(Continued from Ch 50, Lady Doe)
The Chronicles of Rapina
Chapter 51, Leeched
A warrior dressed in full plate and leather armor soiled with the grime of battle walked into the leech's clinic in the largest town in northern Norwit. He set an unconscious woman on a bench in the waiting room.
"I am sorry, I am closing for the day," Leech Fraksen said.
Rames dumped half the money from a small purse into his hand, transferred it to a one of his belt pouches and then tossed the half empty purse to the leech. The full helmet Rames wore further modified his disguised voice. "Hold, leech. There be a trunk full o' ladies finery I left at th' back door. Me an' me buddies, we foun' dis 'ere wench in an orc lair up north. She was the most well-spoken orc slave wench we ever did meet. She helped us getting around the lair some but she warn't much of a warrior. She got zapped by a orc shaman when we took da heart of deir hideaway. She gots some things that makes us figure she's noble born only we don't want some lord blamin' us for stealin' 'er, so we're leaving 'er with you. We pawned 'er jewels at jacinth's pawn shop to float 'er rescue and medical fees. If you find 'er daddy, maybe 'e'll grease yer palm too."
"But you can't just leave her here," Leech Fraksen said.
Rames grabbed the leech's lapels and lifted him off the floor. "Listen mister, the only thing I'm good at is killin', understand?"
The leech nodded in terror.
"Healers are supposed to be merciful, or at least greedy. You go about one or the other an' leave me ta killin.' It took me long enough ta haul the wench down this far South. I'm not waitin' around tryin' ta find 'er dad and see if 'e likes me, understand? Now you jus' do your duty as a leech and let me go."
"Yes sir, I ah, of course. I'll take care of everything. Mercy is my middle name." The leech clutched the purse tightly.
"Gud luck then." Rames set the man down, waved briefly and stalked out of the clinic.
----
It was nearly a day later when the doctor heard the first moans of pain and actual consciousness from the mystery woman's room.
"Uhhuuuuhhh." The patient moaned. It seemed like she had been dead, or dreaming of a bleak rocky landscape and a dingy orange sky but she must have just been asleep for a very long time. Sometimes she seemed to escape the dingy netherworld to wander through the busy rooms of what appeared to be a small clinic, but it was impossibly crowded. It could not have been real unless there was a war on. Maybe she had dropped from exhaustion. Every muscle in her body ached, even quite a few she did not know she had. Her left arm felt dead. It throbbed with a dull pain that was at its very worse in the palm of her left hand. She was not sure which hurt more, her body or her head. They seemed to be having a contest to see which could torment her more.
"Welcome back young lady. You are safe here. My name is Leech Fraksen, what is yours?"
"It's, uh. I'm sorry?" The young woman mumbled as her almond-shaped hazel eyes fluttered open. She was in a clinic's sick room. It seemed somehow familiar to the clinic in her dreams, yet it was so empty.
"Your name, girl, what's your name?" Leech Fraksen asked.
The woman seemed to think for a while, "I... I don't know," She said.
"Have you suffered a blow to the head?" Leech Fraksen asked.
"My head hurts badly. Everywhere hurts badly. My left arm feels numb but it still hurts badly, especially the palm of my hand. My eyes seem okay, at least I can see."
"I will have to examine you," Leech Fraksen said.
"Okay, just don't expect me to move anything for you. Every single solitary muscle aches horribly." The vibrations from the impact of her large shield against a practice dumby echoed through her memory as she relived a fragment of her past. After the hours of martial drill her muscles ached. The touch of Leech Fraksen's examination broke her out of her reverie. Her skin was far too tender to enjoy the touch of a man.
Leech Fraksen examined the lady. He could not help raising an eyebrow. She had a figure most of his female patients would have sold their souls for. On the other hand, she seemed to have some sort of bruising over her entire body except for a hand-sized area across her eyes and another hand-sized patch just under her breasts. The second patch had somehow spread upwards to encompass her breasts while still leaving the skin between them and elsewhere around the intact area as damaged as it was across the rest of her body.
