“However? However what?” the Mage gasped, desperately.

She licked her lips, oblivious to the blood that spattered her face. “You might be worth more alive than dead. You’re obviously for hire. How about if I hire you for my Company at the handsome rate of not being dead?”

His blubbering assent did not particularly impress Jicks, who glanced over at Korlak. “You know any way to make an oath binding on this piece of trash?”

Korlak smiled, slowly. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he told her. “Let’s get that shoulder taken care of first, though. Abi needs her dagger, and we don’t want this idiot to bleed to death. Yet.”

Korlak rummaged in the damaged wagon, then knelt next to the Mage with a wad of rags he’d gotten, packing them around the dagger. As the Mage moaned with pain, he put pressure on the wound, then Jicks leaned down and pulled the dagger out with a quick yank.

The Mage screamed and passed out cold.

That just allowed Korlak to work in peace. By the time the Mage woke up again, his wound had been cauterized, packed with herbal powder that would keep infection out, stitched up and bandaged, though he was still lying where he had fallen. The rest of them had had a chance to get cleaned up as well, going down to the brook one at a time with changes of clothing from the wagon. Abi just left her gore-soaked clothing in the pile of trash they’d burn before they left this campsite. She didn’t want to see what she’d been wearing ever again.

“You see this?” Korlak said, holding up a wad of the bloody rags left over from treating the wound.

The Mage nodded.

“You are going to take a vow to obey every single command that Jicks gives you, and you’re going to do it on your own blood on these rags,” Korlak told him. “And then I am going to bind that vow to a very specific consequence if you ever disobey. Your wound will open, no Healer will be able to mend it, and you’ll bleed to death in about as long as it takes you to make up your mind that disobedience was a mistake.”

The Mage, already pale, turned white. Before he could protest, Korlak squatted down, grabbed his hand and shoved it over the wad of rags. “Swear!” he ordered.

“I swear to obey every command Jicks gives me!” the Mage gulped, probably wishing he could think of some prevaricating way to rephrase that.

Korlak pulled the hand away and dropped the rags on the ground beside them; then he made a few gestures, clapped his hands over the rags, and they burst into multicolored flame. The Mage blanched again.

“Now,” Jicks said, “whatever your name was before, it’s now Del.”

“Why Del?” Stev asked.