Majutsu Shi No Chikara Ch 17

Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Blindfold and Noose

"Damon." Ginga's voice was soft, strained even. It struck the male like a clap of thunder and he wheeled about, the scent of fury fleeing him for the watery sorrow smell he favored when Ginga filled his eyes.

"What is it?" He was by her side quickly, the pain in his body forgotten or ignored, and Abhilash felt a bitter stinging in her throat.

"You're bleeding through your bandages." Ginga was moving to step from the cart, and the male was pressing back, barring her from climbing down.

"It's fine. I need to get camp set up." Damon couldn't hide the fatigue in his voice, the panting breath or the pain swelling up his leg.

Abhilash grunted in disgust, stepped up behind him and deftly unclasped his cloak. Throwing it behind her, the she-ork grumbled the word of command the mad elf had given them. Tumbling through the air, the cloak snapped and popped as it shaped into the promised shelter more handily than Crysanthias had ever explained. With the skill and grace of some immense knucklebone die or paper lantern, the tent bounced, rolled along one creased edge like a drunken coin, and fell on its belly a few paces from where Abhilash had intended.

"Sit." She ordered, looking about the small clearing. "It's done."

"But the..."

"Sit." Abhilash glared at him, her yellow eyes catching a stray shaft of light from a sun already nestled behind the Coast Wall. "I say it is done."

When Damon's mouth opened and closed like a breathless fish, Abhilash snorted and went to work setting down stones for a camp fire. Her magic sword hummed quietly to itself as the she-ork abused a shovel to carve the small pit she wanted for the fire. The enchanted steel at last was getting the respect it deserved. After carving through men and horses, the weapon had seemed to grow accustomed to Abhilash's touch. If the two were enemies, it at least appeared they had reached an uneasy truce after weathering the attack by Tsuro's scouts.

"It's alright." Ginga pressed her hand firmly against Damon's shoulder, guiding him aside so she could get down from the cart. "Let's have a look at your leg."

...

Abhilash snorted blood from her nose again, relaxing into the work of preparing the kusuri sap. Things had gotten easier, once Damon at last fainted from pain and exhaustion. Ginga's thin bone tweezers only just fit into the puncture in Damon's calf, forcing her to fish blindly. For his part, Damon didn't cry out as he had when she'd poured liquor over the wound. This time, he panted so fiercely that his vision blurred and he swooned. Twice the shard slipped from the grasp of Ginga's miniature forceps before she was able to work the chunk of archer's bolt from Damon's leg. His breathing became shallow but even.

"You alright?" Ginga asked, studying the jagged bolt's remains still squeezed tight and covered in blood.

"Hmph." Abhilash gave a meaningless grunt -- a habit recently developed to mean she didn't want to answer.

"I thought you were going to tear my arm off, for a moment." Ginga's eyes caught the twined lamp and firelight, stormy bronze and blue light shining toward the ork.

"Hmph." The she-ork offered a dismissive shrug with the grunt, her eyes set to her own work and resolutely ignoring the helplessness she'd felt.

"I think you're right." Ginga chewed her lip, eyes squinting at the rough edges of the long sliver -- longer than a knuckle bone. "...about the wound sap, I mean. I'll pour more spirits to clean his leg again. Then a stitch or two and your sap."

Abhilash nodded without looking up, bracing herself for the inevitable shriek of tearing metal. When no such sound deafened her, when the raucous clamor of hateful screams and wracking spasms didn't rise to the splash of distilled spirits on Damon's injured leg, Abhilash couldn't stifle her sigh of relief. The tension flooded out of her with such quickness she felt slightly giddy, but the human female didn't seem to notice.

"He's bled so much." Ginga's voice, heavy with worry, was faint. "Can you hold him while I sew? In case he wakes?"

Abhilash looked at the human as though she'd sprouted a second head.

"In case he wakes." Ginga glanced meaningfully at Damon's leg. "I'll be stitching -- it won't be long, and you only need to hold his leg still."

Already the dark-skinned human was drawing a length of fine silk thread across her tongue just before squinting and spearing it expertly through the eye of a shiny metal needle.

"A surgeon's needles would be better -- but they use tweezers." Ginga looked back at the oozing wound, then up at the she-ork. "Special tweezers for holding small things -- the tips are much smaller than fingers."

