#DailyLines #MOBY #WrittenINMyOWNHeartsBLOOD #Book8 #OutJUNE10th #firstaid

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said under my breath. Tench’s face was dead white and streaked with sweat and tears, his eyes closed, but he grimaced, hearing that.

Jamie set his jaw and drew his case-knife, which was sharp enough to shave the hairs on a man’s arm. Sharp enough to slice stocking and breeches, spreading the stiffened fabric aside to show me the damage.

“Who did that to ye, man?” he asked Tench, gripping him by the wrist as the injured man reached a tentative hand downward, seeking the extent of the damage.

“No one,” Tench whispered, and coughed. “I—I jumped off the dock when he set my head afire, and landed on one foot in the mud. It stuck well in and when I fell over…”

It was a very nasty complex fracture. Both bones of the lower leg had snapped clean through and the shattered ends were poking through the skin in different directions. I was surprised that he had survived the shock of it, together with the trauma of the attack—to say nothing of a night and part of a day spent lying in the filthy river shallows afterward. The macerated flesh was swollen; raw, red and ugly, the wounds deeply infected.

“He set your head afire?” Jamie was saying incredulously. He leaned forward, touching the darkened mass on the left side of the young man’s head. “Who?”

“Don’t know.” Tench’s hand floated up, touched Jamie’s, but didn’t try to pull it away. It rested on Jamie’s, as though needing his touch to tell Tench what he needed to know, but couldn’t bear to find out. “Think he …way he spoke. Maybe England, maybe Ireland.. He…poured pitch over my head and sprinkled feathers on. Others would have left me, I think. But all of a sudden, he turned back and grabbed a torch…”

Jamie was carefully breaking off small chunks of singed hair and matted clumps of mud and tar, revealing the skin underneath.

“It’s none sae bad, man,” he said, encouraging. “Your ear’s still there, no but a wee bit black and crusty round the edges.”

That actually made Tench laugh—no more than a breathy gasp—though this was extinguished abruptly when I touched his leg.

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