"Shi-i-it!" He grabbed his bandaged eye. Then he looked at Lis. "I knocked myself down while drunk and Nik went to the Lower City to bring some medicines for me."
"How could you hit yourself like that?" Enriki asked Orel.
"I told you, I was dead drunk – like when I fell down from the stairs and broke all my ribs."
"Let me see," Lis said reaching for the bandage on Orel's damaged eye. Orel shrunk back.
"No, don't!" He hit his head against the back of the bed and howled in pain. A thick dark trickle of blood leaked from under the black cloth.
"Oh gods! Arel? What is it?" They rushed to him crowding around.
"We need to take him to the doctor right now!" Enriki said shakily.
"No, go to hell," Orel could barely speak, clenching his teeth in pain. His fingers gripped the cover. "Leave me alone!"
Lis turned to his friends; he was pale.
"Nikto mutilated Orel," he said to them, then turned to Orel. "Well, Arel, you did finish badly, didn't you?"
"Fuck you," Orel hissed holding his bad eye. He looked terribly: his glorious dark hair, half-heartedly washed of blood, hung in tousled icicles. His lip, despite the ointment, was still puffy. A thick black bandage covered his forehead, the bridle of his nose, his damaged eye and the upper part of his cheek. Nikto pulled it under Orel's hair and knotted tightly. He had based his actions exclusively on the practical use and hadn't cared about the appearance. The crude bandage looked horribly on Orel's chiseled, beautiful face, disfiguring him. The remaining brown eye looked at the friends in pain. Orel suffered but did his best not to show it. Yet they knew him, he couldn't deceive them. Enriki looked at Orel with unconcealed horror. Tol and Squint-Eye were distressed, not know what to say. Lis clenched his fists.
"I'll kill Nikto," he said. "I'll kill him!"
Orel moaned. "Nikto is not to blame!"
"Lis, perhaps it's true, Nikto is not to blame," Tol said gingerly. Lis didn't even look at him.
"If I were you, I wouldn't fish for trouble," Squint-Eye said to Lis. He sat down in the armchair at the bed and looked at the friends frowningly, cracking his knuckles.
"Stop cracking!" Lis yelled at him. "I'm sick of you!" He looked in disgust at Squint-Eye's arms covered in razor scars and terrible bruises left from injections.