Dark and Stormy 2

I turned my inner sight to my hand, let my attention flow from my hand to his wound and from there further inside him.

All of a sudden all the answers I needed were there. I could see the arrow head sitting very far inside, actually close his back. His insides felt all wrong, but there was little I could do for that right now.

I would have to try this on one of the other men later to see if I could compare what I saw. But one thing that stood out clearly was the feeling around the arrow head.

I could feel the burning feel of the arrow head, it was killing him as I watched. I had no doubt now, I had to remove the arrow head.

I looked behind it, there was just a pad of muscle then skin, so I had a clear decision, I would cut in from behind and remove it.

Drowsy was far gone now. I rolled him over, and wedged a pad under him to hold the bandage in place while I got the arrow head.

I cleaned his back and my healers knife with the water I had boiled over the fire while I had been waiting for him to arrive. I could feel the arrow head under his back while I was cleaning it, which gave me hope.

I decided to go for a single longer cut. I grabbed some charcoal and marked the cut I was going make on his back, and held the knife over it, practising the angle and depth of the cut I was going make in my head.

I noticed that Nimble and Whistle were staring at me in confusion, they didn't understand what I was doing. I explained it to them, and explained how they would need to help me.

I was ready. I cut into Drowsy following the line that I had drawn, a single cut, about an inch deep. I pulled the cut apart, and blood starting flowing.

But I could see the arrow head clearly so I levered it straight out with the knife and then pushed the cut shut. It had been open for only a few moments.

I closed my eyes and shuddered. It was a good thing I hadn't really thought about what I was doing before I did it.

Now I just had to clean everything up. The first thing I did was wash my hands. I suspected that there was something poisonous on the arrow, and it wouldn't do it spread it around inside Drowsy.

I had been lucky enough to be given something very special by the old healer in the city, a fine curved needle with some silk. I had never heard of such a thing but she had been sure that I would need it.

I had practised using it once when Digger had brought an animal in that was still alive. It seemed as though the sun was going down by the time I finished cleaning and stitching Drowsy's wounds, three in his front, which finally stopped the bleeding, and twelve stitches in his back.

I could see that I hadn't lined his back up quite right, so I figured that he'd have a good scar and get a twinge when he stretched, but if he lived long to find out, I'd be very happy.

I stood up to start organising a place for Drowsy to lie, inside near the fire. It was only as I stood up that realised how tired I was, and I nearly passed out. Whistle caught me.

"Hey, take a break, girl, you've not stopped to rest since he got here."

I leaned on him. I was hot and tired, sweaty, even though it was now starting to get quite cold outside.

"Take him inside and get him warm and comfortable near the fire."

That night I rested by the fire, sitting next to Drowsy. The squad fell over themselves to do anything they could for me;

Digger had fixed me a warm bath, and then Scar sat behind me and massaged my shoulders after we ate.

I felt that I was treated differently by the men. Oh yes, they adored me, their lover. But now, it seemed as though the respected me, their healer;

as finally, they were really willing to trust me with their lives. I understood that I had to earn that, and now, they were amazed at the way I had got the arrow head out, and put stitches in. Only a few of them had even heard of stitches.

As I was going to sleep that night, Drowsy started to wake up. He had been out from the hash for much longer than I expected.

Perhaps it had mixed with the arrow's poison in his system. All through that night, he kept waking me up with his groans.

The next day I watched Drowsy as much as I could. I had no other duties. The soldiers on their rest day had told me that I should focus on Drowsy, and gone out on patrol.

This was the start of a new sense of mission amongst the men. I had already been impressed by the way that the captain had bound them into a team, but from this point it started to become quite scary the way they focused on their mission.

Drowsy was at death's door for a couple of days. I spent much of the next day and night searching inside him with my inner sight.

I had worked on several of the other men so I started to get a feel for what I should see inside him. The arrow had wrecked his guts inside, and I tried to pour my energy into him, to see if it would help — I had said I would do anything I could think of.

It made me tired, and though I still don't know whether it worked or not, I'm happy I did it. Drowsy run a high temperature and a fever, and bleed from his rectum, ugly clots of blood, but by the third day, I could feel that the heat where the arrow had gone was decreasing and his fever was starting to turn.

It was more than a week before he was eating, walking and defecating properly. But after that, when he came to me, I would often look at him as I lay in his arms, and it would make me glad, knowing that I had saved his life, against all my fears, and that he was back at work, for the people and the land.

Healing Drowsy had an unexpected consequence. Gong, Sock and few others took it upon themselves to "reward" me for my successful healing of Drowsy by having a competition to see who could make me come the loudest or longest.

It had been a regular feature of discussion, to that point, how noisy I was. I had gotten used to it, it didn't even embarrass me anymore.

I didn't know about the competition at first, I just knew that all of a sudden a few of them started to take a more serious interest in what pleased me.

Some had all along, particularly Scar, though he didn't join into the contest — I had something different and more special with him.

Sock, by the way, I think he got his name from the fact that he claimed to have used a sock to cover for the fact that he was huge.

Initially it took me a while to teach him how to control himself so as not to hurt me. I liked to think that I was saving some women considerable pain later.

By this time we'd worked it out and he was able to hold me at the point of pleasure for quite some time.

So after a couple of weeks of some amazing earth shattering sessions, one night as we ate, Gong and Nimble stood up holding an amazing wooden phallus, about two feet in size. I still have no idea where they got it from.

With much ceremony, they awarded it to Sock. It was engraved with the words "Longest and Loudest." I suppose I should have been embarrassed, but instead I simply took all my clothing off, crawled over to Sock and up into his lap, and kissed him my own big thank you.

I spent quite some time, naked, curled up in his lap with his arms around me. I could see that the other's were jealous, and I realised that I had started something new.

I hadn't, to that point, been naked and provocative like this in front of them all, even though they had all seen me naked individually or wearing some provocative clothes.