Oaths

“Cycling the blood now, Doctor,” Edwin says.

“Good, Edwin,” says Doctor Dupont, “and the humors?”

“Stabilizing,” says Edwin, “I think we’ll be able to save him.”

Dupont watches the blood drain from the man’s blackened flesh from the numerous tubes implanted by Edwin, dark and viscous. Only when it gets pulled through the Machine and pumped back into him does it return to a semblance of its natural crimson color. A couple more cycles through his body and the Machine will get the blood back to its natural state. 

The man, kept safely unconscious by an infusion of Aether, is barely identifiable as a human. Along with the blackened flesh caused by the infected blood, his body is swollen almost to bursting. They already drained some excess fluid earlier, but Dupont worries they may need to drain some more if the swelling doesn’t start going down. 

“Poor bastard’s lucky we found him when we did,” he says, marking the man’s vitals on a chart, “a couple more minutes and the infection would’ve completely displaced his blood.”

“What was he doing all by himself in Sludgewalker territory?” Edwin asks.

Dupont shrugs. “Could be dozens of things, we won’t really know for sure until he wakes up.”

“My guess is bounty hunters,” Edwin says, “only someone on the run from a bounty man is stupid enough to stumble into a Sludgewalker den.

Dupont shrugs once more. “Maybe.” 

The man’s background is inconsequential, what’s important is keeping him alive long enough for his body to repair itself. 

It won’t be easy.

Sludgewalkers are savage, predatory creatures. Bacteria from a single bite infects a man, turning his body, piece by excruciating piece, into another Sludgewalker. The blood is the point of no return. Once the infection takes over the blood, a man is as good as dead. It’s said that becoming a Sludgewalker is the most exquisite pain a mortal can experience, though Dupont wonders where that rumor started, seeing as how the only ones who’ve experienced it are now feral, hunger driven monsters. 

Dupont grips his chart and eyes the man nervously. 

The two may have kept him from tipping over the edge, but his journey back to health is far from over. The Aether will keep him unconscious for another day or so. After that, it’ll take a week before he’s well enough for Dupont to let him out into the wild again. No one stricken from a Sludgewalker bite has ever died on Dupont’s operating table and he doesn’t intend to break that record any time soon. 

Edwin stands over the man, intently watching the blood cycle through the Machine. As his flesh begins regaining its natural color, Edwin presses tenderly on certain points on the man’s body with a special instrument, examining his humors, making sure they’re maintaining. He checks the bite wound, located on the man’s left arm. It still looks no different from when they found him. Red, black, swollen and oozing. 

“The swelling should start going down soon,” Edwin says, “hopefully the bite won’t leave too much of a scar.”

Dupont hides a smile. Edwin’s growth since his mother’s death is one of the few things that kept Dupont going through the years. He’s watched his son grow from a whiney petulant assistant to a skillful physician, almost as knowledgeable as Dupont himself. The passion he now sees in Edwin’s eyes matches the passion he once held for the job. The passion that all but drained from Dupont the moment his beautiful Eleanor was taken from him. 

Edwin checks the man’s other vitals, heartbeat, temperature, etc. Reporting them to Dupont. 

Dupont nods distractedly and marks it on his chart, but his mind is occupied by other thoughts.

Haunting thoughts…

———

Nearly a decade ago.

A terrible night. 

Acid rain falls from the sky, coating the world in an oily, toxic sheen. 

Dupont and little Edwin—barely ten years old—sit at the dinner table, awaiting the delicious meal cooked by Eleanor. The smell intoxicates them both, mouths drooling. 

Eleanor always made the best stews.

The front door blasts open with a CRACK! and two rain covered, brutish-looking men step inside, carrying a third man between them. The third is in a poor state, his torn clothing hangs from his frame and he’s covered in his own blood.

Dupont stands to confront them but is roughly thrown to the side by the larger of the men, a gnarled thug with a scar on his chin. “Out of the way!” 

The interlopers move to set the injured fellow on the table.

The dinner table, dutifully set by Edwin with plate and fork, is thrown into disarray, covered in the blood and body of a dying man.

Dupont, instinctively, gives the man’s injuries a once over.

Unconscious. He’s suffered major blood loss. Multiple jagged, deep wounds, signifying an animal attack. Perhaps a bear? The man is lucky to be alive. Although, in Dupont’s professional opinion, he won’t be for long. 

“You’re a healer,” says the scarred man, “heal him.”

He was worried that’s what they would ask.

“I can’t,” Dupont says, “I’m sorry, but this man needs a Remeditorium, I’m not equipped to help him here. A hospital’s Magicks may save him, but I don’t know if it’s within my ability.”

“We ain’t taking ‘im to an ‘ospital,” says the other conscious man, a thug with a bad goatee, “took one of my cousins there once. One of the physicians musta recognized ‘im ‘cause the bastards strung ‘im up the next day. Didn’t even bother healin’ ‘im.” 

They’re criminals. 

