The Spirit Banner. Alex Archer
managed to remain conscious. The motion had started the wound bleeding again. With shaking hands, he stuffed several of the compresses against the open wound and then tied it off with one of the strips.
He was breathing heavily now, the pain making it difficult to concentrate, but he pushed through it, knowing he had no choice but to finish what he had started.
Gingerly placing his leg flat on the ground, he took hold of the tip of the arrow, wrapping his fingers around the barbed edges to give him more leverage. He gritted his teeth and pulled.
With more than a bit of resistance, the rest of the shaft slid free.
He tossed the broken shaft of the arrow aside, packed the wound with some snow and the rest of the compresses to stop the bleeding, then tied the whole thing off just as he had the entry point.
When he was finished, he slumped on the ground, sweating, exhausted and in considerable pain.
After some time—he didn’t know how long—the pain receded to a manageable level. He pushed himself back up into a sitting position and took a look at his handiwork.
Blood had dried around the edges of the makeshift bandages, but it looked like as if the wound had stopped bleeding.
Maybe he was going to make it, after all.
A soft snort to his immediate right made him nearly jump out of his skin. He slowly turned his head, not wanting to jostle his injured leg but at the same time afraid of what he might see. To his vast surprise, he found the horse he’d been riding standing a few feet away, rooting through a partially opened saddlebag for something to eat.
“Thank you, Lord,” Curran whispered.
If he could get on the horse, he had a fighting chance at survival.
Like the other Mongol steeds, his was a short-legged, shaggy beast that had seen its fair share of death and was unmoved by the carnage around it. Losing interest in the saddlebag at its feet, it raised its head, catching sight of Curran in the process. It trotted over and nuzzled him, looking to be fed.
“Good boy,” the priest whispered, petting its nose with one hand while grabbing onto the straps of the saddlebags it still wore with the other.
Using the straps for support, he hauled himself upright, using the strength of his arms and his one good leg. It took several tries, but at last he was standing on one leg, his arms wrapped around the horse’s neck to keep from falling.
He rested in that position for a moment, praying the horse wouldn’t make any sudden moves and dump him back down on the snow. When he’d caught his breath again, he reached for the pack still hanging around the horse’s hindquarters, right where he’d loaded it earlier that morning.
Working slowly and carefully to limit jarring his injured leg any more than necessary, he untied the drawstrings of the pack and withdrew the ceremonial robe he’d worn when appearing for his audience with the khan in Karakorum. The material was quite thick, something he constantly complained about when wearing it, but now he was silently thankful. He slipped the material over his shivering form and slumped against his horse, already exhausted and he hadn’t even tried getting himself up into the saddle.
A sudden sound to his left drew his attention.
He straightened up, trying to see.
Only the dead stared back at him.
The sound came again, a low moan, but this time he saw the fingers of a nearby form twitch in conjunction with it.
Another survivor!
“Hey! Hey, you! Can you hear me?” Curran called out in the Mongolian he’d picked up during his two months in Karakorum.
The strange croaking sound that came out of his parched throat surprised him. Until that moment, he hadn’t even been aware of his tremendous thirst. He coughed, then used a handful of snow to wet down his lips and throat before trying again.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
There was no response.
He knew he hadn’t imagined it. That meant the man was either too injured to respond or simply couldn’t understand him.
Curran had no choice; he was going to have to go over to the injured man and take a look. He considered climbing astride the horse, but decided the effort required to get up and then back down again was probably too much for him. Instead, he got the horse moving slowly in the direction he wanted it, using the animal as a makeshift crutch for support as he hopped along on his good leg. When Curran was close enough, he pulled the horse to a stop and dropped down in the snow next to the wounded man.
He rolled the body over and discovered that it was the man who had saved him earlier, Tamarak.
The feathered shafts of two black arrows jutted from deep in the man’s stomach and a sword blade had taken a bite out of the left side of his head. Given the barbed tips, Curran had no way of removing them. He’d been able to remove his own only because the arrowhead had come all the way through his flesh. These were embedded deep in the muscle. Pulling them out was likely to cause more damage than leaving them in. The best he could do was to make Tamarak as comfortable as possible and to stay with him until the end.
An end that could come faster than either of them wanted if they didn’t find some shelter and protection from the cold.
He dragged the other man closer to the horse, where, to his surprise, the animal got down on its knees, allowing Curran to haul both himself and Tamarak’s unconscious form onto the horse’s back.
The beast climbed to its feet, and for the first time since the Naiman war party had been sighted, Curran felt optimistic about his chances for survival.
As if in answer, the wind swirled around him and the falling snow began to thicken. The storm was here to stay, apparently.
Curran took a moment to get his bearings and then turned the beast about to face the direction in which they had been fleeing. There were caves back in the pass itself and it was Curran’s intention to hole up inside one for shelter from the storm.
He’d worry about how to get back to Karakorum in the morning.
First, they had to survive the night.
S EVERAL HOURS LATER Curran sat in a cave that was deep enough to filter out the winds howling outside. There had been a few sticks lying just inside the entrance. He combined them with some of the extra clothing from his pack, and made a small fire to keep them warm. It was still cold, though not as bad as it would have been had they been trapped outside. It would serve to keep them from freezing to death.
At least until the fuel ran out, he thought, and then just as quickly pushed the image away. The Lord will provide, he told himself. The Lord will provide.
At least we won’t starve to death, Curran thought, with a glance at the corpse of his horse where it lay just within the entrance tunnel. The poor beast had collapsed after carrying so much weight through the freezing cold weather without rest. Curran hadn’t yet managed to get up the nerve to start carving up the carcass. He didn’t mind eating horseflesh. He’d been forced to do so during other missionary journeys he’d been on and it hadn’t been all that bad. It was just that this particular horse had been instrumental in saving his life and it felt disrespectful to treat its remains in such a fashion.
Still, when the time came, Curran had little doubt that his reticence would quickly vanish. Starving to death wasn’t on his list of endings to this saga.
The dead horse was proof of what they had endured to reach this point. The trail had been difficult to find without the Mongols to guide him. The ever-increasing fury of the storm had cut their already-slow pace to a crawl, as did the times that Curran lost his grip and toppled off his patient mount. Thankfully, the horse had traveled this way before, and when he finally stopped trying to control it and just gave it its head, it took him where he wanted to go.
With the help of the firelight, Curran had cleaned Tamarak’s head