Restless Soul - Alex Archer [52]
He dropped her hand and shook his head. “I couldn’t save one of them, you know. The fellow with the broken arm bled out on me last night. Internal injuries, too, judging by all the bruising on his chest. From what the Thins tell me, you hit him pretty hard with a sword and kicked him for good measure.” He paused. “Not that he didn’t have it coming.”
Annja didn’t say anything. She just waited for him to continue, which he eventually did.
“The fellow with the maimed hand, he’ll be all right. Missing all but the thumb, though. Couldn’t find the pieces in the mud to even try to reattach them. Sleeping now—I sedated him pretty good. I’m limited in what I have to work with, you understand. I used some tranquilizers that work on oxen on the fellow, on Lu, as well. Used up most of my medicines and supplies on the lot of you, and I’ll probably have the devil of a time replacing them. Retired and all. And not licensed here anymore. Just never bothered to get it renewed.”
He gave a shrug of his shoulders and rubbed his lower lip. “Couldn’t be helped, though, I suppose, using my supplies. I just couldn’t let you all lie there untended.”
“Thank you,” she said, “for taking care of me and Lu.”
He gave another shrug. He was a thin man wearing an overlarge shirt. “Don’t expect things like this to happen in the jungle. Violence is city stuff. That’s why I retired here, for the peace. Used to work in Chiang Mai, you know. It’s the largest city in the north. Some years back I came here on a holiday to see the temples and decided to stay, settled in Chiang Mai. The wife had passed. I converted to Buddhism when I fell in with some monks. Learned to speak Thai—not the easiest language to master, don’t you know. And then just learning one dialect won’t do. There’s Lanna, or lower Thai. And the people in Northern Thailand have their own dialect called Kham Muang, though most of them understand regular Thai. Then you have the hill tribes, of course, which all have their own languages, like these Thins. Took me more than a little while to master ‘Thinspeak,’ as I call it. Still don’t know all of it, but enough to get me by. Anyway, I eventually quit my practice in London, shipped some stuff over and started a limited practice up in Chiang Mai. Didn’t make near so much the money, but the climate suited me better.” He tugged up the blanket and checked her leg, blotting it with a rag dipped in peroxide.
“Did some work in Chaing Rai also, which is where Thailand kisses Laos and Myanmar, and in Mai Sai, Nan—which is surrounded by mountains, such a pretty place Nan is. Spent a month or so in Pai, then in Phitsanulok, which is between Bangkok and Chiang Mai, a gate to the Sukhothai Park it’s called, which you should see while you’re here. I even hung out my shingle in Mae Hong Son for a brief time, though it is a spit of a place. Tiny, but with a beautiful vista. It’s where the tourists go who intend to do some trekking to the various hill tribes. Did some trekking myself, and that’s how I decided to settle out here in the middle of nowhere. The Thins helped me build a house about a year back. Have two rooms, that’s quite the thing, don’t you know, two rooms.”
He checked her arms next. The right one had a strip of gauze wrapped just above her elbow; it had taken the brunt of the bamboo splinters when one of the men had shot the building.
“You’re lucky they found me at home, Annja. I still travel…to Chiang Dao, Chiang Khong, Thaton for the boat rides, Mae Salong and the national parks. As I said, the climate here agrees with me and I can still get around pretty well. Might as well hike, eh? At least while my legs can still carry me. No TV reception out here. Northern Thailand is considerably cooler than the rest of the country, and I like