Consciousness came back in pieces.
First: pain. Everything hurt, but his shoulder was a special kind of agony that had its own heartbeat.
Second: warmth. He was lying on something soft. Blankets. A bed or maybe just piled cloth.
Third: voices. Low, arguing.
"—can't keep him here, Mara. If soldiers come looking—"
"And what, we throw a wounded man back into the forest to die? That's murder, Jens."
"It's survival. We've got children in this village. If he's some criminal or deserter—"
"Look at him. He's half-dead. He's not a threat to anyone."
"Not now, maybe. But what about whoever shot him?"
Cadarn cracked his eyes open. Firelight. Low ceiling. He was in someone's cottage—single room, hearth at one end, sleeping area at the other. The smell of peat smoke and boiled cabbage.
Two figures stood near the door, backlit by the fire. The woman—Mara—was the one he'd seen before he passed out. The man—Jens—was younger, lean and nervous-looking.
Cadarn tried to sit up.
Mistake.
The pain ripped a groan out of him before he could stop it, and both figures spun around.
"He's awake," Mara said, moving toward him. "Easy, now. Don't try to move."
"Where..." Cadarn's voice came out as a rasp. "Where am I?"
"Millbrook Village." Mara knelt beside him, her weathered hands surprisingly gentle as she checked his forehead for fever. "You collapsed at my door about two hours ago. Arrow through your shoulder, half-dead from blood loss."
Two hours. He'd lost two hours.
"Did you..." He swallowed, mouth dry as sand. "Did you see anyone following me?"
"No one." This from Jens, still hovering by the door. "But we haven't exactly been advertising we found you. For all the village knows, Mara's cooking supper."
"The wound," Cadarn managed. "Did you...?"
Mara's expression became carefully neutral. "I cleaned it best I could. Packed it with yarrow and cobwebs to stop the bleeding. But I'm no surgeon, mister. It needs proper attention or it'll go septic."
Cadarn almost laughed. The sound came out more like a cough. "I'm a surgeon. Or was."
Both of them stared at him.
"You're a doctor?" Mara said slowly.
"Was. Twenty years ago." He tried to shift position, sent fresh pain lancing through his shoulder, and gave up. "I could... talk you through it. If you have supplies. Needle, thread, clean water, alcohol if you have it."
"We've got needle and thread," Mara said. "And I can boil water. But alcohol? In this village? You'd have better luck finding dragon eggs."
"Vinegar, then. Wine. Anything acidic to clean the wound."
"I've got vinegar from last summer's pickling."
"That'll work." Cadarn closed his eyes, trying to marshal what remained of his strength. "I need to see the wound. Help me sit up."
"That's madness," Jens protested. "You've lost half your blood already—"
"And I'll lose the other half if the wound festers. Help. Me. Up."
Mara looked at Jens. Something passed between them—spousal communication in that silent language married people spoke. Then she moved to Cadarn's side and carefully, slowly, helped him into a sitting position.
The world tilted violently. Cadarn gritted his teeth and waited for it to stabilize.
"The belt," he gasped. "Need to remove it. See the damage."
Mara's fingers worked at the makeshift binding. When she pulled it away, fresh blood welled up from both wounds. She sucked in a sharp breath.
"That bad?" Cadarn asked.
"I've seen worse. During the border wars, we had wounded come through sometimes." She grabbed a cloth from nearby and pressed it against the worst of the bleeding. "But not by much."
"Describe it to me."
"Describe your own wound?"
"Can't see it properly. Need your eyes. Describe what you see."
Mara leaned closer, her face screwed up in concentration. "The front wound is maybe... two fingers wide? Ragged edges. Still bleeding but not gushing. The back wound is similar but the edges are cleaner. Goes straight through the meat of your shoulder, doesn't look like it hit bone but..."
"But what?"
"But there's... I don't know. Dark stuff around the edges. Not blood. Something else."
Cadarn's stomach dropped. "What color?"
"Greenish. Gray. I thought it was just dirt but..."
Infection. Already. That fast.
No, wait. Think. Two hours wasn't long enough for infection to set in unless...
"The arrow," Cadarn said sharply. "Where is it? The one they pulled out of me."
"You pulled it out yourself," Mara corrected. "We found it beside you when we brought you in. Jens, grab that arrow."
Jens reluctantly moved to a corner and retrieved the bloody shaft. He brought it over, holding it like a dead snake.
Cadarn examined it as best he could in the firelight.
Standard military arrow—ash shaft, goose fletching, bodkin point designed to punch through mail. But the tip...
Cadarn's blood went cold.
"Bring it closer. The light. I need more light."
Mara moved a candle nearer. In the flickering glow, Cadarn could see what his worst fears had already told him.
