Page 24 of Chained to the Horned God
I’ve seen it before, in backwater villages where bandages were rinsed in river sludge and knives were never cleaned between amputations. This is no different. Just a grander cage. A bloodier one.
I push past a moaning human whose eyes roll white in their sockets, pressing the back of my hand to his brow. Boiling. His skin burns like hot stones under thin parchment. Another man has black streaks crawling up his thigh, the wound beneath crusted with old pus. I curse low under my breath, snatch the blade from the table—still wet from someone else’s blood—and hurl it across the room. It clatters against the stone wall, then drops to the floor with a sick slap.
“You filthy bastards!” I scream, turning toward the guards lounging near the door, their armor barely buckled, lazy smirkstugging at their mouths. “You rewrap bandages and reuse blades like they’re toys—do you want everyone in this pit dead?”
One of them shrugs. “Not everyone.”
I stalk toward him, fists clenched, heart thudding like a war drum behind my ribs.
The taller one steps in front of me. “Mind your tone, healer.”
I don’t.
I slap him hard enough to snap his head sideways.
The other one laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s seen all day. I don’t see the hand coming until it crashes into my jaw, spinning me sideways into a stack of stained linens. My head rings, mouth full of blood and spit. I spit both at his feet, red streaking down my chin.
He’s still laughing when he leaves, locking the door behind him with a cheerful, “Sweet dreams.”
I sit there a moment, stunned and trembling, the left side of my face throbbing like a plucked drum.
Then I get up.
Because there’s work to do. Always work.
The oil lamps hiss in the corners, sputtering shadows across rows of broken bodies. I clean the wounds myself this time—properly. Boiled water. Fresh cloth. My fingers move on instinct, even as my shoulders sag and my eyes blur. I whisper to the unconscious. I murmur to the dying. I hum old songs to keep my hands steady. I hold pressure on a bleeder with one knee while stitching with the other. I strip off my outer tunic and rip it into clean strips.
I don’t sleep.
By dawn, the room smells a little less like death. A little more like something salvageable.
The door creaks open again just as the light begins to slip through the slotted stone. I expect more mockery. Maybe another slap.
Instead, it’s Durk.
He’s soaked in sweat, one eye already starting to swell shut, and across his back hangs another orc—half-conscious, gut wrapped in a torn blanket, blood seeping through like a sunrise.
“Wake up, healer,” Durk grunts. “We got another one.”
“I’m awake,” I rasp.
He lays the wounded orc down with surprising gentleness. His own knees crack as he straightens, wiping a hand across his mouth. He eyes the room, the cleaned tables, the freshly wrapped limbs, the faint steam rising from buckets of boiled water.
“You did all this?”
“I didn’t sleep.”
“You’ll die doing this.”
“Maybe. But they won’t.”
Durk looks at me for a long time.
“You know,” he says, dragging over a bench with a sigh, “They’re starting to trust you.”
“I noticed.”
“That’s dangerous.”
