[Mkguild] First Impressions (19/20)

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

Second to last part!  Clearly, this one might do best positioned slightly
before LToY.

_________________________________

            After he was captured by the poachers, Gerard had almost killed
himself trying to escape.  He spent hours trying to find a way to escape,
from changing his forehooves back into something close enough to hands to
actually work a knot, to blindly yanking at the ropes that bound him.  He
was too exhausted to do the first quickly, though, and the trappers were
paying quite enough attention to him to make sure that he wasn’t able to
complete any such attempt.  Pulling at the ropes, meanwhile, had nearly
strangled him, and yet the knots still held.  In the end he collapsed,
despairing of all hope.  He would not be able to reach his family in time
for the Yule.



            When he came to as he was being loaded onto the cart, he renewed
his struggles.  Lois caught his eye, however, and Gerard could see the
self-assured look behind the assassin’s eyes.  Gerard decided that he would
get no more from struggling than he would from staying still, and so decided
to stay where he was while the group loaded him onto their wagon of furs.  As
an extra precaution, they cruelly looped a rope around his broken leg,
forcing him to injure himself further if he decided to attempt any further
escapes.



            Being transported in a cart that was already full of empty furs
and dangerous traps was hardly a comforting feeling.  For all Gerard knew,
the poachers intended to turn both Metamorians into a profit in a similar
fashion.  The thought made Gerard’s skin crawl, but there was little to be
done for it at the moment.  Hopefully Lois had a reason to be confident;
otherwise they would find out before long exactly what the men intended.



            He found the ensuing trek exhausting.  He was doing little more
than resting himself, but he could not find any way to fully fall asleep.  He
couldn’t even remember how many days it had been since they had attacked the
lutin encampment.  Without even this reference point, he could not figure
out how long he had before the Yule.  For all he knew, it had long since
passed them by, and he was now only fighting to reach Metamor alive.



            The wave of magic caught him completely by surprise.  By the
time he noticed that the man pulling the cart had stopped, he only had
enough time to look up into the advancing wall.  He was certain it was over
for all of them.  He braced himself, waiting for at least some sort of pain
to follow the wave’s arrival, but never felt anything.



            When the shouting started, he did his best to try to see what
was happening, but he was tied down in such a way that he couldn’t see what
Lois was doing.  What he could see was that the cart’s driver had
mysteriously disappeared, and the trapper that had been watching the wheels
on the right side was now partly hyena.  Before Gerard even had a reasonable
amount of time for this to register, the wagon was yanked roughly away from
its stationary position.  Lois had taken hold of the handles and was
furiously pulling the cart through the trees.



            Gerard was not foolish enough to believe or even hope that Lois
could outrun their enemies for long, but as they grew farther and farther
from the trappers, they could hear nothing that indicated that they might be
pursued.  Gerard turned carefully to avoid injuring his leg, and saw nothing
but the dark forest stretching out behind them.



            Lois stopped immediately after reaching the road, making sure
that no one was following them.  He waited there for several minutes, eyes
and ears twitching about in an attempt to catch any sign of pursuit.



            When no one came, Lois took a few moments to settle his nerves,
but didn’t stay put for long.  He began to pull them along down the road as
quickly as he could, pressing his paws deeply into the road in an attempt to
make good time.  Gerard was still in shock at this point; he hardly
understood what had just happened.  Had Lois set something up so that they
could escape?  He had thought that the man had no magical talent.  In that
case, did he somehow know when the wave would hit?  Had they simply been
astoundingly lucky?



            He was so surprised that it wasn’t until the sun started to put
in an appearance that he realized how little any of those questions really
matter.  They had escaped!  That meant that they were headed back towards
the Keep again!  He turned to look down the road, eyes scanning the horizon
for any sign of the walls.  They would make it back to the Keep soon, they
had to.



            The appearance of Metamor’s guards made his heart skip for joy.
While Lois was clearly exhausted, the stag felt nothing but a desire to leap
out and run down the road.  They couldn’t be far off now!



            Still, he had to wait for a good while before they were even
allowed to move again.  Gerard was untied and helped out of the cart, while
several of the other patrolmen unloaded a supply wagon that would provide a
faster, safer method of transport for the two men.  As they waited for this
to finish, a field medic checked on their injuries.  He said nothing to
Gerard, but his face was grim after he looked at the leg.  All Gerard
discovered about the injury aside from that was that the medic recommended
waiting until Coe got a good look at it.  They would withhold any attempts
at diagnosis in the meantime.



            As the medic worked on Lois, Gerard spied something that the
ermine had hid from him to this point.  It was a bound wound to his
chest.  Despite
the uncleanliness of the area, it seemed to have mostly healed.  Still, by
what Gerard could see of it, there was no way that it had been a comfortable
southward march for the assassin.  The medic tended to it, cleaning the area
and replacing the bandages.  All the while Lois spoke quietly to one of the
other patrolmen, grimacing every so often as the medic would press a bit too
hard, but never addressing the medic directly to complain of it.  He noticed
Gerard watching before too long and nodded to him, giving him a small smile..
They were both slowly coming to realize that they had succeeded in their
southward trek.  It was just a matter of the short hop back to the Keep, and
they would be back home.



            The wagon was finally emptied of its contents, and Lois and
Gerard jumped in while one of the patrolmen guided the wagon back to the
Keep.  No one came as an escort; if the cordon was doing its job, no one
would have to.  Still, it left just the two of them and their driver on the
road, and left the last leg of their journey feeling almost as lonely as the
rest had been.



