Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘Shit, Churn, I’m hurt,’ she whispered, trying to roll onto her side. A sharp pain flared in her shoulder and her left arm tingled with pins and needles, then went numb. She tried to move her arm, but it lay useless at her side. ‘I broke my arm, Churn,’ Hannah said plaintively, reaching for him, ‘and my head is bleeding.’ Her vision blurred. ‘I hit it hard, Churn. I think I’m going to pass out. We need to get away from here before I do…’ She inched her way across the rock, trying to ignore the pain as she dragged herself on one hip. She focused on Churn, whose head rested on his folded arms while the bulk of his body was still submerged in the water.

‘Come on, Churn,’ she encouraged, her voice breaking, ‘let’s get you up here too.’ She grasped one of his hands as firmly as she could with her own good hand, gritting her teeth to ignore the jags of pain that radiated from her shoulder to her fingers. Even healthy, she didn’t have the strength to heave Churn onto the rock, but she hoped the power of her touch would motivate him.

‘Come on, buddy,’ she said, her vision tunnelling now. She knew she wouldn’t be conscious for much longer. ‘A little help, my friend,’ Hannah groaned.

He finally lifted his head, and as she succumbed to the encroaching darkness, she thought, he will be all right. Churn took a deep breath and pulled himself painfully out of the water. The cold bit hard; his arms and legs had begun to tingle numbly and he struggled to remain lucid as he looked Hannah over more closely. As well as the head wound, which was still bleeding, one collarbone was almost protruding through her skin and the arm looked pretty nasty as well. Hoyt would have to set and bind that one. Her knees and elbows were bleeding, but none of her other limbs appeared to have snapped. He ran his fingers over her ribs, but his own hands were so cramped with cold, he was unable to feel if any of them had broken.

Rutting mess, Churn thought, this will slow us down. We should have gone back and circled around. He made a solemn promise to himself: if he were able to carry Hannah back up the slope, he would never again return to another high place – not a ledge, nor a building, and certainly not another icy mud slope above a swirling, freezing mountain river – no matter who might be chasing him.

Churn shook his head to keep his thoughts clear: he had to move Hannah, before she lapsed into a coma. He searched the hillside, waiting for Hoyt and Alen to pass down a rope: he could climb the embankment with Hannah over one shoulder, if they pulled from the top. His main concern was to give the injured woman as gentle a ride as possible.

First things first: he needed to immobilise Hannah’s shoulder. Keeping it from moving would be critical if they were to make a safe ascent, and Churn thought it best that she remain unconscious until he had her safely out of the gorge. Jouncing the broken collarbone might wake the girl (she had looked like a sea nymph that day in Southport) and then she might jerk away and cause them both to tumble back down. Ignoring the fact that he was freezing himself, Churn started to unhook his cloak; he needed it for bandages – but as he did so, something glinted in the sun.

He crawled painfully over to the shining object – a cloak pin, holding closed a thick woollen wrap being worn by what was undoubtedly a dead man. It looked as if he had fallen, like they had, but he hadn’t been as lucky: a pace or two further and the mud would have cushioned his fall, as it had Hannah’s.

Churn peered closely at the body; he reckoned the man, a forester, maybe, judging by his clothes, had been dead for several days, though the chill air had stopped the corpse from rotting. The body rested half on and half off the rocky ledge. It looked like the man had cracked his skull, killing him on impact. Churn warmed somewhat at the notion of another dead Malakasian, then got to work pillaging the corpse for anything he might use to make safer his and Hannah’s potentially dangerous journey up the muddy embankment. The man had a knife and a small wood axe, nothing appropriate for battle, tucked in his belt. He tore the man’s cloak into strips which he used to bind up Hannah’s injured shoulder, being especially thorough, then he attended to her head, using another makeshift bandage to tie around her forehead, stopping the flow of blood from her wound. He dipped a bit of cloth into the river and used it to clean her face.

From somewhere above, Churn heard Hoyt and Alen calling, but he couldn’t call back; he could just hope they found him soon. He returned to the corpse and reached for a leather pouch, small but bulging with what he hoped was silver. It was tied tightly at the top with a wet leather thong. Churn fumbled with the tie for a moment, the cold making his fingers cramp, and then gave up and drew his own knife to slice through the leather and open the pouch.

Almost immediately, he was gone. It wasn’t cold and he wasn’t wet. The snow was falling again, warm weather snow, tickling his face and catching in his hair. His shoulders ached, but he was happy to be free from the frigid waters. He tried and failed to free one of his hands to brush the snow from his face.

He was back in the cottonwood tree, but this time he didn’t look down. Instead, he forced himself to keep his gaze focused on the perfect azure sky, Gods of the forest, but it was a beautiful sky. Churn wouldn’t pull his gaze away from the cloudless expanse of Pragan blue perfection, despite the heavy aroma of smoke and ash. He was back, but it wasn’t real. It was a dream. The smells made him want to look down, but he wouldn’t; he would look up at that sky for the rest of his life if necessary.

Then he heard them: there were at least two, above him someplace, hiding in the Pragan sky, but they called him and he didn’t answer – he couldn’t answer. There was no shouting left in him, certainly not from the top of this rutting tree where he had shouted and cried for so long. Instead, he shook his head, a gesture he had perfected in those few moments after climbing from the river, and he would use it again now. It helped him ward off the cold. It was cold now, even there in the cottonwood tree. Perhaps it was winter snow. Churn knew, without looking down from the branches, that Hannah Sorenson was not down there on the ground outside his family farmhouse; she was somewhere else – he tried to remember where she had fallen, but the vast Pragan sky called him back and he forgot the woman for a moment, just long enough to smell the ashes burning below…

Churn dropped the leather pouch. Demonpiss! It’s more of that cursed bark, he screamed in his mind. He dipped his hands in the river and wiped them repeatedly across his leggings, hoping to wipe any vestiges away. Adrenalin surged through his body, warming him for what he needed to do. He picked up the pouch and secured it with the leather thongs, then tied it safely onto his belt. Then he stood for the first time since crawling from the river and looked up the embankment. The curve of the hillside blocked his view, but he could hear Hoyt and Alen right above him, shouting his name

Cry out to them, he thought, yell up to them now. Churn threw his head back, rounded his shoulders and drew a deep breath – but nothing emerged, not a squeak. He couldn’t make himself shout, and as he couldn’t see them, he guessed that they couldn’t see him or Hannah either – and still he couldn’t make himself shout up to his companions. Why would you not call out to them? What is the matter with you? he asked himself, shuffling from foot to foot. Do it now – they need to know where you are! Call up to them, you great stupid rutter!

A length of rope, tied in clumsy knots to three sets of leather reins, landed in the river some distance off to his right and swirled there for a moment before it began moving downriver towards him: Hoyt and Alen had thrown down a lifeline and were dragging it the length of the gorge, hoping he or Hannah would grab hold and offer them a reassuring tug.