An Isolated Sacred Pool in the Wilderness, Close to Selamu Alu

34th Summer - The First Year of the Regency (Earth Date 4th September 2016)

The Sacred Pool was far larger than it needed to be to house the handful of Druids that had chosen, or in some cases been chosen, to live so far from civilisation. They didn’t get many visitors, so when the armoured steam tractor turned up out the wilderness, using the long-abandoned road that led to the Goddess knew where, it created quite a stir in the small community.

The patient was as strange as the vehicle he’d arrived in, and his accent was unusual. He certainly didn’t hail from Selamu Alu, and those who knew these sorts of things claimed he didn’t hail from the Empire of Midriver either, although he was dressed in Midriver style clothes. The patient and his two companions offered no explanations as to where they had come from or what they’d been doing in the wilderness but it was obvious from the patient’s badly healed wounds that he’d not had anything but the most basic medical treatment for several weeks.

“He’s a bit of a mystery, Hau,” The Healer told her acolyte who was examining something under the Pool’s battered microscope.

“I know we’re not meant to ask, but…” The dark-haired, young woman said, trailing off, she knew the answer.

“Healers do not ask, Healers do not judge, if our patient chooses not to tell we do not compel them…” The Healer smiled gently at the dark look the acolyte gave her. “That does not mean we cannot draw conclusions from the evidence staring us in the face, so to speak. Start with the wound. What do you think caused it?”

“Umm… A bullet, maybe his gun went off unexpectedly,” the young woman made a gesture upwards diagonally across her face.

“Yes, that is what I thought too. It’s not clean enough to be a knife or sword cut, not dirty enough to be inflicted by an animal, and it was definitely inflicted from beneath.”

“It made a mess of his face; he’ll need to wear a mask if he doesn’t want to scare people.”

“He was lucky, if he’d been leaning a few millimetres further forward he wouldn’t have any face at all. I even managed to fix up his mouth so he’ll soon be able to eat proper food. Actually, he’s doubly lucky, all those weeks in the wilderness travelling in that smoke spewing beast and he didn’t pick up an infection.”

“Yeah, when I first saw him, with the bandage over his face, I thought he would be dead in a few days,” the girl lowered her voice, “then I just hoped he would. He gives me the creeps.”

“What has he said to you?”

“Oh, nothing bad, it might just be his accent.”

“Hmm maybe, but don’t go into him alone, especially if his companions are about.”

“They wouldn’t dare do anything, not in a Sacred Pool… would they?” The girl looked at her mentor, utterly shocked that she’d say such a thing.

“There is something… unnerving about those men and I, will be very glad when they leave. But in the meantime, we give this man the best care we can.”

***

That evening, after her Acolyte had gone to bed the Healer went to the pigeon loft and sent a pigeon to the Sacred Pool in Selamu Alu, telling them about the strange, foreign man who went by the name of Clive, and his unsavoury companions. She then went to her room and rummaged under her bed until she found the box with the old revolver from her mercenary days and the radio. She loaded the revolver, then, after winding the dyno that came with the radio, she tapped out a brief message to her former employers, waited for the received code then went to bed with the loaded revolver under her pillow.

Three days later to the relief of everyone in the Sacred Pool, the steam tractor left, heading towards the vast city state of Selamu Alu.