Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,361

once they had made sure no additional Beedle snipers were anywhere nearby, they turned their attention to the arrow lodged in Swab’s body. This had gone in her back, up high between spine and shoulder blade, and passed most of the way through her body. It had broad, vicious barbs, so deeply embedded that Fern ended up deciding that the only way to get it out was to push it all the way through and out the other side. And this she did after giving Swab a potion from her medical kit that in theory would dull the pain. To judge from the way Swab reacted, it didn’t work very well. Watching the operation from Swab’s front, Prim saw the flesh begin to bulge outward beneath the collarbone. Then the highest part of the bulge lost its form. A lesion appeared on the skin, and it was made of chaos. The point of the arrowhead erupted from its center and then the whole thing came through easily. Once the barbed head had been removed, Fern was able to pull the shaft out of Swab’s back. Blood came from the wound. They bound it up as best they could.

Intent as she was on looking after Swab, Prim paid little note when Corvus flew in from one of his reconnaissance sweeps and summoned Mard. But when they finally knotted the bandages round Swab’s wounds and made sure she had all the water she desired—and she had become very thirsty—Prim looked round and saw that Mard and Corvus were both absent.

They took turns carrying Swab the rest of the way to the Overstrike. Whoever wasn’t carrying her carried water or other supplies. The hike seemed to last an eternity, but the sight of Corvus circling overhead gave them some comfort that all was well at their destination and that they were not being hotly pursued.

They found Mard sitting bareheaded out in the open sun before the dark grin of the Overstrike. His sword was across his knees. On the ground next to him was a rag stained with fresh blood, which he’d apparently been wiping from the blade—for that was glittering clean. But he seemed to have finished with that task and was now just staring out over the distant sea. A short ways before him, just downslope, was a great deal of blood, painting the slope with a ramifying pattern as it discovered paths between stones. Lying unclaimed on the ground, considerably farther away, was a cutlass whose blade—as Lyne verified by picking it up and turning it this way and that in the sun—bore no trace of gore. “Mard must have kicked it away,” he explained.

As they came closer, giving the blood lake a wide berth, they saw that Mard was shivering violently. Prim went to him and knelt down. Lyne, out of a nervous habit, turned and looked back. But from here they had a clear view of the ground below for at least a bow-shot, and Corvus was still patrolling farther out. Fern kept trudging up the slope, breathing heavily and sweating freely with Swab on her back, trying to get her into the shade of the Overstrike.

“I know that swordfights are part of what one signs up for,” Mard remarked, in a low voice, “but that was so different from everything I trained for as to be another thing altogether.”

“But it—your training—worked, did it not?” she asked. “Lyne said you kicked his sword away. How did it end up on the ground in the first place?”

“I would like to be able to say that I executed a clever disarm as I was taught, but really I have no idea. And it’s as likely he kicked it by accident as that I did on purpose.”

“Let’s get into the shade,” she suggested. She stood up and extended her hand. After a few more moments of gazing out at nothing in particular, he met her gaze—but only for an instant—and reached up and took her hand. She gave him a tug—mostly symbolic, for he was quite capable of standing up by himself. He let go of her hand and wiped his on his pant leg as if worried it still had blood on it. Side by side they walked up the slope until they passed into the shade of the Overstrike, whereupon they had to wait for a few moments as their eyes adjusted.

Lyne had gone up before them and was squatting there, bow across his knees, gazing outward. Farther in,