Chapter 13. "Vietnamese Footlocker" (Patreon)

Chapter 13. "Vietnamese Footlocker"

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Dreams again... Again these horrible dreams...

The words rolled around in her head, spoken in a terrible, cawing voice. It seemed if she strained her memory, she'd remember where the words came from. But because it was actually happening in a dream, the old words rumbled like a bell, shattering her consciousness, not letting her catch it in the trap of understanding.

Horrible dreams...

Lena dreamt of a battle. No, not a battle... More like a bloody fight, a frenzied massacre in the darkness, illuminated only by the torn light of the torches. A series of images flashing in a stroboscopic kaleidoscope. Blood on wet wood. The crack of shields. The muffled sound of chopping leather armor with a subtle hint of metallic clang from the plates sewn between the leather and the quilted fabric. The girl had never heard the "sound" of cuirass being pierced through with a single blow of the claw. But at the same time, she knew exactly what it was, the short, tinny thud that made her blood run cold.

They fought in the dungeon, dark and damp, amid the drops of water that fell from the high stone vault-not even seen in the light. Not people and monsters, but people and people, desperately, the way they fight in the last hour when there is no escape, and all that is left is to kill or be killed.

The red flames of the torches leaped over the two blades, painting the gray steel with bloody reflections.

A "rat" cleaver, not a simple one, but with a twisted shank, which bears more resemblance not to a rat's tail, but to a long, curved corkscrew. The blade is not simple either, it is longer and lighter than usual, and the blade is leaf-shaped, tapering towards the tip. This is more of a short sword for a not-very-strong but fast fighter.

Against a cleaver an ordinary sword... No, an ordinary sword, except in length. It is really long, almost like a knight's sword, but for one hand, not even a hand and a half. The blade is straight, but the cross is saber-like, curved with two whiskers - ascending and descending, and the palm is additionally protected by a side cup in the form of a poplar leaf. You have to be a strong fighter to be able to easily twist such a thing with one hand...

The swords clash, scattering stars. They flash in bright dots and immediately go out like sparks in a strong wind. It is as if these flashes illuminate the weapons, and Lena sees that the second fighter's blade - the longer one - is actually very light. The sword has three full-length fuller, and they are not just chiseled out to lighten and strengthen the blade but pierce through the blade, interrupted by thin lintels. An artful, unique work. It is doubly unique because the blade is not a ceremonial one but a martial one.

The fight went on. The dream was drawing in deeper and deeper. On the one hand, the action gained depth and became more detailed, like a single crystal of ice that begins to grow in cold water, multiplying and covering the surface with a matte film. On the other hand, Lena's mind seemed to dissolve in the animated picture, losing the ability to comprehend what she saw.

The cleaver and the sword clash again and again. One of the fighters is definitely stronger. His blade seems openwork, shining through. The other is inferior in skill, but so far he manages to balance the odds with frenzied fury, just a crazy onslaught. The cleaver strikes nonstop, like a water hammer, with such force and frequency that the sword barely has time to put up a defense, let alone counterattack. And yet it has time. The incessant chopping runs seemingly from three sides at once - the cleaver aims at the right, the left, and the top. But a long strip of openwork metal invariably meets the enemy's blade. The fiery reflections on the steel seem to live a life of their own, dancing around the blades with red demons that are eternally hungry for blood.

And here comes the climax. The attacker has exhausted himself, wasted all his strength in a furious onslaught, and is now doomed. A blow, another blow, a long blade catches the lunge with confident ease, takes it to the side, tearing the defense to shreds. Now the victim is doomed, and the grande arte of the fencer once again surpassed the skills of ordinary fighting with its two simple techniques - a direct strike and a direct deflection.

This is a very important fight. Elena doesn't know why, but her whole being is chained to the image of a brutal duel in the middle of a common battle. The fighting skills of the girl from the other world are of little use here, but even her knowledge is enough to know that the fighter with the cleaver has lost. It is important, very important. For some reason, it is important. The images of the duelists are important, but they cannot be seen - dark shadows without clear outlines, gaps of darkness instead of faces. It seems that it's not people fighting but ghosts, embodiments of the elements or entities.