            Lois was quietly eating something that the men had been able to
provide while they were stopped.  Gerard had been offered something,
thoughtfully prepared with his feral form in mind, but he had hardly touched
it.  Even though he logically should be starving, the concept of returning
home made him lose all desire to eat.



            He watched the road for a while, but finally ended up falling
asleep during the ride.  The stag was simply too tired to resist the urge to
sleep.  He was still sleeping when they entered the gates, and Lois had to
gently prod him to bring him back around once they had fully come to a stop..



            All Gerard wanted to do once they stepped out into the city was
to find out what day it was and rush home as quickly as he could.  There was
simply no convincing Lois or their driver, however.  They insisted that his
leg should be treated before he went anywhere, and he found that, no matter
how he tried, he could think of no way to counter their assertions.  His leg
was a priority.  He just hoped the healer could work quickly.



*          *          *



            As the healer at Metamor, Coe’s life was seldom boring at all..
 The atmosphere around the Keep was such that he had to deal with many
injuries a day.  Many people avoided seeing him if possible, as field medics
and mages were often skilled enough to deal with most patrol-related
injuries.  Still, he managed to have a reasonably active workplace almost
every day, whether he was dealing with diseases or injuries or anything in
between.  This meant that whenever he was asked to come quickly, it was most
likely a reasonably urgent case.



            When he saw the stag, still in feral form, he could see why he
had been summoned.  The deer’s hind leg looked horrible; if they were going
to have any chance of saving it, they needed to move quickly.  This he
concluded without ever having touched the injury or inspected it.  It simply
looked that bad.



            Standing in the room beside the stag was an interesting
ferret-like creature, still decked out in his patrol gear, and from the look
of it, fresh back from a grueling patrol.  As the patient seemed to be in no
position to speak for himself, the raccoon turned and asked his companion to
explain what had happened.



            “We ran into a little trouble up north,” the man said.  Whether
from exhaustion or force of habit after a long patrol, the man’s voice was
muted.  “A lutin shaman shattered his leg using some sort of magic.  I did
what I could to keep it steady, but there was only so much I could do given
the resources I had.”



            The healer nodded.  He looked at the deer for half a second, and
then turned back to the other man.  He wanted to be able to address the
patient, and so began to ask the ferret man what the stag’s name was.  He
was cut off, however, when the man pushed past him with a shout.



            “Gerard, stop!  You’re not helping anything!”  Coe turned and
saw why the man was yelling.  The stag had begun to shrink down, evidently
shifting into his more humanoid form.  The leg, already grossly misshapen,
shifted even more awkwardly as the shifting continued.  Coe added his own
protests when he saw what was happening, but the Gerard was not going to be
deterred.



            After several minutes, the grunts of a deer were slowly
supplemented with, then replaced by the yells of a man in great pain.  He
was laying down now, hoof-hands grasping as nothing and flat teeth grinding
as he forced the changes to their conclusion.  Finished, he collapsed
completely, panting from the exertion.



            “You fool!” his companion yelled.  “Your leg is plenty ruined
enough without you injuring it further.”



            “Sor — Sorry.  Need — …” The stag gasped, hardly able to get two
words out at a time.



            “Calm down and catch your breath,” Coe ordered.  He settled down
beside the man’s leg, carefully working paws along its length until he could
feel the broken bones.  The cuts he assumed came at the same time as the
break were old enough that the bone would have started to fuse together
again, but he could feel the breaks clearly, and they still shifted as
though they were fresh.  Perhaps the stubborn deer had done him a favor, he
mused to himself.  If the leg could indeed be saved, he would have had to
re-break it to set it correctly as it was.



            The raccoon healer called for a razor, and soon was shaving away
the fur from around the cuts.  What he saw made him bite his lip.  It wasn’t
pretty; the injuries had become infected, and it was already advancing
quickly.  They would have to work fast to save what they could, and there
was no guarantee that they would be able to save much at all.



            His patient was finally able to catch his breath, a small wonder
on its own as Coe had not been afraid to press a little bit on the wound.  As
Coe continued his inspection, he finally completed his explanation.



            “Lois, I’m sorry,” he said, clipping his sentence short.  “I
need – I need arms, Lois.  I need to be able to hold my wife.  I need to be
able to hug my children.”



            The white-furred creature said nothing, but a sidelong glance
revealed that he was nodding.  Coe shook his head with a smile he simply
could not suppress.  “Your wife and children will have to wait for a little
while longer, I’m afraid,” he announced.  “Don’t worry, though, I’ll get you
to them before the Yule.”



            The stag snapped his head in the raccoon’s direction, lips
quivering.  “What day is it?” he asked breathlessly.



            “It’s Yule’s Eve,” the healer responded.  “You must have been
pretty far gone if you didn’t notice the wedding preparations.”



            Gerard paid no mind to the healer anymore, instead looking at
Lois with a pained, but genuinely relieved, smile.  “We made it,” he gasped.
He laid his head hack on the ground, antlers clicking softly as they touched
the stone.  “We made it,” he repeated.



            Lois nodded, leaning up against the wall.  He expected that just
being back would be enough for him, but finding out that they had succeeded
in returning in time for the Yule had an unexpected effect on him.  He had
not expected to care at all about when they got back, but the revelation
made him feel like a tremendous burden had been lifted from his shoulders.  For
whatever reason, he found that he actually cared about making it in time for
Gerard to keep his promise.  He leaned his head back and smiled.  Perhaps
the journey had been worth the trouble after all.


!DSPAM:4ea8aa0830371804284693!
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