Bonesetter (37 page)

Pell looked back to Denit and the others.
With dismay, he realized that they had resumed shuffling closer.
He shifted his grip on his spear.
Should he call Boro out to stand with him?
Or would they then realize that he really
didn’t
have anyone else to back him up and therefore attack all the faster?

Pell realized that they were now approaching the area where the noose was buried in the dirt.
Where
was
it exactly?
He couldn’t see it,
or
remember its exact location!
How long would it take to work?
Would it work at all? Why hadn’t he tried it out?
At the time, he hadn’t wanted to carry all that rock back up after tripping a test run, but that seemed a weak excuse now.
Spirits!
He at least could have marked its location better.
He stood on his toes peering for evidence of its whereabouts.

“What’s the matter Pell?
Afraid of our feet now?” Denit’s jeering tone roiled Pell’s stomach further.

Suddenly Denit danced ahead a few steps and cast his spear!
Dodging Pell shouted, “Pull!
Gia, pull!
Now!” Then he thought with horror that Denit was all the way on his side of the trap, and, it didn’t look like the others were in it yet.
“No!
Don’t!” As if in slow motion, he saw the small rope snapping tight against his wishes.

Snarling, Ginja leapt forward to meet Denit.

Denit’s spear missed Pell by a handspan, struck the wall behind him, then clattered back, striking him on the shoulder.

Pell raised his own spear, wondering whether to cast it, or save it to fight hand to hand.

The rope of the snare burst up out of the dirt of the trail,
much
closer to the cave entrance than Pell had remembered. Denit
was
in its reach but only his trailing leg!
The rope snapped up the inside of his leg, then the noose sawed shut about his knee.
Suddenly jerked upside down, Denit shot up the cliffside.
As Pell watched Denit’s screaming, bouncing transit up the face of the cliff, his gaze encountered the net full of rocks descending just beyond.

After, Pell would recall the events in short, slow motion segments.

-
The net bursting open.

-
A swarm of rocks
, each
the size of a man’s head exploding forth.

-
Denit’s ascent hesitating, and then Denit beginning to descend again, preceded by the bounding stones.

-
Pell’s gaze swinging down to encounter Denit’s band.

-
Their faces gaping upward openmouthed—the hunters simultaneously realizing that those small boulders were hurtling directly at them.

-
All the hunters but Roley beginning to scatter.

-
Roley, staring dazedly upward, wad of hemp visible in his open mouth.

-
Roley
,
struck on the head by one of the rocks, falling as if clubbed to the ground by a giant.

-
Denit bounding away from the cliffside in his descent, then the rope catching on something above so that he swung back to slam into the rock face with a sickening thud.

-
As the stones struck the path,
clouds
of dust puffing up so that Pell could see only poorly.

-
His horror growing as a bounding rock struc
k one of the Aldans in the back,
tossing him bodily from the path.

-
Ginja yelping and scurrying back toward Pell.

As he started toward the carnage, Pell dimly perceived the others coming out of the cave behind him.

Agonized screams arose from within the dusty cloud hanging over the path.
What have I done?
Pell thought in dismay.
In his mind, he had always pictured the trap ensnaring a small group of enemies and lifting them a short distance off the path.
There they would hang, arms bound at their sides by the rope, helplessly watching his triumphant approach. They would plead for his mercy and agree to his conditions.

Instead, he rushed toward them, his gorge rising in his throat.
He came first to Roley, thrashing violently about on the path.
Pell stopped, staring but fearful to approach closely because of his dread of being struck by the wildly thrashing, yet
still
powerful limbs.
Limbs that he had
so
learned to fear, over his years in the Aldans.
Not knowing what to do, he looked about and saw someone lying just off the path, gasping in obvious pain.
He moved that way.
Then, suddenly worried about a counterattack, he looked cautiously about for the others.
He thought he saw Exen, running in the distance.
Perhaps he saw, through the clearing dust, someone else lurking near the edge of the clearing.
He looked down and saw that Belk was the one lying at the edge of the path.
Belk gripped the right side of his back and twisted in agony.
He gasped for breath, but
wasn’t blue like others
Pell had seen dying for lack of breath.
Pell knelt beside him and said, “I’m sorry Belk. Spirits, I’m sorry!
I didn’t know this would happen!
What can I do?”

Belk rolled his eyes, struggling for breath.
Pell remembered having the wind driven from his chest by Denit when he was younger.
Maybe that was all that was wrong with Belk?
People did get better from that.
Pell looked up to see Gia and Boro standing there, eyes wide.
Agan, Panute and Falin stood just outside the cave, surveying the scene.
Ginja stood beside Pell, eyeing the thrashing Roley and growling.
Gia said, “What spirit attacked them Pell?
How did you call it?”

At first he wasn’t sure what she meant, then he realized that she had no idea of her role in tripping the noose.
He had never explained it to anyone but Tando and Donte.
“I had set up a trap… outside the cave… in case we were attacked.
The rope you pulled tripped it.
I didn’t mean for it to do this!
”

“Trap?” she asked, twisting her tongue about the unfamiliar word.

“Uh, yes,
it’s
a… device to catch things.
It’s
what I hunt with.
This one was only supposed to catch people… not to really hurt them… but something went, went terribly wrong.”