The carved sword aims for a jab, and Lena knows, feels, that it will be a surgically precise blow to the abdomen. The embodiment of the mathematics of killing, combining anatomy and geometry. Just above the groin, under the conventional projection of the kidneys onto the abdominal wall, so the obliquely cut tip cuts through the aorta below the fork of the renal arteries. This is a very neat, "masterly", externally bloodless wound. And absolutely fatal - it is impossible to stop the internal bleeding.

But the sword must be stopped, and the owner of the cleaver must not die. It is impossible. It is forbidden. Why...? The answer seems obvious. It is at a distance of outstretched fingers, at the thickness of a hair, it is already known. It is only necessary to focus and realize what is already known... But Lena can't. Her thoughts are like a fog. They are everywhere and nowhere, around the fight and infinitely far away from it at the same time. It is a dream. And a dream remains a dream only until the awareness of it comes.

The jab has begun. Anything can happen in a dream, and Elena sees time slowing down. Droplets of moisture hung in the damp air, glimmers of red fire sliding across them, dissolving into shades of yellow and orange. The hand turns the blade flat, and the point moves forward, cutting through the round drops like splashes of fiery mercury.

And then the unbelievable happened - the fighter slipped. His boot - a small, dainty little boot - hit a wet spot. Where a normal man would have fallen, the warrior had a moment to regain his balance, but the swift lunge went wrong. And the man with the cleaver literally leaked, screwed like a snake into the brief moment between the two blows - the past that had failed and the future that was yet to be born. The moment was shorter than a heartbeat, faster than the click of a bowstring that came off his fingers. But the fighter had time, and his cleaver sank just above his opponent's collarbone, at the base of his neck, uncovered by armor.

Anything is possible in dreams, and even from the cut veins, the blood gushes out, carmine red, contrasting, and chemically pure, like the best paint in the world. Very slowly because the flow of time seems to fear returning to its normal course. Red to red. Death to death.

The sword combines swiftly as if its wielder had been initially wound up by cunning springs to a certain sequence of actions, even if the person is essentially already dead. However, no lunge reaches its target.

The dying man falls, even in death, clutching the hilt of his faithful blade. It is as if he is ahead of his own shadow, falling out of the mist that shrouded the figures of the duelists in a ghostly shroud. The fire of the torches is reflected in his wide-open eyes. The eye... A pale purple whiteness and a cardinal-colored iris, bordered by a dark, almost black border. From the iris to the empty center, devoid of pupil, black threads stretched, which are in constant motion. A completely non-human eye that nevertheless belongs to a person.

The winner turned around in a defensive stance, and now Lena sees. His face, so familiar, so ...

Downstairs in the kitchen, Mouse dropped the cast-iron cauldron right on top of the pot with such a rumble that it took the girl out of the dream, like a slaughterer beating the life out of a cattle with a lead hammer. Again Lena experienced the sensation of a ghostly, absent memory. She had seen and recognized the man in the dream, a recognition that seemed to hide somewhere at the very edge of her consciousness and... ...slipping away whenever she tried to concentrate. Most unpleasant of all was the persistent feeling of the dream's importance, of its involvement in events that might have already happened or might only happen in the future.

Damn, it...

Lena threw back the bedspread of the shabby, darned hide, which had once boasted lush, warm fur but, over the years, had frayed to the point of suede and sad, dignified baldness. Mr. Cat gave a disgruntled purr and stretched out, showing powerful claws as if to warn him to respect his right to sleep in peace.

"Well, I'm sorry," Elena said guiltily, fumbling with her barefoot for the felt socks that had been used as room slippers. Meowr looked at her carefully and covered his eyes with oval pupils as if accepting her apology. He curled up. His paws picked up into a familiar ball on the edge of the blanket, where more fur was preserved. It was creepy yet incredibly graceful, a harmonious creature that looked like a cat, a rabbit, and a snake at the same time.

