The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [32]
The limb gave way with a snap, hung for a moment by its bark, then fell. The portion Stephen was on sprang up like the arm of a catapult, and he suddenly found himself airborne and feeling stupid.
On the Sundry Follies of the Thinks-Too-Much, he began, a new essay he’d just decided to write in his head. He reckoned he had time for another line or so as he flailed wildly for purchase. His thigh hit a branch, and he scrabbled for it, losing the sword, of course, in the process and not securing a hold, either.
Looking up, he saw Winna’s face far above, tiny but beautiful. Did she know he loved her? He was sorry he hadn’t told her even though it might mean the end of their friendship—and of his friendship with Aspar.
His hand caught a branch, and fire seemed to shoot up his arm, but he held it, nevertheless. Gasping, he glanced down. The slinders were there, leaping for him, missing his dangling feet by a yard or so.
The chief virtue of the Thinks-Too-Much is that it isn’t likely to reproduce its kind, for its lack of attention to matters at hand oft leads to an untimely demise. Its only virtue is its love of friends and sorrow that it could not help them more.
He saw that the sorcelled tree limbs had reached the ground, and the man-beasts were swarming up into the branches. He looked up in time to see a leering face just before another body grappled his and pulled him into the salivating mob below.
“I’m sorry, Aspar!” he managed to shout before he was smothered in greedy hands.
LEOFF GAGGED at the pain as his fingers were stretched toward what had once been a natural angle for them. “The device is my own invention,” the leic explained proudly. “I’ve had great success with it.”
Leoff blinked through his tears and peered at the thing. It was essentially a gauntlet of supple leather with small metal hooks at the end of each finger. His hand had been inserted into the glove and placed on a metal plate with various holes drilled for the hooks to catch in. The doctor had stretched his fingers out in the directions they ought to lie and fixed them there with the hooks.
Then—the most painful part—a second plate was fitted above his hand and tightened down with screws. The tendons of his arm ran with fire, and he wondered if this was just a more subtle form of torture devised by the usurper and his physicians.
“Let’s go back to the heat and the herbs.” Leoff winced. “That part felt good.”
“That was just to loosen things up,” the leic explained, “and to invoke the healing humors. This is the important part. Your hands were mending all wrong, but fortunately they had not been allowed to progress for too long. We must now guide them into the proper shape; after that, I can build rigid splints that will hold them in place until the true healing can occur.”
“This comes up often, then?” Leoff gasped as the fellow further tightened the screws. His palm was still far from flat, but already he could feel multiplied tiny snaps within his bruised flesh. “Hands done up like this.”
“Not like this,” the leic admitted. “I’ve never worked on hands damaged quite in this way. But hands crushed by blow from mace or sword are common enough. Before I was leic to His Majesty, I was physician to the court of the Greft of Ofthen. He held tournaments every month, you see, and he had five sons and thirteen nephews of jousting age.”
“So you’ve only recently come to Eslen?” Leoff asked, glad for the distraction.
“I came about a year ago, though at the time I was attendant to the leic who served His Majesty King William. After the king’s death, I served Her Majesty the queen briefly before becoming attendant to King Robert’s physician.”
“I am recently come here as well,” Leoff said.
The physician tightened the screws.
“I know who you are, of course. You gained a reputation rather quickly, I should say.” He smiled thinly. “You might have exercised a bit more prudence.”
“I might have,