by Aimee Gross
“Come on, Dink. I have to suppose Virda will welcome a ride down, even bareback. Did I call you, I wonder? Perhaps I’ll call some goats or chickens later.” And off we went.
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Although I furrowed my brow and tried to summon a nanny or hen from the wood, we collected no more of our stock on the way back to the house. I led Dink with Virda astride, and the others followed. We made for a rag-tag procession, and none too fast, besides. I charged Wieser and Gargle with alerting me to anyone lurking, but they raised no alarm.
We found the back door kicked in but not splintered off its hinges. Snow drifted and eddied on the kitchen floor. Snow also mixed with scattered foodstuffs in the larder. I could see anything that required cooking lay scattered, spilt and spoiled, whereas anything that could be carried away and consumed was missing. Much of the crockery lay smashed on the flagstones, but not all of it. Furnishings were overturned but not broken, for the most part. They had not troubled to knock out window panes, I was glad to see. Glass is difficult to come by, Da always said. Our leaded triangle panes kept the snow out, still.
I bade the rest of them stand by a ready escape at the back door, while Wieser and I made a tour through all the rooms. I carried the sword to stab under beds and in behind curtains. No soldiers.
Annora helped Virda to Da’s big bed, after replacing the straw-stuffed mattress they had dragged off the frame. I found some dry woolens to cover her, and began to debate in my mind about the advisability of a fire. Would smoke from the chimney alert nearby Keltanese to our presence? Just how nearby were they, by this time? All the damage had been accomplished before the snows commenced, I reckoned from the lack of fresh tracks.
I decided to warm stones in a fire built in the ruin of the barn, where rising smoke might be expected past the actual blaze that consumed it. What cooking we must do could be accomplished there as well. The stones I could carry by bucket to Virda to keep her warmed, and we would all sleep in the room under the stairs.
I took Wieser along to the wood pile, and gathered enough for an armload. Wieser set up a whine, and would not go in the barn’s foundation with me. “I know it’s queer, Wieser. Let’s just get a fire laid. It’s not as if we can damage it further.”
She would not come closer, though, and whined all the louder. I got the fire going, and placed my warming rocks along the edge. “Back to the house, then. You can stay with the women next time.”
Murr shot out between my legs when I opened the back door, zipping into the garden under the snow-laden bean vines. Morie appeared next, anxious to chase him, but I would not hear of her wandering out alone.
“We haven’t had a chance to look at the state of the place, you could fall in a hole or gods know what else could happen. You’ll stay in here, and come with me when next I go out. Lay the cloaks out to see if they’ll dry.”
She laid Iggle’s out first, of course. Wouldn’t want Iggle to catch a chill. When I brought more bedding for us down the stairs, I found only Virda and I were accounted for—no Annora or Morie.
“She’s wheedled Annora into going out to find Murr. She never minds!” Gargle pecked at the back window, followed by Wieser renewing her whine at the threshold. I yanked open the door, set to yell for them, when Annora appeared, dragging Morie by the arm.
“There’s a soldier in the barn, Morie says.” Annora, wide-eyed and out of breath, turned and pointed.
“He’s maybe dead,” Morie said, equally breathless.
“Did I not say to stay in the house? What makes you think he’s dead?”
She would not answer, pouty since I had scolded her. Annora said, “I understood her to say she pissed in his ear.”
“Morie! Did you do that?” She nodded, still refusing to speak. Morie, who would not be taken to the bushes by her brother, had pissed in the ear of an enemy soldier. I could not credit it.
“Show me!” I commanded, meaning show me where he is. Instead Morie dropped to her knees, and before I could say anything, leaned forward and said, “Pssst, are you dead?”
Annora burst out laughing, and I could not help laughing, too. “And when he didn’t answer, you thought he was maybe dead?” I said, passing a hand over my brows.
“He didn’t answer, he just went unnngh,” she said, imitating a guttural moan. Relief fled as quickly as it had flooded me. I snatched my sword, snapped, “Take me to him,” and strode out ahead of them. “Wieser, come on. Is that what you’ve been whining about? For gods’ sake, you’re going to have to be clearer. What’s the use of vague unease? How is that a message from you?”
I stalked toward the barn, Annora and Morie with me, Wieser wagging her tail now, of all things. I quit talking and shushed everyone including Gargle, who flew over to join the procession. I crept in at the place Morie pointed, under the shelter of one of the tipped walls where snow drifted in lightly. The water trough stood with a skin of ice on it, holding up one side of the charred wall. He lay in the pallid light that filtered in, Keltanese tunic plain to see, gore-clotted cloth wrapped around his throat. I could not see if he was breathing, but Morie had claimed he made a sound. I eased closer, and saw a knife lying just where it might have fallen from his grip, near his hand on the stone floor. His uniform was filthy, ripped at one shoulder. He wore one boot, and rags wrapped the other foot, the protruding toes waxy pale. Frostbite.
I pitched my voice fierce as I could, as I did not plan to piss in his ear in my turn, and said, “You! Are you living yet? You can be dead quick enough, if so.” I prodded him with the sword, having first kicked his knife away from his easy reach if he showed able to move.
