King of Swords (The Starfolk) (2 page)

From the bottom of the heap came a whimper of pain. The boy tried to sit up. In a remarkably steady tenor voice he said, “Can you get this damned thing off my legs, please?”

That was no trivial problem, given that the carcass weighed as much as two big men. Had her supplies included a rope or
chain, she would have been tempted to tow the brute off with the truck, but they didn’t. It took several minutes to free the boy, and he did most of the work. Although his face was coated with mud and probably bruised from hitting the ground, it seemed to have suffered no more than that. His left forearm was bleeding, but his worst injury was the savage clawing that had raked him open from neck to belly, four parallel slashes streaming blood. His clothes were in tatters, and his thick leather belt had been snapped in half. She gripped his good arm to help him upright and tried to wrap it around her shoulders, but he resisted.

“Can walk,” he muttered. “I’ll be all right.” He pulled his arm free to hold up the tattered remains of his jeans.

She held his elbow and guided him back to her chair by the fire. Amazingly, he seemed to be shaking less than she was.

“You shot it?” he mumbled.

“I certainly did! What do you think I did—hit it with your guitar?”

“Just that I thought… Never mind.” He slumped down onto the chair.

“Stay there!” she said fatuously, and ran to the door of the Winnebago. She disappeared inside, then returned with a bundle of towels. “Here, let me see.”

He was crouched in the chair, doubled over, head down, blood dribbling onto the ground. “I’ll be all right.”

“No, you
won’t
! You’ll bleed to death if you don’t get any help.
Now sit up!”

Reluctantly he straightened up. She spread a towel over his chest wounds, and blood soaked through it instantly, black patches in the firelight. He used another to wipe the mud off his face.

“You don’t have a cell phone, do you?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t work out here. Thanks for the rescue. I’m Rigel Estell.”

“Mira Silvas. I’ll bandage you up as best I can, and then we’ll get you to a hospital.”

“No hospital.” He spread the second towel modestly across his lap. “There’s a pump by the washrooms. If you bring me a bucket of water, I’ll get cleaned up. I have a spare pair of jeans… or at least I did.” He peered past her at the remains of his bicycle, crushed under the bear. He was either remarkably calm for a man who had so narrowly escaped a nasty death, or he was already in shock.

She disappeared into the Winnebago and returned with two bottles of mineral water. “This isn’t distilled,” she said, “but it must be safer than campground water.”

To her annoyance he wasted the first by tipping it over his head, drenching his body in a tide of liquid mud. His face was narrow and bony, with high cheekbones, and pale, slightly almond-shaped eyes. Most people would have described him as “a good-looking kid” when he wasn’t grimacing with pain and covered in swellings and scrapes. His flaxen hair had fallen loose and hung in tangles around his shoulders.

She pulled away the bloody towel so she could empty the second bottle over his chest, exposing the long scratches. With absurd modesty, he tried to pull the remains of his shirt over them. She pushed his hands away.

“I’m no doctor,” she said, “but I think it’s mostly superficial. Just flesh wounds.” But there had been little flesh there to start with and some of the cuts had gone down to the bone. “You’re lucky you had that belt on, or the brute would have disemboweled you.”

She reached for the tatters of his jeans. He pushed her away and doubled over.

“For heaven’s sake! I’m a married woman. I’ve seen dicks of every size and damned near every shape. I’ve played with more balls than a golf pro. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before. You still have it, don’t you? You didn’t lose anything irreplaceable?”

“No. But close enough,” he mumbled. He was speaking to his blood-soaked thighs. “I need more water and some bandages, that’s all.”

“You are going to hospital. Have you any idea where the nearest one is? Tofino? Port Alberni? If we can find a phone, I’ll call for a helicopter ambulance.”

“No hospital,” he repeated. “No hospital and no doctors.”

“You’ll bleed to death.”

“I won’t. I heal quickly. Please just get me some more water.”

“Is this some religious nonsense? Are you one of those fanatics who doesn’t believe in medicine?” When he did not answer, she tried again. “It’s not medicine you need; you need stitches to close those gashes.”

“No hospital,” he muttered to his knees.

“You’ll do as you’re told! I’m going to bandage those cuts and then get you to medical help.”

“No!”

“Yes. Only a hospital can give you what you need. Hell, you need antibiotics, and rabies and tetanus shots too. You’ll probably go into shock before we even get there. Stop behaving like a maniac, Nigel.”

“Not Nigel. Rigel.” He kept his head down. “Mira, I am grateful for your help, but I can’t go to a hospital or see a doctor. I’d rather die. That’s final.”

“No it isn’t. What happens to me if I let you die? You’ll have to give me a very good reason. Are you on the run?”

He did not speak. She wondered if he was about to faint.

“Rigel! Answer me. I have a gun, remember.”

He made a muffled sound that was close to a chuckle. “You’ll shoot me to stop me from bleeding to death? All right. I’ll let you help me, but you must promise not to take me to a hospital.”

“I’ll promise anything. Stack of Bibles. Believe it. Now sit up.”

He straightened up with a whimper of pain. “Look, then.” He gestured down at his chest.

“Look at what?”

“No nipples.”

“Oh.”

“Or a navel,” he said. “Now do you understand?”

She laughed nervily. “You trying to tell me you’re some sort of alien?”

He didn’t answer.

T
he woman reacted better than Rigel had expected she would. She snorted and pushed his wet hair aside to look at his right ear. “Not pointed,” she said. “Or hairy. Perfectly good ear.”

