Gently, I dribbled the Quickheal potion into Aryennos’ mouth, supporting his head with my other hand and trying not to shift his left shoulder. Someone really needed to invent an injectable version, but failing at that, I’d have preferred to immobilize his shoulder before anything else. It took time, since I wasn’t going to risk him aspirating it, but after the first couple of rounds, he woke up enough to respond, at least, and swallowed when I told him to.

  Carefully, I wrapped the one Bandage I had in reach to cover the back left of Aryennos’ skull where the bump was. I couldn’t be sure, with the swelling and bleeding, whether he’d damaged the occipital bone itself. I hoped not. That could be bad. That whole process was also tricky, considering the care needed to avoid jostling his left shoulder.

  Probably his weight had come down on his left leg, which had buckled either due to injury or bad footing, and his shoulder had smmed into something or he’d instinctively grabbed for support and his own weight at a bad angle had done it. Then he’d nded on his back and his head hit a rock. That would account for all the significant trauma being down one side.

  “Nathan?” Serru said. “Are you directly in the path of the opening?”

  “Off to the side. Why?”

  “I’m going to roll you the things you asked for. We’re working on how to move him. It won’t take us much longer and it will be better than simply a bnket on the ground.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Go ahead.”

  The bundle literally just rolled down the slope, given an obviously forceful push. I had plenty of time to grab it before it could keep going. Two familiar bnkets were rolled together and wrapped tightly and tied with two of my collection of triangle scarves, my navy-white-goldenrod-maroon one and another that was woven to look like orange and red and yellow feathers. I untied and unrolled it carefully and found the Splints and Bandages and Shears in the centre along with Jilsha’s earth-toned scarf.

  “Perfect! Thank you!”

  Okay, first priority, immobilize that left arm. I folded and rolled one bnket and tucked it in pce between his chest and his upper arm. It was easier to ease an end of each scarf under him lower on his abdomen and work them gently upwards. I paused to use the Shears on the strap of his bag—they severed it cleanly and effortlessly, unexpected but a relief—and tug it aside so it wouldn’t interfere.

  He moaned.

  “Aryennos? You with me?”

  “Anywhere,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said gently. “Hang in there. I’ll get you fixed up for the moment, then Serru and Terenei will get you out of this hole you found, and then I’ll turn to centaur and give you some proper care.”

  “Mossling... watch out...”

  “Mossling? I didn’t see one, but we’ll stay alert.” I touched the choker’s bead again. “Be careful, Aryennos says there was a mossling. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”

  “We’ve seen no sign,” Serru said, “but we’ll watch for that.”

  “Okay, I’m hoping this won’t hurt after that Anodyne, but I’m not counting on it. Ignore any noises for a minute.”

  It did hurt, tying two scarves in different directions to keep his arm immobile and supported, with the bnket trapped between it and his side to cushion it and keep it at a better angle, but a lot less than it could have: he didn’t scream fit to be heard back in Ottermarsh, which tended to be the most common response of patients with dislocated shoulders in my experience.

  I tucked the other bnket over him and checked that he was still breathing well and his heart, though fast, was steady. Then I cut up the leg of his pants as far as I had to in order to wrap the lower limb with the Splints and Bandage. Was it actually broken? I really wished I knew. It wouldn’t be long before I could do a proper Diagnosis, I had to remember that: even if there wasn’t a hospital, only whatever I could do, I could actually do a lot.

  “Nathan?” Serru said. “You’ll need to guide this from your end so it doesn’t hit Aryennos. The ornithians are harnessed to our end, so when you tell us you’re ready, they can pull.”

  What they fed down the slope took me a moment to process.

  Somewhere they’d found long round poles about as big around as my thumb and tied them together with... was that fishing line? Doubling them would certainly make them stronger, and the edges of a bnket were trapped between those yers as well as tied with more cord at the corners. The reinforced long poles had been crossed near the upper end and spread farther from each other at the lower end where I was, and Serru’s gathering staff served as the third side of the triangle, though it was too long for the task and hung over the ends to right and left. On the triangur surface were the two long narrow yellow cushions from the wagon, with another coil of rope on top of them.

  That clever pair had managed, while I was patching up Aryennos, to throw together a respectable travois with enough padding to protect him from the worst of the loose rock. It wasn’t going to be comfortable, but as long as I could get him secure, he shouldn’t take any more damage, at least.

  “You two are brilliant! That’s perfect!” Well, as perfect as we were going to get. “Where did you find the wood?”

  “Wagon canopy frame,” Terenei said. “Do you need help moving him onto it?”

