Wilderness Super Short Stories

There was no doctor at the camp. There had been a delay before, stupefied, he thought to let them know he had been bit. And then—more agony; agony piled upon agony.

Not concealing their doubts as to their chances of saving his arm or him, they had slapped the rough tourniquet upon his arm, and had twisted down upon the stick until he moaned, unwillingly, in pain. Then they had dipped one of the big hunting knives into boiling water, and had cut his arm at the bite marks—gashing it across, with great, free-handed strokes, then back again at right angles; squeezing the cuts to make him lose the poisoned blood.

Then they had cauterized the wound. Sick, half afaint, to Coulter it seemed that they were deliberately thinking up additional tortures. The white-hot iron that seared his flesh, tormenting the agonized ends of nerves that already had borne past the breaking point, was the final, exquisite touch of agony.

Coulter was one of those men who bear pain—even a slight pain—with difficulty. Even the sight of blood made him faint. This was horrible beyond anything he had ever dreamed. The physical racking; the feel of the steel blade cutting through his own flesh and sinew, down to the bone, made him bite his lips till they spurted blood, in the effort to keep from screaming aloud.

He had expected to have fallen by now. Part of him wanted to but his feet kept trudging through the snow. The cold had stopped bothering him and all he wanted was to sleep but some stubborn, thoughtless, and uncaring sense of survival kept him walking southeast across the arctic wasteland.

His sword hung reassuringly on his back. The furs he wore sheltered his body from the sharp bite of the cold. Only his face was unprotected and this he covered from his nose down with a strip of blanket. His large pack was lighter now that his tinder and food were almost depleted. He was starting to feel as empty as his meager supplies.