Into Darkness

30

The healers who had gone off to one of the buildings emerged and raced back with a variety of supplies.

Rita lifted his elbows. “Hold your arms up. Your wound has torn open from your effort at fighting and it’s bigger now than before. We will need to stitch this up.”

Richard was wishing he had Shale around to heal the wound with her gift. But then he remembered that Shale had become part of the coven, even if it was against her will.

Rita grumbled, reprimanding herself for not sewing the wound better before. She pushed the sides apart to open the wound so she could inspect it. It made Richard groan with pain. Another woman handed her a bit of poultice as another handed her a needle and thread. She immediately swiped some of the yellowish concoction into the wound and then set to work stitching it together.

Richard winced and held his breath each time she pushed the needle through his skin and drew the sides of the wound together. With each stitch she pulled the thread tight with a little tug. Each time she paused before the next stitch he caught his breath. When she was satisfied, she bent and bit the thread to break it and then tied off the ends.

“I hope that holds it,” she muttered.

Another of the healers leaned in for a look. “It looks like it should. You did strong stitches. They should be more than enough to hold it tight.”

“As long as he doesn’t get into another battle right away,” Rita said.

One of the others scooped another big glob of a different ointment of some kind out of a bowl. Richard could smell aum. Another woman dabbed the bloody wound over his ribs with a rag to clean it up. Richard winced and recoiled. It wasn’t the stitching that hurt so much as the wound itself.

“Stay still,” Rita groused. “Hold your arms up out of the way.”

She obviously didn’t appreciate that he had ruined her previous work. The woman with the ointment slapped a handful of it against the wound. As soon as she did, another pressed a folded cloth over it. As she held the cloth in place, Rita took a roll of binding material from one of the others and started wrapping it tightly around him. He grunted from the pain of how tight it was, but at least the aum was already beginning to numb the ache of the wound.

“I know that you aren’t going to take our advice to rest for a few more days,” Rita said, “so I had to put in extra stitches and it was necessary to make the binding tight. I don’t want the wound opening up when you are riding horseback. I hope you don’t need to get in another battle with those monsters for a little while at least.”

Seeing that it was important, Vika grabbed the roll from Rita. “Here, let me help. I can make it tighter.”

Vika was not nearly as gentle as Rita had been. She made the wrapping so tight that Richard feared to exhale lest she cinch it down when he did and then he wouldn’t be able to breathe in again.

“Stop complaining,” Vika murmured as she continued to wind the binding around his chest, concentrating on what she was doing.

“That’s good,” Rita said, taking the end from Vika once she had used the whole roll. She split the end, then pushed it through several of the layers of bindings and tied the tail so that it couldn’t come undone.

“You are a natural at this,” Rita told Vika. She shook a finger at the Mord-Sith. “I want you to keep an eye on the wound. If he starts to bleed again, unwrap it and put some more of this salve on it, then put a clean cloth over it. After that, wrap him back up. I’m afraid that is all we can do without him taking some time to rest and heal. But we all understand the urgency of going after the Mother Confessor.”

Vika took the tin after Rita checked that there was enough in it before screwing on a lid. “I will. Thank you for helping Lord Rahl. I will watch over him in your place.”

Rita smiled and patted Vika’s cheek. “Good girl.”

“We need those horses,” Richard told Toby.

One of the men pointed a thumb back over his shoulder at the sinking sun. It was hovering over the western wall out to the pass. “It will be dark in a couple of hours, Lord Rahl. Don’t you want to wait until dawn to leave?”

Richard glanced to the pass trail under the setting sun. “If I missed saving the Mother Confessor from that coven of witches by a couple of hours, or a couple of minutes, or even a couple of seconds, I could never forgive myself, and our world would never forgive me.”

The man and those around him acknowledged what Richard said with solemn nods.

Richard intended to ride hard and cover ground as swiftly as possible. There were plenty of horses, more than he had expected, so he told the men that he wanted horses for him and the six Mord-Sith, and an extra for each of them so they could rotate their mounts when the horses got tired.

The crowd outside the stables watched as men led horses out of stalls in a couple of the stable buildings. A pair of men for each horse, to save precious time, helped get the horses saddled and bridles on. While they were doing that, other women and men rushed up with supplies for their journey and tied them to the spare horses. Richard could see men tying bags of oats to the spare horses as well.

“Let’s get going,” Richard told the Mord-Sith once he saw that the horses were ready.

As they all mounted up, Rita stepped forward and put a hand on Vika’s leg. “Watch over him, will you?”

Vika smiled. “Like a mother hen.”

Richard believed her. But he had to admit the support of the binding did seem to make the wound feel better. The aum helped as well.

“Lord Rahl, thank you,” Toby said as he, too, stepped out of the crowd, hat in hand. “We are in your debt.”

“And I in yours.”

“If we can ever be of help, with herbs or anything else, everyone in Bindamoon stands ready to render any assistance we can.”

Richard gave the man a nod of appreciation. “We need to get going. The children of D’Hara need me.”

Without delay, Richard flicked the reins and gave his horse a gentle press with his heels. The horse responded immediately, charging ahead at a swift trot. The Mord-Sith stayed right with him. The extra horses ran behind on long tethers. He ran his horse down the trail road the rest of the way through the town and toward the western wall and its arched opening.

“Lord Rahl,” Vika said as she rode up beside him as they went through the arched tunnel under the wall, “how in the world are we going to find that witch woman, Shota, and her coven?”

“That’s the least of our worries. We simply need to head west.”

“Why west?” Berdine asked.

“Because,” he told them as he looked back over his shoulder, “Shota will be taking Kahlan to Agaden Reach.”

Berdine wrinkled up her nose. “What’s Agaden Reach?”

Richard passed a look among all the faces watching him as they rode. “A very bad place. It’s surrounded by jagged peaks of the Rang’Shada Mountains, like a wreath of thorns, and then a dangerous swamp.”

“Ah,” Berdine said. “Of course it is.”