That much doesn’t surprise Dupont, though the confirmation makes his stomach turn. 

Eleanor steps into the room carrying a pot full of stew and takes in the scene. She looks to Dupont, stunned. 

“Honey—”

The scarred man lunges, grabbing Eleanor by the elbow. She resists at first until the thug brandishes a brutal-looking knife. The pot clatters to the ground, spilling hot stew onto the floorboards. 

“This man saved my life,” the thug says, gesturing to his companion on the table, a flicker of pain on his face, “heal him.” 

“I can’t!” Dupont says.

“If he dies,” says the scarred man, “she dies.” 

His knife is tight against Eleanor’s pale throat. 

He seems better spoken than his half illiterate companion, though no less cruel.

Edwin rushes to his mother. 

“Momma!” 

The goateed thug grabs him

“Let them go!” Dupont cries, but the brutes hold firm. 

“Do it, Otto,” Eleanor says, her voice is brave, despite the blade at her neck, “the poor man’s lost a lot of blood already.”

She’s right. Damn it, she’s always right. The man is close to death, each passing moment brings him ever closer. They’re losing time.

“Edwin, I need your help,” he says. 

At a nod from the scarred man, the thug holding Edwin lets him go, allowing him to stand at the table near Dupont. 

“Hold pressure here,” Dupont says, gesturing at a wound in the man’s side.

Edwin, sniffling, places his hand on the dying man. 

“More, son.”

Edwin does so. 

“What happened to him?” Dupont asks, grabbing napkins and attempting to tie off the most egregiously bleeding wounds. 

“Bear,” says the man with the goatee, confirming Dupont’s original prognosis.

Dupont crouches and picks a knife off the ground. It’s no scalpel, but it’ll have to do. He heats it up using the flame of the fireplace. He can stitch up the less urgent wounds, but the most vital arteries will need cauterized.

“Keep pressure on those wounds, son,” Dupont says. 

And he sets to work.

Cutting. Burning. Sewing. 

Dupont works with the skill of a surgeon and speed of a duelist. The dull steak knife is his weapon of choice. 

With each wound closed, the man’s recovery solidifies. 

Dupont barely notices when the last wound closes. Only when he moves to sew up the next open gouge, and fails to find it, does he take a breath. 

I did it.

But the man isn’t stabilizing.

He’s no longer losing blood.

So why isn’t he stabilizing?

Perhaps he’s lost too much? 

No, he isn’t as pale as that. 

Dupont scans the man’s torso, faded scars and newly sealed wounds only. Nothing out of the ordinary except…

Dupont notices a bit of purple, swollen flesh around the man’s waist, near a small tattoo of a deer skull. He prods at it. 

Not symptomatic of blood loss, but…

Dupont pulls the waistband down.

“‘Ey!” says the man with the goatee, “watch your mitts,” The scarred man shushes him.

A nasty, half-inch barb, sticking out of the man, just above his crotch. 

The barb left from a slaughterwasp sting. 

The bleeding man wakes with a scream and thrashes wildly.

“Hold him down!” Dupont shouts. “He’ll tear his stitching.”

The thug with the goatee moves to help Edwin hold the struggling man to the table. 

“You told me this was a bear attack!” Dupont says, staring at the barb in horror, “you didn’t say anything about wasps!” 

“The bear was attacking a hive when it came at us,” the scarred thug says, looking almost as worried as Dupont, “we didn’t notice he’d gotten stung. Can you fix it?”

Slaughterwasp stings were fatal in all but the most optimistic cases. There’s a reason they were called “Slaughterwasps.”

“Optimistic case,” is not the phrase Dupont would use to describe this man.

He’s about to tell the scarred thug as much, when the knife held against Eleanor’s throat glitters in the candlelight.

“If he dies, she dies,”

“Edwin,” Dupont says, “tongs!” Edwin hesitates. “Now, boy!”

Edwin rushes from the room. 

“Stay with me,” Dupont mutters.

The man, delirious, doesn’t respond. 

The venom’s already released. 

“No no no,” Dupont is helpless. “Edwin, the tongs!” 

“I can’t find them!” Edwin cries from the other room.

Dupont curses and pulls the barb from the thrashing man with his bare hands.

The poor wretch shrieks, voice hoarse.

Dupont leans forward and starts sucking the venom from the man’s wound. Such a practice isn’t usually encouraged, especially with slaughterwasp venom, but Dupont doesn’t have much of a choice. The venom burns his mouth. Dupont spits it on the floor, acrid smoke spilling from his lips. 

He sucks out a couple more mouthfuls of venom and blood, but the man isn’t calming. 

It’s already reached his central nervous system.

But Dupont doesn’t stop, even when the only thing he sucks out of the wound is polluted blood. 

The two thugs watch in horror, and the man on the table thrashes and screams.

Until…

With a final halted gasp, he dies. 

The room stills, and remains still for a few painful moments. 

The acid rain patters against the tin rooftop and sizzles against the windows. 