If he had to guess he would have to say that some sort of magical healing had been applied to the two unusually intact areas, but that it had been inadequate to do more than, at least temporarily, save the young lady's life. He might have thought she had been severely beaten, except that the bruising was too even and uniform to have been done with any sort of body part or instrument. In addition her hair had fallen out and was now growing back in. Currently it was no longer than the beard of a man with five o'clock shadow.
"Do you remember the adventurer who brought you here?" Leech Fraksen asked.
"There was an adventurer?" The lady asked.
"I'll take that as a no. What about being abducted by orcs, do you remember that?" Leech Fraksen asked.
The woman squinted. Her memory was full of dreams and nightmares from before she had come to. It seemed she must have been awake before now. The room she was in seemed familiar, but where were all the wounded stumping around in pain trying to get the doctor's attention? "Not dreams, I need memories," the woman thought to herself. A fragment of her past surfaced revealing a dozen lusty orcs standing around her in rapt attention as she lay in a puddle of their cum hungrily taking one after another. The woman blushed, "I am sorry, I cannot remember much, but I am pretty sure the orcs had me. Do you know who I am?" She asked.
"No, but your manner of speech is educated. The adventurer that dropped you said he and his buddies had found you captive in an orc lair. He said the spell of an orc shaman had hit you. He left a trunk of things. If you like I can search them to see if there is any clue to your identity."
Her memory wandered to reveal a shaman enspelling two familiar warriors. The Norseman she recognized as one of the bath-masters from her recent martial The warriors vibrated in place unable to move effectively because of the rattling spell of a troll shaman. Her memory held a troll shaman not an orc shaman? Other trolls attempted to carve her friends into meat. The scene shifted and she was caressing the mottled skin of the troll shaman. She took hold of his mighty erection and engulfed it between her legs. Uuuurrgh, the woman groaned in pain as the leech continued to examine her. "You can check the trunk if you want. I can only remember bits and pieces. They don't even make sense. It's like trying to remember a dream."
"I will apply clove oil to your skin and give you something to help with the pain in your head. My wife will be in to help you with your toilette." Leech Fraksen said.
"Thank you," The woman whispered wanly.
---
The next day the Leech talked to the young woman after he finished with his other patients.
"There is a man in town that draws. He offered to sketch your picture so we could pass it around at church and see if anyone knows you. My wife will also search the trunk full of belongings the adventurer dropped off for clues today. Would you like that?" Leech Fraksen asked.
"I-I guess so. Why can I remember how to talk if I can't remember my own name?" the young woman asked.
"Don't worry miss, I've heard of this sort of thing before, even seen it to one extent or another. Sometimes it happens with head injuries or in cases of enormous stress, shock or trauma. The mind seems to store knowing kinds of things and doing kinds of things in two different areas. You can forget what you know, and still know how to do what you did. Most people eventually recover. Sometimes doing something you did before you forgot yourself can help bring back the knowing associated with the doing," the leech said.
"Thank you Leech Fraksen," the woman whispered.
-----
Two days later it was Saturday, and Mark Reins came with his charcoals and parchment. Charlotte Fraksen finished helping the new patient clean up and then showed Reins in.
"So you're the mystery girl. How are those mage wounds coming?" Reins asked.
"Slowly mending. I am glad you are not painting. I don't think my skin is supposed to be yellow and blue," the young woman said.
"You look beat up for sure, but I won't draw your bruises and I'll add some more hair. Artistic license is better than makeup." Reins smiled as he began to draw. I shouldn't be more than an hour," he said.
A distant look came to the woman's eyes as a daydream or fragment of memory surfaced. A robed man spoke to her from the past, "Makeup is an art, with a bit of rouge and shading we make this dead woman look nearly alive." The woman snapped back to the present, "Er, It's okay, take your time. Now that I'm doing a little better I enjoy company," the woman said.
"Your nostrils are moving, do you smell something?" Mark Reins asked.
"It's just a tingle I get." She did not add that it seemed to happen primarily when men were present. It did not make a lot of sense to her yet.
Reins worked steadily until he had completed a portrait. "There you are."