The cataclysm took its toll on the animal kingdom. Dogs became extinct, leaving only the romantic nostalgia of aristocrats and old treatises on hunting and interbreeding. Cats, on the other hand, transmuted into Meowrs. Or not mutated. In general, the stories converged on one thing - cats disappeared, and Meowrs appeared.

Strictly speaking, Meowrs were not cats but rather resembled lynxes crossed with reptiles, which had undergone a very long chain of transformations. Moreover, Lena suspected that the Meowrs were no animals either, for these creatures seemed much more intelligent than monkeys and dogs. Meowrs were completely untrained and chose their companions. Not masters but companions. The strange animals hunted no mice and were useless in the practical economy, but they had an almost mystical ability to "drink the grief." It was believed that Meowrs relieves mental suffering, banishes sorrow and grief, and moderates bodily pain. And it brought good luck.

Meowr, who lived in Matrice's house, immediately chose Elena and slept with her almost every night. Lena did not particularly believe in its mystical nature but rather in the psychotherapeutic properties of a pet. Not without reason cats prolong life and multiply the health of the old and sick. But one way or another, stroking the purring dwarf lynx was a pleasure, and during the first, most difficult months of her new life, only Mr. Cat kept Helena from thoughts of twisting the noose and throwing her over the rafters.

There was a strong belief among the common people that the Meowrs were so intelligent and unusual because they possessed human souls. Those who died in the Cataclysm could not go to heaven or hell, being trapped in the earthly, material world. And their souls find refuge in the bodies of the Meowrs until that day when the Paraclete ceases the existence of the Ecumene. The Church did not support these beliefs, but it did not fight them either (probably, the Church hierarchs are also sad and hard on their souls). And killing meowr everywhere, from the Island to the City, was considered a terrible sin because the soul, expelled from the animal's dead body, was permanently deprived of a place of refuge without the possibility of finding a postmortem.

Rinsing her face with cold water, Lena massaged the skin around her eyes, which even to the touch, seemed unhealthy and swollen. Saphir downstairs shuffled a broom made of twigs as thin and sparse as the hair on his bald head. The sun was already beating down through the mica window in full sunshine, but the apprentice had had an unscheduled day off today; certainly, the black streak of life had not been replaced by white, but rather a light gray one.

The night before, in the late evening, Lena had opened the trunk. She had only had to bang the old lock a couple of times. She took out the wine and drank heavily, perhaps for the first time in her whole stay here. With each sip all the horrors of the past day were pushed aside, life became a little more fun, and Lena herself felt like a real local woman, ready to swear and beat muzzles on a par with the men. Saphir, looking at all this, only shook his head, maintaining an impenetrable expression.

And when Mouse tried to swear in her usual squeaky voice, Lena remembered Ranyan's expressionless, deadpan look and simply threw a mug of dried pumpkin at the maid, which did not break, and were worth an eighth of a penny each. Surprisingly, Mouse took it quite calmly, as if it were a matter of course, and stopped squealing at once, taking care of the household. Lena poured two more fingers of wine, then added as much, thinking that she probably still did not understand the specifics of local relations. She was thinking badly, and her drunken thoughts were turning more and more slowly and heavily, like ill-fitting millstones.

Matrice returned very late, towards midnight, in an unusual state. It was not fear, not excitement, but rather the anticipation of something significant, something uncertain that was about to happen. Her dress reeked of urine and tar as if the apothecary had retrained as a tanner. Matrice didn't even check the cash drawer. She listened absent-mindedly (and this in itself seemed surprising) to Lena's confused account of the day (about Ranyan and the " deceiver " girl wisely silent), just as absent-mindedly glanced at the half-empty bottle and announced that tomorrow the apprentice is free until the evening. With the retention of her wages.

The tipsy girl had some trouble climbing the steep stairs to the second floor, to her room, and found, first, that Saphir had made her coal warmer and, second, that Mr. Cat had come. Lena thought that perhaps Pantocrator was real after all, so she flopped into bed.

