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283 SC, The northern migration three days east of Stoneburners Gathering, in the Great Desert

Arrows continued to whistle past overhead intermittently, but Mikel was out the line of fire as long as he stayed beneath the wagon. Of course, keeping him under the wagon was the archers’ objective. It would make the ground force’s job that much easier. Mikel had no intention of cooperating though. Closing his eyes, he found his inner door to the elemental plane. It hung in a curtain of air as always. Nudging the door open with his thoughts, he drew elemental air energy into himself again. He savored the familiar tingle that the elemental caress always gave him for a moment before opening his eyes. He exhaled streamers of power through his nose and reached out to the hot, dry air currents that eddied in the desert canyon.

First he needed to do something about those arrows. He visualized an invisible vortex growing around him. As it picked up speed, he slid out from under the wagon but did not stray too far from cover. Now he could see far enough up the canyon walls to spot the figures descending toward the canyon floor. He sent feelers climbing the thermal currents that rose out of the canyon, listening for the scrabble of footsteps, or a telltale indrawn breath of preparation. He heard harsh breathing, whispered commands, and muttered curses. Then he heard the tightening creak of a drawn bow and the thrum of a released bow string. He tracked it back to its source even as he intensified the swirling wind in its path. The arrow streaked toward him in a blur. But he was ready. He deftly stroked the fletching with a practiced needle of wind, deflecting the arrow harmlessly as it passed through his invisible vortex. He was in no danger, but ducked his head just to put on a convincing show. There was no sense in attracting too much attention.

Now he had the archer’s position fixed. He waited until the man leaned out to prepare a second shot, as he slowly exhaled a silvery streamer of pure elemental energy up toward the ledge where he crouched. When the raider was at his fullest extension, Mikel huffed, forging the air behind the archer into a cold gust, short but sharp. It caught the man full in the back, knocking him off balance and sending him tumbling down the canyon wall. Mikel nudged the man’s headlong descent with another well timed puff of air, insuring that he tumbled into one of the climbers who was making a precarious descent. Both cries were cut short by a viscerally satisfying crunch as they reached the canyon floor. Two down.

Mikel reached out to the air currents again, listening as he tried to count his attackers. He counted at least three more high on his side of the canyon, probably archers. There were even more on the far side. While he searched with his heightened hearing, he deflected two more arrows that streaked toward him. He had his hunting crossbow ready in his hand, but no targets in range. He was crouched down as he cast his eyes and his thoughts upward, and unknowingly circling away from the protection of the damaged wagon. Too late, he heard a scrabble of loose stones and a puff of dry sand behind him. Someone had reached the canyon floor nearby. Mikel began to turn toward this new threat, readying a blast of air as he opened the silver gilt door in his mind a fraction further.

“Mikel! Look out!”

Eliza exploded out of the wagon behind him. She threw herself toward Mikel’s assailant. Desperation blazed in her hazel eyes as she swung her birch staff into the path of the raider’s sword. The blow had been aimed at Mikel’s unprotected back. It never would have connected of course, but Eliza couldn’t have known that. Her vehemence surprised the attacker as his killing stroke glanced off of her staff. She followed up with a quick counter at his unprotected right leg. Mikel heard a crunch as the end of Eliza’s staff connected with the dark skinned man’s knee cap. A splash of crimson bloomed through the dun colored cloth of his coarse breeches. He grunted in pain as he dodged to the side, but Eliza had paused after her initial attack, settling into a defensive position. The raider tried to take advantage of her hesitance with a rapid diagonal slash of his blade, but Mikel didn’t give him the chance.

He redirected the energy he had funneled into his aborted blast of air into an enlarged defensive wind screen that would also protect Eliza from the archers overhead. Then he fired his crossbow, exhaling a tightly focused stream that hammered the deadly bolt under Eliza’s raised staff and straight through the raider’s eye. Before the look of surprise could fade from the man’s face, Mikel grabbed the back of Eliza’s white linen tunic and pulled her back out of the line of fire. Arrows rained into the space they had just vacated as the pair collapsed back against the shattered wheel of the wagon.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Me? What about you?” Mikel looked at her pale, freckled face, flushed with exertion, and didn’t know what to think about this little spitfire. She certainly didn’t behave like any other healer he had ever known.