Abhilash stared mutely at the human a moment before giving a resigned huff. With a small collection of plodding, reluctant movements, the ork clamped one claw just behind Damon's knee and one hand angled to hold the wound tightly shut. Ginga nodded approvingly.

"Not that I have a surgeon's tools... or skill." Ginga shrugged, setting the point of the needle to place her first stitch.

Faster than Abhilash had ever seen, Ginga drew two fast stitches crossing the wound.

"Let go of his leg." Ginga motioned gently. "We need to see how well his skin holds the silk."

"Fast stitch." Abhilash murmured her own approval of Ginga's skill, releasing the wounded limb to the human's further scrutiny.

"Tanner's daughter." The dark-skinned human shrugged with her answer. "Skin and leather aren't

so

different... not really."

The human gently pried and cinched, teasing the line of silk this way and that before tying several careful knots. Satisfied with her work, Ginga looked up to see the glowing yellow orbs of the she-ork staring at her with an unfamiliar look in the ork's face.

"Better get that wound sap ready, I'm guessing you set it hot and it feels none too pleasant." Ginga blushed dark and looked away. "If he wakes up, I reckon you'll have a harder time of it."

Abhilash blinked several times, as if waking from a trance. Looking down at the sutures, the she-ork grimaced thoughtfully before collecting a small piece of Ginga's silk thread and testing it against the heat of the wound sap. Scowling, the ork's lower lip pouted a moment as she scooped a bit of the resin with her knife. She waited in a fashion that gave her human companion the impression that this was an unusual circumstance. As the resinous kusuri sap cooled and moved sluggishly along her blade, Abhilash set the steaming, sticky syrup over the stitches and smeared gently. She repeated this process, during which Damon moaned fitfully once and the she-ork's hand shook with sudden tremor. Her third and fourth passes, waiting twice as long before spreading similarly-sized portions of the stuff over Damon's leg, went much better as Damon didn't react at all.

The helmet-pot of resin stopped giving its infrequent hiss as it continued to cool away from the fire and Abhilash vigorously scrubbed her knife blade clean of the charred remains of the kusuri sap. Ginga nibbled at some of the stolen rations they'd taken -- preferring to eat the evidence rather than be caught with it. Damon slept, though his face was ashen pale and Ginga worried he bled too much.

"He'll need bone broth." Ginga mused around a mouthful of hard trail bread. "Butcher one of the goats."

"No." Abhilash snorted, crossing her arms over her breasts. Ginga looked over at the ork.

"Fine." Ginga stood, dusting her hands on the front of her blood-stained tunic. "Then I'll do it. Get a pot on to boil."

"No." The ork stood, moving to block Ginga's path.

"Why by all the gods and ancients not?!" Ginga barked, fists on her hips and flames dancing in her eyes.

"No water." Abhilash grunted.

"You drank all the water in

two

days?" Ginga gawped with disbelief.

"No." Abhilash snorted derisively and followed with what Ginga assumed was her favorite ork word.

"What happened to it, then?" Ginga demanded, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Him." Abhilash pointed at Damon.

Ginga turned, half expecting Damon to wake and defend himself from the accusation. She turned back, her lover clearly beyond reply or rebuttal, and wondered for a moment if the she-ork was lying... or attempting some sort of crude humor.

"How do you mean?" Ginga asked, then realized she needed to be more specific. "How did Damon drink all the water?"

"He didn't." Abhilash snorted again, this time finding Ginga's fumbling exceptionally stupid

and

amusing. "I poured it on him."

"You

poured

it..." Ginga stopped, her arms and jaw going slack with the realization.

They stood in silence for several long moments as Ginga gave her next words careful thought.

"We'll need to find clean water, in the morning." She crossed her arms on her chest, mimicking a pose the ork used fairly often.

Abhilash nodded once, and that was that. They returned to the camp, and Ginga bundled Damon into the shelter of the cloak-turned-tent. When he started shivering, she huddled beneath the blankets with him to keep him warm.

...

Damon marveled at the clever barbarism of how each body was strung-up. Every victim was likely hanged until dead, lowered to just within reach from horseback, and the loose end of the hanging rope tied beneath their shoulders. All their hands were tied behind their backs with heavy leather thongs, save one whose hands were cut clean off at the wrist -

that

one likely was strung-up already dead or fainted from blood-loss. At least one was small enough that it put Damon of the mind it may have been a child of ten or twelve winters... too small to be full-grown, to his eye.

