In the silence that followed, Gabrielle did her best to become invisible, but the commander’s interest in her had been kindled. He jumped to his feet. “Ah, maybe the good captain was right. Take my mind off the boy.” He reached for Gabrielle’s wrist. “C’mere, you.”
Gabrielle stiffened and shrank from his touch. “I am a bonemender!” she heard herself babble. “You cannot violate a bonemender!” What pathetic nonsense, she thought. This man wouldn’t care if I were the Spirit of the Gray Sea herself.
Strangely enough, though, Col hesitated. He looked at her sharply.
“Bonemender.” He didn’t seem to know the word. “You are a ... surgeon?”
“I help sick and wounded people get better. If that’s a surgeon, then yes.”
A shadow darkened the man’s hard face. Some deep pain was hidden here. “Are you any good?” he demanded.
It was hardly the time for false modesty. “Better than most,” she said.
“My son is dying,” he said. “My surgeons can do nothing for him. You want to save yourself? Save him.” He headed out the door. “Come,” he ordered.
COL THRUST HER INSIDE the tent. A slight figure lay hunched on a pallet against the wall. Gabrielle had not expected this: Col’s son was so young, no more than fourteen or fifteen, she judged. A bracing flame of anger licked at her: The brute, to send his own boy into battle! The boy stared at her, frightened eyes huge in a white face.
“Are you the Angel of Death?” he whispered. She realized suddenly how sinister she must look, so filthy and disheveled, and smiled in spite of herself.
“No, no,” she said softly. She did not know if he would understand her speech. “I’m here to help you.” She gestured at Col, asking him to explain. While he did, she knelt beside the boy—Derkh, his name was—and did a more careful appraisal. It was an abdominal wound, covered with a greasy bundle of bandaging, soaking red even now. The boy’s skin was ghostly pale, his dark eyes hectic. She touched the back of her hand to his forehead and neck, no apparent fever yet, at least. His hands were pale and cold; he had lost a great deal of blood. A groan escaped him; he clamped his lips together hard but could not stifle the little mewing grunts that ended each breath. He was in terrible pain, Gabrielle realized, and struggling fiercely to be brave in front of his father.
Until this moment Gabrielle had not thought she would treat Col’s son. She had imagined herself refusing boldly and going bravely to her death. Now the healer in her asserted itself. She had sworn to relieve suffering. This boy suffered; looking on him now she knew that nothing else mattered. He was not her enemy. He was her patient. She did not know if she had the skill and power left to help him, but she meant to try.
“I’ll need boiling water, lots of it. Clean bandaging, not these dirty rags. I need healing herbs from my kit. It’s on the battlefield where I was found.” Gabrielle’s tone was as clipped and commanding as if she were addressing a servant. Col raised an eyebrow but did not strike or rebuke her. He went to the door of the tent, rattled out a string of orders and turned back to her.
“What else?”
“I need to wash.”
He grunted. “Don’t we all?”
“I need to wash before I treat your son,” she persisted. “Any dirt that gets in a wound can cause infection. In an abdominal wound, that could kill him.”
Col yelled through the tent door again, and a bucket was brought in. As Gabrielle rose to her feet, a wave of dizziness washed over her and her vision blurred. She bent over her knees, fighting the faintness.
“What is it?” Col’s voice was sharp. “Are you sick?”
“No,” Gabrielle said. “But I do not remember when I last ate or slept.”
“You can have water now. Food tonight, if my son is improved.”
Col spoke again to the guard outside the tent and left without a backward glance.
WHEN THE SUPPLIES arrived, Gabrielle was already at work. The sword had thrust up under the boy’s ribs, damaging the liver, and he was losing blood rapidly. Gabrielle’s first priority was to seal the largest of the cut blood vessels. There was no prospect of reattaching them; she just hoped Derkh’s body would be able to compensate for the blocked passages.
Before looking at the wound itself, she brewed up a light dose of the mandragora, mixed with a milder, and safer, willowbark mixture. It was the strongest painkiller she dared give the boy. Patiently she coaxed it into him, one small spoonful at a time. He gagged once or twice but fought it down, desperate for some relief. As the tea took effect, he closed his eyes.