  “Uh...” I considered how little Aryennos was really in any condition to move, and my own lower strength as a felid—okay, for my size I probably had no grounds to compin, but I was objectively smaller and even shifting him to do as much as I had had been an effort. “If one of you thinks you can get down here without adding to our casualty count, that might actually be a good thing.”

  “I’m on my way,” Serru said.

  “Go slow. The slope is extremely loose and slips easily, and there’s a deeper hole at the bottom.”

  “I’ll take care.”

  Meanwhile, I investigated, and pnned. If we could shift Aryennos onto this, with the leftover scarf to support his head and neck, and then loop the rope around over the bnket to secure him and reduce the odds of him slipping... with someone watching constantly, I thought we could get him up to the surface and campsite without exacerbating the crisis. I set his bag near the narrow end where his head could rest on it, wrapping the cut strap around the side bars to keep it roughly in pce despite the slope, and turned back to Aryennos to carefully arrange the rolled scarf around his neck.

  We’d have to get our stretcher-travois down a little farther, but that was going to be a lot easier with two.

  Aryennos moaned again, and stirred; his breath caught and he raised his right hand to paw fitfully at the bnket, trying to reach the bindings on his left arm.

  “Don’t do that,” I told him. “Seriously, you do not want to mess with that!” I scrambled to catch his right wrist before he could do harm to himself. He was, all too obviously, not in anything resembling a normal cognitive state, or at least, he drifted through one only intermittently.

  He jerked his right arm away from me, and the recoil as he got out of my insecure grip meant he thumped his own upper left colrbone.

  Anodyne or not, he shrieked and filed with, well, everything he could move.

  I didn’t have as much mass and the ground was terrible.

  I felt the lip of the rocky hole crumble under me, and cwed frantically for anything I could hold onto that was not my injured patient.

  Serru scrambled to get farther down the slope, but had to back up and seize the rope that was still around Aryennos’ midriff as more of the edge cracked and loosened. I did hear her cry my name as I fell.

  It was unpleasantly tight only for a couple of thudding heartbeats of collecting bruises and abrasions; then it felt armingly open on all sides but one.

  Weirdly, I felt my own body twist, and decided not to fight it.

  I nded on rough rock on feet and hands in a kind of crouch. That isn’t to say I didn’t feel the impact jar uncomfortably through my whole body, and I was probably going to ache, but that was better than the more likely alternatives by far.

  Oops. In retrospect, I really should have had them toss down a second rope so I could secure myself. We had enough rope that I couldn’t excuse it as a matter of priorities. Maybe I should look into some search-and-rescue training when I got home.

  I groped for my communicator. “I’m okay. I guess felids nd on their feet. Is Aryennos all right? Are you?”

  “Yes,” Serru said. “I think he is. Although I’m afraid I caused some pain and possibly more damage. I had to grab him and drag him onto the travois because so much of the ground gave way and there was no longer anywhere solid for him to be otherwise. I’m safe, I was farther back.”

  “Well, if you have him aboard, then I suggest you tuck that bnket over him more tightly, and try to make sure his legs are together and wrapped so they don’t fil around, and wrap the other rope around so he stays there. Then start pulling him up. I’ll be fine, and you can drop me a rope after he’s up on solid ground.”

  “I... all right. I don’t like it at all and we need to be quick. If you aren’t in water already, then the cave you’re in is higher but the tide is starting to come in by now. Stay right there and don’t get lost, the tunnels are a maze and it’s very easy to get turned around with no point of reference. Here, I’m tossing a lumina stone down. Pce it where you are so that you don’t lose track of the exact spot where the rope will be coming down.”

  A glowing spot of pink light gleamed and dropped towards me; I caught it in my cupped hands. “Got it. Thank you. Now take care of him.”

  I set the pink lumina stone, as instructed, on the ground where I’d nded, and only then stepped away to explore. There was something comforting about that point of light, an anchor to my friends, a reassurance that they weren’t going to just forget about me.

  Was there anything cool down here to gather? It was unlikely there was anything aggressive, and I almost certainly wouldn’t run into a grue, so I might as well look around. If I stayed still, I was going to stiffen up, which I definitely didn’t need, and it would be better to keep my mind busy against the nagging thoughts that I should be there with Aryennos while he was moved.

  The stone under my feline paws was fttish and smoothish, but there were cracks and fractures that left uneven spots, so I moved carefully. As my eyes adjusted, I began to notice pces that were less dark, although not actually bright; on investigation, it turned out that there were both bunches of crystals and clumps of fungus that glowed faintly. It probably wouldn’t even be visible in a location that wasn’t so devoid of other light.

