The arterial bleeding from the right shoulder joint began with a dark, rhythmic pulse that welled up through the charred wool of Jon’s neckerchief.
“Hold the pressure,” Jon muttered, pressing his palm flat against the base of Cael’s neck.
The hero was slipping away. Cael’s skin was cold, clammy with the grease of shock, his lips turning a pale, lavender grey. The sudden removal of the celestial system’s kinetic support had left his vascular system collapsed; without immediate compression on the axillary artery, he would bleed out in the gravel before the watch could clear the upper shafts.
Jon did not hesitate. He stripped off his own heavy wool tunic, pulling the rough, homespun garment over his head and tossing his linen shirt into the mud. The cold mountain air bit into his bare ribs, raising gooseflesh across the sixteen ink marks that coiled around his arms, but he had no time to consider the cold.
He folded the coarse wool into a thick, firm pad four inches across, driving it directly into the smoking hollow beneath Cael’s right clavicle.
Cael groaned, his body arching in an involuntary spasm as the coarse wool ground against raw, blistered muscle and burned bone.