“Derkh,” she said, choosing the simplest words she could find. “It will hurt when I change the bandage. But the tea will help, and you will sleep after.” He nodded; nobody needed to tell him that Gabrielle was his last hope.
The injury was ugly, all right; but Gabrielle was relieved to find a fairly clean layer of cloth next to the skin. She had been afraid the filth of the bandage alone would kill him. Derkh groaned and clenched his teeth as she began to rinse out the wound. “Cry out if you need to,” she said, working as gently as she could. “Your father is not here, and I will not think the less of you. I’ve seen many a grown man show less courage than you.” He must have understood at least some, for the rigid tension in his body eased a little, and though he did cry out—and cry—at the worst parts, he seemed calmer and less afraid. As promised, he dropped into a deep, exhausted sleep as she finished up the bandaging.
A man brought soup, cheese and a chunk of coarse bread, and Gabrielle made herself eat every scrap. Then she sat by Derkh’s rough pallet and worked over him far into the night, until fatigue overcame her and she too collapsed into uneasy sleep.
CHAPTER 22
FOR two days the Greffaire forces camped just far enough away from the battlefield to be free of its stench. The official reason for the delay—and it made perfect sense to Col’s troops—was to allow the men to scavenge valuable arms and armor from the dead of both sides. The true reason, which Col confessed to no one, was to give his son a chance to live. The strange “bonemender” had somehow pulled Derkh through that first night, when his own surgeons had left him for the dark road. Now she and his son would both have a second chance.
While the Greffaires tarried, La Maronne was on the move. The Verdeau troops, down to about twenty-five hundred men, marched southward toward Gaudette. Two thousand Maronnais, supported by some eight hundred soldiers from Gamier, marched west from the Eastern Gateway to meet them. Envoys galloped for Gaudette to request reinforcements from the castle garrison. And traveling faster than any of them, loping almost silently along secret forest pathways known only to the Elves, Féolan and his Stonewater warriors closed in on the Skyway Pass.
They found the battlefield easily. A valley strewn with death soon attracts clouds of carrion birds. Screened by the flanking woodlands, the Elves watched with disgust as Gref Orisé soldiers stripped the bodies of the fallen. Too late, thought Féolan. It is already lost.
But his military commander, Haldoryn, pointed out that there were too few bodies for a total defeat. “The losses were not all on the Verdeau side,” said Haldoryn. “They gather plenty of their own armor. Plus if what you say about the use of conscripts is true, those poor souls must number many of the dead.”
“So there was a retreat,” concluded Féolan. “A retreat, perhaps, to join with fresh troops.”
“That is my hope,” agreed Haldoryn. “A retreat to buy time.”
“Can we help to buy them that time?” asked Féolan. Haldoryn thought, curling his lip in distaste at the sight of a soldier hacking a gold wristband from a dead soldier. “I have no taste for killing sleeping men unawares,” he confessed. “But after looking upon this desolation, I believe I could stand it. I suggest we scout out the Gref Orisé camp.”
GABRIELLE SPENT THOSE two days in Derkh’s tent. The two guards posted outside were hardly necessary; she had no desire to take her chances among the Greffaire soldiers. Besides, in the deep healing tranc
e she found a little oasis of oblivion, a respite from the pain of Jerome’s death. Several times a day she changed Derkh’s bandage and poultice and coaxed soups and medicines into him. The rest of the time she left the world and poured her mind into his healing, working until sleep pulled her down into blackness.
The first morning she had awakened on the ground beside Derkh’s pallet, aching and chilled. She grimaced as she rose to her feet; her clothing was stiff with dried blood and gave off an acrid, meaty smell. Her thigh, where the sword had glanced off it, had bled and stuck to her skirt; the wound throbbed. Ironic, she thought, if she healed this half-dead boy, only to die herself from an infected flesh wound. She gave her leg a hasty wash, sprinkled dried goldenseal directly on the cut and covered it with what little bandaging she could spare. Then she turned to her patient.
He was watching her. His eyes looked better this morning, she saw with relief, clear and lucid.
