Ойкумена / Oikumena: Глава 5

Chapter 5 Just think

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:04

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Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:04

Finally, Santeli glanced toward the stranger once more. The redheaded witch or shifter was sitting on a rock, her arms around her head. Feeling the brigadier's heavy gaze, she looked back. Santelli thoughtfully tossed the axe into the air with a flip and caught it habitually. The feel of the hard handle in the palm of his hand concentrated his thoughts and cut off everything unnecessary.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:08

The foreman was not a bad judge of character, and he knew it. Now he looked into the eyes of the tall girl and saw nothing witchly in them. Nothing at all. Wise men say the soul looks at the world through the eyes. Maybe they're lying, but the look does tell a lot. Even the most cunning man, the most dexterous "deceiver", luring convoys to robbers and cannibals, can not completely hide the second bottom of his intentions. The look will still give it away. You only need to be able to look and see.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:10

And the foreman saw nothing dangerous in the eyes, reddened from the tears repressed, half-hidden by the red, tangled strands. It was the look of a man confused, incomprehensible, almost crushed to death by the vicissitudes of life. It was the look of a woman in her right mind but not of this world. It was the look of a noblewoman who had never fought for her life, who had never needed anything, securely protected by the walls of her father's or her husband's castle, behind the spears of his retinue.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:15

There was a reason for this meeting... There was a reason.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:15

Santelli sighed, gathering his thoughts. An inner voice, a gut feeling that the foreman trusted, whispered that a choice could be made now, where on one side was nothing, including bad things, and on the other side were very complicated consequences. Complicated but interesting.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:16

"Hold it," ordered the foreman, slipping the axe behind his belt.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:17

Shena slapped the Horse on the withers, and the cart creaked, stopping.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:17

"I'll get her," muttered Bizo, fiddling with his crossbow.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:43

"Did I give you orders?" The foreman was defiantly surprised.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:43

The alchemist whimpered and fell silent, flashing his eyes resentfully.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:44

Santelli sighed once more.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:44

"Viall, help me out here," he commanded, pulling back the burlap with which Codure was covered in the cart. "Hold his leg."

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:45

The wounded man slipped into a half-forgetfulness that was soon to be replaced by the fever that was sure to bring him to his grave. When his leg was disturbed, he groaned loudly, his muddy eyes swiveling and clearly unaware of what was happening.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:45

"Sarge... what are you doing?" cautiously asked Kai, who had lost all his courtesies in his confusion.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:48

"Help," Santelli repeated through gritted teeth to Viall. "Drag him."

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:48

Codure was in great pain; he even tried to fight, but the weakness and pain robbed the poor man of his last strength. He only howled, twitching his arms and breaking his nails on the clothes of his tormentors.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:49

"That's it, put it down," puffed Santelli.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:49

Viall returned to the cart very quickly, staggering like cancer. Santelli missed no opportunity to emphasize once again who in the brigade was the bravest and most desperate. He stepped back only a few steps and stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. The stranger stared at Codure, who had been placed halfway between the cart and the stone where she had been sitting.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:50

"Sergeant, that's not good," said Kai.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:51

"Feed your own to some creature...," supported Bizo uncertainly.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:51

Shena was silent, but Santelli could feel her gaze all over his back. Cold and angry. The spearwoman didn't like noblemen. That in itself was all right. Who liked them? But with Shena, the antipathy turned into outright hatred, which sometimes took a very strange form.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:54

"Our own?" asked the foreman half-heartedly, raising an eyebrow sarcastically. "Did you share salt with him? Chopped the coin?"

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:54

There was nothing to say. The laws of the brigades were unwritten but hardened like iron by many years, very straightforward and not subject to free interpretation. Codure was taken for Profit, but so far, he had not proved himself, and the brigade did not unanimously accept him - he stood on his own. Subsistence and a half share of the income that's all the apprentice can count on. The foreman was acting harshly, but in his own right, when he gave the apprentice up to the undead. Another thing is that after such tricks from the brigade, people usually start leaving without payoffs. And they were in their right, too.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:56

The red-haired witch, meanwhile, took an interest in what was going on. She got down from the stone and approached Codure, trying, however, to keep away from Santelli, whom she was clearly afraid of.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:57

Lena did not understand what was happening at all. It was as if the leader was waiting for something from her. And the rest of the gang was waiting, too, talking softly among themselves in a language that resembled both English and German at the same time. Moreover, it seemed to the girl that the travelers were no less afraid of her than she was of them. She had to make a decision. Maybe she should have done something, according to the local custom. Or, on the contrary, not to do ... Lena knelt beside the lying man, still away from the leader with his sinister axe.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:58