Bastards.

Damon sucked his teeth and spat, ignoring the buzzing insects and cacophony of scavenger birds still bickering over whatever morsels remained.

The sun sank lower as he contemplated how to get almost a dozen corpses loose of their expert perches.

The shuffling, furtive shadows of wolves eyed him as twilight bloomed from the canopy of the forest and drank the hills in a single gulp. Sated from their earlier pillaging, the wolves watched carefully. The stench of ork and human was a heady mix that kept their hackles raised, but the pack was small and cunning. Clever enough, at least, to know that even a single of the two-legged beasts could bare fangs from well outside biting range without warning. They knew the wickedness of crossbows, archery, and even the humble sling, as well as the more conventional long-fangs of wood and iron. Still, the lame two-legs stood beneath their hanging quarry as a tempting target. Lame as it was, its stink prickled with something more dangerous than steel. Something like sky-fire and the roaring thunder of the faceless sky-things that hunted in the rain, or the slippery sweetness of the pack-friends that roamed the woods. Anyway, their bellies were full-enough for one night that they could circle back when the two-legs laid down to sleep in the dark with their small fires.

The occasional growl or low yowl of the wolves faded into the clutching darkness, leaving the human to gaze up at the splayed branches and their rotting ornaments backlit by the retreating glow of the sunset in full regalia. The macabre raiment on each body highlighted their stillness as insects buzzed, crawled, and flit from cavernous belly to eye socket. The stench of it made Damon feel dizzy -- or dizzier, perhaps -- and he was glad that he had little more than water in his belly since midday. Instinctively, he brushed at the vermin testing his ears and nose -- though perhaps he only imagined it for the sheer number of bodies similarly violated by buzzing intruders seeking easy morsels for their own.

His leg throbbed a warning as he stood there, reminding him that he'd been upright longer than it thought proper given his condition. Drawing his attention to the tools he had available, Damon considered his knife. Perhaps he could lash it to the end of his staff as a crude spear...

Damon frowned as his searching hand found a hard lump in a heavy pouch at his hip.

The tooth.

He grimaced, shifting the pouch further behind himself and fumbling around beneath his cloak.

The small, precious book Crysanthias had given him felt soft, comforting compared to the rigid, ominous presence of the dragon tooth. Damon blew a heavy sigh of relief through his lips, glad to find the book still on his person and not lost in the jumble of possessions on the cart. Grimacing as he glanced back to the cart and the campsite, Damon felt his skin cool in knowing he wouldn't be forced to limp back in abject defeat. Setting his jaw and thumbing through the pages, he sought through for a particular entry he remembered.

At least this way, I know I've done what I can.

He assured himself.

Offhandedly, Damon summoned a bright white orb of light, scattering the smudging shadows and blurry darkness crouching around him where he stood. The Coast Wall gave an unmoving shrug of disinterest as it contemplated the dazzling light cascading over its shoulders. Overhead, sunlight skated up discolored, naked flesh and glanced off leaves in a desperate race to draw the curtain of night over the corpses there.

"Let's try this one." Damon mumbled to himself, then silently read the passage.

Cradling the book before him, the staff wedged against his side and his light orb balancing dangerously in the hollow of his wrist, the young wild mage lifted his free hand and wiggled his fingers to limber them. He mouthed the incantation carefully several times, tracing his fingers through the air.

"Alright, farmer..." Damon shook his hand once more, turning his gaze up to one of the corpses hanging above. "Let's see what you've learned."

That which is sought be found -- the caught unbound.

The shape of the words came out wrong from his mouth, when he grasped them, turning into bizarre, wriggling crickets smacking into a reed basket before larking away on bat wings. His hand moved with the intention of untying a knot; picking the loose strands carefully apart. Without so much as a flicker, the noose unraveled from the neck of the man (was it a man?) Damon had focused his attention toward, and the body dropped suddenly, wetly, bone-snappingly to the ground. The birds were furious. The insects, if they noticed, gave no clear indication of their opinion of the matter.

He felt his fingers itching, as if clinging tar was pulling at the tiniest of hairs all over his hand. Not unlike the kusuri sap binding his leg wound, only this was far more insistent. More

present

. Startled by the itching and his success, Damon stumbled backward, dropping the staff, his light orb, and himself into the grass. He hit hard, cursing and spitting; thumping a fist on the ground for his own clumsiness and rewarding himself when the ground helpfully offered a jagged stone to the outside ridge of his fist in answer.