  Interrupting Serru with questions right now was bad.

  Besides, I had literally nothing to gather anything in. My top was short-sleeved and stopped around navel-level, and I didn’t think stripping more or less entirely naked was worth it.

  On the other hand, if I gathered interesting things and left them near the pink light, I could ask them to throw down a bag when they came back for me and I could just toss it all inside then.

  I distracted myself from weirdly echoing near-silence, with only the wind’s wailing across openings and the distorted crashing that I thought was waves, by humming. As usual, I just went with whatever came to mind. In this case, the only song that my brain would settle on was Blondie’s ‘The Tide is High.’

  I collected whatever I could carry, and made several trips back. At least it gave me something to do. And besides, it was an old lesson in games: if you could collect it, especially if it glowed, you almost certainly wanted it for one reason or another.

  One of my paws spshed.

  I crouched and checked the stone under me. I’d come down on a lower bit, but even around that, it felt wet.

  I retreated towards the pink lumina stone. How fast did tide rise, anyway? I knew someone from New Brunswick who might have been able to answer that, but I had no idea, southern Ontario being some way from any ocean and thin on tides.

  “Guys? How’s it going up there? I can wait if you have your hands full, just whenever you get a chance.”

  “Nearly there,” Terenei said. “We snagged on a root and had to get free, and the ropes shifted and had to be retied, but it shouldn’t be much longer. Are you all right?”

  “Ah... for the moment, but it’s getting wet down the tunnel.”

  “We’ll be done and able to get you out well before there’s any danger,” Serru said. “It isn’t a low cave system if you’re only noticing water now.”

  “Gotcha. Just getting a little twitchy. I’m not used to being sidelined and waiting for rescue when someone else is in trouble. Concentrate on Aryennos. I can wait.”

  Water around my ankles wasn’t going to kill me. It was washing inwards, sure, but not with enough force to knock me over or anything, and it was still down the tunnel, not up where I’d fallen down. In fact, there was still more tunnel above that point, and I could distract myself gathering in that direction.

  “Nathan?” Serru said. She sounded a little out of breath. “Aryennos is safe. I’m going to toss a rope down. I’m going to stay back a bit just in case the edge crumbles any further. The rope is attached to the ornithians, and Terenei will have them start to pull as soon as you tell us you’re secure.”

  “Right. Can you throw down a bag too? I collected some stuff.”

  Terenei ughed. “Well, you have our newcomer well-trained, Serru.”

  “That will add useful weight to the end of the rope,” Serru said, completely unfazed.

  I hastened back to the pink lumina stone, my hands halfway full, and waited.

  Sure enough, the coral-coloured bag came over the edge, tied to the end of a rope.

  There were loops tied into the rope, too, four of them, which would give me a better grip than simply holding on possibly could.

  “Got it!” I freed the bag from the rope and slung it across my body, tossed everything I had gathered into it as quickly as I could even if it was wet, and scooped up the pink lumina stone, shaking water off it. With my feline feet in the lowest loops, I seized the upper ones. I didn’t think I needed to turn it into a harness of any kind, it wasn’t that far and I could hold on. “And I’ve got the rope! Go ahead!”

  The ornithian pair pulled steadily and smoothly, and it didn’t take long at all to reach the top. That was a bit trickier: the rope had been draped over a heavy root, which was certainly a better idea than just having it trail down over that unstable edge, but it complicated climbing up and over a bit.

  Serru was using the roots to give herself more stable footing, as well, and offered a hand to help me.

  As soon as we could, we both fled out of the vicinity of the tree.

  “Thanks,” I told her breathlessly.

  She nodded, and tilted her head towards the makeshift travois and Aryennos. “I have a bad feeling that his injuries might be worse now than before. There wasn’t much time to be gentle.”

  “At least he didn’t go down that hole. Here, I don’t know whether I gathered anything useful but if I could, I did.” I handed her the coral bag and brought up my HUD so I could switch to centaur.

  The biggest drawback of this form was the awkwardness of kneeling down to reach someone on the ground.

  Aryennos stirred when I touched him, and opened his eyes, although it took him a moment to actually focus.

  “I fell,” he said fuzzily.

  “You fell. And, being you, you did it thoroughly. You’ll be fine, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. You’re safe, no more falling, and we’ll have you all patched up in no time. Just rex and trust me, okay?”

  He mumbled something affirmative, and closed his eyes.

  Some people screamed and cried and hyperventited. Some just disconnected and went somewhere inside. Both were understandable, being hurt was frightening, but the tter were definitely easier to treat.