The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [157]
There—it was enough. The fingers of his left hand crept along the metal. He tucked his hand beneath him, into the hollow at the small of his back. Then he pressed his body back down, hard.
He held his breath, and like a horse he forced the air from his lungs. He pulled on his right hand. There was resistance—
—then with a bright jolt of pain it popped free from the encircling strap.
Beltan stared at his right hand. It was bleeding. He’d torn off a good strip of skin. But it was free.
Quit staring, you stoneskull, and move.
The strap around his hips was loose now, and it was simple to pull his left hand free. Loosening the band around his upper arms and chest was a harder feat. However, after much grunting, and a fair amount of popping on the part of his elbow, he was able to work his right hand over to the clasp that held the strap in place. He couldn’t see what he was doing, and his fingers were numb; it was going to be impossible to figure out the strange clasp.
Except that it wasn’t. Again came the cool tingling, in his fingers this time, which moved with a dexterity he was fairly sure he had never possessed before.
The strap went slack. Beltan sat up.
The sheet fell down, and he stared. The last time he had glimpsed himself, he had been horribly thin, like the people of a village he had passed through one spring, where mold had spoiled the winter store of grain and folk had nearly starved to death.
Not today. He was still thin—far too thin. There was no trace of his old ale belly, and he could easily count his ribs. But his skin glowed with pink warmth, and flat sheets of muscles worked visibly beneath. His wound from last Midwinter’s Eve was a rough, white line snaking down his side. He flexed his arms. They were stiff, but he had the feeling he could swing a sword with them if he had to.
But that was impossible. A sickly man could not put on a stone’s weight in such a short time.
Whatever the answer to this mystery, it would have to wait. He threw back the sheet. The straps around his ankles were easily removed, but he was less certain about the tube in his arm. He gripped it, clenched his teeth, then jerked it out. There was some pain and blood, but it was not as bad as he had thought. Carefully, he swung his feet around, then pressed them against the cold floor. He pushed himself up from the bed, and for the first time in two months Beltan stood.
It was almost the last time. A rushing noise filled his ears, and the room spun around him. He stumbled and might have fallen, cracking his skull on the hard floor, but at the last moment he grabbed the steel rack beside the bed and hung on it like one of the clear bladders of fluid.
He breathed and spat; gradually the dizziness passed.
Slow this time, he took a few steps. With each one blood and confidence pumped through him. In moments he had reached the door. He was sweating, and breathing ridiculously hard for having walked no more than a dozen steps, but he had made it. Hanging from a hook by the door was a thin, white coat like the doctor had worn. He shrugged it on and held it around him. It was too small, but it was better than nothing.
A soft, hooting sound.
The chin-pasi gazed at him through the mesh of its cage. Its brown eyes were soft as it made a low sound. The thing almost seemed concerned for him. But then, maybe it was. Close as he was to it now, he could see it was female.
Beltan grinned. “I’m all right, my lady.” He lifted a finger to his lips. “Now, be quiet. We don’t want anyone to know what we’re up to.”
The creature kept watching through the wire.
The door was made of steel. It did not have a bar to hold it shut, like most doors Beltan knew, but there was a steel handle that obviously worked as a lever to open it. Beltan tried to move the handle.