Come out now?
Not yet. My leg is still stuck.
But before he could even ask for more assistance, Sigmore was back again, making short work of moving the rocks away from Koradan’s legs. “Can you move now?”
“I feel like one giant bruise, but yeah, sure, no problem.” For all his complaining, it was far from the worst injury Koradan had ever received. But even so, as he began the slow crawl back towards daylight, he could feel liquid trickling across his back and down his side. Blood. How much of it was a question that would have to wait until he was outside, though.
Finally, he was back out into daylight. Rodgard came forward to help him up, and he and Sigmore each put a shoulder under Koradan’s arms to help him walk. “How’s the leg?” Rodgard asked, noticing Koradan’s significant limp on his right side.
But before he could answer, a flurry of people came rushing over, making all sorts of fuss about his injuries. “You’re limping! Here, sit down.”
“Your back’s been shredded! You poor thing!”
“Do you need some water? Or some bandages. I’ll fetch bandages…” Paul, it seemed, had been busy updating everyone on what they’d found inside the mine, and the news that there were eight men alive and well seemed to be motivation enough to forgive Koradan for the not insignificant crime of being a demon.
“Sit here,” Rodgard said, lowering him onto a rock. Ashd was in his face a moment later, a stern growl sent Koradan’s way regarding the amount of blood Ashd could smell.
“Nothing’s broken,” he told the vreki as he rubbed his nose. “Just a bit bruised and battered. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Back over at the mine, there was a heated discussion going on about what to do next. “We need to shore up the structure before we send anyone else in,” one man was saying.
“The men need water. If we leave them there without any for another night, they could be in dire straits by tomorrow.”
“Or we could get someone else trapped down there.”
“It’s a quick job. Go in, pass them some canteens through the gap in the rocks, and get out again. Paul said the gap should be big enough for that.”
“We can’t go in until we know the ceiling’s not going to collapse!”
“Fuck it. I’m going in,” Mitch suddenly declared, standing up. “I don’t care if it’s safe or not. Give me eight canteens of water.”
“You can’t-”
“What I can’t do is leave eight good men to die down there because I’m too scared to take them some fucking water. The rest of you can clear the rocks and prop up the ceiling, and we’ll certainly have to do that before we dig the men out, but if we can get them some water, that will give us another day at least. So could someone get me eight canteens?” he snapped, looking at some of the women standing around nearby.
“Take nine,” Best told him. “Just in case.”
“Fine, nine, then.”
“And some lamp oil and some matches,” Koradan said, wincing as the muscles in his shoulders chose that moment to cramp up. “They’re all out.”
“You can bloody well stop worrying about everyone else and take care of yourself,” Mitch said, pointing a stern finger at him. “You’ve just had a slab of rock half the size of a horse fall on you. Fuck knows how you survived that thing.” He went back to discussing the plan with the others, effectively ignoring Koradan for the moment.
“We can jerry up a couple of supports,” he overheard someone saying.
“…not safe. Could come down again…”
“…buy us some time, if nothing else…”
He tuned out of the conversation, concentrating on taking a couple of deep breaths. He was going to be sore and aching for a few days, but the bigger issue right now was figuring out where he was bleeding. He ran a hand over his face, and then the back of his head, relieved when it came away dry – if a little dusty.
“You’ve got a gouge taken out of your horn,” Sigmore said, checking him over. “It’s not bad, just a chip really. But that means you took a pretty solid blow to the head.”
“Is my back bleeding?” Koradan asked. His horns were plenty ugly already. One more chip wasn’t going to make much of a difference.
“You look like you took a bath in sandpaper,” another voice answered before Sigmore could say anything, and Koradan looked up in surprise. Lynette was standing over him, her bag of medical supplies over her shoulder and a canteen of water in her hand. “Turn around. Let me clean this for you.”
What? Why would she…? Surely she knew that he’d taken Paul into the mine? “You don’t have to do that,” he said, frowning up at her. “I’ll be fine.”