“Your clothes smell awful,” he said. Gabrielle nodded.
“Why don’t you change them?”
“I have no others.”
Derkh considered this while Gabrielle prepared new medicine for him. She could see the pain was starting to bite again.
“You can have some of mine,” he announced as she tipped his head up to spoon in the tea.
Gabrielle hesitated. “Your father might not ... “
“If my father is displeased, let him beat me,” Derkh replied harshly. “It is my order. They are in that carryall. Take whatever is least dirty.” He motioned with his chin.
Gabrielle took the top suit of clothes—a kind of tunic and strange, wide-cut pants. They were none too clean, but she wasn’t about to paw through her captor’s possessions. Derkh closed his eyes while she changed; the tang of young man’s sweat enfolded her as she pulled the tunic over her head, and even so she was grateful for the improvement. There was a strange intimacy to wearing someone else’s clothing.
Gabrielle gathered up her old skirt and overdress and looked at Derkh.
“Just throw them outside; someone will get rid of them.”
She went to the door and paused.
“What is it?” asked Derkh.
“Nothing,” said Gabrielle softly. “It’s just ... my father’s blood is on them.” The confession came out before she could stop it.
Derkh seemed taken aback. Maybe, like her, he hadn’t really considered that grief and loss came to enemies as well as friends.
By the morning of the second day, Gabrielle knew that Derkh was out of danger. She was glad, for a bond of trust and respect had grown between them. She herself, however, was dangerously close to collapse. She didn’t much care; exhaustion and heartsickness had taken too heavy a toll. But it occurred to her that with Derkh stable, she could slow her efforts to a more normal pace, and this might also buy the Basin troops the time they needed to regroup. Col had delayed this long for his son. Would he wait longer?
She attended to Derkh diligently that day but paced herself. Col checked on them around noon, and though he quickly regained his stern manner he could not suppress his surprised relief at finding Derkh resting comfortably, sipping at some broth.
“He will live?” he asked bluntly.
Gabriel nodded. “With rest and careful attention to his wounds, yes. He will live.”
“Lucky for us both,” he remarked. It was as close as he would come to thanking her.
CHAPTER 23
THAT night, about a mile from camp, Haldoryn briefed his men one last time. “Get in and get out,” he said. “No foolish risks. We want to disorient the enemy, put them on the defensive. We cannot make a serious dent in their numbers, but we can perhaps shake their confidence. Keep silence, stay cloaked in darkness. We rendezvous on this path, back where it crosses the stream.”
“One more thing,” added Féolan. “Some of these men are conscripts who fight against their will. They will be quartered together. Do not harm them, unless forced to it.”
Except for the conscripts’ compound, the Gref Orisé camp was not heavily guarded. No alarm sounded as the swift shadows flowed over the perimeter and vanished among the tents. Orange tongues of flame licked at the darkness: supply carts, ale barrels and cook tents sprang alight. A cry of “Fire!” rang through the camp as the startled sentries rushed to quench the flames. Two men drowsily guarding a large tent sprang to arms but too late; they died without a sound under the knives of two grim-faced Elves. Men thick with sleep poured from their tents with confused shouts; many were dead before their companions knew what had happened.
Commander Col did not rush out. He yelled for his guards, and when they did not appear, he strapped on his cuirass and helmet before cutting a strip out the back of the tent with his sword and stepping through.
Danaïs wiped his dagger and faded back into the shadow of a tree. He glanced at Féolan, his lips thin with disgust. “This is an ill night’s work, my friend,” he murmured.
“Aye,” agreed Féolan. “Rather would I face a man full-armored and ready than kill from behind like a thief.”
Danaïs stiffened. “It seems we get our wish,” he said.
Féolan turned to the armored figure stalking toward them. He smiled ruefully. “At last I get to show off my Gref Orisé training,” he said. “Danaïs, stay back, I beg you, and protect both our backs.”
Féolan lowered his sword in the classic Gref Orisé fighting stance. Let him puzzle on that, he thought. The figure paused, then accepted his challenge. The duel began, unnoticed in the uproar all around them.
