Page 6 - Wild Times in Coalpass

“Hello. Wakey wakey, sleepy head.”

Elayne's eyes fluttered open to find Harlea standing over her in the middle of a trashed kitchen. Lurching backwards, she smacked her head on something solid that was positioned right behind her head. The pain shot through the back of her head, joining the chorus of other aches that called for her attention.

She twisted in her seat, finding shelves directly behind her and bags of rice beneath her feet. With a long breath out, she checked herself over. The scales that had embedded themselves in her had disappeared, leaving a bloody indent in her sternum. All things considered, she could have pulled up far worse.

As she came back around to face Harlea, she found that he did pull up worse. His right arm hung close to his body in a half-assed sling that he’d made from his shirt. Battered and bruised, his nose had broken again and had given him a large swollen black eye to boot. With a little wave, he hobbled back to make space for her.

“Harlea, are you doing ok?” Elayne placed her hands on her knees and tried to push herself onto her feet but had no luck.

“Oh, I’m a bit worse for wear.” Harlea leant against the door of the cupboard and gestured at his left pant leg that was covered in blood. A large piece of chair leg was in his hand and he brought it to his chin as he spoke, “I’d say a six out of ten.”

“Good Gods, Harlea. What happened to your leg?” Elayne twisted around to the shelf and pushed off of it. Levering herself up onto her knees, she got her left foot underneath her and felt a fresh wave of pain rush down her body. Her back ached something awful and she had a whopping headache. Turning her neck from side to side, she found she had very limited mobility on her left side and a sharp pain in her shoulderblade. None of it was good news as she stood back up on her feet and stared at the lovely bags of rice that had been her bedding.

As she moved out of the pantry that she’d found herself, she entered a small kitchen and looked her battered friend up and down as he shuffled back.

“I had a bit of a tumble with the most awful woman,” Harlea responded with a slight slur to his speech. His lip twitched as he tried to place weight on his left leg and he hopped back to lean on the kitchen’s bench, “but not my first time.”

Elayne ignored his stupid grin and poor attempt at winking with his swollen eye. His leg had a puncture wound that was thankfully bleeding at a nice slow pace. Moving past him, she stumbled over to the largest section of the bench and cleared the dishes and debri off of it. With a tap in the middle of the spot she’d cleared, Elayne gestured at Harlea, “Sit. What was in your leg?”

Harlea flipped the broken piece of chair up in the air and back into his hand to reveal the broken part covered in his blood, “Ta-da!”

She sighed and shook her head, “Would you like me to bandage it up?”

“Please.” Harlea answered weakly and hopped up onto the bench next to her. He leant his back on the wall and tossed the chair leg out of the window. With a tap on his leg, he let out a squeal of pain before they changed in a stream of giddy chuckles.

“First rule. No screaming right into my face, yeah?” Elayne didn’t wait for her response and lifted the torn parts of the pant leg out of the cut.

Harlea squirmed but said nothing as she tore the hole in his pant leg wider. The wound itself wasn’t too deep but the damned thing was pretty jagged. There would be a lot of stitches in Harlea’s future but there wasn’t so much blood that Elayne was that concerned. She’d need to stop the bleeding and they’d want to get to a physician sooner rather than later.

Her bag had bandages and some needle and thread. She could have a go at stitching if he was willing but it depended on exactly where her bag had gotten to.

The night had been a blur and Elayne had no idea when she’d lost her bag. Looking back in the pantry, she couldn’t see it in there.

Propping herself against the table, she made do with what she had. The entire kitchen was a disaster zone, with the floor hidden beneath large pieces of broken furniture and broken ceramic. Elayne could see the dining room they were in before through the open doorway and it looked similarly devastated. Her eyes returned to the kitchen and scoured the bench until they rested on a particular set of drawers to the far left of the kitchen. They were against the wall with the small inlet that led to another door that, Elayne was sure, would lead to the side entrance to the house.

She heaved herself back onto her feet and was pleased to find them steadier beneath her. Her body was sore and her ribs on her left side ached terribly but she was mobile. Given everything they’d been through, mobile and alive was a gift.

