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POV: Arthur Snow
Location: Briarwhite – Village Outskirts
The village of Briarwhite looked half asleep when they entered, but something beneath the surface felt tense. Doors closed faster than usual. A child stared at them too long from behind a shutter. At the far end of the square, a low fire burned in a wide basin, but no one stood near it.
Arthur, Garron, and Sarra moved through without drawing weapons, but their eyes stayed sharp. A few men sat outside the longhouse, dressed not like guards but like tired farmers pretending they could fight.
"We just had a raid," one of them told Arthur. "Two nights ago. Came down through the woods. Took food. Hit a cart outside the gate. No one dead. This time."
Arthur nodded. "Any wounded?"
The man gestured toward a stable near the well. "Healer's in there. Boy named Thom."
They walked over.
Inside the stable, three villagers lay on straw bedding. A man with a leg wrapped in bloodied cloth. A girl with a broken arm held in a sling. A mother cradling her infant, who wheezed faintly with every breath.
Beside them knelt a young man—early twenties, hair tied back, sleeves rolled to the elbow. His hands moved with method, but not panic. He was mixing something in a wooden bowl with crushed herbs and clean snow.
He glanced up once.
"You're not from here."
Arthur didn't answer.
The man—Thom Gorse—kept working.
"Don't touch anything. The poultice isn't set."
Arthur stepped back.
Sarra crouched nearby, watching. "You the healer?"
"No," Thom said. "But no one else here knows how not to kill someone."
He dabbed the infant's lips with a cloth, slow and steady, then checked the girl's arm and adjusted the sling with practiced care.
Garron shifted. "He's calm."
Arthur watched the way Thom moved.
Clean. Minimal. Every motion stripped of waste.
It stirred a memory—sharp and fast. Another life. A man in black robes stained with herbs and blood, known only as the Demonic Doctor, whose scalpel served the Heavenly Demon's sect as both healer and interrogator. He had taught Arthur something once:
"Most people fear what breaks the body. I fear what wastes its movement. The body only lies when it's clumsy."
Thom Gorse had no aura of power. No threat.
But his stillness was exact.
Arthur stepped forward.
"Where'd you learn?"
Thom glanced at him. "I was training to be a maester. Left Oldtown two years ago."
"Why?"
"I got tired of being told when not to help."
Arthur nodded.
"You fight?"
"No."
"Would you?"
Thom looked at him then. "Only if I had to."
Sarra spoke up. "That mean you're scared?"
"No," Thom said. "I just know where I'm most useful."
Garron grunted. "He talks like a scholar. But he moves like a killer's assistant."
"I've treated killers," Thom replied. "That's not the same."
Then someone shouted from the other end of the fence. "Help! He's wounded!"
Arthur reached them first.
A young guard lay bleeding into the snow, clutching at a tear across his side. Not deep enough to kill quickly—but the blood was pulsing hard.
Thom appeared just behind him, bag in hand.
Arthur dropped to one knee, pulled the man's hand away, and pressed his fingers along the wound. Two inches too low for the lung. One rib cracked. Blood coming from an arterial nick, not a full tear.
He took a breath and placed his palm just left of the bleeding point.
Then he pressed.
Not with force. With rhythm.
One beat. Pressure. Release. Shift.
He sealed it just long enough for the flow to lessen. Then, from his belt pouch, he took a powder—brown, bitter-smelling. Pressed it directly to the wound.
The bleeding slowed. The man's eyes steadied.
Arthur looked up. "Now."
Thom was already beside him. "What the hell was that?"
Arthur stood. "Something I learned."
Thom looked down at the pressure point, at the powder—his mind already cataloguing what he saw.
"That wasn't in any anatomy I studied."
Arthur didn't answer. He walked past, wiping the blood from his fingers with snow.
Later, by the fire, Thom approached again.
"How did you do that," he said quietly. "You knew where to press. You knew how much. That powder—was it stimulant? Ground pine bark and crushed ironroot?"
Arthur looked at him once, then back to the fire.
Thom continued, more urgent now. "Where did you learn that?"
Arthur didn't look up. "Does it matter?"
"Yes," Thom said. "Because what I saw—that—wasn't field medicine. That was trained. Taught. You saved that boy in under thirty seconds with one hand."
Arthur shook his head. "I don't have time to teach you."
"But you could."
Arthur looked at him now. "Maybe."
"Then let me come with you."
Arthur stood, adjusting his cloak. "You want to learn?"
"Yes."
"Then keep up."
Thom stared. "That's it?"
"That's all."
Arthur walked toward the edge of camp.
Thom stood there a moment. Then quietly packed his satchel, tied his pouch, and followed.
Sarra, watching from a nearby log, gave a half-smile and said under her breath:
"Now he recruited a healer , What a strange group indeed"