“Sir,” he said, and I turned back to the lantern-lit bothy and the still figure crumpled on the floor. I thrust away Cabal’s inquiring muzzle, and ordered the great hound to lie down in the far corner. I felt Gault’s heart and found it still beating faintly, and straightened him into an easier position, thinking as I did so, that it was so that one straightened the crumpled dead.
Gwalchmai came very soon. I heard his uneven step outside, hurrying, and next instant he was in the doorway. “What is so urgent, Artos?”
“Gault,” I said, and moved aside to give him more space. “He’s taken an arrow under the ribs.”
Gwalchmai limped forward and knelt at Gault’s other side. “Reach down the lantern and hold it for me. I can’t see in this gloom.”
I did as he bade me, and we leaned together over the wound in the pool of yellow light. “Who broke off the shaft?” Gwalchmai demanded. He had already drawn his knife and was cutting the lacing of Gault’s war shirt.
“He did it himself, so that his men should not know.”
“So — well, I daresay it will make little difference in the long run. It would have given me a better purchase. . . .” He cut the last thong that held the battle shirt together on the right side, and lifted it back, with the blood-sodden linen tunic beneath; and was silent, looking down at the wound that was laid bare. At last he raised his eyes to mine. “Artos — what am I to do?”
“Light of the Sun, man, that’s for you to say. Get the barb out, I suppose. Why else should I have called you?”
“Not quite so simple. If I leave the barb where it is, he’ll be dead in three days — an ugly death. If I try to get it out, the chances are around a hundred to one that I shall kill him here and now.”
“But there is the hundredth chance?”
“There is the hundredth chance.”
We looked at each other across Gault’s body. “Do it now,” I said, “while he is unconscious. At the worst, death will be quicker and kinder that way.”
Gwalchmai nodded, and got to his feet, and I heard him shouting from the doorway for hot water and barley spirit and more rags. He remained there until the things were brought, then returned and knelt down, setting out the tools of his trade beside him. “Get something to put under his back — we must have him arched backward to draw the belly taut.”
I grabbed the old cloak and an armful of bracken from my bed, and made them into a firm roll, then lifted Gault while Gwalchmai arranged it under him, so that when I laid him down again his body was bent backward like a half-drawn bow, the skin drawn tight over breast and belly.
“So, that will serve. Now the lantern again.”
I knelt there for what seemed as long as a whole midwinter night, intent on holding the horn-paned lantern perfectly steady, that no tremor of light might confuse eye or hand at the crucial moment, while Gwalchmai, working with the complete absorption that shut him off from all men at such tunes, bathed away the blood so that he might see exactly the edges of the wound, and again took up his knife. I watched the sure, intent work of his hands as he began with infinite care to enlarge the wound. Later, he laid down the knife and took up a fierce little probe, then another, and later still, returned to the knife again. It seemed to grow unbearably hot in the bothy, I could feel the sweat prickling in my armpits, and beads of it shone on Gwalchmai’s forehead, and yet the night was a cool one, and I had no fire under the turf roof. From time to time, whenever Gwalchmai bade me, I felt Gault’s heart. His upturned face was frowning, the teeth bared as though in intolerable pain, but I think that in truth he did not feel anything. I hope to God that he did not. At one time I thought his heart was stronger and his breathing more steady, but maybe it was only my own desire that deceived me; or maybe it was a last flicker of life. . . . Quite suddenly, both began to grow fainter.
By that time we must have been working on him for the best part of an hour, and the thing was almost done. “Gwalchmai — can you give him a respite? His heart is fading.”
Gwalchmai gave an infinitesimal shake of the head. “Respite will not serve him now. Moisten his lips with the barley spirit.”
And only a few moments later he sat back to draw his own breath, then leaned forward once more and took hold of the short end of arrow shaft which now lay in a little oozing blood-filled hole. I shut my teeth and for an instant my eyes. When I looked again, he was laying a reeking arrowhead on the ground beside him. Blood gushed out in a red wave, and Gault drew a great choking breath that seemed to tear itself free of breast and rattling throat, while a convulsive shudder ran through his whole body — and we, kneeling alive in the lantern light, knew that the hundredth chance had been denied to us.
Gwalchmai sat back on his heels, and said with a great weariness in his voice, “Hang up the lantern again. We shall not be needing it any more.” He rubbed his hands across his face, and when he took them away, his forehead was smeared with Gault’s blood. “We know so little — so hideously little.”
“Better he should go now than in three days’ time,” I muttered, trying, I think, to comfort myself as much as him. I got up, suddenly as tired as though I had just come out of battle, with no glow of victory to sustain me, and turned to hang the lantern again where it had hung before. And even as I did so, the pad of hurrying footsteps sounded outside, and Levin was in the doorway. “Gault bade me take over and see to the men while he made his report,” he began in a rush, “and so I could not come before. I —” His gaze fell on the body on the ground, and the rush broke off short, into silence. Then he said, slowly and carefully, as though he were a little drunk, “He is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I knew something was amiss, but he would not tell me. He said only to see to the men while he came up here to make his report. So I could not come before.”
He came a step nearer, and saw the bloody arrowhead and the few surgeon’s tools that Gwalchmai had begun to gather up for cleaning, and looked at Gwalchmai, his mouth flinching. “You killed him, you bloody butcher!”
“We both killed him,” I said. “Gwalchmai will tell you that if the barb was left in, he must die within three days; if it was cut out, there was one chance in a hundred of saving him. That’s long odds, Levin.”
“Yes, I —” He pressed the back of his hand across his forehead. “I am sorry, I — n-not sure what I’m saying. . . . Did he — say anything?”
“He was already out of his body,” Gwalchmai said, getting to his feet.
But the other had knelt down beside his dead, bending forward to look into the set frowning face, and I do not think he was aware of us any more. He cried out sharply and shudderingly, “Why didn’t you wait for me? — Gault, why didn’t you wait for me? I would have waited for you!” and slipped down full length with his arms around the body as a woman might have done.
Gwalchmai and I looked at each other, and went out of the bothy.
Outside the door hole, he said, “I’ll send a couple of men to carry the body away.” And then, “Best have a care, or we’ll be needing a grave dug broad enough for two.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said. I heard his footsteps die away into the darkness between the watch fires, gauging his tiredness by the slur of sound as he dragged his crippled foot after him. I stayed where I was, under the Red Dragon on its lance shaft beside the door hole, listening for any sound from within the bothy, until I heard the feet of the men Gwalchmai had sent; and then turned back into the lantern light. Levin was kneeling beside the dead man, staring down at him, and seeing them there with the lantern spilling its pool of dim yellow radiance on the two wild-barley-colored heads, I realized as I had never quite done before, how alike they were. It was as though the link between them was so potent that even in their outward seeming they could have nothing apart from each other. “The men are coming up from the camp to carry him away,” I said.