The arrowhead wasn't just dirty. It was coated.
A thin, crusty residue clung to the metal—dark brown and flaking in places, with that telltale greenish tinge around the edges. He'd seen this before. Once. During the Lowland Rebellions.
"Shit," he whispered.
"What?" Mara asked. "What is it?"
"Poison. They poisoned the arrows." He looked up at her, and whatever she saw in his face made her step back. "It's called corpse-poison. You take an arrowhead, stab it into rotting flesh—dead animals, preferably something diseased—let it sit for a few days, then use it. The rot gets into the wound and..."
"And what?"
"And it kills you. Slowly. Fever, delirium, the flesh around the wound turns black and stinks like a charnel house. Takes about three days if you're strong. Less if you're not." He let his head fall back against the wall. "They weren't trying to kill me with the arrow. They were marking me. Slowing me down. So they could track me by the infection."
"That's..." Mara's voice shook. "That's evil."
"That's war." Cadarn laughed, a broken sound with no humor in it. "Professional. Efficient. Evil's got nothing to do with it."
Jens had gone pale. "So you're saying he's going to die? Here? In our village?"
"Not if we treat it now. The poison's had maybe two hours to work. If we can clean the wound properly, cut out the contaminated tissue, burn it clean—I might live long enough to die of something else."
"You're talking about surgery," Mara said. "On yourself."
"I'm talking about you doing surgery. On me. While I talk you through it." He met her eyes. "I know what I'm asking. But it's this or I'm dead by morning, and if I die here, whoever's hunting me will burn this village to the ground looking for answers about where I went."
Silence.
The fire crackled. Somewhere outside, a goat bleated.
Finally, Mara spoke: "What do you need?"
Twenty minutes later, Cadarn was propped up against a pile of grain sacks, stripped to the waist, with a leather belt between his teeth.
Mara had assembled supplies on a low table beside him: a paring knife boiled in water for ten minutes, needle and thread similarly sterilized, strips of clean linen, a bowl of vinegar, and a fire poker heating in the coals.
Jens stood in the corner, looking like he wanted to be literally anywhere else.
"You don't have to watch," Mara told him.
"Someone needs to hold him down if he starts thrashing."
"Fair point." She turned to Cadarn. "Ready?"
No. Absolutely not. This was insane.
Cadarn nodded.
"Talk me through it."
He spoke around the belt clenched between his teeth: "Clean the knife with vinegar. Then you're going to cut away the dead tissue around the wound. You'll know it when you see it—grayish, doesn't bleed when you cut it. Get all of it. Don't be gentle."
"How will I know when I've cut enough?"
"When you hit tissue that bleeds red and I start screaming."
Mara's hand trembled slightly as she picked up the knife. "I've butchered chickens. Rabbits. One time a pig. Never a person."
"Same principle. Meat's meat. Just... try to leave enough of me attached that I can still use my arm."
"Comforting."
She poured vinegar over the blade, then over her hands, then—without warning—over his wound.
Cadarn's back arched. The belt muffled his scream but didn't stop it. White-hot acid fire poured through his shoulder, every nerve shrieking.
"Sorry," Mara said, not sounding particularly sorry. "Figured no warning was kinder than counting down."
He couldn't respond. Could barely breathe. Just nodded weakly.
"Alright. I'm starting."
The knife touched his flesh.
There were layers to pain, Cadarn had learned.
First layer: the sharp, immediate pain of the cut. Clean. Almost surgical. Your body understood this pain—it said danger, damage, stop.
Second layer: the deeper ache as the knife went past skin into muscle. This was worse. Dirtier. The kind of pain that made your body want to escape itself.
Third layer: the wrongness. The visceral understanding that someone was cutting pieces out of you while you were still alive and conscious. This wasn't pain anymore. This was violation.
Cadarn had reached the third layer.
He could feel every scrape of the blade as Mara carved away contaminated tissue. Could feel the blood—too warm, too wet—running down his chest and back. Could smell his own flesh, coppery and raw.
The belt between his teeth was shredded. He'd bitten through the leather in three places.
"Is this it?" Mara's voice sounded far away. "The gray parts?"
Cadarn forced his eyes to focus. She was holding up a strip of something that had been part of his shoulder. It was grayish-green, marbled with black threads. Dead tissue. Poisoned.
He nodded.
"There's more. Going deeper."
Cut it out. All of it.
He couldn't speak anymore. Just nodded again.
The knife went back to work.
Jens was the one holding him now—strong hands on his good shoulder and chest, pinning him against the grain sacks. Cadarn wasn't sure when that had happened. Time was doing strange things.
"I think that's all of it," Mara said. "The tissue I'm seeing now is bleeding proper red. But the wound is... it's big. Really big."
