Inspired by the prompts for: Bad Things Happen Bingo - Manhandling and Febuwhump - 21 Unresponsive; 26 Help them
"Open the gate!" Gallatin yells, pounding at the sturdy wooden door with both his fists. It is still dark and most people inside the fort fast asleep. The guards on duty will not be thrilled to be so rudely disturbed while playing cards or whatever guards do to while away their time, but this is an emergency. It cannot wait until dawn.
A hatch opens and a young man in black Nilfgaardian armour peers out into the night.
"What do you want?" he grunts in the most unfriendly manner possible, seizing Gallatin up as if he were an ugly insect.
"I need a healer or a mage. My friend is badly injured—"
"Come back after sunrise when the gate opens, like everybody else. Now, bugger off, pointy!" The guard is just about to slam the hatch shut again when Gallatin's hand shoots forward, grabbing the man by his neck in a vice-like grip.
"Damn you," he growls into the guard's face. "My friend is dying. He's a Nilfgaardian commander! Your emperor will personally gut you if he doesn't make it because some dipshit guard had the audacity not to open the fucking gate in an emergency!"
His threat seems to bear fruit, or maybe it is the fact that the guard can hardly breathe, in any case, Gallatin can hear a bell being rung. More guards come running. He lets go of the man who immediately steps away from the hatch, gasping for air. The guards might not exactly welcome him with open arms but Gallatin does not care, the main thing is that the heavy gate swings open.
"Where's the officer in charge of this shithole? I need to talk to him! Now!" Gallatin demands, striding through the gate with the two horses in tow despite the half dozen guards who have drawn their swords and are pointing them at him. Eying the bossy elf suspiciously, the soldiers surround him. Then their leader steps forward.
"Your weapons, elf!" he commands. Gallatin hates to give up his only means of defending himself against the Dh'oine, but if he wants to save his friend, he has no choice. He opens the buckle of his belt and lets it drop to the ground together with his sword and sheath. There are several daggers, too, that follow suit.
"That's it?" the officer asks and Gallatin nods. "Search him!" the man orders and two soldiers step up to him.
"Damn, we don't have time for this!" Gallatin hisses. "My friend is dying while we speak! He's an officer in the Nilfgaardian Secret Service. Help him, for fuck's sake!"
"Seems you're in luck then, elf," the officer says, furrowing his brow. "A mage arrived from Nilfgaard just yesterday. Follow me! And no tricks or your corpse will dangle from the gallows tree quicker than you can say 'Ouch'!"
A mage! Gallatin's face lights up at the offier's words despite his threat. Gods, that is good news and very lucky indeed. A mage is so much better than a healer or field medic or a barber surgeon. More often than not those are nothing but charlatans and even if they are not, their abilities to heal are very limited. A real mage, however, could mean the difference between life and death. Even with a mage, there is no guarantee that Cahir will survive, Gallatin is painfully aware of it, but it will strongly shift the odds in his friend's favour.
They do not have to go far. The officer halts in front of a big, black tent adorned with the emblem of the golden sun that has been put up at the edge of the parade ground under a huge, ancient tree. As if she had somehow divined their arrival, a dark-skinned, young-looking woman with short, curly black hair steps through the open tent flap at the very same moment. The woman is clad in a silver-grey robe and emanates an aura of power that makes Gallatin's skin prickle with electricity. She casts one quick glance at the elf and the unmoving body on the pack horse and immediately takes charge.
"You there, get him off the horse, quick!" she orders the guards who stand closest to Cahir. "But careful, you dolts, don't drop the man!" Then she ushers them into the tent's dimly lit, spacious interior with their burden. Gallatin and the officer follow the soldiers inside.
"Here, onto the table!" With one wide motion of her arm, the woman sweeps all kinds of maps and scrolls that are spread out on the table onto the floor to make space. While the guards carry out her orders she magically lights a dozen or so torches. Then she has a closer look at her ghastly pale patient. Her eyes grow wide with surprise.
"Cahir!" she exclaims. There is no response from the sick man on the table nor any other sign that he is still alive. Is he even breathing? Quickly, she puts one hand on Cahir's chest to check for the tiniest, invisible movement while, with two fingers of the other hand, feeling his neck for a pulse. She breathes a sigh of relief. The pulse is far too fast and worryingly weak and thready and his breathing awfully shallow, but he is not dead.
"You know him?" Gallatin asks, as surprised as the sorceress.
"Yes, I do. What happened?" she inquires, now feeling Cahir's brow. It is so hot, you could almost fry an egg on it if you wanted to.
"Caught a knife in the back more than two days ago, up in the highlands. The wound's badly infected."
"I can smell that." The sorceress wrinkles her nose. Although healing has never been her favourite occupation, let alone felt like a vocation to her as it was the case with Marti Södergren or Triss Merigold, she has helped treat injured Nilfgaardian soldiers as early as in King Fergus's wars against Etolia and Gemmeria more than thirty years ago, long before Cahir was even born. The stomach-turning stench of rotting flesh caused by gangrene is not new to her. It will take a hell of a lot of chaos to fix it, though. If it is not too late already.
"Out, everybody out!" she commands in a tone of voice that tolerates no contradiction. She needs to concentrate and she cannot do that surrounded by nosy soldiers. And with the worried gaze of this elf following her every movement. Funny, she never knew Cahir had an elven friend. Might be an interesting story. She will definitely ask him about it - if he lives.
"You heard the Lady Fringilla, elf," the officer says and, none too gently, pushes Gallatin toward the exit. Gallatin hates to be parted from his sick friend but this Fringilla woman not only seems to be a very powerful and competent mage but also genuinely concerned about Cahir. She will do whatever she can to save his life, right?
"Follow me, the commander of the fort will want to have a word with you," the officer adds, leaving the tent. Gallatin complies. With no weapons and once again surrounded by the guards, the sharp points of their swords trained at him, he hardly has a choice. It is natural, too, that the fort's commander wants to hear a full report of who he is and what happened. Hopefully it will not take too long so that he can soon come back to check on Cahir.
Unfortunately, things do not go as Gallatin would have wished, the contrary. He follows the officer toward a big stone building, no doubt the commander's home. Instead of being led into his office, though, on the officer's signal, the guards suddenly turn on him, slam him into a wall, tie up his hands behind his back, push him down a flight of stairs and lock him up inside a dark, dank cellar room that smells of mould and shit.
Damn, why on earth are those arseholes doing this?
Gallatin does not have to wait very long for the explanation. First he hears the heavy steps of several men climbing down the stairs, then the door to his room opens with a creak. A middle-aged man with a greying beard and temples and an air of authority enters, a torch in his hand.
"So, this is our unexpected, pointy-eared guest," he says with a sneer, holding the torch so close to Gallatin's face that he fears his eyebrows are going to burn off. "This guard here," the man motions for one of the other, much younger soldiers to step forward into the light, "you might remember him, has reported an incident at the gate. A bloody elf attacked and almost choked him to death. You can still see the red welts left behind by said elf's dirty fingers!"
"Commander, Sir, it was an emergency, I can explain—"
The commander waves his hand and the guard's fist hits Gallatin square in the face before he can finish his sentence. He staggers backward against the wall, momentarily dazed.
"Now listen closely, elven scum," the commander hisses, "to what my son and his friends here have to tell you. I assure you, the message won't be particularly difficult to understand."
The two friends grab Gallatin roughly by his arms and hold him in a vice-like grip while the commander's son first knees him in the stomach, then punches him again, this time so hard that blood gushes from his nose.
"Next time, elf," the commander adds menacingly while the manhandling continues, "make sure you remember to treat a soldier of Nilfgaard with the proper respect!"