Although Kup repeatedly said the best course of action was to minimize the pain and wait for the fate Heavenly Father had arranged, Knight Benny stubbornly insisted on taking the Priest—whose only uninjured part was his face—to the Monastery.
Compared to trusting medicine, the knight's actions seemed closer to trusting theology.
The crisscrossing cuts caused by the scales seemed as indistinct as the culprit that had made them. The injuries they saw when they first cleaned and bandaged him had mostly been limited to the skin. Aside from the frightening amount of blood, they hadn't reached deeper tissue.
Yet when they changed his bandages a second time, some wounds seemed worse than he remembered—perhaps his memory was at fault. They had reached the subcutaneous fat and superficial veins, and places that should have clotted and scabbed over had been stained red again.
It was as though an invisible serpent still coiled around him, tightening its grip step by step and deepening the damage. Or perhaps the harm had already been done and was only gradually revealing itself.
He had no choice but to change the bandages himself, again and again. After using up all the supplies he'd brought along, his arm hurt even more. He'd only been able to stabilize it temporarily, and Heaven knew whether it was a hairline fracture or a complete break.
As expected, after several days of jolting travel, by the time they reached the clinic the Monastery had set up at the foot of the mountain, the Priest was barely clinging to life. Whether he could hold on long enough to make it up the mountain was a serious question.
It was hard to say whether staying alive was a blessing from Heavenly Father or merely an exercise in prolonging suffering. At this point, all