“Spirit!
That was amazing!” Boro exclaimed.
He, as opposed to Pell, obviously wasn’t horrified by the outcome of events.
“You did that?!
Can you teach me how?
Do you need to be able to control the Wolf Spirit?
Who taught you how to do it, can I learn from them?”

Gia shook her head during Boro’s questions, looked about, and then interrupted, “What should we do for these men?”
She gestured at Belk and Roley.

“I don’t know.
Belk,” he said looking down at the injured man, “where are you hurting?
Can we help?”

Belk rolled his eyes again, but this time managed to grunt an answer, “Get Pont.”
A voice over Pell’s shoulder said, “No, don’t.
Pell’s a better healer than Pont is Belk, ask
him
to take care of you.”

Pell looked back. Gontra stood just behind him!
Running up the path behind Gontra were Tando, Donte, Manute and Deltin.
They were certainly
a
welcome sight.
Where were the rest of the Aldans?
Well, with Gontra behind him, that meant that he now knew where, how many?
He looked about, Roley, Belk, and Gontra by the path, Exen running, Pont?
Maybe in the bushes, that was five…
Oh!
And Denit hanging from the rope!
Remembering Denit, Pell looked up, “Tando, Gontra, Boro, help me get Denit down!”
He went over to where Denit hung limply, upside down above the path.
Pell scrambled up onto Tando’s shoulders and, pulling out his knife, cut the rope about Denit’s leg.
With the others help he lowered him to the path.
With Denit down, they all stared at him.
His head lolled at an unnatural angle and his face
was
a dusky hue.
At first Pell hoped that the color only resulted from being hung upside down but shortly it became obvious that his color wasn’t improving.

Gia knelt and listened to his chest.
“He isn’t breathing…
His heartbeat is weak.
He will die soon.”
She said this with distress but with the complete assurance of someone
who was
absolutely certain of an outcome.

Pell said, “What can we do?!”

Gia looked up in puzzlement.
“I don’t know of anything, do you?”

“No!
I’m
not a healer!
Maybe Agan knows of something?
Some herb?”

“I’ll ask but I’m sure she doesn’t.”
Gia rose and jogged up the path to her grandmother.

Tando was looking on with a puzzled expression.
“Pell, why would you try to help Denit anyway?”

“I…
I’m not sure… but we shouldn’t just let him die, should we?” Pell said looking around at the others.

Tando shrugged.
“I would.”

Boro, however, said in a venomous tone, “Yes! Why not?
He would watch you die with delight.
He has never helped anyone, he
only
brings misery!”

Pell knelt himself to listen to Denit’s chest.
Pushing aside some dirty furs and leaning his ear against Denit’s ribs, he found himself looking past a few curly hairs at the other’s feet.
Yes, he could hear a heartbeat, no breathing, but an irregular, faint heartbeat. He looked up at Denit’s face. It was even duskier than before.

Gia returned to say that Agan knew of nothing that could be done to help someone who wasn’t breathing, “They all die,” she said simply, then turned to examine Roley and Belk again.

Not knowing what else to do, Pell followed her to look at them as well.
No longer thrashing, Roley now quivered rigidly.
Gia knelt to feel his bloody scalp, “His skull is broken here,” she said.
“Does your trick work for broken skulls?” She looked up at Pell, her clear gray eyes curious.

“Uh…
I don’t think so.
Just for bones that are shaped like sticks.”
He also knelt and examined Roley’s bloody head.
He felt a soft area in the hair.
Just as Pell probed the soft area, Roley threw up, or at least he heaved up and his mouth filled with something that smelled like vomit usually did.

“Oh no!” Gia exclaimed.
She reached into his mouth to try to scoop the vomitus out but, like the rest of his muscles, his jaw was clenched rigidly shut.
Then he heaved again
,
vomit spewing out his nose.
Shortly his breathing became severely labored. Saying, “This one will die soon too,” Gia turned to walk over to Belk.

Pell was aghast, thinking to himself that Roley had thrown up just after he had touched the soft spot in his skull.
Perhaps it was his fault if Roley died?
Well of course it was his fault!
He’
d set the trap!
But somehow that was different than killing him while trying to help him.
He wondered if anyone else had noticed that it happened at the same time as he was probing Roley’s skull.
Was it
because
he had pressed in?
He tugged uncertainly on the hair over the area that had been crushed inward by the rock, trying to pull the depressed area back out.
Nothing good happened; in fact Roley’s breathing became more and more labored.
Pell thought frantically that there must be some way to help him breath—but for the life of him, he didn’t know what it would be.

He looked around for Gia.
She knelt by Belk, probing at his back.
Pell thought to ask her if anything could be done for Roley, but remembered that she had already checked with Agan and that they had concluded that nothing could be done for someone who wasn’t breathing.
Pell looked back over at Denit who was now a dark dusky blue.
Denit laid unmoving, open eyes staring up at the sky, head tilted at
that
odd angle.
He certainly looked much the same as other dead people that Pell had seen in the past.
Durr had looked that way when Pell had found his body, ages ago.
Though Durr hadn’t had the blue coloration.
Roley continued to make little heaving motions, as if to get a breath, but no air seemed to be passing in or out of his nose or mouth.
Foul smelling vomit surged in and out when he heaved, but that was all.
Pell distantly noted that Roley was turning blue as well.
He thought to himself,
Tando’s not going to think so much of “Pell the healer” now!
As he considered his impending loss of recognition he thought that he should be grateful—not to have everyone expecting so much of him.