Dupont stands there, stunned. Covered in fresh blood, mouth still burning from slaughterwasp venom.

Edwin finally comes in from the kitchen, carrying the tongs. 

A tear travels down the face of the thug holding Eleanor. He wipes it with his free hand, and his face hardens. 

“Well,” he sighs, “I guess a deal’s a deal.”

The words wash over Dupont.

“No!” 

In a single fluid motion, the man—the unpardonable refuse claiming to be human—runs his knife over her throat and carelessly tosses her gurgling body to the ground.

Edwin drops the tongs on the ground and screams. 

Dupont collapses to his knees, frozen in disbelief. Shock. Not even tears come to his eyes. The pain in his mouth all but forgotten. His breath catches in his throat. 

His gaze meets Eleanor’s who lays motionless in spilled stew and a widening pool of blood. 

“My condolences,” the scarred thug says as the two men step out the door and back into the rain, leaving Dupont and his son alone with two corpses.

———

Still watching Edwin work, the smile has vanished from Dupont’s face. His thoughts, as they tend to do, have inevitably wandered to that terrible night.

If only he’d been able to save that one man.

“The swelling’s gone down a little bit, doctor,” Edwin says. 

Dupont takes a deep breath. 

Focus on helping this man. 

Thoughts of Eleanor have haunted him for years, almost leading to him forsaking his oaths. But they, along with Edwin are all he has left in life. 

He would continue, if not for himself, or even Edwin, but for those he can save. For every man, woman and child who died on his table, he would save a hundred more. 

“Wonderful job, Edwin,” Dupont says, “let’s start getting some fluids in him then, wouldn’t you agree?”

Edwin nods, moving to prep the Machine to begin injecting essential fluids into the patient’s dehydrated body.

“Help me flip him, won’t you?” Edwin asks.

Dupont moves to the man’s side. On a count, they flip the patient over onto his stomach. 

As Edwin inserts the hydration tubes in the back of the man’s neck and arms, Dupont begins charting down other observations about the man’s physicality. 

He’s a strong man, whose body knows work. Back knotted with muscles and scars. Skin toughened with age and tribulation. A couple minor scratches, nothing that needed stitches, probably sustained in the man’s failed escape from the Sludgewalker. 

Dupont marks as such on his chart. 

A small tattoo on the lower part of the man’s torso catches Dupont’s eye. 

The ink is light, faded with years, hard to see with the man’s pallid skin. Dupont squints. It looks like… 

A saberdeer skull. 

Dupont’s heart stops. 

The last time he saw a tattoo like that…

The man he failed to save. 

“Edwin, help me flip him back,” Dupont says, gripping the patient by his arms.

“What? I’m not done yet.” 

But it doesn’t matter to Dupont. 

I need to see his face.

“Help me flip him back,” Dupont growls.

“But—” Edwin pauses. “Yes, doctor.” He hurriedly removes the tubes from the man’s neck and helps his father flip the man back. 

The face.

He failed to recognize the man when they brought him in, due to the blackened, swollen flesh. But now…

Now Dupont can see the scar on the man’s chin.

His fists clench so hard Dupont feels like they’ll form singularities in his palms. 

Beads of sweat run down his temples. 

“If he dies, she dies.”

The world around him dulls. All he can see is the face of the man that killed his wife.

“Doctor, what are you doing?” Edwin asked. 

His knife runs across her throat…

“Father!” Edwin again. Dupont ignores him. 

“My condolences.”

“Dad!”

Her blood spilling on the floor of the house they built together.

A hand grips Dupont’s wrist. Edwin’s hand. 

Dupont looks at his son. The fear and determination in his eyes. 

A moment of confusion. 

Dupont looks down at his hands, and the scalpel he holds at the man’s throat.

Slit his throat, like he slit hers.

“Don’t do this,” Edwin says.

“You know who this man is?” 

Edwin looks at the man’s face, then back at his father’s. There’s pain, recognition in his look, but it has not replaced the determination.

“Your oaths,” Edwin says. 

Damn you Otto, you had to go and raise an honorable son.

“He killed her, Edwin! She was perfect and he killed her!” Dupont chokes on the last sentence. His eyes are blurry, whether from rage or pain, he doesn’t know. 

“So you’ll kill him in cold blood?”

Cold blood on the cold floor, mixing with cold stew.

“It’s what he deserves.”

“Killing him won’t bring her back.”

Dupont has no reply. 

“You said, ‘for every person we can’t save, we save one hundred more,’” Edwin says, “Dad, we’ve nearly saved this man.”

“He doesn’t deserve it, Edwin.”

“Maybe he doesn’t! But that’s not up to us to decide. Let the magistrate decide his fate. ”

Dupont avoids Edwin’s gaze. 

“She would want you to spare him,” Edwin says. Dupont freezes. “Just like she wanted you to save his friend that night.” 

“Do it, Otto…”

Dupont lets the scalpel slip from his fingers.

He collapses into his son’s arms and, for the first time since the night she died, Otto Dupont cries.