The man was a powerful and canny fighter, though against Féolan he seemed lumberingly slow. Féolan began two-handed, in the heavy slicing Gref Orisé style. As he got a feel for his opponent’s moves, he switched to the more complex one-handed swordplay of his own people. He managed several nicks at the man’s bare arms, and took a glancing blow on his fingers in return, but knew there could be no victory unless he penetrated the armor. Working his way toward his opponent’s left side, he feinted and then leaped in with a powerful two-handed broadside sweep behind the man’s knees. He was down. Danaïs leaped in, pinning the sword arm and sending the sword skidding across the bare ground while Féolan fell on the man’s back, slit the armor laces and flicked open the clasps at the back of his helmet. The thick neck and shoulders lay exposed.
Féolan paused, breathing heavily. He should kill this man, his enemy, conquered in a fair fight. But his gorge rose at the thought of thrusting a sword into that unprotected neck. He pulled off the backplate, cast it aside and said, “Sit up, you.”
His opponent sat warily, the breastplate falling away to reveal his chest still heaving with exertion.
“Now your helmet.”
Féolan recognized the man immediately. He had seen him only once, but a striking presence like that was hard to forget.
“Good evening, Commander Col,” he said. His sword stayed firmly trained at the man’s neck.
Col swallowed his shock well. “How do you know my name?” he grated.
“I served in Unit Eighty-Six,” replied Féolan. “And now, I think, there is no more time for talk. Pick up your sword, Commander, and fight me on even terms.” He was well aware of Danaïs’ alarm at this gesture, but he had no choice. He could not walk away, leaving the commander of the Gref Orisé forces alive and well, and he could not kill the man in cold blood. He would have to fight. And he would have to make a quick job of it, before they were noticed and men rallied to Col’s aid.
It was almost easy. It had been many, many years since Col had fought without armor, and he left his side unprotected once too often. Leading with a quick feint, Féolan darted in and planted his sword deep between Col’s ribs.
They did not wait to see the outcome. He and Danaïs slipped away, making for the woods east of camp.
GABRIELLE STARTED AWAKE to hammering footsteps, shouting and the crackle of fire. She leaped to her feet and peered out the doorway of the tent. It was a scene from a disjointed nightmare: the air fu
ll of smoke and shouting, the dark figures of running men glimpsed by the crazy flicker of flame. Her guards were gone.
An idea whispered in her: escape. Behind that a sudden longing: home.
She pulled back from the door, trying to order her thoughts.
“If you have a chance to go, take it.”
Derkh’s voice made her jump. She turned to him. “Take it,” he insisted. “You have more than earned your freedom.”
She crept over to his pallet. “I need to know that you will be well.”
“I will,” he replied. “I’m getting better now. You know it.”
“You are, but as long as that wound is open it can get infected. Your ... uh, surgeons, they have to take care of it properly.”
“Tell me how.”
She did. She told him how to keep the wound clean: to insist on handwashing, boiled bandages and frequent dressing changes. She left behind the last of her poultice ingredients and told him how to dry and reuse them when he ran out. She gave him the names of the plants involved, in case his own surgeons kept a supply. And then she surprised herself by leaning over and kissing him on both cheeks. He reached up around her neck and pulled her close, and she was glad to feel the strength in his arms. Then she cracked open the tent flap and slid out into the orange and black night.
THERE WAS NO TELLING which way was best. Gabrielle hadn’t even the sketchiest sense of the camp’s layout; she just picked a direction and ran. Lacking the energy to dodge and hide, she blundered past the fighting and the fires, finding herself at last in the relative shelter of a stand of trees. Heaving for breath, legs trembling, she tried to catch her bearings. She had rarely been in the woods at night, but she found after a few minutes that she could pick out the blacker lines of the trees well enough. Cautiously, she made her way deeper into the brush, feeling for the ground beneath her feet, gaining confidence with each step. Gradually the clamor died away, until for the first time in many days she heard nothing but the soft sounds of nature. Moonlight outlined the birch trees with silver; an owl hooted. Her feet found a narrow path and followed it easily. She was not afraid.
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