The man was young and appeared to be wounded. Not even apparently, but surely. The man's already unhealthy face was covered in yellowish skin, like a wax mask covered in tiny beads of sweat. The wounded man was conscious but did not seem to understand what was going on around him. His left pant leg was cut almost to the groin, covered by a powerful codpiece, and the leg was encased in a primitive splint of narrow planks and a thick gray bandage with dried blood stains.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:59

Lena looked up at the ringleader. He looked up at her, tucked his pigtails behind his ears, and smoothed his beard. The look in his dark eyes was still one of anticipation.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 12:59

Did they mistake her for a healer? Maybe the local doctors... or healers are wearing Manowar T-shirts and denim pairs?

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:02

//What have I got to lose?

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:03

She decided to try and unwind the bandage. It was hard, the knots were tight. A shadow fell overhead - the leader was leaning over a lying man, an axe in his hand. Elena recoiled, but the bearded man simply cut the first knot. It looked like the axe had been sharpened for good measure.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:09

"She's about to start eating," Viall remarked thoughtfully. "Or leaking blood."

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:10

The brigade watched the witch unwind the bandage ineffectively, wrinkling and cocking its nose funny. Still, no one understood what Santelli was up to. At last, the witch freed her leg and carefully rolled the cloth into a roll. She carefully examined the wound.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:11

"No, she bewitch ," Bizo pointed out authoritatively.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:12

"How will she bewitch him?" Kai reasonably objected. "We're on the ground. We're not down here."

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:13

"Somehow," Bizo said significantly.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:14

There was nothing to say. The evil deed is simple.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:15

Elena was afraid she was going to vomit again. But she didn't. After all the adventures of the past twenty-four hours, her perception had dulled, lost its sharpness. Merely the wounded man. Merely a leg. Simple... what the hell... Not simple at all.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 15:46

The leg looked bad. Not as bad as Grandpa's huge Atlas of gunshot wounds, published in Stalin's time, with big detailed pictures, but still bad. A deep, though not to the bone, open wound ran along the thigh muscle, ending just above the knee. Inside was visible pinkish flesh and even blood vessels, grayish-like twigs in a herbarium. Just looking at the wound reminded her of the paw of a hideous cat with a basilisk's face. Only here, the claw had done more work, though it was just as sharp. But that wasn't the only trouble.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 15:49

The swelling all over her thigh was visible to the unaided eye, as was the unnatural subluxation of the limb (Lena didn't know what to call it properly). Judging by what she saw, there was not only a laceration but also a fracture of the femur. Again from the scraps of Grandfather's memories - a combination extremely dangerous even for the advanced medicine of the twentieth century. Which here, it seems, is still many centuries away.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 15:50

Lena rubbed her palms together, shaking off the scales of dried blood, carefully running her fingers along the edges of the wound. Instead of heat, her fingertips tingled with an unnatural chill. Something was wrong here, but Lena forbade herself to think about it. She feared that if she stepped out of her meditative state of concentration for a moment, all was lost. The leader of the gang seemed quite peaceful, but the girl was sure that he could kill her at any moment for some unknown motives.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 15:52

What to do?

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:07

As if to echo her thoughts, the bearded man pressed his lips together and set his lower jaw forward in a look of slight disappointment. She had to think of something, and fast. Or run for her life.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 15:53

What would Grandpa do?

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 15:53

Her memory threw up an unhelpful and inappropriate memory. The early childhood, an old medicine man who liked to sit in a rocking chair, reading Science and Life. He can't rock - there's a cat and a little kid in the house, so Grandpa has permanently wedged the chair in with screws and bolsters. But he still likes to sit. A rocking chair from the old days, the memory of the past. His granddaughter does not let him read, crawling over Grandpa, like "the wood beast Monkey," as he likes to call her, making menacing faces, but through the net of wrinkles, his eyes look kind, with love. Sometimes, to calm down a little runaway girl, Grandfather tells his granddaughter stories from his extensive practice. Uninspired, uninspired, and well-written. Then his gaze changes. The old man looks somewhere in the distance, and no one knows (and no one will know), what pictures his own memory paints. The granddaughter doesn't understand half of it. The words are terribly grown-up, smart, but the very voice of the Grandfather is soothing, it flows like a huge river, soft and deep.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:07

Why did this one come to mind? Why?

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:04

//Think about it, whispered the phantom of the old army doctor.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:05

Right. Now she remembered.

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:04

Granddaughter sits on her lap, putting aside a thick magazine. And Grandpa says:

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 13:04