“I wasn’t the one mooning around so that slicer could sneak up on me, now was I?”

“I wasn’t…” Mikel gritted his teeth. Of course Eliza wouldn’t have understood what he had done to the archer, or how his defensive vortex had just saved both of their skins, or that he had never been in any real danger from the raider with the blade. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to. He let out a frustrated breath between clenched teeth. He loosened his grip on the elemental air energy that swirled around them, leaving just enough in place to warn him if anyone approached the wagon. Although he could hear several raiders on the canyon floor now, no one was coming any closer. Evidently Eliza’s ferocity had given them pause. Good.

“Sorry.” Mikel felt the tension flow out of his shoulders with that single word.

“Just… be more careful. I don’t need you getting hurt. I’ve got my hands full with Jak as it is.” Eliza glanced up at one of the feathered arrows that were stuck into the side of the wagon overhead. She carefully reached up and levered it out of the wood.

Mikel let his head thump against the wooden wall of the wagon. “How is our Master Merchant?”

Eliza paused before answering, while she examined the arrow in her hand. Not a good sign. “In trouble. The arrow is too deep. It needs to come out before we move him. And I can’t do it alone.” She turned her eyes to Mikel and now they were calm and professional. The eyes of someone who knows she holds life and death in her hands, and doesn’t flinch.

“All right. I think we’ve bought some time. What do you need me to do?”

“Hold him.”

Mikel nodded grimly. Eliza put her small hand on Mikel’s gloved wrist in a display of gratitude. She peered out around the side of the wagon and then scrambled into the door in the back quickly. An arrow thudded into the wood moments after she ducked safely inside. Mikel sent a bit more energy into the swirling winds just to make the archers’ lives difficult. Then he scrambled after the petite healer into the wagon’s crowded interior.

Jak was lying on a raised platform, cobbled together from oversized crates and shipping containers. It kept him up off the floor of the wagon, but was a far cry from the opulent travel cot the merchant was accustomed to. Jak did not look good. His dark brown mop of ringlets were plastered to his head with sweat. His usually coppery skin was pale, probably from blood loss. His breathing was shallow, pained. Mikel looked at the merchant’s loose flowing tunic and expensively tailored breeches. Their vivid patterns seemed dim now, when compared with the scarlet stain that seeped through the pale fabric that wrapped Jak’s left thigh. An armspan’s worth of evil feathered shaft had sprouted from that vivid splash, a sight jarringly at odds with the heavy merchant’s typically jovial appearance.

“Took you long enough. Sight seeing?” Jak offered a tepid smile that looked more like a grimace.

“Negotiating with the natives.” Mikel kept his eyes away from the splash of red while Eliza rummaged through the her satchel for supplies.

“Any prospects?”

“I think you’d call it a real buyer’s market.”

Jak belted out a laugh that was cut short with a wince.

“I wouldn’t be moving if I were you.” Eliza returned to the makeshift operating table with her hands full.

“Well it’s impossible to get comfortable on these beastly boxes. It’s not as though I’m going to try to walk anywhere. I’m sure a little wiggling around won’t kill me!” Jak lifted his hands as though to shift the weight of his upper body, but Eliza’s voice stopped him.

“Actually it might. The arrow didn’t go all the way through, but you might have been better off if it did.”

“Are you mad? Better off how?” Jak’s eyes locked on Eliza’s face, but at least the argument had brought some of the color back to his cheeks.

“There is a large channel that runs down the inside of your thigh. It carries blood. Lots of blood. If the arrow had gone clean through, the head wouldn’t still be buried a scant finger’s breadth away from that channel. Now every time you move, the arrowhead cuts a little deeper, a little closer. If it severs the channel, you’ll bleed out and there won’t be anything anyone can do to save you.”