She slept, judging by the noise outside the windows, well past noon. She was thirsty, and her eyes hurt a little, but overall she felt better than she'd expected. That was what it meant to get a good night's sleep without getting out of bed so early. She was very hungry.

Putting on her top shirt, Lena stroked Mr. Cat. The meowr yawned, clenched its teeth, and graciously rubbed its ear against the man's hand. The creatures' fur was similar to that of a capybara - quite sparse and stiff. But at the same time, it was surprisingly cozy and warm, so she wanted to stroke again and again. Meowr laid his triangular head right on the bedspread and squeezed his eyes shut, twitching his ears blissfully.

After stroking the good cat, Lena dressed, changed her slippers for wooden shoes, and, as some classical writer would say, "girded her loins," preparing to meet... ...yet she doesn't know what. On the one hand, yesterday's Matrice seemed immersed in her problems and rather benevolent. On the other... anything could happen.

So, leaving the door ajar for Mr. Cat's comfort, Lena clattered her boots as she descended the stairs. They were waiting for her at the bottom.

"Just in time," Matrice said as she poured herself a glass of wine made of real glass. She poured it from the same bottle the girl had emptied more than two-thirds of the way the day before. It looked like a silent reproof, though it certainly was not.

Santelli waved his spoon with which he was eating the hodgepodge. Judging by the sight and smell, the food came straight from Mother Chahar's place. The venerable lady was of Highlander descent, renowned for the best mercenary infantrymen and the best camping cuisine on the continent. Her signature dish of cabbage, turnips, carrots, and onions stewed with corned beef and spices looked awful from Lena's perspective, mostly because of the displaced color scheme-blue cabbage, bright red pumpkin, beet turnips, yellow carrots. It was like a mix of different crap representing the insides of a horror movie. But it tasted divine.

Kai didn't eat anything, just tapped the table with his one-toothed fork. He had been away for a long time last month, and it seemed that he had found a good healer magician on the way who fixed the fighter's nose. Kai could breathe normally now, but he still had the habit of grinning. Just like now. The swordsman was very unhappy about something, though he tried to keep his dissatisfaction to himself.

Saphir was not to be seen. From the sounds of it, he was grinding slate tiles in the backyard, turning them into fine crumbs for the hearth. And, by the same sounds, he intended to do so for as long as possible. Mouse was hiding somewhere, too. All in all, everything indicated that the meeting was going on for a reason.

"Join us," Matrice sipped her wine. Santelli waved his spoon again, this time in a mute invitation. Kai frowned and remained silent.

Lena came down the stairs, treading carefully with her wooden clogs. Something was wrong here... very wrong. Usually, she didn't get this kind of attention, but here it felt like the whole gathering had been organized especially for her.

"Eat," said Santelli, chewing on a particularly large and hot piece of turnip. "Good food, just from the tavern."

Kai silently moved an empty, clean wooden bowl to an empty stool and took the lid off a clay pot covered in a glassy glaze, the kind you didn't cook in but served food in a thermos. The pot was steaming hot and powerful. And very tasty.

They ate in silence. Or rather, it was Santeli and Elena who wielded the spoons. Matrice was still sipping wine, and Kai was tapping out a march with his fork. Saphir was tapping with his beater in time for the march. As she chewed the spicy, well-peppered hodgepodge, Lena thought about three things. First, as Winnie, the Pooh would say, there was a reason for all this. Second, how good it felt to eat something tasty and meaty after a twenty-four-hour and completely unhealthy fast. And third, she was thinking of Matrice, or, broadly and highly pompous, the local role of women in society.

As far as Elena understood, the Cataclysm had struck the local Ecumene far worse than the Plague of the Middle Ages. The Black Death, for all its horror, was only a disease. The disaster that wiped out the Old Empire was far more widespread and, one might say, complex. It had something to do with magic, and among other things, it annihilated almost all the magical energy of the world on which the state and society were built. As a result, everything from ordinary communications to agriculture collapsed overnight. And epidemics were already attached as the cherry on the cake or rather the nail in the coffin.

