Things Continue to Occur:
Rance's cries for help eventually reached the rest of the outpost's inhabitants. Anglur was the first to arrive. She gasped in surprise when she saw Olon. “Armok! What's happened to him? Is he...?”
“I checked, he's still breathing, but I think his legs are broken! And maybe his arms! And... I honestly don't know what else.”
Anglur took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Yes, I can see his legs are broken. Normal legs don't bend like that. They usually don't have the bones sticking out, either. Let's get him inside the tower,
carefully, and then see if we can find a doctor.”
“Find a doctor? There's only 12 of us here. I'm sure if we had a doctor around, we'd have met him already.”
Later:“Yeah, I've done some doctoring. I thought you'd realized that. I mean, I introduced myself as “Doc”.”
“You said you were a bone carver!”
Doc shrugged. “Same thing, really. A bone's a bone, when you get right down to it. The way I see it, the inside of a dwarf is about the same as the inside of a trout, right?”
“What? That doesn't make any...” Rance shook his head. “Look, can you treat Olon, or not?”
“I suppose I can try. Clear off a bed and put the man down, I'll take a look at him.”
Debate Time in the Bonelands:
“Look, as far as I can see, he was up on the north tower roof. You know how he liked-”
“Likes!”
“All right, you know he likes to look around the ruins on his own. Clearly he leaned against some old battlements that weren't as sturdy as he'd expected, and fell. I'm just amazed he's alive after a fall like that.”
“I just don't know. We've been digging into the roots of the towers, and that's not right. Who can say what we might have awoken and what it might do? Maybe it went after the boss first, and now it's going after us!”
“Oh, calm down, McDhubos”, Dariush interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Derm's explanation seems perfectly reasonable to me. It was just an unfortunate accident”
"Unless it was something else", Mipe muttered darkly. "Or someone else."
Before anyone could answer, Doc slipped in to the meeting hall and coughed loudly. The conversation stopped, and all eyes turned towards him. “I've finished my diagnosis, folks. Basically what I expected. His legs are broken. Well, shattered might be a better word. The left lower one is in the worst shape. Not sure what I can do about that. His left arm's got a fracture too, but it's nothin' I can't deal with. Can't really say how much I can fix, but barring infections, I think he'll live. Pretty damn lucky, I'd say. Not many can fall six stories and live to tell the tale.”
There was a long lull in the debate as each dwarf thought over the news. Kamudo, the fisher was the first to speak. “So, who's in charge while Olon is broke down?”
“That's a rather tasteless way of putting it.”
“So? It's still important! Who's going to be making decisions while he's recovering?”
“I think we can simply make decisions as a group for now,” Anglur answered. “There's only twelve of us here. I shouldn't cause any problems to work by committee temporarily. I've got some experience heading up meetings, and Olon appointed me broker recently, so I haven't any problem with taking a hand in organizing things. With all of your input, of course.”
“Only until Olon recovers, right?” McDhubos looked a bit uncertain.
“Of course.”
(A note: It is now late autumn. The first caravan has just arrived. Argonnek, no dwarf for you just yet, but you should be in the next entry. Also, does anyone know if dwarfs can recover from multiple compund fractures?)
Author
Topic: Bonelands: A historian's adventure. (Community Fort) (Read 4869 times)