after that.
Eva turned to him and said, “Why don’t you go up and see if your dad needs some help. I’ve got this now.”
Tarc blinked, suddenly very tired, but he stood and left the little hidden room. Eva called after him, “Get some of your old shirts and pants for Daussie.” Tarc turned with a little surprise but then realized that of course Daussie couldn’t wear her long skirts and feminine blouses anymore. When he’d climbed the stairs out of the basement he went to his room and got a shirt and pair of pants that had been getting a little tight. He started looking for Daum and Daussie.
He found them in Daum’s brewing room, Daussie crying as Daum hacked her hair off close to her head. He was cutting it much shorter than Tarc’s was at present and doing a sloppy job, leaving some hanks shorter and others longer.
Tarc studied her a moment. She still looked pretty, bad hair, bloodshot eyes and all. He wondered what could be done about that. “Sorry Dauss,” he practically whispered. He held out the bundle of clothes. “Mom said to give you these.”
Daum said, “Tarc, look under my bed, you’ll find a bow and quiver. Take it to the cellar and put it with the other weapons. Oh, and look through the kitchen. Take any big knives there that might make good weapons too. I suspect the invaders will be confiscating anything they think might be used as a weapon.”
To his astonishment, Tarc found an elegantly curved bow and a quiver of extremely high quality arrows under his parent’s bed. He had never known his father had such a weapon. When Tarc arrived back in the basement with the bow and all the big knives from the kitchen he found the panel closed over the hidden room. The bolts hadn’t been shot so he was able to just lift it out of the way and put the weapons inside. Pike snored softly under the influence of the poppy.
Back upstairs he started into the brew room, but backed out at a shriek from Daussie. He’d gotten a brief glimpse of his mother wrapping Daussie’s torso with a long bolt of cloth. Daum spoke behind him. “Go up and try to get some sleep. We’ll be opening at the usual time. I expect there won’t be much business, but we’ve got to act like we don’t know anything’s changed.”
Chapter Seven
Daum’s prediction that there wouldn’t be much business proved horribly wrong.
Instead of Daussie, Daum woke Tarc. “We need you downstairs waiting tables. The invaders have come here for breakfast and Daussie won’t go into the big room, even dressed as a boy. She’s trying to do your jobs and we’re calling her Dodge. For God’s sake don’t call her Daussie by mistake, some of these assholes know her name and have started asking for her.” He started to leave, then stepped back in, “We’re telling them that Daussie went back to live with her parents on a farm near Ajax.”
When he’d first woken, Tarc felt like crap, but the bolt of adrenalin that shot through him at the thought of the big room full
of soldiers slammed that feeling out of him. Downstairs the big room was absolute bedlam with shouting soldiers bellowing orders faster than Tarc could take them and much faster than Eva could turn them out.
When Tarc delivered his first plates and asked for payment the man at the table stood, grabbing Tarc by the front of his shirt and lifting a big knife to hold it under Tarc’s chin, “Don’t remember me do you, you little piece of shit?”
Tarc suddenly recognized the man who’d shorted him on the weight of coin for a meal because he’d wanted Daussie to wait his table. Nonetheless, eyes wide, Tarc shook his head “no.”
“Well, last time you asked me to pay I told you I’d only pay that sexy bitch that works here sometimes. The same holds today, and this time there ain’t gonna be no deputies showin’ up to insist I pay.” He grinned and arched an eyebrow, “You know why?”
A twist in his gut said that he did, but Tarc shook his head anyway.
He leaned close to Tarc’s face and bellowed, “‘Cause they’re all fookin’ dead!” He shoved Tarc away and bawled to the room in general, “So, everyone eats free today! Right mates?”
A general roar of approval from the room greeted this proclamation.
Tarc glanced at Daum who gave a minute shake of his head. He headed back to the kitchen, trembling with a mixture of apprehension and rage. He told his mother what had happened. She closed her eyes and said, “Try to keep calm and just do what they say. It’s better that they eat us out of business than killing us.” She pointed to five more plates of food.
As he reached for the plates, someone limped in the back door with a strap of wood. Tarc’s eyes widened.
It was Daussie!
She looked like shit. Not just her hacked up short hair and bloodshot eyes. There were dark bags under her eyes. Somehow her skin was darker and smudgy. “Her eyes… they’d cut her long lashes short! Her limp… she limped, he realized because they’d probably stuffed something in her shoe to make that leg longer. The way Daum had cut her hair longer on one side than the other made Daussie’s head look asymmetrical.
Tarc shook his head, stacked the plates on his left arm and headed out to the big room. “Dodge,” he thought to himself, I’ve got to remember to call her… call him, “Dodge.”
***
If Tarc and his family had found the morning feeding the soldiers gratis oppressive, it was nothing compared to the events later that morning. At midmorning the town’s alarm bells began tolling very slowly.
Uncertainly, men came outside, almost all of them having already figured out that Walterston had fallen without an attack on the walls. They knew there would be no point in charging to their posts at the walls. On the streets they found men with unsheathed swords who disarmed them of even small work knives. Though they patted them down, to Tarc’s surprise, they did not find the throwing knives he and Daum had hidden between their shoulder blades.
The unsmiling soldiers herded the men of the town toward the central plaza. If no men came out of a house the soldiers pounded on the door and demanded that at least one man and preferably two attend a “ceremony” in the plaza.
At the tavern they had demanded Daum, Tarc, and “that gimp that works out back.”
When Daussie learned that she was expected to go to the square with the rest of the men she looked so frightened that Tarc feared she might bolt or pass out. Daum grabbed her by the elbow and steered her grimly out to the street where she limped along between Tarc and Daum. She began sniffling.
