The morning after reaching Highpass... and it appears they aren't the only newcomers to arrive. Nor are they the only ones struggling to understand what is happening in the mountains.
"Master, wake up. You're needed."
John's eyes flew open. He looked around, his heart in his throat, but he was alone. Well, alone save for Sadie, James, and James' wife and daughter. James seemed to be still asleep and neither Elizabeth or Katherine looked his way. Sadie was lost in prayer.
"Where's Zynga?" John asked as he sat up.
Katherine turned to him. "Who?"
"My... the halfling woman."
"Oh, they're all outside," she said.
"Thank you," John said as he stood up and adjusted his robe. He picked up his spear from where it leaned against the wall and left the small house.
Highpass looked a little less a ghost town in the morning light. The sun had just topped the mountains to the east and was slowly drying up the dew from the night before. People moved about the town proper, some coming to and from the well to gather water and others moving from one building to another.
A bustle of activity from the north drew John's attention. This time it was Helleen who was carrying someone while Jennaca made sure her path was clear. Others noticed and began to follow her, including Artesia and some of the gladiators.
John hurried across the common area and didn't notice Zynga until she'd caught up to him and walked beside him. "You woke me up?"
"You're asking me? Don't you remember?"
"I do... but you weren't there."
She smiled at him. "Remember our bond, Master."
John grunted. "In times of great need I can talk to Jennaca over great distances... can we do that too?"
"Yes," she said. "When I'm well fed especially."
John coughed into his hand.
Zynga giggled.
"So, you and Roxanne..."
"It's been a busy night, Master. No time for fun," she pouted.
"I thought you needed me to be, um, well fed?"
"I do, but fun is fun, and I believe she's going to be a lot of fun."
John shook his head and said no more. He'd reached the well and so did Helleen and Jennaca with their charge. Helleen set the person down and John saw, for the first time, that she was a woman. Barely a woman, he supposed. She looked younger than Jennaca.
"What's this?" John asked as he looked over the fallen woman. His eyes widened when he saw the blood on Helleen's arm. Blood that was now starting to form a growing puddle under the woman.
"She came crawling down a path in the mountains to us," Jennaca said while Helleen began to tug at the woman's dark clothes to find her wounds. "Helleen, check her legs and back, she had to be crawling for a reason."
John turned to Zynga. "Go get Sadie! She's praying in the house we stayed in."
Zynga scowled. "Praying?"
"I'll go," Jennaca said and shot off at a run.
"Saints!" Helleen cried out.
John spun back to the fallen woman. Helleen had taken her boot off and cut the leg of her pant and bared her leg. There was a chunk of flesh taken out of her leg. Not just skin, but the meat beneath it too. Blood ran from the wound until Helleen ripped off the rest of her pant leg and used it as a belt to tie around her leg just below her knee. Even then the blood only slowed to a trickle.
"What did that?" John wondered.
"That's not a wound made by claw or blade," Helleen said. "She's missing muscle. It was torn free... a bite, I'm thinking."
John winced. "I've seen bites before. Animals can sink their teeth in and maybe tear a limb away, but this isn't like that. This is like it was cut out and away."
"Her back," Artesia said.
Helleen looked up and saw the torn and blood soaked leathers on her lower back. She reached up and tried to tug the dark brown garment out of the way but it wouldn't budge. Artesia knelt next to her and used her dagger to cut the thick outer garment and help expose the woman's back and side.
Deep gouges in her lower back on the right side wept red tears. On her left, opposite the wound in her leg, her side had three more gouges. Two were deep but the third was over her hip and laid a gouge in the bone bare for them to see.
The sound of running feet announced the arrival of Sadie. She nudged John out of the way as she pushed past him and sank down on the woman's left, opposite of Artesia and beside Helleen. Sadie had the symbol of her faith in hand to help her focus and wasted no time gasping or staring at the woman's injuries. She laid her hand on the gashes in her back first, heedless of the steam that ran off the woman's blood in the cool morning air.
"Give her some room," Matthew barked to the growing crowd. "Let the air in and let her work!"
John shook his head and looked around. More and more villagers were arriving. Jennaca slipped in beside him and brushed against him. Her hand found its way into his while she watched.
Artesia rose and stepped back. She looked around, searching the crowd and then turned and pointed at Roxanne and Weston. "You two, with me!"
"You can't—" Roxanne started to argue.
"Go," Matthew growled at her.
"I need another," Artesia said. "The town's unguarded now!"
"I'll go," a man John hadn't met yet said. He had a studded club hanging from his belt and a sword at his left hip. "I'm Baylee, closest thing Highpass still has to a sheriff."
Artesia nodded. "You're with Weston," she said. "Patrol the south and east. Roxanne and I will guard the north and west."
"That's where she came from," Zynga pointed out.
Artesia nodded and asked, "Join us?"
Zynga glanced at Roxanne and then at John. "Master?"
