Aura by M.A. Abraham Page A

was quickly overpowered.  When the men thought they had killed him, they mounted their horses and left.

Aura watched the trio leave, and when she was sure that they were gone, she made her way down from her perch, and to the side of the stranger on the ground.  She checked him first for a pulse, which, when she found it, was weak but steady.  Satisfied, she left him, to catch his horse, feeling that she just might need it.

The horse, as it turned out, was a troublesome brute.  It refused to budge for her in the beginning.  She pulled on the reigns, and tried to mount it, but it only snorted at her and sidestepped her attempts to get up on top of him.  After a few futile attempts she tried another method, after all, there was more than one way to skin a cat, or in this case, to ride a horse.  She talked to the huge animal, as she stroked his nose and petted him, telling him how strong and important he was, and how his master needed him.  The horse, after a time, gave another snort then followed her lead.

Aura gave a sign of relief as the horse moved beside her to his master's side, then lowered his head to nudge the comatose man.  She understood, he wished to make contact with the man himself.  She took the man's blanket from out of the sacks slung over the horse's back then knelt to tend to his injuries.

The first thing she did, as she believed that he was probably in shock, was to cover him, to give him warmth.  The man was still bleeding, though not as much as he had before, and he was still unconscious, so she could gain no insight into his condition by questioning him.

Working with a swiftness she had witnessed first hand at the hospital in the convent, she checked his exposed limbs for breaks.  She was relieved to find none, although she needed to remove his chain mail to be sure.  After the chain mail there would be the thick leather undershirt to deal with before she could be able to make sure of his condition.  It was not going to be easy undressing this man, not without his or anyone's help.  To Aura he was massive, and even with her training, she knew she was going to have trouble accomplishing what she needed to in order to help him.

It took a while but eventually she succeeded in ridding him of his first two layers of clothing.  She then tended to the rest of her examination.  He had a deep gash across his upper arm one that she decided would need careful tending, as well as stitching.  She felt for broken bones on his upper torso, and found none, so she removed his helmet.  There was a tear in the headgear, and beneath it she found another gash, on the upper part of his skull.  She hoped it was not a sign of a fracture, for that was something she had no skill with.

Deciding to leave the head injury for last, she removed a light tunic, to see if there were other injuries.  It was hard to tell, as there was blood everywhere, on both the man and his clothes.  She found no other gashes; however, she did notice the bruising about the curve of his shoulder, where the horse had struck him.  She prodded the area for a while, looking for deeper injuries, and noted that his shoulder was slightly out of place.  That, she determined, she could do something about.  She had spent enough time in observation rooms, and time acting as Dr. Rorrit's sidekick, to remember how he dealt with things like this.  She had found that she could learn a lot by listening to the old doctors prattle on about the old days and how things had been done.   She set it by bracing her feet against his body and pulling on the displaced arm until it popped back into place.  Outside of a groan the man made no sign that he was aware of what she had just done.  She bound his shoulder tight with his shirt, before sitting down to rest.

A howl in the distance alerted both Wolf and Aura to other dangers.  The evening was beginning to set in, and they were in the open without supplies or protection.  She gave the