He wedged the litter under the bear's side and wordlessly, the girl came up beside him and helped push the bear onto the litter. With a final heave, the bear was rolled onto its back over the branches and he tied the bear to the litter. As he did he noticed a hilt sticking out of the bear's right wrist and upon closer inspection blood in the claws. It was the girl's hunting knife she'd been using to gut the deer.
He turned and searched the girl for injury. Upon close inspection, he saw tears along the upper arm of her left sleeve, and it appeared wet. The black color of the uniform hid the red of blood well… as it was meant to. Feeling like an incompetent and unobservant commander he sighed and said. "Come here."
Her eyes flashed open in shock but she slowly approached, weary but determined like a child who knows they've done wrong but is willing to accept the consequences. He wasn't sure why but he couldn't meet her questioning gaze, he'd had many soldiers approach him the same way. Instead, he focused solely on her arm. Pinching the sleeve near the shoulder seam in each hand he ripped it off.
She jerked back covering the new hole under her arm and screeching "Hey!" finally sounding more like what he expected girls to sound like. Only then did it cross his mind that battlefield medicine was not something that accommodated for modesty.
He quickly turned and busied himself with finding blood moss before she could see his embarrassment. To distract her from thoughts of him carelessly exposing her he ordered "Rinse the sleeve, it will be your bandage until you can see a doctor."
She listened without a word and he came back a moment later with the moss as she wrung out the ripped sleeve, careful to block his view of the new hole under her arm. He did his best not to look as He used the stream to clean off her arm and inspect the injury. She was lucky it wasn't deep, those long claws could have easily cut her to the bone, instead only three lines streaked the arm, two little more than a scratch, and the other less than a finger width deep. Although her arms were so thin compared to what he was used to, that even that seemed rather bad.
He packed the blood moss into the wound and tied the sleeve over it snugly. Maybe it wasn't all luck he acknowledged, impressed by her pain tolerance, seeing how the dagger had been wedged in the bear's wrist. However, even the best defensive block would do little to stop the momentum that bear had.
He stood up and turned away looking for what else had to be done. After scanning the area he began to tie the larger of the bucks over the back of her horse giving her time to gather herself, though maybe it was just him that needed to gather his thoughts, they always turned so dark these days if he wasn't careful.
"We'll head towards my guard, you'll turn in the game, excuse yourself, and meet us back at the edge of the woods. Then we'll head into town and I'll call a town doctor. After that, I expect to hear a detailed explanation."
"Oh, well… um I, I can't exactly go with you, but I can explain on the way."
"You realize you've committed a serious crime, not to mention you offered up a life debt." he wasn't used to anyone contradicting his orders so he found himself more shocked and confused than upset. He hadn't even asked anything difficult of her so again... why?
"Well, yes, but I didn't mean for any of this… what I mean is, I don't intend to take back my promise, I'll find a way to serve you to the best of my ability, but my aunt will kill me if she goes back to our rooms and I'm not there… I can answer any questions you have as we walk and do as you first suggested by making myself or rather you scarce after turning in the game, but then I have to change and be seen as myself or people will question my honor as a lady if I'm missing into the night. But I could meet you at or briefly after the dinner tonight or sometime tomorrow or... or something…" she stammered looking down at her boots.
Again he found himself at a loss for words. First, he'd been thinking she was weak on her word and dangerously bold, but then he got caught on the part about her being a Lady. She was a lady of nobility? In the woods. Hunting in pants. A lady? "Fine, but do not test my chivalry," he warned somehow worried this strange young girl would walk all over him if he wasn't careful.
She laid out her damp clothes over the back of his horse and her gear on her horse as he shouldered the smaller buck. Then she heaved a fox over her shoulder, a whole threw the eye where the third arrow had been removed, likely back in the quiver on her horse with the others. How did this lady know how to shoot so well?
Other than her brief freak out over the bear's blood she seemed entirely too comfortable around blood and guts as the fox had been gutted efficiently while he'd be focused on other things. Was she really a lady? Or was that just a lie meant to give her time to get away?
He began walking and whistled for his horse to follow. It was a good thing he was a strong war horse or he likely wouldn't have been able to move the beast of a bear. The girl led her horse as she walked beside him a dead animal casually slung over her shoulder. He had no idea what to think of her or this situation, but he did not have to wait long for her to start fulfilling her promises and start explaining things.
"So, where do I start…" She began falling in behind him as the forest thickened again.
"At the beginning is usually best" he suggested taking out his sword to hack away at foliage that was likely to hinder the horse's loads as he led the way back.
"Well, I grew up learning to wield a sword and hunt from my father, Earl Cedric Calloway, whose old uniform I borrowed… I was forced to live with my aunt when he and my older brother didn't return from the War. She despises girls acting unladylike and has forced me threw all sorts of etiquette stuff which was pure torture! Anyway, it was driving me crazy and I just so desperately wanted to go out and prove myself in something I was actually good at and reminded me of life before everything changed, but, well… anyway, I have the clarity of mind now to see what a horribly stupid Idea this was…
"Anyways… My insufferable cousin had been going on and on about this damn hunt and how well he thinks he'll do when he's not even that great of a shot. And how he'd get so many girls interested in him, that he'd find a wealthy and much classier lady than me to become the next head of my father's household while I just continued to shame my family's name by not securing a beneficial marriage alliance. As if that's all I'm good for is being sold off like a breading mare and couldn't possibly contribute to the Earldom in any other meaningful way because the idea of a young lady doing paperwork and managing people and lands is just as preposterous to people as a young lady hunting. I saw red and all reason went out the window, I just wanted to prove that he wasn't better than me just because he was born a man and I wasn't." she said with a firey vengeful flare.
"I'd have joined the hunt as me but it wouldn't have been allowed and girls can't do hardly anything in this world without bringing shame and dishonor to our houses which even asking would have done, so I thought instead of asking for permission, I should just go as a Man… But then I faced the problem of how would I keep people from recognizing me? And what name could I enter under? It had to be an aristocrat who wasn't at all likely to come and someone who could get away with not showing their face, before I had time to cool off and think of the consequences the letter was written and it was just a stroke of luck; or really bad luck from your perspective, that I had a bunch of documents from you and your father in a box of my father's things in my room with your family seal and letters you'd written to my brother in his things. I know what I did was wrong, really wrong, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause you any trouble… I certainly hadn't thought you would actually come…"
He snorted at the last part, she was almost right, it was only his paranoia at all the creative and decietfull workings of politics that got him to come or he wouldn't have cared. But his first question that came out unbidden was "Are you saying you're Knight Commander Calloway's daughter? Isn't she a child of but seven or eight?" he'd met her a few times what seemed like a lifetime ago and her brother used to talk about her but he couldn't reconcile the memory of the little girl in a fancy frilly dress and perfectly curled pigtails that barely reached her fathers waste was the same young woman with him now.
"Well... I was when we first met... but that was eight years ago Your Grace. I made my debut this past spring... you were also a child when I saw you last," she said, a note of offense in her tone.
He could relate, his family council liked to gripe about him being too young. Eight years ago, he had been a child, only 11 years old. Now he often felt far older than his 19 years. Yet he still didn't feel nearly old enough to start worrying about marriage and heirs like his council seemed to. His own father hadn't married until he was 26 and he thought that was a much more acceptable age, though his father had been hounded for years by that point too.