Tarc thought momentarily of how he had sneered at her girlish fears in days gone by. Today, he mostly felt glad he hadn’t started sniffling himself. He realized that he felt fear for his sister too.
Tarc wished he’d been able to piss before they’d left the tavern. His ghost told him that his bladder wasn’t all that full, but it spasmed at every threat, making him wish he could stop somewhere and empty it.
The strangers herded the men into the big square, packing them in until they could hardly move. Tarc saw big John the blacksmith and in the distance he glimpsed Jacob and his father. As he’d feared, he didn’t see any of the deputies. Nor the sergeants from the drill center. His eyes flashed back and forth, looking for Garcia, or Banes the archery instructor he’d liked, but he saw none of the town’s military leaders.
A boom came from the raised stage on one side of the square. Tarc looked that way along with everyone else and saw a man swinging a huge mallet to hit the big gong used to call people to announcements. It gonged again and Tarc noticed that the bells which had been ringing from the deputy’s stations had fallen silent. One more gong and silence reigned across the plaza.
Tarc’s eyes wandered over the big stage and suddenly realized that the big stranger who’d stayed in the tavern, the one who’d held a knife to Tarc’s breast, stood at the forefront of the men on the stage. With sick horror, Tarc realized that Sheriff Walters and three of his deputies were tied to posts on the stage. They were stripped to the waist which seemed foreboding. Tarc saw that Walters was just as grossly fat as he’d suspected.
A murmur had arisen, but it subsided as the big man held up his arms. His harsh voice boomed out over the square. “There’s a new Sheriff in town.” He began, then slowly drew his huge curved sword, holding it high. “Your old Sheriff was fat, and weak, and stupid. In fact, though you probably can’t hear it, he’s sniveling and blubbering behind me right now. He’s been begging for his life ever since we dragged him out of that cushy house of his last night.” The big man spun lightly and swung his enormous sword, slashing it across Walters’ bulging belly.
It left a red streak as it passed.
Walters shrieked piteously.
The big man threw his head back and laughed. “That, my friends, was merely a scratch! Hell,” he guffawed, “I had a bigger wound the day I got circumcised! And this man you called ‘Sheriff’ has shit himself over it.”
Tarc stared in revulsion. The wound probably extended eighteen inches across Walters’ distended belly and must have been at least an inch or two deep. Certainly, far more than a “scratch.” Beside him Daussie had turned and buried her face in her hands, trying her best to block out the horror. Tarc wondered if the men of the town would revolt against this vile treatment.
The crowd had begun to murmur and Tarc heard someone in front of him whisper loudly, “We can take them if we all charge at once!” One of the guards glanced over and moved in his direction.
The big man on the stage bellowed again. “I’m your new Sheriff. Sheriff Krait. A krait is a dangerous snake like you see on my shield.” He held up his shield, which had the head and part of the body of a snake on it. “But it’s not as dangerous as I am. So this town is no longer Walterston. It’s now ‘Kraitston.’” He lifted the bloody tip of his sword to the sky, “Me and my men here were known as ‘Krait’s Raiders’ in the Steel wars east of here.”
Everyone had heard of the wars over rights to the steel in one of the ancient cities to the east. Tarc had even heard of Krait, reputed to be a vicious and horrible man. His heart sank at the thought that such a man could be their Sheriff.
Krait continued, “And if any of you have any thought that maybe I shouldn’t be the Sheriff,” he paused and the tension ratcheted up. “Then remember this…” The big man whirled again. Swinging the huge sword viciously around him, he spun to each of the three posts that had a deputy tied to it.
At each spin one of the deputy’s heads flew off their shoulders, leaving the bodies jerking and quivering against their bonds, blood spraying from the stumps of their necks.
A fourth and final spin and Walters’ big belly fell open.
Walters’ bowels spilled out of the wound and hung down to his knees.
The sheriff shrieked piteously.
The man in front of Tarc who’d said, “We can take them,” suddenly broke ranks, charging toward the stage. He’d started to shout, “Come on!” but his words ended in a sudden gurgle as the guard who’d moved in front of him r
an him through with his sword.
For a moment Tarc had sensed the crowd leaning forward as if they would charge with the man. But, just as suddenly, they recoiled, no one wanting to lead a charge that ended like that.
No one wanted to be the next to be spitted on a sword.
No one had the courage.
Tarc knew he didn’t have the courage. He didn’t glance at his father because he certainly hoped his father didn’t have the courage.
Krait, laughed uproariously. “Only one of you was man enough to lead a charge?” He guffawed again, “I knew the men in this town were pitiful, but I didn’t think you’d be nothing but a bunch of pussies!” He turned his head this way and that as his men stood, eyes intently on the crowd, swords at the ready. “I’ll tell you what, if any of you are man enough to challenge me, put your hands up and step forward. I’ll give you a sword and you can take me on. Beat me, and my men will leave town.”
Krait looked back and forth over the men in the square. “No one?! You’re all a bunch of cowards just like I thought?”
Nothing happened for long seconds, then, to Tarc’s absolute astonishment, someone lifted a hand. The other hand went up, then the man began wriggling out through the crowd.
Eyes wide, Tarc saw that it was Will Jonas, Tarc’s occasional tormentor during sword instruction on drill days.
Tarc had always thought of Will as a bully, hot headed, obnoxious and eager to fight. Bullies weren’t brave in Tarc’s mind. They pushed around people smaller than them, like Will had beaten Tarc in the ring. Tarc had never imagined that Will would be the kind of man who’d be willing to stand up to someone like Krait. Will was big, but Krait was significantly bigger than he was!
Krait had a huge shark like grin on his face, “So, there’s a man in this town after all!” he boomed out over the crowd.
Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic Page 17