The color slowly drained away from Jak’s prominent cheeks. Mikel could see him holding himself rigidly still as he digested Eliza’s grim news. “What do you suggest?”

“The arrow has to come out.” Eliza continued laying out supplies as she answered. She carefully set a bundle of clean white linen, a small ceramic pot, a fine pair of pliers, and a small wooden rod on the platform near Jak’s left side.

“All right then, let’s pull the damned thing out already.” Jak gritted his teeth in preparation.

“Can’t.”

“What? But you just said…” Jak spluttered in confusion.

Eliza held the arrow she had retrieved up in front of Jak’s spectacled eyes. The head was a broad flake of crystal that tapered to a wicked point. It was much wider at the base where it attached to the wooden shaft, and had long trailing splinters that protruded back toward the fletching. “It’s a tribal broadhead, designed to do as much damage on the way out as it did on the way in. If I pull this arrow back out of your leg, you might live. But you’ll never walk again.”

“Never walk…?”

Mikel looked Eliza in the eye, seeing what must be coming next, and realizing why she had needed his help. He nodded to her, to show he understood what was necessary.

“There’s an alternative. But it will hurt. A lot.” The petite healer glanced once at Mikel, waited for Jak to open his mouth, and then pressed the wooden rod between his teeth before he could speak.

“No more questions Jak. This has to be done quickly. Bite down hard now.”

Jak struggled, but Mikel threw his weight across the merchant’s chest and pressed the wooden block between his teeth so he would not spit it out. Eliza ran her fingers over the wound, probing and measuring delicately as she checked the arrowhead’s orientation. Now Jak bit down on the block without Mikel’s insistence as he grunted in pain. Mikel felt the merchant’s muscles tense as he tried not to jerk, but the worst was still to come.

Eliza lifted Jak’s left knee very slowly, and propped a small package under it, giving her access to the back of his thigh. She wrapped both hands around the shaft of the arrow, closed her eyes, and pushed with one quick fluid motion. Jak bellowed aloud and all his muscles lurched against Mikel’s weight but he did not break free. The arrowhead now protruded from the back of Jak’s thigh. Eliza gripped the wooden shaft in her pliers and snapped it neatly near the skin, eliciting a fresh groan from the wounded merchant.

Mikel felt Jak tense again and heard the scraping sound of his teeth grinding into the wooden rod. Eliza worked with quick and efficient motions. She set the crimson stained broadhead aside as she shifted her pliers to the shaft above the entry wound. She pulled the shaft straight out, dripping with gore. With a final grunt, Mikel felt the tension melt away as Jak passed out. Eliza packed both sides of the wound with a dark sticky salve from the ceramic pot. Then she wadded fresh linen into the entry and exit wounds before wrapping Jak’s broad thigh with what was left of the gauze.

She took a steadying breath when she was done. She touched Mikel on the shoulder, and he gently released his hold. Eliza retrieved the wooden rod, inspecting the fresh bite marks before setting it aside.

“Well, that’s all I can do for now.” She looked dissatisfied.

“Should we wake him?”

Eliza shook her head, frowning. “Sleep is the best thing for him.”

“Will he live?”

Eliza shrugged. “If he doesn’t get blood poisoning. One of us should probably get back outside… to keep those raiders from surprising us again.”

Mikel knew she was right. He lifted his head, listening to the sounds carried to him on the desert breeze. The raiders were still holding back. Mikel wasn’t sure why. “You were amazing.”

Eliza flushed. “He’s not saved yet. And I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

“Still. He’s lucky you were here. We all are.” Now it was Mikel’s turn to flush. What was getting into him? Luckily, Eliza didn’t seem to notice.

“Hah. Don’t expect the old bastard to admit it. He still thinks I cheated him into letting me join the wagon train.”

Mikel looked at her, a little of their mischievous roadside banter resurfacing despite their situation. “But you didn’t. Did you?”

Eliza looked back at him, and he saw the slightest glimmer of a smile in return.

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