Well of Souls

Batra heard movement to her left and she pivoted on her heels: just in time to see the third attacker angle his way into a side alley and disappear.

For a minute, the only sound was their harsh, labored breathing. Phaser still in her hand, Batra collapsed into a huddle, her head aching, her ears still ringing. Her mouth tasted sour, and she worked her tongue, dislodging a clot that she spat to one side.

From her left, she heard Halak’s groan. She looked over. Halak had sagged to the pavement and lay on his stomach. A dark bloom of color stained the left arm of his tunic.

“Samir!” She crawled over on hands and knees to his side. Tucking the phaser into her waistband, she touched his arm with tentative fingers. They came away wet and black.

“Oh my God.” Carefully, Batra rolled the sleeve of his tunic up until she saw the wound: easily a six-to seven-centimeter slash along his left bicep, from which blood flowed but didn’t pulse.

“I don’t think it hit an artery,” she said. She was aware of how filthy her hands were, and she tried wiping them clean on her pantaloons: a hopeless task. “We need to get you to a doctor, and…”

Her eyes dropped to a spot on his right side. Her breath sizzled between her teeth. “Oh, no.”

There was another stain on his tunic, further down, along his right side. At first, she thought it was merely blood from his arm, but then she saw the stain grow before her eyes.

“Oh, no,” she said again, “oh, no, no.” With trembling fingers, she tugged up his tunic until she found the wound. Her heart iced with fear. The knife had sliced into Halak’s side, arcing down from the edge of his rib cage to the small of his back. She guessed that he must have turned, trying to deflect the blow with his arm, and only been partially successful. If he hadn’t turned, the knife would have stabbed down into the exposed angle of his neck made by his collarbone and shoulder blade: a lethal wound.

But this wound, my God, it looked bad, and they were far from anyone who might help them and… Stop.Batra gnawed on her lower lip, forcing her galloping thoughts to slow, shoving down the scream that balled into the back of her throat. She couldn’t help if she panicked.

Gently, she probed the wound. As soon as she peeled the edges apart, Halak moaned.

“No,” he said, his voice barely audible. His face had gone so pale his eyes looked like sunken, dark pits in a field of dusky chalk. “No, leave it, leave it, stop…”

“Quiet,” Batra said. “I have to see how bad.”

Halak subsided into silence. The small muscles along his jaw jerked and quivered as she moved her fingers over the wound. She breathed out. The wound wasn’t gaping, probably because the knife was sharp. Her eyes roved the fabric of the tunic. Its edges were not frayed, so the knife hadn’t been serrated. That was good, and in that, he’d been lucky. A serrated edge would have snagged on the way out, ripping and tearing at Halak’s flesh and causing more damage.

Think, think, what’s there?Her mind worked over what she knew. She remembered enough basic anatomy—comparative xenozoology had been a required course for her undergraduate work—and the most vulnerable organ in the path of the knife would have been Halak’s right kidney. She didn’t think the knife had gone in that deeply, but it was sharp enough to slice through fabric without fraying the edges. It couldn’t have been a stiletto either, because the wound was a slash not a puncture. Probably curved.Her eyes ran over the wound track. And very sharp.

She paused, her fingers poised over Halak’s skin. “I’ve got to pull the edges apart and see how deep.”

“Go,” said Halak. His voice came out as more of a grunt, and shiny beads of perspiration sprouted along his forehead and trickled in rivulets down his cheeks. “But hu…hurry. Not sure I can…stay…stay conscious…we’ve got…we’ve got….” He broke off, panting, unable to finish.

“I know. We’ve got to get off the street,” said Batra. She licked her lips. “Hang on.”

She eased the cut edges of his skin apart. They came away with a slight, moist, sucking sound. As if a stopper had been pulled, dark red blood gushered out and spilled down along Halak’s side to soak into the waistband of his trousers. But, as Batra watched, the flow diminished to a thick, steady stream. Not pulsing, so no arteries had been cut. Batra’s careful eyes inspected the wound. There was a thin ridge of fat, stained orange, just beneath Halak’s skin, and she saw where the knife had sliced through muscle. She couldn’t tell, but she didn’t think the knife had hit his kidney or gone into his abdomen.

“How…how bad?” Halak whispered.

“Bad,” said Batra. She rolled his tunic back over the wound. “Not as bad as it could be. But we’ll need a doctor to know for sure and…”

“No. No doctor. Dalal…not that… far….”

“Dalal?” Batra was astonished. “Samir, you need to see a doctor!”

“No,” said Halak. His throat worked in a painful swallow. “No, it’s not that bad. We need to get to Dalal and then get…get out…out of here.”

Batra opened her mouth to protest but didn’t. She didn’t have a prayer of getting out of the district alone. If they’d looked like victims for the coyotes before, now she’d have to fend off the vultures. Her alert eyes darted up and down the alley then up to scour the face of the tenements. All the windows were closed, their shutters drawn, or polarizing filters— why would you need polarizing filters in a dark alley?—dialed to maximum opaqueness.

No one peeping out to see what all the fuss is about. Probably because in a place like this, no one hears a thing.

Then her ears pricked. She listened, hard, and heard the sound again: a slight scraping, like the edge of a box being dragged on gravel.

Behind, and to the left.Barely breathing, she eased out the phaser tucked in her waistband with her right hand.

The sound came again.

The muscles of her haunches tensed, ready to spring. Batra pivoted, slowly, the phaser up, ready….

A wave of relief flowed through her limbs, leaving her weak and shaking. The man she’d put down with her phaser blast was starting to come around. She watched as his head moved feebly from side to side, and then, as his right leg flexed, bent at the knee, and then extended, the mystery of the gravel noise was solved: his shoe, scudding along stone.

Quickly, her eyes shifted to the one Halak had knocked out. He lay, unmoving, twins gouts of blood streaming from his nostrils.

Well, if one was coming around, it was high time for her and Halak to get gone. Batra swiped up her discarded pouch from where the third one had dropped it and tucked the phaser inside. As she turned, she caught a glint of metal in the gutter alongside the man’s body. The knife. Quickly, she scuttled over, plucking the gored blade from a slurry of gray mud and stagnant water. She wiped the blade clean on his pantaloons then tucked it into her waistband.

Halak was still hunched, almost doubled over. She dropped to a crouch alongside. “Samir,” she said, her tone urgent, “we have to go. Can you stand?”

He nodded. She moved around to his right side, planted her left shoulder into his right armpit, and helped him to his feet. He sagged; his tunic was clammy with sweat, and her skin crawled at the sticky feel of fresh blood oozing from the wound in his side.

“Samir,” she said, working to keep her voice calm, “Samir, which way? How far?”

For a moment, she thought he’d passed out, and she had to repeat the question twice before he answered. Then his eyelids fluttered.

“That way,” he managed to say, lifting his chin in the general direction in which they’d been heading. “Halfway down…on the le…left.” He stammered out the number of the tenement.

They headed out, Batra staggering under Halak’s weight that seemed to grow heavier with every step. Please.Her breath came in gasps, and she had a hard time keeping her footing on the slick stones. She wasn’t a religious woman, but she found herself offering up a prayer to whatever god might be watching over them now. Please, just let Halak live and please, just get us to this woman Dalal, and then we’ll do the rest, that’s all I ask.