John nodded and said, "Keep me informed if you see anything."
Zynga hurried to join the two women headed north.
The woman's back was bruised and scarred with four scrapes that still seeped blood. Sadie had moved on to her side and her priestly magic was closing the wounds and turning those ragged cuts into scratches similar to the ones in her back. Sadie slumped and took a shuddering breath before she shook her head and turned to Helleen.
"Sorry," Helleen said and rose so she could switch to the woman's other side without letting go of her upper leg where she continued to squeeze. "If I let go even the tourniquet doesn't do much to stop the bleeding."
"You should have tied it higher. Her upper thigh," Sadie said. "Keep the pressure until I'm done."
Helleen nodded and shifted her hands a little to make it easier to squeeze the woman's thigh.
Sadie bent her head and placed her hand over gaping wound. The healer didn't squirm or shy from the terrible hole in her calf as she chanted and called once more for Eile's blessing. She continued to chant, barely pausing to breath. Her voice grew hoarse and the her shoulders bowed as the minutes dragged by. The blood slowed from a trickle to drop and then nothing. The raw meat left behind twitched. Muscle fibers jerking as though they were trying to move the foot still. Before their eyes the wound began to fill and close. It was slow and, to hear the shift in Sadie's voice and to see her posture, exhausting.
Sadie slumped forward at last, falling across Helleen's arms and into her lap. Helleen grabbed her, forgetting to hold onto the wounded woman's leg, and then gasped as she realized what she'd done.
Jennaca slipped from John's side like an arrow loosed from the huntress' bow. She scooped up Sadie in her arms and lifted her away. She shifted the girl in her arms so she carried her like a sleeping babe and looked to John.
"Back to the house," John said. "Let her rest where it's warm."
Jennaca nodded and carried the exhausted priestess across the common ground and back into the house she'd spent the night in.
"Told you that woman could work miracles," Matthew said as they all stared at the fallen woman's leg. The flesh was raw and pink, almost as if it has been burned. The skin beneath was mottled purple and black, but it was whole again, if smaller than her other leg.
The crowd murmured and uttered prayers. John nodded, impressed. He offered his hand to Helleen and she took it and rose on shaking legs. She winced and stood on one leg and then the other, shaking them out and getting the blood flowing again.
"Now who is she and where'd she come from?" John wondered.
"I know her," Brandon said. "This is Aisley, she's been a runner from Hawk Hollow these past few weeks since trade became too dangerous."
"I heard the runners were traveling in groups?" John asked.
"They were," Brandon agreed. "Three at a time."
"Saints... if she crawled in chewed up like this, I'd hate to see the other two," Matthew said.
John winced. "Let's get her somewhere comfortable to rest. She'll need a friendly face or two to wake up to as well."
"I'll take her back to my place," another man said. "I'd appreciate it if you came along as well."
John looked the man up and down. His clothes weren't any finer than the rest of the villagers but he wore a vest over his shirt and held himself in a fashion that implied he thought highly of himself. "Of course, my name is John."
"Brandon told me first thing this morning," the man said and shook John's hand. "I'm Dean, mayor of Highpass."
"Mayor? Well then, it's good to meet you, my lord."
Dean waved. "Pfft, none of that. We've done away with lords and ladies and all that nonsense. We're all free folk here. All of us equals."
"Even if you're the mayor?" John asked while Helleen scooped the woman up in her arms a second time.
"Yes, well, I'm still trying to figure that out. I think it's how they get extra work out of me," he said.
John chuckled and followed the man back to his house. He owned the tallest finished building in town, though it wasn't the widest or longest by far. Dean opened the door and gestured for John to head in. John stepped to the side instead and let Helleen carry the wounded runner through before following.
"Hello, who— oh my, she's hurt! Are you hurt as well?" a woman greeted them after emerging from a doorway and staring at the bloody bundle of flesh and rags in Helleen's arms.
"This is Lena, my wife," Dean said. "Lena, this here is Aisley, from Hawk Hollow. Something hurt her on the road. She's been fixed up, but she needs rest."
"Of course!" Lena said and gestured for them to follow her.
"Go ahead," John told Helleen.
Helleen followed Lena deeper into the house and disappeared around a corner. John heard them heading up on some stairs and turned back to Dean.
"Come, please, milord," Dean said and gestured for John to follow him into the house.
John walked with him into a combination dining room and sitting room. "I thought there were no lords or ladies here?"
Dean motioned for John to have a seat in one of the wooden rocking chairs and then sat down on a bench facing away from the table towards John. "Among us there's not. But you're not one of us and as I heard Brandon tell me, you're a lord form the south."
"Southeast," John admitted. "But I think I've given all that up."
"They still call you Lord John," Dean said.
"Yes, they do."
"And they work for you?"
"Some of them," John admitted. "Jennaca, Artesia, and Zynga."
