Bram Ash had made it through the open delivery portal, through the drainage under-road drain, and up the railway siding on sheer, unbending stubbornness. But his strength ran out fifty feet from the kitchen platform.
He fell to his knees on the wet cobblestones, his right arm dangling at his side like a broken branch, blood pouring from beneath his collarbone in a thick, dark blood pulse that pooled in the gray mud around his thighs.
A guard carbine had fired from the high watch-tower above the Sump Road portal. Just then, the flatcar cleared the gates. The lead ball had struck him from behind, entering below the right shoulder blade, tearing through the upper back muscle and shattered bone fragments of his old wound, and exiting through the chest muscle two inches below his collar bone.
“Heth,” Bram whispered, his forehead striking the wet stones with a dull thud. “Heth... The medicine... Is in the square...”
Len was off the flatcar before the iron wheels had ceased their shuddering. He sprinted across the cobblestones, his boots sliding through the grease. He dropped to his knees in the slurry beside the fallen court guard.
He gathered Bram’s head onto his right knee. His good right hand pressed his folded woolen neck-cloth into the gaping exit wound below the collarbone to slow the pumping blood. The cloth was soaked in three seconds, hot, dark bright red blood welling up between Len’s fingers with terrifying speed.
