Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (71 page)

“Brace yer feet on either side of my neck man an’ hold on damn tight,” Jamie did what he was told without question, not even uttering a peep when he bit into his tongue in the effort to get his feet firmly entrenched on Casey.

There was a small, scraping sound, a muffled oath and the words, overfamiliar to Jamie as he’d been chanting them in his head for the last hour, “
Mary, Mother of God, blessed art thou amongst women’
and then a few more lines, condensed and edited for the benefit of their situation and then a strain of muscles in all concerned and a great cracking, crumbling and tumbling. Jamie overbalanced and surprised found himself hanging upside down and grappling for dear life with the beam and stone that seemingly turned to dust each time he thought he had a handhold.

“Casey,” he gasped and upon breathing in a cloud of dust, began a fit of coughing that threatened to dislodge and kill him.

“Aye,” a head liberally coated in mortar dust popped up through the opening, now the size of a large man’s shoulders, “though just barely, I said brace yer damn feet not shoot me out to kingdom come. Here give me a hand, I’ve a hold out here now,” Jamie gave the hand and was pulled out onto the other side with what was rather more ferocity than was strictly necessary.

“Don’t look down,” was Casey’s sage advice after Jamie, having looked down, turned a pale green under his mask of white. “It’s maybe twenty feet down to that tree and if ye can get a grip on to it, we’re home free. Now,” he twitched his head slightly the right, “we’re on a bit of a lip here so we might as well use it as long as we can, it’s forty steps near as I can figure to yer right and then a straight drop down to the tree, though ye’ll have to find a substantial branch to land on.”

“You don’t say,” Jamie hissed through clenched teeth, sweat beading on his forehead and wet limestone stinging his eyes like the devil.

Forty steps to the right, he counted them out carefully, measuring each one so that it was as close in length to the one before it as possible, he’d no desire to look down again so he’d just have to risk the possibility of missing the tree altogether. In between each number, he chanted its Latin counterpart to himself in order to keep a desperate grasp on his rapidly building panic. Jamie Kirkpatrick, calm in the face of many dangers, was not very fond, it could be fairly said, of heights. Even his hands had begun to perspire and mix with the limestone dust to form a thin coating of slick mud.

It was Casey however, cool and calm as Sunday tea, above him that lost his footing just as Jamie found a branch he trusted to be sufficient to his weight. He slid down the wall in a shot before somehow finding a hold with one hand and there he hung precariously, fingers of his left hand dug in with a grip that was astonishing to a bare inch of protruding gray stone.

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” Jamie whispered and intended no disrespect to the gentleman whose name he uttered.

“If ye could put aside cursin’ me for the moment an’ get me the hell off this wall,” there was a muffled groan, “I’d appreciate it.”

“Right,” Jamie said and inched back out along the branch, looking for another solid one beneath him to brace himself and take the weight of the man above him, without sending them down to the ground which was still far away enough that although death would not be certain, great pain and disfigurement would be.

“Alright then,” he said a moment later, having found what he thought was the best of a very dismal set of options and set himself precariously upon it. “I don’t see any toeholds beneath you so,” he took a bracing breath, “throw yourself back and I’ll catch you.”

“I see strategy would not be yer strongpoint,” Casey said with a rather biting wit, Jamie thought, considering his current predicament.

Casey pulled his feet up slightly and then asked in a fairly meek voice, “Are ye ready man?”

“Ready,” Jamie replied grimly.

He came down with the graceful ease of a big tree falling or at least it seemed so to Jamie’s horrified eyes and Jamie, much to his own surprise, managed to get a handhold on him before a cacophonous pop split the air and launched them towards the ground at breakneck speed.

Jamie, knocked momentarily unconscious by a branch he hit headfirst on the way down, awoke to the feeling of hellfire and the forks of a thousand imps whose only duty was to stab him mercilessly on every inch of skin he possessed. It took a moment to regain some sense of bearing and when he did realized he’d fallen into a thick and wondrously thorny bed of roses.

It took several minutes and the manufacture of long, bloody scratches on his hands, arms and face before he would extricate himself from the wickedly painful embrace of the roses. He was relieved to find that other than assorted bruises and bumps, he’d sustained no breaks.