The practical and observable consequences were many. For example, the situation of women, who at least formally enjoyed equal rights with men. There seems to have been (if one believes Matrice's brief remarks) a period when men were almost nonexistent, nine-tenths of them wiped out by disease and the war of all against all that had broken out in the ruins of the lost old world. So women began to be equally involved in the economic turnover, and so that the lines of succession were not interrupted, all rights and privileges had to be extended to wives and daughters, including judicial duels. Over the years and decades, the forced necessity became a tradition. Nowadays, a woman could simply declare complete independence, engage in some commerce or even war, and this was perceived quite normally without curiosities or sneers.

Another thing is that such a status had a backside - one had to take responsibility for it. If one defined oneself as a member of a certain circle and occupation, one was supposed to be treated accordingly, regardless of age and gender. This was why Elena was secretly jealous of Shena and Matrice but never thought of following in their footsteps. Involvement in serious affairs and the respect of brigade villains went hand in hand with a minute-by-minute willingness to accept a challenge from anyone without the slightest discount. Complete equality without privilege proved by no means romantic, and life as a free independent woman was, in the first place, extremely dangerous.

And this raised a very serious question for Lena about her own future, for it seemed that she was not yet in danger of returning to her native Kansas.

A spoon scraped along the bottom of the bowl. Lena carefully picked up the rest of the gravy with a piece of tortilla and thought about adding more, but she didn't. Her stomach was enveloped in a pleasant warmth and a feeling of fullness, and to add more was to please her tongue, but her inner voice and reason number one (about the Winnie the Pooh case) suggested that now was not the time to fall into the greediness of gluttony. Lena resolutely pushed the bowl aside, Matrice put the glass down, and Kai stuck his fork on the table as if to end the unplanned feast.

"Well, you've got your belly full, and okay," summed up Santelli, puffing up and unbuckling his belt for a couple of holes.

In fact, the brigadier could express himself very intelligently and courteously, but he usually played the role of a simple-minded man with one thought in his head. He rarely went out of character, and it was usually accompanied by bloodshed.

Matrice sighed, or rather exhaled long as if the glass contained "dead water," that is, the local moonshine. And with a visible effort, she pulled out a small wooden box from under the table.

"Oh," was all the girl said, who wasn't expecting to see all this until a week later.

"Open up," the foreman squinted slightly, either recommending or ordering.

Lena had already imagined what she might see inside. It was not without reason that for months she had been drawing and sketching her idea on a wax tablet, then charcoal on planks and, finally, precious sanguine[1] pencil on real rag paper, this for a master cabinetmaker. And then for the blacksmith. But to imagine and draw is one thing, but to see with one's own eyes is quite another.

It started simply enough. Lena thought it would be a good idea to replicate the emergency medical kit, like in the ambulance, only with adjustments for the new environment. So that all the necessary equipment of a field medic wasn't scattered in bags but properly organized and stacked. A little later, another idea was added to this one as a result of her acquaintance with local medical instruments. The first time she picked up an amputation knife, which looked more like a butcher's cleaver, with a bone handle covered with a rough carving, the girl immediately remembered one of her grandfather's stories.

The old man recalled that with the outbreak of World War I and the scarcity of everything, the French had to get all the old stuff they could find out of their warehouses and send it to the army. Among them were surgical kits of the XIX century, which caused a lot of problems during disinfection just because of their wooden and bone handles. After all, at the time of their manufacture, the "miasma theory" prevailed, and germs were nothing more than amusing blots under a microscopic lens.

As a result of all her pondering, Lena took Bizot's alchemical trunk as an example and designed a sort of lightweight surgeon's field kit for carrying in a cart or not very far. Matrice was extremely interested in the idea, and Helena received both her blessing for the experiment and funds to order it from craftsmen. The work cost a pretty penny, to tell you the truth, but the result...

The result, however, was yet to be judged.