When she made it to the drawer, she opened it up to find exactly what she was looking for. She didn’t know much about the kitchen but she knew logical thinking and whoever the cook was, clearly he’d agreed with her that the aprons should be in the closest place to the door. Picking out the cleanest apron from the draw and a knife from the bench, she made her way back to Harlea. She tore the knife down the length of the apron and chose the side that looked less stained. With another long slice, she held two long pieces of cloth in her hands. They weren’t perfect but they would do for now.

“It is a decent puncture. You’ll get a nasty scar but you won’t lose the leg.” Elayne informed Harlea as she offered him the second bandage.

Harlea had his eyes closed and hummed quietly as he took the bandage. His head snapped backwards for a second before he righted it and let out a long breath.

“You ok?”

“Yeah, just hate watching people work on me,” he responded with one eye open.

“Well, stop getting hurt.” Elayne replied as she folded up her piece of apron into a small parcel, “I am going to press this onto the hole and then bandage it up. It is going to hurt.”

There was no response and Elayne pressed the padding on his wound. She kept the pressure on and ignored the small whimper he made. Her left hand stayed on the padding and her right grabbed Harlea’s hand. She directed it onto her left, “Press down as hard as you can.”

No response again but Harlea put both of his hands onto the padding and screwed up his face as he forced it into his wound.

The bandage was still in his right hand but Elayne pulled it deftly from between his hands as she looped it loosely around her hand. She took its end and frowned as she watched Harlea bear down on his leg. The pant leg would have to go, she decided.

She grabbed both sides of Harlea’s pants and tore the hole as wide as she could. It tore apart easily and gave her enough space to work with.

“My pants, noo!” Harlea chuckled between the pain and let out a low groan as kept forcing the pad onto his wound, “Urgh, Elayne.”

“Shh.” Elayne tutted him as she wrapped the bandage around his leg. Working with practised ease, she spun the bandage around his leg, displacing his hands as she forced the bandage onto the padding. She pulled it tight, swatting his hands away as he tried to stop her and ignoring his futile swearing.

She waited a second to let him run out of steam, “See? You were so brave.”

“You made the bandage too tight.” Harlea complained as he gave his leg a little swing on the side of the bench.

“Don’t touch that until we get a proper bandage.” Elayne chided him as she cleared a spot for him to stand on the kitchen floor, “And next time, leave the bloody chair leg in so I can secure it properly.”

“Yes, doc, sorry doc,” he replied through gritted teeth as he hopped onto the floor.

She didn’t know why she wasted her breath. The man had a reputation of surviving mortal danger and she’d heard him laugh about his physician’s endless list of health concerns.

Harlea hopped back off the bench, landing on his right leg and he hopped over to where she was. He gave her a big hug and Elayne welcomed it gladly. She pulled him close as the pure joy of still being alive washed over her.

“Ey, ey. Come on now.” Harlea struggled as his foot left the ground. His hands came back past her sides and knocked into her ribcage as they passed.

The pain raced through her body, her left ribs complaining heartily as she set him back down and let out an exasperated hiss, “Shit. They are definitely broken.”

“Oh, bad news. Hows’ everything else?” Harlea asked as he hopped around the room.

Elayne ran her eyes over her body for the first time since she’d woken. She was exhausted and terrified but physically, she could have been a lot worse. Running her hands over the bug bites on her face, she shivered, “I'm concussed and I've lost a significant amount of blood but no bugs under my skin and I am not dead.”

Concern rippled across Harlea’s face, “You need to get that cut on your head checked as well.”

“On my head, right. Where did my bag get to?”

Harlea pointed back to the pantry and shrugged, “No clue really. It has my other axe though.”

“It’s not in there.” Elayne said, more worried about them bleeding out than his rusty old axe, “Surely there will be some cleaner linens packed away in this house.”

“Decent chance. But if not, we can head back for our other bags.” Harlea couldn’t help himself, pressing gingerly onto the ground with his left leg again, “It’s not horrifically bad.”

