Snippet #1914933

Aruna smiled politely at the big man when he introduced himself. “Ena,” she replied with an ease born of practice. She was getting used to lying. He slapped her on the back in a friendly fashion, and she had to step quickly to avoid sprawling in the dirt, but she merely nodded at him and the other man and obediently made her way back to the inn.

When she entered the inn, a morbid sight greeted her. Injured men and boys lay sprawled all over the main room in various states of urgency, and Grillian and Rhia and a handful of others who had escaped the fray were tending to them. Rhia looked up as Aruna walked in, and immediately stood, walking over to her.

“Oh, Ena! Thank goodness you're alright!” the woman exclaimed, tackling Aruna in a sudden hug before the girl knew what was going on. She tentatively patted the barmaid on the back, and Rhia released her a moment later. “I was so worried when I couldn't find you in the inn--is that blood?” Rhia examined her shirt. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Aruna said quickly. “I was... helping someone, outside.”

“Well, then good,” the other woman said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Because we can use as many helping hands as we can get. These men are all injured in one fashion or another, and neither Grillian nor I are half the healer you are.”

Aruna ducked her head at the compliment, but she did not smile. She couldn't. Rhia had no idea just how much more effective she apparently was at killing than at healing. She merely prayed that Jaknir would have the sense to keep his mouth shut about it. Biting a man's face off might earn her a barbarian's respect, but anyone else with any sense in their head would merely be afraid of her if they learned of such a thing.

Rolling up her sleeves, Aruna set her shoulders. “Let's get to work, then. Who is the worst off?” Rhia nodded and led her across the room to a makeshift operating table made of two dining tables pushed together. It was occupied by a young man who was swathed in poorly tied bandages, and seemed to have passed out from the pain. Aruna shook her head pityingly. “He won't live through this,” she said somberly, inspecting the wound under the bandages. He had caught a sword through the middle and the rent it had left had allowed his intestines to begin spilling out. He had lost much blood. “I can't heal this,” Aruna told Rhia despairingly.

“What about that tall man?” Rhia asked.

“Jaknir?” Rhia stared blankly. “The blond muscular one?” The barmaid shook her head.

“Some of these men are talkin' about another man, a tall one who healed a horse earlier. They say he can heal things using magic. Could he do it?”

Aruna shrugged. “Magic makes a lot of things possible that simple medicine is inadequate for, but who knows? Where is he?”

Rhia shook her head. “I dunno. But I can certainly send someone to search fer 'im.”

Ena nodded, assenting, and the barmaid left her to talk to a boy with his arm in a sling standing near a group of men.

Aruna moved on to the next patient. “Tell him to gather some herbs, too, while he's at it, Rhia,” she shouted to the barmaid. “We need comfrey, allium, yarrow, willow bark if there is any. That barbarian out there, Jaknir, he might know what to look for.”

“Got it,” Rhia shouted back, and Aruna turned her attention back to the man in front of her, grimacing in pain from an arrow wound in his thigh. “Miss,” she said, gesturing at a woman who stood nearby. “I need you to go to the kitchen, find a big pot and fill it at the pump out back, then put it over the fire to boil.”

The woman stared at her for a moment. “Now, woman! Go!” Aruna urged her. The woman bustled off to the kitchen. Aruna took a linen napkin that was lying on the table and pressed it against the man's profusely bleeding arrow wound. “Put pressure on it,” she instructed him, and moved on to another patient.