He moaned, tried to open his eyes, and said, “Water,” in thick-voiced Keltanese. I repeated my warning in Keltanese, then, but he only repeated his request, nay plea, for water.
“Can you speak Mercedish?”
He made a minute nod, and croaked again, “water” but in our tongue. Annora, who generally had shown sense on our adventures, squatted by his side, dipped a bit of cloth in the trough, and held it to his cracked lips. She squeezed it to drip in his mouth, when he acted too weak to suck it.
“What are you thinking? Get up!” I shouted, and he was undead enough to stay her hand as she began to withdraw it. “Angel, please,” he groaned. I laid hold of her arm and pulled her out of his grasp before he could hurt her, or take her hostage. Though, in truth, I had to admit he looked unable to do much at all.
I dipped the rag again, and shoved it roughly into his fingers. Preparing to withdraw with Annora and Morie, I saw him feebly shift toward his mouth with the cloth. “Bah!” I said, and lifted his hand by his cuff to set it over his lips. I chivvied the two girls and Wieser out into the dim winter light.
“What are you going to do with him?” were the first words from Annora.
“I’m going to roll him down to the town road and pin a note to his tunic telling his own to look after him,” I said hotly. “What I’m not going to do is open an infirmary for all and sundry who wash up here. He’s the enemy!”
“He’s a wounded man, and freezing out here.”
“Why have they gone off and left him? How far off have they gone? Maybe they’ll be coming back for him, have you thought of that?”
“It looks as if they’ve left him for dead.”
“Or, they’ve gone down to Virda’s to get some help for him, and are bringing a litter as we stand out here arguing.”
I turned in disgust and began to head for the house.
“I can’t leave him out here.”
I wheeled on her. “He’s not Wils lying there. He’s an enemy soldier, here because he’s invaded our country, sacked our farm and burned our barn and we don’t know what all else, yet. I haven’t had time to inventory, since I’m trying to have us all keep waking up alive. What do you think you can do for him? Get him well enough he can slit our throats in the night?”
Morie began to cry, and she does not cry quietly. Her wail reached a screech when I clapped a hand over her
mouth. “Take her in,” I said, and shoved her toward Annora. “I’m getting him out of here alive or dead, and I do not care which. Better dead, so he can’t tell any of his fellows about the angel who gave him a drink.”
“They’d think him raving, I expect. Though you gave him a drink, too. Do you think you have it in you to go and stab him as he lays?” She looked at me closely over Morie’s curls, while Morie burrowed her face deeper into the scarf at Annora’s chin.
I did not know how to answer. If I said I could go back and push my blade into him without hesitation, she’d know I lied. Clearly, I had never killed anyone. But this was my home, I had to defend it and those I loved. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
She waited, unmoving.
“I won’t do anything yet. Take Morie in out of the cold. Check on Virda, she’s probably frantic if she’s heard us carrying on out here.”
She carried Morie in, then. I went back to be sure the man hadn’t moved. He lay as we had left him, with his hand still over his mouth with the rag. He looked grayer in the face, if anything.
I thought hard on the walk back to the house. What would Da want me to do? He had killed men when he was a soldier, surely? And not an enemy in his own barn, presenting a greater threat than one off far from home somewhere. What would Wils want? His bride protected, or mercy shown to an enemy?
Wieser walked beside me, and Gargle perched on the porch roof, muttering. “You all are no help. You may be telling me things, but I don’t know what any of the time! I can guess at things for myself. Are there any others about the place? No? Or yes? I could wish you were more use, if you’re here because I summoned you.” My anger and uncertainty spilled out onto them, since I had no other ready target. Neither of them commented by sound or action. I heaved a sigh and went in the house.
“Judian, I have not opposed you in anything since I came here,” Annora said as soon as soon as I set foot in the kitchen.
I looked for Morie, but she must have been persuaded to “help” Virda for a bit. “No,” I acknowledged, pulling out a chair at the table. “No, you’ve been game for everything and a great help to me with Morie. And Virda. I’m going to ask you to tell me why you want to part ways with me now, over this man.”
“I don’t know, I wish I did.” She crossed her arms and hugged herself, staring out the back window. “It just seems I cannot leave him out there to die. I’m no warrior. I’m only barely become a wife. But if I can heal someone, I find I must do it. I can’t turn away. I know he’s our enemy. I do understand how hard you’ve strived to keep us safe. But I can’t leave him there, and I don’t want you to have to kill him, and hear his ghost whisper in your ear forever more.”
“What’s this about his ghost?”
“Wils said your da told him he hears the ghosts of men who fell to him in battle. Has he never told you? He said they breathe in his ear at unexpected times, times when he’s happy and content, or times when he’s complaining about some something that isn’t going as he wishes, as well. Reminding him they would be content or irritated, but cannot be either, as they are dead. By his hand.”
Fine. I had not thought of bearing the burden forever of ending the man’s life. I just wanted to know what to do now as my best course. I rubbed my forehead. “Can I sleep on it?”