“Don’t push it. You’ll need a proper physician from that last town to look at you.” Elayne tutted as she gently ran her fingers through her hair. At the very top of her head, she’d lost a chunk of hair about the size of half her fist. There was some blood but not enough for her to be concerned. It was by the bridge that she’d lost the hair, from the odd oily girl.

With a shudder, Elayne chose not to think about the girl or the bridge. At least until they got out of the town. She focussed her attention on Harlea as he rummaged through the kitchen. Working his way into the mountain of debri in front of the door, he inspected several chunks of wood before tossing them towards the pantry with little regard to where they landed.

There was an intent behind his action, Elayne was sure of it but he didn’t seem to be working towards the door nor was he looking for something beneath the mass. Her curiosity was piqued but she couldn’t bring herself to disrupt the gentle ease that had settled over them as he dug deeper into the remains of a cupboard.

She gave a quick glance out of the window to find the early greys of the morning had settled over the nearby river. Gone was the red tinted hellscape and the oppressive heaviness that beggared her every movement. She wasn’t sure if they were still in danger but Harlea seemed completely at ease, even as he sorted through the destruction.

“Oh, that’ll do nicely.” Harlea spoke again as he pulled at the bottom section of the cupboard. With a crack, a section of the backing and the cupboard’s leg tore from the rest of the wreckage and Harlea held it aloft proudly.

Showing Elayne first, he turned it around in his left hand and then pressed the bottom of the cupboard’s leg into the ground. The wood held nicely and offered him a walking stick that went up to his waist. He bore down on the small flat spot at the top of his new walking stick and grinned from ear to ear, “Now, shall we find Fiona?”

“Sounds good. Where did she go?” Elayne agreed as she stood back up. Turning back quickly, she grabbed the kitchen knife again before she stepped towards the dining room.

“Not a clue.” Harlea responded with a shrug and moved a step into the clutter in front of the door before pausing. With a despondent look back at her, Harlea stepped to the side, “I would guess the first floor given she went out the window there.”

“Back up,” she ordered him with a shoo. The cupboard was the first to go, with Elayne getting a hold of the two biggest parts that she could find. She gave them a yank and the whole pile shifted to the side. Another two attempts at dragging it and she was content with the space she’d created near the far side of the door.

Not that there was much of a door left. Its last hinge had survived the carnage with a small section of the door’s panels and the bottom rail still connected to it. Using the front of her boot, Elayne pressed the bottom of the door back on the hinge, straining the tenuous hold it still had. The wood buckled quickly and opened up a path for her and her injured friend.

Elayne made a show of letting Harlea pass through the door first, revelling in his eye roll as he limped through the door.

All things considered, Elayne thought he was moving reasonably well. There was no sign that the bleeding was any worse as he moved and, as much as he complained, he was very mobile for someone with a decent-sized wound.

Elayne smiled as she followed him through to the diningroom. The whole room had been completely upended, with even the dining table flipped and smashed in half from the conflict.

“I remember this table. When it was still intact.” Elayne established for herself more than for Harlea.

“Oh, it didn’t last much longer than you did.” Harlea gave her a gruff laugh as he pointed to the wall to her left, “You hit that wall. Hard. Then, out like a light.”

“Mmm, that would explain the headache.” Elayne replied as she watched the floor around her. Glass coated the hardwood floorboards in every direction, offering only the pieces of table and chair as safe havens for her to navigate with.

Harlea went ahead of her, hopping onto a large piece of the tabletop as he tried to find a path forwards. Even with his walking stick, he made short work of the mess to make it back to the door to the foyer they’d first entered through.

“Honestly, this was much worse than the normal Wild Events, I’d say. This one was a terrible first timer.” Harlea said as he stepped through the open doorway. He turned back and watched as Elayne followed his path through, “Awful stuff. I’ll tell the Board as much.”

Behind him, the foyer was bathed in a cool grey light. The stairs had been damaged and the paintings were now on the floor but with each step, Elayne felt like she was in the aftermath of a storm more than anything else. A hurricane perhaps but not a Wild Event as the cool morning air whistled through the empty home.

