Chapter 5: The Iron Banners

The rest of the journey was a blur of tense, adrenaline-fueled hiking. The potion had bought them time, a precious, fragile commodity. Elara remained unconscious, her breathing shallow but stable. The bleeding had stopped. For now. Leo knew that without proper care, the necrotizing poison was still a death sentence, a clock ticking silently in her veins.

He was acutely aware of Kaelen's sideways glances. The warrior's skepticism had been replaced by a potent cocktail of awe and suspicion. Leo wasn't just an outworlder anymore. He was an anomaly, a man who combined a coward's paralysis with a sage's knowledge and, now, a gambler's luck.

As the twin moons climbed higher, casting long, eerie shadows through the silver trees, Kaelen finally spoke. "We're close."

Soon, the primordial forest began to show signs of civilization. A crudely marked trail. The distant, flickering orange of torchlight. The low murmur of voices. They emerged into a large, cleared area nestled in a natural bowl between rocky hills.

This was the Iron Banners' camp.

It was less a camp and more a permanent, festering wound in the wilderness. It consisted of two dozen patched-up tents and lean-tos encircling a massive, smoky bonfire. The air hung thick with the smells of unwashed bodies, cheap ale, and cooked meat. Men and women in mismatched armor lounged around the fire, sharpening weapons, mending gear, or drinking sullenly. It was a place of tired, dangerous people.

Their arrival immediately drew attention. A warrior with a scarred face and a missing eye looked up from his drink. "Kaelen! Thought the woods had finally eaten you. What's that you're dragging in?"

Kaelen ignored him, his focus elsewhere. "The infirmary," he grunted to Leo, gesturing with his head toward a large, grubby tent set slightly apart from the others. "It's the best we've got."

As they carried Elara towards it, a path cleared for them. The adventurers stared, their eyes drawn to the pale, still form of the elf. Whispers followed them like wasps.
"Is that... Elara?"
"Gods, what happened to her?"
"Looks like Gravehound work. She's done for."

Inside the infirmary, the smell of stale blood and herbal poultices was overpowering. Three cots were occupied by groaning, miserable-looking men. One had an arm wrapped in filthy bandages, another was pale with fever, and the third had a festering arrow wound in his thigh. An old woman with a sour face and knowing eyes, the camp's designated "Healer," looked up from grinding herbs as they entered.

"Lay her down," she commanded, her voice like gravel. She shuffled over and pulled back the blood-soaked cloth from Elara's wound. She sucked her teeth. "Gravehound poison. And a gut wound. You wasted your time carrying her here, Kaelen. Say a prayer to the gods of the wood and let her go."

"No," Leo said. The single word was quiet, but it cut through the room's despair with the sharpness of a scalpel.

The old healer turned her sharp eyes on him. "And who are you, boy, in your strange rags? A priest? A shaman?"

"He's a... medic," Kaelen supplied, the word feeling foreign on his tongue. "He kept her alive this long."

Leo ignored them both, his mind already in triage mode. This tent was a cesspool of infection. He needed light, clean water, and tools. "I need fire, a lot of it. And bring me every scrap of clean cloth you can find. And a needle and thread. The smallest you have. Boil them all in water, along with a knife. Now."

The old healer scoffed. "Boil a good needle? You'll ruin the temper! And what good is a knife to a dead woman?"

"She's not dead!" Leo's voice cracked like a whip. The authority in it, born from a thousand chaotic emergency rooms, stunned the woman into silence. He turned to Kaelen. "Do it. Please. There is no time."

Kaelen, trusting what he had seen over a lifetime of camp tradition, nodded grimly and left to carry out the orders.

Leo turned back to Elara. The potion had stopped the bleeding, but the poison was the real enemy. The flesh around the wound was puffy and had taken on a dark, bruised hue. Necrosis. He had to cut away the dead and dying tissue before the infection went systemic. It was a debridement, a battlefield procedure he'd only ever read about.

He looked at the man on the nearby cot, the one with the arrow in his thigh. The man's leg was swollen and red, streaks of infection running up towards his groin. Sepsis. He'd be dead by morning. The Echo began to whisper, a faint static in his ears. The man's shallow breathing, his glassy eyes... it was a familiar sight.

The bridge. The cold. The failure.

Leo grit his teeth, forcing it down. One patient at a time. The most critical first.

Kaelen returned with a steaming pot, a knife, and a needle and thread taken from a leatherworking kit. It was crude, but it would have to do.

"Everyone out," Leo commanded the other conscious patients and the healer. "I need to work."

They hesitated, but a hard look from Kaelen sent them shuffling out into the night.

It was just him, Kaelen, and Elara.

"Hold her steady," Leo instructed, positioning a torch for maximum light. He took the boiled knife. It felt clumsy and huge in his hand. He took a deep breath, the image of a sterile operating room a painful, distant memory.

With a surgeon's precision, he began to cut. He excised the discolored, dead tissue from the edges of Elara's wound, working quickly and methodically. It was a grisly, bloody business. Kaelen watched, his face pale, a mixture of horror and fascination. He had inflicted hundreds of wounds in his life, but he had never seen one treated with such cold, focused care.

Finally, Leo was satisfied. He had removed the poison's deadly march. Now to close the wound. The thick leather needle was a clumsy instrument, designed for hide, not skin. But he worked patiently, his stitches surprisingly neat.

He finished, covered the wound with the cleanest cloth he had, and finally stood up, his back screaming in protest. He was covered in sweat and Elara's blood. He had done it. He had performed surgery in a filthy tent with a boiled skinning knife and a leather needle.

He looked at Elara. Her color was already better. Her breathing was deeper.

He had won.

He turned and saw the old healer standing at the tent's entrance, her mouth agape. Beyond her, a dozen other adventurers had gathered, drawn by the spectacle. They stared at him, at his bloody hands, at the now-peaceful elf on the cot, as if they were looking at a ghost.

In that moment, Leo realized his life had changed forever. He wasn't a stranger anymore. He was a miracle worker. A monster. A man who could cheat death.

And in a camp full of men and women who courted it daily, that made him the most valuable—and vulnerable—person in the world.