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It was nightfall.
The eerie starlight poured in from the bedside window and illuminated the chamber. Scyrr sat up, the blanket slipping down to his waist and revealing a bloodied and badly bruised torso. His hand strayed toward his plastered and bandaged throat, gingerly feeling out the wound. Hot and wet. He had not realized that he had bled so profusely. He faintly remembered the arrival of the healer and the emergency treatment but not of being moved inside; he must have been out cold from the loss of blood. Common sense dictated that he lay still and let his wounds be further ministered. However, the staunching of wounds takes composure and patience on the part of the injured, neither of which he possessed in abundance.
Scyrr reached for the herb tea at his bedside, apparently placed there for his consumption: a mixture of golden seal, bistort, and plantain. Emergency anti-hemorrhagic remedy for heavy internal bleeding, he recalled. He remembered its acidic taste all too well. Internal bleeding, too? He really was in a mess, wasn’t he.
He then tentatively swung a foot off the bed, and instantly doubled up from the pain. He gritted his teeth and tried again. Better. The pain wore his patience ragged and thin, but he had to find out what happened in his absence. He ransacked the bedside drawers and came up with an earth-colored woolen pullover, deerskin breeches, and a pair of boots two sizes too big for him. He couldn’t find his uniform, but these would do for now. He was finishing up tying the bootlaces when the healer walked in. She started, as if surprised, and admonished him on getting up before he was properly healed. Not that he listened to her. He wouldn’t trust his life with a Scarburg healer if he could help it; who was to say they wouldn’t have left him there to bleed to death if Lord Athenar wasn’t there to help him?
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