Elayne moved past Harlea and up to the side of the staircase. Near her face was the base of the highest railings before the landing. They were the last ones that stood on the left side of the staircase, with the others spread out the foyer floor, “Twenty silver each is not enough for a contract like this,”

Harlea scoffed as he shuffled up next to her, “Oh no no, I would guess we’ll be getting around one hundred and twenty to one hundred and sixty each once everything is sorted.”

“I thought the Board agreed to one hundred?”

“Ah, see. You still have some things to learn,” Harlea responded with a wink while he hobbled quickly to the front of the stairs. He wandered around listlessly as he looked at the ground.

Deciding to let him process how he wanted, Elayne changed the subject, “Harlea, what happened with Areli?”

“Ah, probably laying belly up conserving heat in one of the houses nearby,” Harlea stopped in front of a piece of baluster shaped like a t.

He tipped forward on his walking stick, left leg coming up behind him as his right hand reached down and plucked the long wooden stick up from the floor. Gracefully, he lifted himself back up and held the cross section of the wood up to his face. “I wouldn’t worry about him. Once we give him the all clear, he’ll spring up somewhere nearby, I bet.”

Elayne moved along the side of the stairs, eyes on the windows as she joined Harlea. The scratching noise that she had heard the whole night had stopped after she’d woken up, but it had been replaced with an absolute stillness that had a very different eeriness about it.

Every sound as Harlea twisted the stick in his hand broke the silence between them. He tapped its broken edge on the ground a few times before he tossed his walking stick aside and pressed it under his armpit.

Catching his eye as he tested out his new crutch, Elayne pressed on about Areli, “I lost Areli before we got to the bridge though. Didn’t you say we had to stick together?”

“You were told to stay with the group, El.” Fiona corrected her from above, “Areli’s fine.”

On the mezzanine above them, Fiona stood defiantly, covered from head to toe in blood and vomit.

Elayne let out a small gasp as Fiona wiped her face. The only item that was not dripping with some form of vile liquid was the faded child’s t-shirt that she used to blot her face.

Fiona hobbled around the corner of the mezzanine and slowly descended down to the central landing. As she went, she cleaned her neck and arms until the small t-shirt was fully soaked. The world stopped turning as Fiona lithely worked her way down the stairs, favouring her right foot over her left but showing no injury but a minor limp, “Alright, I’ll need to go get my bag and supplies. How many bandages do you still have, El?”

“None, I lost my bag. I used an old apron for Harlea’s leg: medium puncture wound and he took the object out before I could wrap it properly.”

Harlea gave her a little shove and a dirty look as he stood next to her but nothing else in response. His shirt had suddenly shifted from on his body to between his left arm and his crutch but Elayne knew better than to comment on it.

“Of course, he did.” Fiona sighed,  “Har, the first thing you do when you get back to Ol’Haran is buy more medical supplies.”

Scrunching up his face, Harlea stuck his tongue out at Fiona as she descended to join them.

Fiona smirked back at him as she stopped several steps from the bottom, “Good. El, you take a look around for anything valuable in here. The family looks like they were pretty rich; so jewellery, devices, but don’t touch any bijous. Or anything trapped.”

Elayne stepped up to join her on the stairs and was relieved to see Fiona basically unscathed, “Got it.”

Fiona tapped her lightly on the shoulder as they passed by each other. Elayne caught her hand and gave it a squeeze before she moved up to the landing.

As Fiona let go, she turned back to Harlea and tutted at him again, “The state that you are in. You should have been the one scaling the building you know.”

“Hey, you had the compass.” Harlea argued back as he hobbled to the base of the stairs, “It was very heroic of me to stay behind, I will have you know.”

“Stupid to not learn how to use the compass yourself.” Fiona quipped back pleasantly as she gave him a hug, “Go get on the couch and don’t move until I’m back.”

Harlea grumbled something quietly to her and held her tight. After a moment, they released each other and Fiona was out of the door without another word.

“Isn’t she worried about the Wildfolk?” Elayne asked Harlea while he limped way over to the closest couch.