Damon lay still, wincing and breathing heavily -- biting back another frustrated outburst as he became aware of the searching, hot, wet sensation of blood trickling down his leg beneath his bandages. Grudgingly, he pulled his thoughts away from his bruised ego and bloodied hand.

"Well, shit." He grumbled, then laughed at himself.

His light had vanished when he fell, and his staff -- stout as ever -- had given his arm a terrible beating for couching it too tightly to himself. Still, he'd been successful in using a knot-breaking spell. He wasn't sure why it sounded wrong when he spoke the words -- he was

nearly

certain he'd said them properly. Conjuring his light again, Damon re-read the incantation several more times -- mouthing the words without drawing the sigla that "untied" the knot. He tried to review his actions, but was too distracted by his fresh or re-opened injuries.

"Fuck it." He struggled to his feet, reading the book twice more before tucking it carefully into its carrying satchel.

Damon discarded his magical light, the lamp snuffing into nonexistence whence it came as soon as a blade of grass interrupted its flight.

He set his gaze on the next body. His fingers danced through the symbols as he spoke the words -- again, they sounded wrong to his ears. So distracted by his attention to how misshapen his voice sounded, Damon felt a whiplash across the backs of his fingers. The stinging raised visible welts from fingertips to elbow, and his eyes widened at the sight of them.

"I'm too distracted." Damon gawped in amazement, blood welling faintly from three spots where the welts passed over knuckles. "But why does it sound wrong?"

What you say passed between you... not words...

Damon heard Abhilash's voice burbling up from somewhere days passed. Was it three moons ago, now? Not quite two?

"Movement, music, mind." Damon reminded himself, echoing the nymph's words as he directed his focus to the rope -- to

all

the rope bound to the flesh hanging from this tree.

His limbered his hand again and took a deep breath, closing his eyes and imagining all the ropes unwinding. Fraying.

That which is sought be found -- the caught unbound.

He forced himself not to flinch at the sound, letting the clumsiness of it pass his ears without interruption.

A symphony of crumpling flesh and bone resounded around him, startling birds and bugs alike into a deafening riot. The wave of decay washed over him and pried its greasy fingers up his nose and through his hair. Damon choked, retched, and shambled hurriedly away -- his eyes searching the graying twilight for the glittering red-yellow safety of a campfire. His leg throbbed angrily as he put too-much weight on it, the hardened sap tugging relentlessly at hair, skin, and stitches alike. The wet trickle of sweat and blood from beneath his bandages felt icy on his skin, but seemed to otherwise remain faint.

The wolves, smelling the tangy, visceral bursting of flesh and organs from a league off, turned their noses back toward the tree and its rotting meat fruit.

Damon shuddered at the howl in the distance, glad of the dim ring of firelight pressing outward against the creeping dark.

"It's done." Panting breathlessly, Damon all but threw himself to the ground beside the fire.

...

"Slowly." Ginga breathed into Damon's mouth. "Let me handle this -- you just be still."

She rocked her hips slowly against him, feeling his cock hardening inside her. Twice already she'd had to stop him from thrusting, from exerting himself and making his weakened condition worse. She chastised him for offering to use his magic for her own pleasure. After stripping him down inside the tent, she'd sucked him until his erection suited the task -- then she dragged herself across him so slowly that he'd nearly lost all arousal before she began kissing him.

"You have to let the broth do its work." Ginga reminded him more than once.

"You're sure?" He kept asking, even as she settled heavily on him and slipped his softened prick into her, milking him back to life.

"Just enjoy being mine, tonight." Ginga whispered, licking the side of his face and sucking at his earlobe. "If you come, or don't, it isn't important."

"Hurry up." Abhilash snarled, but Ginga barked back at her.

"Fuck off, slattern!" Stoney blue-gray eyes glinted with firelight, defying the yellow hunter's eyes fixed on her. "I say he rests, so he rests."

Human and ork bristled at each other, testing wordlessly, motionlessly. Abhilash's nostrils flared, eyes narrowed.

"Feh." She sniffed disdainfully and turned away to spit into the fire, grumbling quietly in ork-speak.

Several moments' pause skipped across thudding heartbeats as Ginga watched the she-ork before she looked back down into Damon's deep brown eyes.