He limped across the grass, graying with the arrival of morning and heavy with dew. Casey was laid out on a flat bit of ground, too silent for anything but unconsciousness or death. Jamie hoped fervently for the former but was, he found, to be disappointed when he reached Casey’s prone form.

“I’ve broke my fockin’ arm,” Casey said disgustedly.

“Better than your neck,” Jamie ventured only to receive a look of frustrated disgust.

“We’ve got to cover some ground an’ quickly, we’ve got maybe an hour before full light an’ we’d best be well hidden by then,” Casey was all authority but still made no move to get up off the ground.

“Do you need my help?” Jamie asked.

Casey sighed and said, “Aye, I’ve dislocated my shoulder as well an’ I’m afraid if I sit up now I’ll vomit from the pain.”

“Is anything else broken?” Jamie asked politely.

“No,” came the answer.

Jamie allowed no room for hesitation and grabbed Casey by his good arm and pulled him up quickly. Casey, by way of thanks, threw up on his shoes.

After helping Casey rather more gently to his feet, Jamie went and wiped his shoes on the grass. When he turned back Casey, the color of old bed sheets, was scanning the horizon.

“Which way?” Jamie asked.

“There,” Casey pointed off to the southwest, down a long slope of loping green hills. “There’ll be a barn somewhere over that rise an’ though I’d prefer to get much further away, it’ll have to do.”

It took an hour, freezing, soaked with dew and beginning to throb and sting all over, Jamie was distinctly relieved to see a barn over, as Casey had predicted, the first rise.

With no time, nor really much care for subtlety, they walked right through the doors, which were ajar. The animals were only beginning to stir and barely lifted an eyelid in response to the appearance of two bedraggled and bloodied humans in their midst.

They made their way up to the loft, large and filled with sweet-smelling fresh hay. Casey went up first and Jamie pushed from below. They had barely settled in when they heard the cows begin to rustle below.

“Milking time, man’ll be out any minute,” Casey whispered and then collapsed, gray and sweating in the hay. Jamie followed suit and then moved not a muscle for the eternity it took the man below, whistling and chatting amiably to his herd, to do the milking. His neck muscles were protesting vehemently when at last, with a final, ‘Aye there, Bessie, there’s a gude girl an’ a pretty one too, not as fine as my Nora mind but fine as a cow’s likely to be,’ they could hear the sound of feed being poured into buckets, water splashing into a trough and then the farmer departed back to the house.

Jamie sat up, blowing bits of straw out of his face and turned to look at Casey. Even in the dim light filtering through the rafters of the barn, the man did not look well. It would have been a mercy if he’d passed out but he was all too conscious, teeth clenched together, sweat running in streams from his forehead.

“We’ll have to do something about the pain,” Jamie muttered, half to himself.

“I don’t doubt it’d appeal to ye to knock me out cold but have a check in the rain barrel first would ye, man? If there’s nothin’ to be had ye’re more than welcome to hit me over the head.” The rain barrel which oddly enough was situated in the farthest, darkest corner of the barn, where it wasn’t likely to catch even the most adventurous drop, did, when Jamie sunk his arm up to the shoulder, in its murky depths, offer up manna directly from heaven. Four bottles, filled with peaty brown liquid, guaranteed to relieve a man of his pain as well as the rest of his faculties. He tucked them under his right arm and was back up the ladder in a shot.

“How did you know I’d find this?” he asked uncapping a bottle and helping Casey to tilt up his head and take a long draught off the bottle.

“Didn’t, good guess is all. I hide my own in a hatbox at home.”

Jamie helped Casey to drink half the bottle, in long steady swallows, before lowering him back into the straw.

“Pamela tells me that ye’ve a bit of medical knowledge,” Casey said and Jamie didn’t like at all the way the man looked at him.

“An ill-considered two months floundering in the sciences hardly constitutes a sound base for a medical career.”

“Do ye know that ye use too many words when yer nervous?” Casey asked. “Now I’ll need a minute or two for the alcohol to take away my nerves an’ then ye’ll put my arm back in for me.”

“I will?”

“Aye,” Casey gave him a black look, “ye will.”

