“In your hospitals, maybe,” Gregor said. “Here? On the floor of a sheep byre, with a storm on the way?”
Nick grunted. “Good. She’s going to have a fever soon. If the temperature drops, that will keep it down. You. Hector? Get her to drink more of the tartar.”
Hector hesitated as his eyes skipped from the gory scene on the floor to Jack and Gregor. His worn hands worked nervously around the large brown bottle he held.
“I don’t know if—”
Nick lifted his head sharply and fixed Hector with a bleak glare. “Good thing I do, then,” he said. “Pour it down her throat.”
He didn’t bother to wait and see if Hector did as he was told. Nick’s attention dropped back to Bron’s ruined stomach as he grabbed a bleach-white sheet to sop up the blood. He visibly gagged as it squelched under his fingers, his lips a thin, white line. Then he dove back in with bare fingers and a needle that Jack had seen Hector use to sew up a ewe’s fox-shredded stomach.
The first jab of the needle made Bron flinch and choke out a moan. She dug her fingers into the barn floor until she gouged up splinters with her fingernails.
Jack lunged down and grabbed Nick’s wrist. It was slick with hot blood, sticky under Jack’s fingers.
“Stop it,” he ordered thickly. “This is torture.”
“It’s medicine,” Nick corrected him sharply. “Done right, sometimes there isn’t much difference.”
“If she’s going to die,” Jack said. He tightened his grip on Nick’s wrist until he could feel the tight play of tendons under his fingertips. “Let her die. Cleanly. I can smell the prophets’ taint on her. It’s a bad way to go.”
A hand grabbed his ankle. It was weak, but Jack was surprised enough that Bron could grab at all that he nearly jumped out of his skin. He recovered after a breath and crouched down next to her. However else he’d fucked up as Numitor, at least he could do this. A Scottish wolf should die with her Numitor by her side.
“I’m here,” he said. “You don’t have to fight anymore.”
“Fuck. That,” Bron gritted out between chapped lips and clenched teeth. “I am. Not. Gonna die by dog.”
Gregor snorted a startled laugh, but the brief moment of humor faded quickly. He came over and squatted down beside Jack.
“Bron, I don’t think pride has healing properties,” he said. “You aren’t healing, and Nick’s not really much of a doctor.”
Nick grumbled under his breath. “I don’tlikeworking on the living,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I wasn’t good at it.”
Bron swallowed and tried for a smile. It didn’t quite make it. Her lips twisted down in a grimace as Nick grabbed the torn sides of her gut and pulled them together.
“You. You puked. When you saw me,” she gasped out, her eyes closed and hand on Jack’s leg.
“It was puke or faint. I’m not much good unconscious.”
“I don’t want to die,” Bron said as she opened her eyes. “There’s people I need to kill. Can’t depend on my dog brother to do… can I? Give me the fucking drink.”
This time when Hector looked for approval, Jack gave it to him with a nod. Gregor put his arm under Bron’s shoulders to prop her up, and Hector poured the thick, acrid liquid down her throat. She swallowed, throat working with each gulp until the taste got too much for her and she had to turn her head away.
“What’s that for, anyhow?” Jack asked.
Nick lifted his head briefly. His eyes were black and bright in the sweaty mask of his face as he glanced at the bottle. “To make sheep puke,” he said bluntly. “We didn’t have any activated charcoal and no time to make it. If blood loss and infection don’t kill her, that won’t.”
Jack recoiled. “Why the fuck would you give her that? She’s—”
“To get out any of the prophets’ potion left in her stomach,” Gregor interrupted. “You think it’ll be the same as you? That she’ll heal once the poison’s out of her system, the same way you got the bird back in your head?”
Bron retched and then tried to curl up around the pain. “How’s there even any left in there?” she groaned. “They sliced me open like a fish and emptied me—oh gods—out.”
She rolled her head to the side as much as she could and retched again. Thin streams of black bile dripped from her lips. Hector wiped it for her on the sleeve of his sweater and then offered her the bottle again.
“They didn’t,” Nick said. He sounded detached, almost polite in a weird way, as though he didn’t have a naked woman on the floor with his hands covered in her blood. “It was quite a neat job. They knew what they were doing.”
Bron lurched up to try and grab him, her fingers clawed as she reached for his throat. That wouldn’t make his stitches any neater, so Jack grabbed her shoulders to push her back down.
