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"Come on, Julius," the man wheedled. "I'll buy that black mare at the ridiculous price
you're asking."
"And her foal?"
"And her foal," the man agreed. "But only for an additional fifty. And that's doing you a
favor!"
"Oh, very well. You drive a hard bargain, my lord."
As the two men shook hands, Derry could hardly believe his good fortune, for the agreed
price was hardly half what the chestnut was worth if Derry could make good his boast to
repair the injury.
A groom brought a bucket of water, and Derry began carefully sponging out the
stallion's wound, amazed that the animal did not protest. Indeed, the powerful warhorse had
grown as meek and quiet as a lamb under the hands of the stranger lord in mail. Derry's head
was beginning to throb from the blow to his jaw, and his own blood ran down his left arm as he
worked, mingling with the stallion's, but he paid it no mind nor to his own growing
discomfort. He would be all right until he stood up, at least. His Uncle Trevor came to crouch
beside him, unrolling a small medical kit with needles and sutures, and Romare, the blacksmith
from Castle Derry, eased closer to inspect the injury.
"I've boasted about your talents, Romare," Derry murmured, "but you've taught me
everything I know about horses. Can we save him?"
"Since you've bought him, it's certainly worth a try, m'lord," Romare replied. "But why
don't you let me take over here? I can throw sutures as well as the next man. And someone
ought to see your arm. You're bleeding more than you think."
"He's right, you know," said the man in mail, reaching across to grasp Derry's arm below
the laceration as Derry rose wobblingly, steadying himself with a hand against the stallion's
side. "From the looks of it, you're going to need a few sutures yourself. That's quite a lump
you've got on your jaw, too." Bloodstained fingers lifted to lightly brush the knot, already
bruising. "Randolph, would you take a look at this, when you're finished with the groom?"
Derry had time to note only pale grey eyes and a shock of short-cropped yellow hair
above the man's mail shirt before his vision went dark, and he fainted.
Derry's next awareness was a resurgence of the throb in his jaw, a stinging pain
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overlying the ache in his left upper arm, and someone humming tunelessly, close to his head.
He opened his eyes to see a pleasant-faced man in black bending over him, drawing a damp
length of black silk from the bloody ruin of his left shirt sleeve. The stout blue linen had been
slit from elbow to shoulder to bare a laceration as long as a man's hand, and the sharp stinging
came from the needle the man was using to close the wound.
"Well, hello," the man said, smiling as he drew his thread snug. "You're among the living
again, I see. When you fainted, I feared you might have a concussion, but now I think it was
simply from the shock. You ought to be fine when you've had some rest."
"How long was I out?" Derry murmured.
"Oh, not very long. I've only just started sewing you up. Actually, I suppose we could
have just cleaned and bandaged it, but this will leave you with less scarring. You young men of
the nobility end up with enough scars, as it is. Murderous sharp, those warhorses' shoes and
filthy, too, though I think I've gotten the wound clean enough. If you had to miss the cleaning or
the suturing, I think you got the best of the bargain by sleeping through the former not that
this is pleasant, I'll grant you. I'm Master Randolph, by the way, and I'm trained to do this, so
you needn't worry. My lord didn't want you turned over to just any local barber-surgeon."
Derry did his best not to gape as the man's monologue wound down, though he did stare
a bit. The man who had identified himself as Master Randolph appeared to be in his mid-
thirties, and bore a small gryphon's head on the badge embroidered on his left breast shades
of green and gold on black, the shield outlined in gold. Derry blinked, vague recognition of the
badge nibbling at the edges of memory, then raised his head for a better look at what the man
was doing, grimacing as the needle bit again into the edge of the wound.
"You do neat work," Derry murmured, as he laid his head back down and tried not to
flinch. "I'm Sean Derry."
"Yes, I know. The Earl Derry. Your uncle told me," the man replied. "Incidentally, he's
gone to settle accounts with Julius. Your smithy's working on the chestnut. And you've either
driven a very shrewd bargain or bought yourself some very expensive horse-meat and hide."
"I know," Derry replied, laying his good arm across his eyes. "It's a gamble I probably
shouldn't have taken. We've spent so much already, getting me outfitted for my knighting. I
probably could've gotten the bay for far less, too, if he'd gone to auction. His confirmation is
good, but those white legs would've brought the price down."
"Hmmm, he'll be a serviceable mount for you," Randolph said. "And those white legs
will make him distinctive."
Derry started to chuckle at that, stifling a yelp as one of the stitches pinched, and picked
up his head to see what Randolph was doing. The wound was perhaps a third closed. As he
murmured apologetically and laid his head back, turning his face away, he was startled to find
another man crouching on his other side the man in the mail shirt. Derry wondered when he'd
come in.
"Well, young Lord Derry, how are you doing?" the man asked, smiling. "Is the good
Master Randolph just about finished torturing you?"
His grey eyes held a hint of fog and summer rain, but lit with sunlight. And contrary to
Derry's earlier impression, he was probably little older than Derry himself mid-twenties, at
the most. Derry found himself liking the man instantly.
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"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir," he said, smiling tentatively. "You both
seem to know who I am, but I'm afraid I don't know you."
"Hmmm, that isn't important just now," the man murmured. "What is important is
getting you patched up. You were quite a hero today, you know. The parents of the child you
saved are ready to nominate you for sainthood. How's that lump on your jaw? He didn't hit his
head anywhere else, did he, Ran?" he asked the surgeon, probing with both hands in Derry's
curly brown hair to feel for swelling.
About to pursue the question, Derry felt an almost uncontrollable urge to yawn and
winced in the middle of it, as Master Randolph's needle continued its annoying work.
"Think about something else," the man in the mail shirt said softly, those incredible
silvery eyes gently catching and holding his as the man's hands braced his head from either
side. "Close your eyes and imagine yourself somewhere else. Detach yourself from the
discomfort."
Yawning hugely, Derry obeyed, and found that the discomfort did diminish. In fact, he
even dozed. When he came to his senses again, the man in the mail shirt was gone, and Master
Randolph was tucking in the last ends of the bandage on his shoulder. Uncle Trevor was sitting
on a stool, looking down at him anxiously.
"How do you feel?" Trevor asked.
"Like I've been kicked by a horse in the shoulder and jaw," Derry replied, stirring
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