The woman squinted and cocked her head, "Do I look like that?" She asked.
"I've been told my portraits are very good," Reins said.
"Oh, um, it's just that I have not seen myself since, since before the spell." The woman looked decidedly confused.
Reins held up his index finger and spoke into the other room, "Mrs. Fraksen, do you have a mirror I could burrow. The patient wants to see if I have done well and cannot remember what she looks like."
Mrs. Fraksen brought a mirror and the woman stared at herself for the longest time, tracing her fingers over her face and looking at her very short reddish auburn hair. Finally she looked at the portrait again.
"It is a good likeness. Thank you, Mark. "I cannot believe the things I cannot remember."
"Or some of the things I can," she added silently within her mind.
"It's my pleasure, uh, well whatever your name might be. The Vindicator enjoins us to help those in need," Reins said.
The woman squinted as she heard a voice from her fragmented past, "Your sins are grave for one so young." The voice was that of a priest wandering the halls of her memory. He had the eyes of madness." The woman blinked, "Uh of course," she mumbled.
-----
A week later the clattering of hooves filled the lane outside the leech's office. The movement of armed men could be heard outside and several came in.
A man clad in armor strode into her room.
"Bellany! It is you!" The man looked to be about to pick her up and hug her but the leech put his arm before the man's chest.
"Forgive me milord, the lady is bruised to the bone nearly everywhere on her body. Were you to hug her, the pain would be excruciating," Leech Fraksen cautioned.
Bellany put her head in her hands, "I am so sorry. I am more than half-dead and everywhere bruised. I do not remember anyone. I cannot even remember my own name."
You are Bellany Norwit, my daughter. You are in Norwit and I am Lord Darl Norwit the Baronet of Norwit under Marquis Avengene. We were sure you were dead. Leech Fraksen said an adventurer brought you in. He lifted the leech right off the floor and told him he was only good at killing and that the leech ought to handle the mercy for him," Norwit chuckled.
The ache in her left palm against her forehead intensified and an eerie scene filled Ballany's mind. She was looking at the specter of herself standing in a barren yet somehow familiar landscape. "Daddy is a very busy man. I spent much more time with mother but he taught me chess one year on the eve of the vindicator's birth."
Bellany looked up at Lord Norwit, "I am sorry I don't remember you. Are you sure I am your daughter?" She asked.
The pain in Lord Norwit's eyes was evident, as if his daughter's words had stabbed him through the heart. I am sure you are my daughter. "You have grown some, and filled out quite a bit, but I know my own daughter's face. Early last fall you were making the journey to the Barony of Bristol to go to a prestigious boarding school. Your guards and coach were overcome by orcs. I feel so badly. Just a day after you left I received word that two of our forts had fallen to orcs and giants. Usually we would have known earlier, but this group of orcs was uncommonly efficient. Not a single scout escaped the night of the attacks. The orcs took your carriage. We found the remains of the guards.
Things got so bad that year I had to request aid from Marquis Avengene several times. We nearly lost our keep a few weeks later. That orc tribe nearly broke us. Reinforcements from the south arrived just in time. Thankfully, Avengene later struck up an important alliance with Lord Heinrich Li'Yieraun and his mage, Nordula. With the aid of a mage for transportation and the power of the highest priests of the Vindicator, we put many of the giants into their graves. We had never seen so many giants working for the orcs before."
Bellany nodded, "I wish I could remember you. I wish I could remember anything. Bellany hesitated in confusion, did you teach me chess?"
Norwit brightened, "Yes, I did. I never spent as much time with you as I should have, but one winter on the eve of the vindicator's birthday when you were eight years old I did teach you chess. I am sorry your memory is damaged. Maybe it is better this way. You were taken by orcs. The Vindicator knows how they must have brutalized you. This way you have a fresh start."
Bellany nodded gravely, "You mean I am probably not a virgin."
"No, but you are alive and that is what counts, "You cannot imagine how much your mother and I worried"
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This ends Leeched, Chapter 51 of The Chronicles of Rapina.
The story continues in Chapter 52, A Night As Dark As Sable
Copyright 2002 by Rapina