The box turned out just as the customer had described, with smoothed corners, lacquered with fish scale glue, and even with a wide strap for carrying on the shoulder. The craftsman had already, of his own accord, decorated the chest with sparing but elegant touches of shallow carving, and added shoulder straps in the manner of baskets which were often used here as a sort of "assault rucksack". This was something Lena had not ordered (because she hadn't thought of it), but it worked out well.

The lock (another thing Lena had forgotten about) was a simple hook and loop, but it fit very well and had an extra eye so that a small lock could be hung if desired. After removing the hook, the customer opened the chest.

Once again, everything was just as she wanted it. On the inside of the lid are leather loops for two different-sized amputation saws, as well as for cloth bags of corpia, which the girl intended to use as individual bandages. There were also several bandages and two bottles in a special attachment. One with a "milk" that killed the pain for a quarter of an hour, the other with a "freezing" elixir. The pale blue liquid cost a lot of money, but it magically "preserved" the wound, stopping all malignant processes in it for about three-quarters of a day or less. It was this stuff that allowed Codure to last so long with a mangled leg that when Lena began disinfecting the wound, the infection from the underground creature's claws had not yet had time to develop.

Beneath the upper lid was another twin lid, which opened to two sides, on the sides of the chest, turning into trays covered with thin bronze plates. The interior space was also organized. It was filled with drawers in three levels, four in a row. Bandages and cordials again, some for emergencies, because the main supply was supposed to be kept separately in a special bag. Another of Grandfather's wisdom - you can never have enough bandages in war. Tools, all polished metal, nothing superfluous. Tourniquets with wooden handles for tightening. Bags of calcined salt for solutions. Glass flask of "dead water" for wiping instruments. A set for cleaning and sharpening tools since stainless steel and disposable scalpels haven't been invented yet. And at the very bottom - medicines in tightly corked vials, stacked in a "honeycomb" with fine shavings and straw.

To herself, Lena immediately called the box a "Vietnamese Footlocker" because she remembered King's famous story[2]. The girl was pleased with the result. Judging by the faces of Matrice, Kai, and Santelli, they were very impressed, too.

"What's that?" The foreman pointed his finger at something faceted, like a knight's armor-piercing dagger, only without a guard and sharpened on one side.

"Amputation knife," the girl answered. Lena remembered that there was no special word for the definition of medical removal of limbs here, so she automatically composed it herself, using three roots meaning "ease," "mercy," and "cut".

"How's that?" frowned the foreman, trying to figure out how this dagger could mercifully cut off a leg.

"A special knife," explained the self-proclaimed medic. "To cut through the large muscles to open the bone. And then, the bone is carefully sawed off with this saw.

Lena did not mention that this particular variety and even the name "Big Amputation Knife NL 315x180" she remembered very well because Grandpa kept it in the kitchen and used it masterfully when cutting pork legs.

"Well, well," stretched Santeli vaguely, exchanging glances with Matrice. Lena didn't notice the exchange, absorbed in getting to know her new toy, but Kai did the opposite. And he didn't like it, either; the swordsman gritted his teeth and grunted. Lena didn't pay attention to that either, though.

"Pack it back," Matrice said briefly but not angrily. "Let's go somewhere."

"Where to?" asked Lena, complying with the instruction. The metal of the knives tinkled softly, wrapped in a leather roll, new, smelling of fresh wax impregnation.

"Not far," the apothecary cut off exhaustively.

Kai silently and angrily pulled a fork from the table, twisting a large, yellowish splinter at the chip. Saphir was still chiseling away at the fuel outside.

It didn't take long to walk to the southern part of Gate where Matrice had several barns combined into one warehouse complex. Rather, it was called something else, but that's how Lena saw it. Kai took the trunk and carried it lightly on his belt, holding it with his hand. The barns were not simple, but you might say capital, stone-built, with noise-muffling padding on the walls and no windows, with magical lamps. Into one of them, Matrice led a small company. The entrance was guarded by two of the apothecary's henchmen, large, grim-looking men with clubs at their waists and knives on long handles in their boot cuffs. They silently opened the gate and silently closed it behind the company. Lena looked around.

