Seeing that the injured man was on the verge of losing consciousness, Ryne decided to call out to them. “Hey! That’s not going to be good enough to stop the bleeding.”
The healthy man snapped around at the sudden voice from behind him, immediately grabbing and brandishing the small sword at his side. On closer inspection, Ryne could see his other hand hung limp at his side. It was no wonder he couldn’t properly treat his injured companion.
Ryne smiled sheepishly, raising his hands above his head. “I’m just a passing apothecary. I know some medical stuff. I figured you guys needed help.”
He had no intention of forcing these men to let him help them. In this day and age, trusting a stranger in the wilderness took no small amount of courage. They had every right to reject Ryne’s offer to help. They were the ones who would have to deal with the consequences, regardless of which choice they made.
The man with the sword stared at Ryne hard for a few moments before finally lowering his weapon. “Please, we need help. He was injured by bandits. It’s pretty bad. I don’t think he’ll make it to the closest city.”
“Got it. Let’s make some space.” Pushing the other man out of the way, Ryne jumped into the carriage.
The injured man’s eyes were closed, face twisted in pain as he groaned. Removing the sloppy attempt at bandaging from the man’s wound and stripping back the blood-soaked clothing beneath, Ryne found a sword wound stretching from his shoulder to his gut.
After a brief inspection of the injury, he instructed the other man to make a fire and start boiling water. Waiting for the man to dash off, Ryne then pulled some painkillers from his bag and slipped them into the injured man’s mouth.
“It’s medicine. Swallow it if you want to live,” Ryne whispered into the man’s ear, then placed the end of his water bottle by the man’s mouth.
The injured man’s eyes flickered open briefly as he accepted the water.
Ryne grinned. “You’re a lucky guy. What are the chances you’d run into me here?”
Pushing aside more merchandise in the carriage to make room to work, Ryne began laying out the tools he would need.
“Okay, then. Try to hold it together for me.”
After Ryne took care of both of them, as he took up the reins of the carriage, the older man said, “You really saved us. Thank you so much.”
Ryne replied with a shrug.
Ryne had stitched up the sword wound for the first man, and then he’d examined the older, healthier man, finding an arrow wound in his shoulder. He had been struck first in the encounter, knocked over when an arrow had taken him by surprise. Once the carriage had slowed, the bandits had dropped onto them from above with their swords. Although he was wounded in the process, the driver’s son had managed to kick the bandits out of the carriage itself, while the older driver had recovered to take the reins and get them away. Ryne had come across them just as they had reached a safe distance and the driver had stopped to do everything he could to attend to his son’s wounds. Ryne really had shown up at the last second, just as the blood loss was causing the son to start losing consciousness.
“Good thing it wasn’t a poisoned arrow,” Ryne had said offhandedly. The arrow that had struck down the father had been broken off, the head still embedded in his shoulder, so Ryne had given him some painkillers and done some quick surgery to extract the arrowhead.
“Seriously. Neither of us would have made it.” The medicine Ryne had given him dulled most of the pain, but the sight of seeing his shoulder opened up and operated on took a courage he didn’t possess.
Ryne had kept the man engaged in conversation during surgery, which was as quick and unintrusive as Ryne could make it. He’d extracted the arrowhead and sewn the wound shut.
Once that was complete, wrapping the man’s shoulder in a bandage and instructing him not to move it, Ryne had reported, “There’s no damage to the nerves or bone, so if you give it a week it should be back to normal. You really are lucky.” And then, deciding driving the carriage with one hand was probably asking too much, he’d taken the driver’s seat himself.
Now he was the one guiding the carriage while the two men recovered. “Well, it works out for me too. Now I don’t have to walk,” he insisted.
“But if you weren’t here, I would have lost my son, and probably my arm too.” Sitting down beside Ryne, the man offered his good hand. “The name’s Illya. As you can probably guess, I’m a merchant. We were picking up some goods across the border, and well, you see what came of that. Oh, and that’s my son Akia back there.”
“I’m Ryne,” he replied curtly, shaking the merchant’s hand.
“How far are you going?” Illya asked.
“The capital.”
Though there wasn’t even so much as polite civility in Ryne’s tone or expression, Illya clearly wasn’t bothered, as he laughed happily. “Well, I should be able to sort you out. We’ll probably be stuck in the next town for a while, but I can ask some of my merchant buddies to take you there.”
He knew it was Illya’s attempt at thanking him, but after hesitating for a moment, Ryne ultimately shook his head.
“No thanks. I appreciate the offer, but I try to avoid spending too much time around other people.”
Illya was quiet for a long moment. “Is it because of your eyes?” he murmured.
Ryne didn’t answer.
“As dangerous as this job is, we tend to come across all kinds of information. An apothecary with green eyes. You’re hiding your hair too, which means it’s probably blond, right?”
Ryne glanced over at the man sitting beside him. His darkly tanned face had more than its fair share of wrinkles. Illya didn’t return the look, keeping his eyes locked forward.
“If so, I want to help you even more,” he continued, taking Ryne’s silence for confirmation. “Not just for helping us. I owe a lot to someone your people saved.”