She turned him slightly so he could see.
The front wound had gone from the size of two fingers to the size of his palm. A crater of raw, bleeding meat where his shoulder used to be. The back was probably similar.
"Good," Cadarn managed to rasp. "That's good."
"This is good?"
"Better than dead. Now we cauterize."
"With what?"
"Fire poker. In the coals. Should be hot enough by now."
Mara looked at the poker, then back at him. "You want me to burn you."
"Want's got nothing to do with it. Burning kills whatever poison's left and seals the wound. Do it quick. One press, front and back. Fast as you can."
"This is going to—"
"I know what it's going to do. Just do it."
Mara pulled the poker from the fire. The tip glowed orange-red.
"Jens. Hold him tight."
"I am holding him tight."
"Tighter."
The poker descended toward his chest.
Cadarn watched it come, this brand of red-hot iron that was about to—
The smell hit him before the pain.
Burning flesh. His burning flesh. Pork roasting. Meat crisping.
Then the pain arrived and the world went white.
He was dimly aware of screaming. Distantly aware of Jens's hands trying to hold him down as he bucked and thrashed. Somewhere very far away, he heard Mara saying "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" as she pressed the poker to the back wound.
Then he was gone.
Not unconscious. Not quite. Just... somewhere else.
Somewhere dark and quiet where the pain couldn't follow.
He floated there for a time.
When he came back, the poker was back in the fire, and Mara was stitching the wound closed with small, careful stitches.
"...awake?" she was saying. "Cadarn? Can you hear me?"
"Unfortunately," he whispered.
Her laugh sounded like a sob. "Worst patient I've ever had."
"Only patient you've ever had."
"Also true."
She finished the stitching—front wound, then back, then bound both with clean linen soaked in diluted vinegar. Her hands were steady now, efficient. She'd found her rhythm.
"Done," she said finally. "It's done."
Cadarn let his eyes close. The pain was still there—would be there for days, weeks probably—but it had settled into something almost manageable. Background agony instead of foreground screaming.
"Thank you," he said.
"Thank me if you live through the night." She wiped her bloody hands on a rag. "You need water. Food if you can keep it down. And sleep."
"Can't sleep. They're still looking for me."
"They won't search at night. Forest is too thick, too dangerous. They'll camp and resume at first light." Mara stood, joints popping. "Which gives you maybe eight hours to rest before you need to move again."
"You've done this before. Helped fugitives."
"Once or twice. During the border wars." She began cleaning up the bloody supplies. "We're too small to matter to anyone important, but the right size to hide people who need hiding. Usually deserters. Sometimes refugees. One time a pregnant girl running from a lord who wanted to keep her quiet permanently."
"What happened to her?"
"Had the baby here. Stayed two years. Then moved east when things settled." Mara dumped the bloody water out the door into the dark. "She sends us a chicken every winter solstice. Good chickens too."
Jens had collapsed into a chair by the fire, hands shaking. "We can't do this. Not this time. You heard what he said—soldiers with poisoned arrows. This isn't some deserter or scared girl. This is serious."
"All of them were serious," Mara said quietly.
"Not like this."
"No," Cadarn agreed. "Not like this. Which is why you should give me whatever food you can spare and send me on my way. Point me north and forget you ever saw me."
Mara studied him for a long moment. "You can barely sit up. How exactly do you plan to walk?"
"Slowly."
"Through forest. At night. With a shoulder wound. While being hunted."
"I've done stupider things."
"I doubt that." She shook her head. "You're staying. At least until you can stand without help. If the soldiers come, we'll say we never saw you. If they search, we've got a root cellar you can hide in."
"And if they find me anyway? What then?"
Mara's expression hardened. "Then they find you. But it won't be because we threw you out to die. We're not those kind of people."
Jens stood abruptly. "Mara—"
"We're not." She turned to face him. "Thirty years we've been married, Jens. Thirty years you've known me. Have I ever been the kind of person who throws wounded men to wolves?"
"No, but—"
"Then don't ask me to start now." She crossed her arms. "He stays. Tonight at least. We'll figure out tomorrow when tomorrow comes."
Jens looked at Cadarn, then at his wife, then back at Cadarn.
"Alright," he said finally. "But if soldiers come asking questions, I'm the worst liar in six villages. Just so you know."
"I know." Mara moved to the shelves and started pulling down provisions. "Which is why you're going to go to bed early with a terrible headache and I'm doing all the talking."
Despite everything—the pain, the fear, the sheer impossibility of the situation—Cadarn felt something unfamiliar stir in his chest.
Hope, maybe.
Or just gratitude that there were still people in the world who'd risk everything for a stranger covered in blood.