guardiansverse | Samaren is injured and delirious, Amika steps in to stop some murders (post-GotBL)

"It's your turn today," Katarin said and shoved the entire bundle - rags, bandaging and all - into Leni's arms.

She didn't sound exactly gloating, but relieved enough that maybe a note was there. Leni scoffed. Sometimes she wondered who had ever decided that Katarin would ever make much of a nurse. "Surely it's not that bad."

"It can be your turn tomorrow too if you still think so."

"You said he's burning with fever and barely lucid."

Katarin gave her a strange look. "If he isn't lucid, get out of there. Don't try to talk to or deal with him. Just run, Leni."

"He's - "

"You'll see what he is."

Idiot child, Leni thought as she shouldered her way through the door. No amount of skill Katarin had with her fine hands could make up for her love for dramatics. She could tell even after less than a month alongside the girl. Leni had been a nurse and camp follower for five years; she was past being scared of her patients, regardless of their reputations. You'll see what he is. All she could see was a man in a bed. Tangled in his covers, reeking of sweat, flushed and radiating dangerous heat. The bandaging at his arm was stained with fresh blood - must have torn the wound open again, tossing and turning. She'd seen it before.

She put the bundle down at the stool by the bed, and despite everything, couldn't help herself leaning a little closer. Just to see his face, fine, ageless, perfectly human after all.

"So there you are," she muttered. "Saul Samaren. Rogue Guardian, they call you, Fiend of No Nation..." just another wounded soldier, after all -

His eyes opened. He sat up.

The speed of it was what caught Leni unprepared first. Nothing flailing or reaching about the movement, all of it sudden and smooth. He was sitting up, he was out from under the covers and twisting his legs under him ready to spring. He speared her with a hazed, wild eyes.

"Who are you?"

Leni was still off her guard. "I - Leni Furst, Captain Samaren, I need to - "

"Furst? You're Hyemi?"

"Of course I'm - "

"What am I doing in Hyem?"

Oh, Sun save me. "You were wounded. Poisoned. You're in the capital of Hyem where you serve - help-!"

She barely got even that word out. Samaren's good hand closed like a bear trap around her throat. He twisted them both off the bed and crashed on top of her, knee pressing beneath her ribs so that she couldn't breathe in at all. As red flooded her sight she heard the door swing open, footsteps and shouts as men barged in. Three men of his own unit - Katarin must have set them to watch, bless Katarin - he abandoned her at once to meet their charge. They were shouting, name and rank, but Leni could have told them already that that was useless. The fever burned brighter in his brain than any thought. And still not enough to slow him a step.

He had grabbed a pair of large scissors from Leni's bundle - she had no idea when he'd managed it, but the first man to come at him fell with the blades buried to the hilt in his thigh. Samaren didn't stop to pull his weapon out, surged right into the next man's charge and caught, overbalanced, and hurled the soldier face-first into the bedpost. Leni dragged herself back and back until she was pressed against the far corner, wanted to scream at the remaining soldier to stop treating that snarling wolf like his captain and - but she could tell, the soldier already knew that he was fighting for his life.

Samaren lingered back a moment over the bodies of his two moaning victims, breathing hard, hissing fever-slurred words in his native Ilyigan. Without a word of the language, Leni knew how hideous a death he was threatening his own soldier with. The poor man's eyes were darting in raw panic about the room, to the sprayed blood, the only blades to hand still embedded in his comrade's body, the six feet of distance between himself and the Rogue Guardian, who burned like a torch consuming itself but would not fall -

"Enough."

The voice cut like lightning through the room. Leni's breath seized in her chest, and the soldier did not dare shift his attention. But Samaren instantly responded, as though from a place much deeper than his addled conscious mind. The coiled threat in his body freezing, he turned instead toward to the door, bowed his head to the woman who stood there.

"Doma Amika."

Amika Stattenholme came striding in, her white dress trailing over the bloodstains. She put a light hand on the soldier's arm, sent him behind her to wobble there in relief. She nodded at Leni, sent a warm pulse of soul-power into her with it. Leni's bruised throat seemed to open and her ribcage with it. Thank the Sun, she was going to live.

Amika came another step closer. She must have sent her power into the two felled soldiers, as well, as both had quieted. She looked at Samaren with raised brows and a tight mouth. "What is this?"

He drew a rasping breath. "I don't know. What's happened?"

"You are delirious. You took a poisoned arrow shot at me, and have been lying in a fever for three days."

"Am I dying?"

"You might have, but the worst is past. You were fortunate."

"Ah." The exhale took all the remaining tension out of him. For a moment he wavered where he stood, sweat-soaked hair falling in his eyes as his head dropped, and Leni almost saw just another wounded soldier. He shuffled a step back, and sat heavily down onto the bed, rubbing his eyes.

Amika took another step, and another, until she was leaning down to offer Leni a hand. She pulled her to her feet, gave her another brush of soul-power to stop her knees' trembling. "This frowe has come to rebind your wound and give you medicine. Now you must wait until she has tended to the men you've treated so roughly."

Samaren grunted, barely repentant. "You shouldn't have sent her alone."

"I should not have." Without missing a beat amidst the blood, Amika put Leni's bundle back into her hands, and sat down on the stool, gathering her skirt around her. Her hand fell onto the bed, an inch away from Samaren's - loose, but poised to grab and hold.

She nodded at Leni. "Please see that these men are attended to. The captain and I will wait."

Leni still fought a stutter. "I - I may be a while, frowe."

"As long as you need. We are not going anywhere." She glanced at Samaren, who was slowly slipping after his burst of mad energy, nodding off where he sat with his head on his chest. "He certainly is not, I fear."

"And you?"

"The same. For safety's sake if nothing else. Would you fetch me a more comfortable chair, when there is time?"

"But - how long will you stay? The fever won't break for days yet, the physician said."

"Frowe Furst," Amika said gently. "If I do not stay, he might well kill you all."

There was nothing Leni could say to that. Even if it wasn't her turn tomorrow, even Katarin did not deserve - she really must apologize to Katarin. She hastily bundled her supplies and knelt by the soldier who'd been stabbed with the scissors. An ugly wound, but with careful attendance, should not cripple. Kill you all. Sun's sake, her experienced hands were still shaking.

She glanced up, just for an instant. Just then, to catch sight of Amika easing the Fiend of No Nation to lie back down. She needed barely a ghost of a touch for it, flitting, very gentle. For safety's sake... if nothing else.

Whatever else there was, Leni felt strangely safe.