Jamie took the allowed minute or two to cast back in his mind to his brief flirtation with medicine. If Casey had been bleeding profusely Jamie would have known exactly what was required, however upon reflection it seemed to him that he’d never quite made it to the chapter on the realignment of joints. He looked over at Casey’s deathly pale countenance and thought perhaps now was not the best time to mention it.

He kneeled down in the hay beside Casey’s prostrate form and felt gingerly along the forearm, from what little his uneducated hands could tell him it was a clean break about halfway up the radius, the swelling seemed minimal and it wasn’t hot. These were all good things, or at least he hoped they were.

“Ye need to get my elbow in close to my body an’ then ye whip it up fast an’ that should rotate the joint back in. Normally the wrist should be up but I don’t know if I can manage that with the break,” Casey gritted his teeth and pulled his wrist up onto his chest.

“We’ll wrap the break,” Jamie said feeling at last some modicum of ease settle in, “make it as stable as possible and then we’ll get the joint back in.”

He took his shirt off and tore two even strips out of the back where the shirt remained the cleanest. He wrapped the break tightly down the length of the forearm and then hooked the ends around Casey’s thumb and back to the wrist to give him some small amount of leverage. He then tore what was left of Casey’s shirt up to the shoulder, which was hot and swollen to the touch. They’d allowed too much time to elapse and the muscles had swelled and knotted, making the task ahead of Jamie that much more difficult.

“I think it’d be best if I sat on your chest and attempted this,” Jamie said grimly.

“Aye,” Casey said weakly, rather less enthused by events than he had been a minute ago.

Jamie straddled his chest and took the beleaguered arm in hand, the elbow resting snugly in his palm, his other hand grasping the offended shoulder and taking a deep breath counted to three and whipped the arm up, hearing with immense relief the crunch of a maligned joint falling into place.

“Jaysus Christ,” Casey let out an explosive breath and closed his eyes in relief, a small measure of color already beginning to tinge the edges of his face. “Give me another swallow of that whiskey, will ye?”

Jamie helped him to another substantial slug and took one himself for good measure.

It was only then, adrenaline dropping from a roar to a hum in his ears that he realized they were not alone. Peering above the stairs, looking for all the world like a silver-whiskered badger was the none-too-pleased face of a man he could only presume was the owner of this establishment.

“Hello,” he said a trifle giddily, causing Casey to open his eyes and shift over to his side with a startling swiftness.

“Hello yerself,” came the unamused reply and then face moved upwards and was joined by a body, cradling a rifle in the crook of one arm, “my wife has sent me out te see if ye lads would like some breakfast and if ye’d need of her medical box.”

It took Jamie a moment to gather his faculties at this astonishing turn of events but Casey said easily, “Aye, we’d be grateful for a bite an’ if yer wife has any medical knowledge we’re in sore need of it.”

“She nursed durin’ the border campaign an’ has like seen the helluva lot worse than the two of yez. Right then, I’ll be back.”

True to his word, he was back in minutes with a minute woman with an equally lined face and jolly blue eyes behind him. Jamie and Casey had made it to the floor of the barn, Casey rather precariously as he was experiencing dizziness and another bout of nausea.

“Christ, I’ve seen the hind end of mules that looked a sight better than the two of you,” said the woman with uncharitable succinctness. “Broke is it?” she asked Casey, nodding curtly towards the arm he held to his chest. “Ye’d best sit, yer the shade of old bathwater. Jacob get the milking stool an’ fetch me two splints, yea long,” she gestured with her small brown hands, “an’ be sure they are thin an’ straight as ye can find them. Now lad,” she fixed her gaze on Casey, “let’s have a look then shall we?”

She unwrapped Jamie’s bandaging, her touch deft and light and Casey seemed as though he hardly minded even when she felt with precision along the break itself, her brow furrowing in concentration. “Mm, it’s a clean one an’ will mend nicely, swelling’s minimal.” She then prodded his shoulder pushing here and there for long minutes. “Twill help to unknot the muscles,” she said to Jamie’s questioning look, “it’s best to relieve the tension in the muscles, an’ though an opiate best serves there, knowin’ where an’ how to touch never hurts either.” She laid Casey’s hand gently across his lap and with a brisk no nonsense air, laid out the things she needed to set his arm.

“Your husband said you had nursed during the border campaign,” Jamie said venturing at small talk.