Dark and Stormy

The first snowfall heralded a great change — winter arrived with a bang. Up to the time of the first snow, we had only had rain twice in five weeks, and otherwise the sun had shone every day, though it had been cold.

After the snow, the weather settled down to what Ferret called the winter pattern. Every few days, we would have a storm, which would last about a day, and drop some snow on us.

Then it would fine up for a couple of days, and the sun would shine. From the day it first snowed, there was snow on the ground the whole time through to the end of winter.

We were lucky, in our snug little valley, we continued to get regular sun, and it never got as cold as it did in some parts of the mountains.

My mood changed when the snow came. Although I still got up early, if the weather was good enough, to do the morning exercises with the squad, I was no longer filled with excitement for the new day.

I wasn't sure why my mood changed. Not much had changed, but I had. I wasn't sad or down, but I was no longer on the incredible high I had been on up to that time.

Our mission got much harder when the snow came. The captain was already very concerned about this. In the beginning, there had been a small trickle of thugs making their way across the mountains in small groups, usually about four in each group.

They had no field craft, and they hadn't expected to encounter any trouble in the mountains. Each time, the patrol that had found them had been able to ambush them with complete surprise, and we had not even had any injuries at all, until that big group of them had come through.

They had also been taken by surprise, but since then, there had been nothing. While the men were happy, the captain was concerned that they had realised that we had closed the mountains.

The snow made quite a bit of difference to our tactics. Mainly, it made it easy to track men in the snow. But this cut both ways.

While it was easier for us to track them, it made it impossible for us to hide our tracks, and less likely that we'd catch them by surprise.

The snow made the captain's falcon even more important. It slept in the log hut, and spent each day high in the sky over the mountains searching for humans.

Each night, the squad sat around the fire in our log hut discussing tactics. The captain wanted to make as much as possible out of our better knowledge of the land.

They knew the paths through the mountains, they had found their own paths, ones no one else would find, and they mapped out new patrols, secret ways they could use to catch anyone by surprise. There were caches of arrows all through the mountains.

All the squad practised with their bows every day, it was their preferred weapon. "Let them die at a distance" was one of the captain's mantras.

The squad usually carried four weapons with them when they were on patrol: their long bow; a battleaxe, a hunting knife; and a stave. A few carried swords with them.

Scar had taken me under his wing, and he was teaching me to use a knife. He was teaching me close in knife work, very personal fighting.

I argued that I wouldn't fight like that, but Scar told me that with my beauty, my utter desirability, I needed to know how to fight dirty, as a last resort for personal defence. I hit him for that, but he just laughed.

So he taught me unarmed combat, how to use someone's strength against them, and how to finish someone off with a knife.

I found that my inner sight gave the ability to predict what my opponent was going to do, and I learnt to defend myself well.

My inner sight was growing every day, though it made me tired to use it. If I wanted, I could feel everything that lived in the valley.

More animals had moved into the valley as the weather got colder on the mountains, and some mornings one of the squad would go out hunting, in the direction I sent him. They usually came back with a kill for our evening meal.

Early one afternoon, I was laying in Whistle's arms when I felt something wrong. Someone in great pain was coming into the valley, and it was Drowsy. My heart dropped; as I had feared, one of the squad was seriously hurt.

I was waiting, ready, at the camp entrance when Nimble and Crunch carried Drowsy in on a litter. He was only barely conscious, and his clothes were soaked in blood down his right side.

I got them to put him down just outside the log cabin, next to a small fire I had lit as I prepared.

As I cut his clothes off him, I asked Nimble what had happened. They had run into some thugs, and for the first time the thugs had been expecting trouble.

They hadn't been fully caught by surprise, and one of them had managed to get an arrow away. It had hit Drowsy in this stomach a few inches from his right side.

The arrow hadn't gone right through, and when Nimble had tried to pull it out, the head had broken off and got stuck inside.

Great. Nimble was covered in blood, so it must have been spurting out. I didn't like the look of this at all.

It would've been nice if Nimble had left the arrow in — he was called Nimble because he wasn't, but the idea of running back here with Drowsy on a litter with an arrow poking out of him didn't sound very good either.

Nimble had bandaged the wound by wrapping a dirty cloth tightly around his body, and blood was still running slowly out of the bandage, which was soaked. Drowsy was going into shock from the loss of blood.

I was very afraid that Drowsy would die from this wound. He had lots of blood loss, the arrow head — which was probably quite dirty — still inside him.

And a stomach wound would mean it would be a while before he could eat, and any food or shit already inside him would get mixed up with his blood inside him.

I thought how he had lain in my arms and told me about his little girls, waiting at home for him, how they loved him so much. I swore to myself that I would do anything to save him.

My first decision was whether to try and stop the bleeding right away, or whether I should try and get the arrow head out.

I carefully lifted Nimble's bandage with a grimace, it was terribly dirty. The blood was no longer spurting out, but he was still bleeding briskly. I decided to try quickly for the arrow head.

Before I could do that, I would have to sedate him. He was only barely conscious, but conscious enough to be a problem.

I retrieved some hash and some wild-berry leaves from my pouch. If the men had known I had hash... But what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

Mixed with wildberry leaves, it had more potency as a sedative, I could put Drowsy's mind somewhere else.

I put the leaves in a sleeping pipe, and put it to his mouth, making him breathe through it. While I was waiting for it to take effect, I prepared to look for the arrow head.

The real problem was how deep it was, and how much more damage I would do before I even decided whether I could get it.

I asked Nimble, who was sitting watching, what angle the arrow had hit him. He showed me, it was heading towards his side a bit.

I asked him how far in it broke off, and he showed me. I was a bit sceptical, actually, if it really was that far in, it would've come out the back.

I rolled him over a bit to look, and there was nothing in his back. He only murmured a little when I moved him, so the hash had taken affect.

I asked Nimble and Whistle to hold him down, so that he wouldn't move, and then I lifted the bandage again. This time I removed it, I would replace it with a clean one of my own when I finished.

I decided to explore with my finger first. Not a pleasant way to do it, but I would learn the most. He jumped as I pushed my finger into the hole, and blood started coming out quickly again, with his heartbeat, which I could feel quite clearly around my finger.

I wanted to be very gentle, but I didn't seem to get my finger in very far. I had thought that the arrow would leave a hole I would be able to follow, but it didn't seem to be the case.

The old healer had taught me this once when we tried to save a farmer who had been gored by the handle of a plough. Obviously, that was bigger and did more damage.

Maybe there was some hope. I placed a bandage on his wound and held it done while I thought about it. Was it really worth getting the arrow head out?

It depended on how big it was, how dirty it was, exactly where it was, and I didn't have any way to find those things out. Or did I?