“Nah, they’re gone now.” Harlea replied, standing over the couch before eventually collapsing down onto it, “They die once the Node goes. Every time.”

Elayne stepped around the broken vase and the long dead flowers with a pang of guilt at the back of her mind. Robbing the dead was an unpleasant idea, even if it was from long abandoned houses rather than graves. Elayne supposed that they had given the dead their peace at last by risking their own lives to come here, so there was some righteousness to their looting. And leaving with only a handful of coins to show for their work seemed like an affront to decency.

Checking back on Harlea, Elayne found him looking up at her, hand on the couch and his mischievous grin back on his face, “One time, the three of us were on a small contract that had us go into a shipwreck on the BloodSea Coast. We were in the bowels of the ship and had this giant crab giving Areli and I hell while Fiona was going for the node. The damned crustacean had us dead to rights, well and truly.”

Elayne didn’t comment as Harlea settled into his story. After a few months, she had heard Harlea spin a number of tales about his past, some of them multiple times and each one of them as fantastical as they were entertaining. Taking a step back down the stairs, she couldn’t help but feel like she just survived his newest story.

Harlea plonked down on the couch’s armrest and let out a laugh, “Imagine: it had me pinned under its leg with only half of my old shield between us. Three centimetres of distance from it disembowelling me and Areli is there too; he’s on top of it with one his knives. Last one he had because all of his others had shattered on its,” Harlea’s face furrowed as he searched for the word he wanted, “its back armour. The shell, you know?

“Carapace,” Elayne answered him and moved three more steps back down the stairs.

Harlea clicked his fingers, “Yeah, the carapice. He’s up there and I’m on the floor and then a second later, Fiona gets the node and all Nine break loose. The crab breaks apart into hundreds of smaller crabs and they drop onto little old me. They’re pinching me and running all over my body as they flee. And I’m there, trying to get away until I realise we can cook them. I get my hands on a couple and then Areli ends up landing directly on my head and down to the ground I go again.” Harlea laughed as he pretended that someone was falling on him.

Elayne smiled but said nothing back. The Mad Man of the Red Damnables wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d heard he was a crazy, half-cut bastard from the tales she’d heard of the North, a heroic folk hero from those in the south, and an idiot from Fiona. Moving over to the couch to join him, Elayne still wasn’t sure what to make of him. Not as mad as she’d feared, nor as invincible.

“You had to be there, I guess.” Harlea quietly concluded and looked out of the windows behind the couch. “You did good though, kid. You’re fitting in nicely into the crew, I think.”

The front yard of the manor was beautiful. It had to be around three in the morning and the gentle grey of the witching hour had taken over the abandoned town. In several years time, Elayne had no doubt there would be more folk coming to start their lives in the once vibrant town. In spite of all of the horror of the Wilds, they’d done something unbelievable.

“Just another day.” Harlea murmured before a yawn caught him off-guard. He let the yawn out with an exaggerated stretch of his arms and he swivelled his body back to the floor. Landing on his right foot, he asked for Elayne’s hand.

She took it happily and eased him back down from the arm rest. It took two hops on his foot before he got the crutch under his arm again, “Got to say, I think this crutch is doing fucking nothing.”

“Sitting on the couch would help you more.” Elayne rebutted immediately.

“Ah, but then who would go find Areli?” Harlea limped over to the door as fast as he could and Elayne made no attempt to stop him. As he got to the door, he turned back towards him, “You’d better get to searching in here before Fiona gets back.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond before he moved out of the door. Elayne took a few steps to catch him before deciding to just yell instead, “What am I meant to be looking for.

His response came back quickly, yelled back through the gentle quiet around them, “Anything that isn’t nailed down is my opinion. We’ll need a cart for me anyway so grab anything worth a coin or two.”

“Yeah, well, ok.” Elayne muttered to herself. She would bring it into the foyer and they could discuss who he was expecting to pull that cart. Before she left, she called out again, “You sure you don’t need me to help you look for Areli?”

“Nah, he’ll find me.”