Judging by the large (and empty) tables along the walls, Profit was received and unloaded here. But now the warehouse had been transformed into a kind of laboratory and, by the looks of it, assembled "from scratch," not according to the original idea, but according to current needs. Matrice seemed to have been experimenting here with the most miasmatic agents, mixing them in a variety of bottles. It smelled simultaneously of oil, tar, varnish, olive oil, something tannic, something else chemical, and something else Lena could not identify even closely. And over this cacophony of smells ruled the persistent smell of evaporated urine. Like a tannery or a laundry.

In one corner stood a rope-rolling machine but without a handle or wooden runner. In another lay the unfinished hulk of a shield, not of simple planks, as was usually done, but of the highlander type, of two layers of slats bent over a steam bath. Next to the shield lined up tall - up to mid-thigh - jugs in a rope braid. Four pieces, tightly corked, with corks filled with wax.

Right in the middle of the barn, under a three-wick lamp, lay a man covered with burlap. Out from under the cloth were cheap, dirty, and tattered shoe covers made of one piece of leather, with a rope running through the holes all around the edge. When they were put on, the rope was tightened, and the result was a tight leather slipper. Something murmured and sniffled where the head was supposedly located. And then there was a burp so that the smell of liquor harmoniously blended in with the general stench. But there was something else... Lena sucked in the air, trying not to cringe in disgust. Exactly, a disgustingly familiar smell, unparalleled in her former life. There was simply nowhere for a city dweller to smell it. But here...

Kai put down the "Vietnamese footlocker" and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. Matrice repeated the gesture, only she didn't lean anywhere but instead spread her legs wider as if to stand more firmly on the stone floor generously sprinkled with hay. Santelli abruptly tore the burlap off the covered man, and Lena shuddered.

The man was poor, ragged, and dead drunk. Still big enough. He had obviously known better and more well-fed times. Now emaciated by chronic malnutrition and a disorderly life wherever and however he could. He was lying down on the roughly chopped half of the gate, tied up, the knots tightened without fanaticism but firmly. A man in his right mind would not be able to free himself without effort, but the drunkard was held securely by the ropes.

"The leg," the foreman pointed out, but Elena already understood that.

The right pant leg below the knee (the man wore pants, not stockings, so he probably once walked in a brigade) was torn and stained with dried blood and mucus. Shreds of the cloth were gnarled inside by swollen purple-blue flesh. Now that the tarpaulin had been removed, the smell of gangrene wafted through the barn, overpowering even the urine. At a glance, it was clearly diagnosed as an ill-treated wound that had already rotted away without any hope of a cure. What awaited yesterday's "tar man" had the festering stitch not been opened and treated.

Lena was sickened, and she took a step back mechanically. Kai suddenly smiled at the very corners of his lips. Matrice, on the contrary, frowned and ordered:

"Cut."

"What?" the girl didn't understand.

"Cut off his leg," explained Santelli patiently. "So he doesn't die of rot."

"Uh..." Lena took another step back.

And the day started out so well...

Santelli glanced at Matrice, shrugged, and drew an axe from his belt. A good saddle axe, seemingly deceptively small and light. The brigadier tossed the weapon, caught it, and bent sharply, crouching at the same time to increase the force of the blow. Elena didn't even have time to flinch; it all happened too fast. The polished metal with the dark sun branding glinted, and the point struck the board with a thud, shredding muscle and bone. The unfortunate man howled, twitching in his bonds, the pain penetrating even the impenetrable alcoholic fog.

Santelli pulled the axe out of the wood and carelessly tossed aside the severed leg just above the ankle, trying not to get dirty in the immediate and violent gush of blood. The red streams didn't look real against the swollen purple flesh.

"I made it easy for you. Work," the foreman ordered just as briefly.

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[1] Sanguine, aka "red chalk," a variety of kaolin clay. A material for drawing, very popular until the 18th century, when natural reserves ran out. Thanks to its rich brown-red shades, it allowed a good transfer of images of the human body.

[2] Battleground