“It’s set too high on my head.”

“Nonsense! You’re just being hypersensitive. As far as your chest goes… well, you must’ve had some kinky plastic surgery. To hide a bad burn, maybe.”

She had found the most obvious solution.

He said, “No scars.”

“Doesn’t mean a thing, especially if you were very young when it happened. As a working hypothesis that’s better than thinking I’m crazy… and right now the only thing we need to focus on is saving your life. Let’s go inside, where I can see better.”

If she wasn’t a matter-of-fact, no-nonsense type, she was playing the role well. But why did she carry a gun? He had made it a lifelong rule not to trust anyone, and people who carried guns were dangerous. Something about that fight with the bear had felt wrong.

He let her help him up. He felt shaky now, and tried to focus on fighting the pain load. He could deal with that, but not doctors, not a hospital. His lack of nipples and a navel wasn’t all of it. He was different in other ways. His hair and eyes were white. And as soon as they tested his blood group or DNA, they’d lock him up in a zoo.

“Can’t tolerate drugs,” he said, leaning on her shoulder as they walked. She was a square, solid girl, easily able to bear his weight. “Painkillers, antibiotics… I shot a roofer’s nail through my foot when I was a kid and they gave me a tetanus shot. I went into anaphylactic shock and damned near died.”

“An allergy can do that. Doesn’t mean anything.” Still steadying him, she opened the door to the Winnebago.

He resisted. “I’m going to get blood everywhere.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

He climbed in shakily, and she followed. One side was lined with miniature cupboards, a sink, and a refrigerator, the other with a narrow bench covered in rumpled bedclothes. Two large suitcases filled the double bed over the truck cab. The place looked clean as a whistle, but had an old, fusty smell.

“Lie down.” She turned up the propane light. “Damn, boy, you need about two thousand stitches.”

He stretched out on the bench and it felt good to lie down. The pain was growing worse, making it hard for him to think straight. “You got a needle and thread?” She was younger than he’d realized, with big dark eyes and black hair, either curly or curled. She wore jeans and a parka, open to reveal a checked flannel shirt. She was probably not much older than he was. She removed the parka and tossed it up on the bed.

“Happens that I do, but I’m not a doctor and it’s not sterilized.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t get sick—not unless someone tries to give me medication.”

“I can’t stitch you! I know some first aid, but I’m no surgeon.”

“Then watch me bleed to death.”

She chewed her lip. “Rigel, the only disinfectant I have is a mickey of bourbon. And no anesthetic, unless you want to use the bourbon for that.”

Oh, crap! His penis was getting excited by the exposure. If he didn’t end this conversation soon, he was going to get an erection, which would be worse even than the mauling. “Don’t need it. Honestly, infection doesn’t frighten me, but if it bothers you, boil the needles and thread and wash your hands in the bourbon. Meanwhile, I’m going to put myself to sleep. I’ll wake up in twenty minutes and check on how you’re doing.”

She started arguing even louder, but he ignored her. He hunted through the forest of pain to find his point of focus, then began tucking the world in around it. He’d learned how to do that when he was tiny and had been surprised when Gert told him other people couldn’t do it. Twenty minutes. Reality folded and shrank and swirled down to nothing.

“I’m back.”

The woman yelped. “Oh! You startled me.” She held a needle and thread in her gory hands; there was blood on her clothes and even her face.

He raised his head enough to inspect the damage to his torso. He hadn’t lost anything vital, but two of the scratches reached the edge of his pubic hair. Mira had stitched him up in pink and blue and green silk like he was an embroidery
project. The bleeding had almost stopped, and his dick was behaving itself again.

“Thanks,” he said. “That should do. I like the pink best.” He had the pain under control now. That was another trick humans couldn’t master.

“I’m going to get jailed for practicing medicine without a license.”

“I won’t tell.” He tried to sit up, and she pushed him back down.

“Can you do that self-hypnosis trick again? It slowed your bleeding a lot. I felt your pulse, and your heartbeat went down to about thirty.”

“As long as you promise not to hijack me to a hospital.”

She nodded. “I promise, Sir Alien. What planet did you say you were from?”

“I wish I knew,” he said truthfully. She hadn’t locked him in and started driving hell-for-leather, so he’d trust her for a little longer. “I’ll look back in an hour.”

Focus…

She had bandaged him up like a mummy and covered him with a blanket. Otherwise he was naked; he rubbed his feet together and felt the dried mud on them. She must have wrestled his dead weight around like a parcel to get him trussed up like this—it was intimate but not romantic, not even erotic. He was wearing nothing but his bracelet, and it would take a blowtorch to get that off him. Turning his head, he saw that she’d spread the ruins of his worldly goods out on the floor and the tiny kitchen counter: some clothes, a knife, a fork, a spoon, a groundsheet, a Swiss Army knife, a couple of cooking
utensils, a money clip with twenty-five dollars in it. He wondered if she’d noted the absence of a wallet or ID. No shaving kit, either. She had brought in the folding chair and was sitting on it, thumbing through the
Complete Works of William Shakespeare
, but she must have been watching him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Much better, thank you.” He could hold the pain down to a tingle now, and he’d adjusted to the shock. He was alive, whereas he might have been dead and half eaten by now. It was another memory he’d keep with him for life, long might that be! He wondered if the scars would stay, but figured they’d probably disappear like all the rest had. Even the nail through his foot had left no trace. “Thank you
very much
.”