“He’ll die, I fear. He’s half-frozen now. I don’t think he’ll survive another night while we deliberate.”
She wasn’t deliberating, I was. I stood abruptly. “I’m walking down to Virda’s place. I want to see whether more men are there, or what they’ve left if they passed through. We’re going to need more food. If any has been left there, I’ll bring it. Give me some kind of a blanket or cloak, I’ll cover him as I leave. Help Morie find Murr, if he’s close by in the garden. She won’t rest until he’s back in. Call him for her. When I come back, I’ll have decided what to do.”
“All right, Judian. I know you have a burden you should never have had to bear so young.”
“I don’t feel young,” I said. “I feel a hundred years old at least.”
CHAPTER 13
Virda’s house still stood, and in fact, off the direct path from ours by a short ways, had been unmolested. That is, as far as I could tell, what with the snowy cover over all. I gathered food we could well use, and lantern oil, and packed it on Dink, who found some of Virda’s goats’ hay a ready meal while I searched about. I had agreed to leave some kind of message for Virda’s sons, should they come seeking her, saying she was safe and in hiding. I wrote a few lines and placed the paper under a candle stick on the fireside table. Perhaps I should move us all down here? But that brought us closer to the harbour town road and the village, and that much closer to trouble, I feared.
I had left Wieser and Gargle at home, set to guard all there and instructed to give clearer warnings of danger. Wieser gave her look of reproach, and Gargle hopped along the porch railing, cawing as I rode out on Dink.
My trip took perhaps two hours, and in that time I decided I could not kill a wounded man. If he had come bursting through our door waving his knife, then I would have done my best to run him through, no doubts. But when I tried to imagine standing over him, putting a blade into him as he lay there helpless, I could not finish the vision. I helped slaughter my share of pigs and goats, had wrung many a chicken neck, done time and again any of the hundred chores involving death on a farm. Hunted the slopes and taken game. If I had more practice thinking of an enemy as less than a man, maybe I could have done it. I thought of leaving him to freeze, and decided I could only have done so if I hadn’t known he lay out there. Easier if I could have discovered him already frozen dead, and know the gods determined his fate rather than me.
When I brought the food in, I asked Annora to come help me move him. I told her we would put him on a pallet in the kitchen, which she prepared in a trice, using Wieser’s former fireside accoutrements with no apology. He would be placed in the corner alcove, without a view of the rest of the room, where the oak barrel of ale had disappeared from when his fellows came through. He would be warmer than in the barn. She could dress his wound. We would offer him food and drink and set Wieser to guard him. If he improved under our care such that he could walk, I would blindfold him and take him out into the woods near to the road and set him loose.
“Yes, oh, Judian, I’ll do whatever you direct. I’m so glad we don’t have to murder him!”
“I was going to be the one to have to do murder,” I protested.
“As if I’d have let you do it without helping you.”
Doubly sure I had chosen well, since I did not want to take anyone else down the ghost-making path, I stood at his head to lift him under the shoulders and Annora carried his feet, and we partly dragged the soldier up the stoop and into the kitchen. He seemed barely aware of being moved, and his brow felt feverish despite his coldness to touch elsewhere. I held him propped against me while Annora unwound the cloth from his neck, soaking it where it stuck to avoid pulling loose the scabs and so set the injury bleeding anew. He bore a jagged gash across the side of his neck that curved round the back. It looked to me as if someone had tried to take his head off. He knew little of our ministrations, having utterly passed from awareness as soon as I sat him up. His pallor was shocking, in the better light of the kitchen lantern. He had lost much of his life blood.
Annora bound the wound with fragrant herbs and some of our spider web poultice. It did not seem to be festering, no odor. She did not blush as she stripped off the rest of his wet garments, and left his small clothes in place. She bade me turn him to see if further wounds had gone unnoticed, but we saw nothing else bleeding, only a multitude of scrapes and bruises. Of more concern were his frostbitten feet, and now fingers as well. She clicked her tongue as she inspected the yellowish white toes. “I hope they don’t split and peel. We must warm him carefully.”
I noted with unease he was young and heavily-muscled. He bore blade scars along his arms, and one crossed his left temple, vi
sible in damp, thick black hair. I could see on his back the ends of ropy reddish whip scars at the neck of his under tunic, and looked down to see they crisscrossed his back beneath the fabric. What manner of life had he lived?
No, I wasn’t going to concern myself with that. “If his hands are sore he can’t hold a weapon. And if his feet are the worse for frostbite, he can’t run off and bring back his fellows,” I pointed out.
“I wonder if his other boot is under the snow somewhere?”
“I don’t think I want to keep him in the kitchen until the spring thaw. If I set him on the road, we’ll put something on his feet.”
“Lay him back. He’s clean, at least. When he wakes, I’ll try to get some warm broth in him.” I helped her drag a pair of Da’s trousers and a woolen shirt onto him, and we covered him with the thick woolen blanket we used in the sleigh. It was a horrible scratchy thing, but trapped the air well. In any case, we had no sleigh now, since it had been in the barn, and no harness or horses, either. I need a sign I’ve done the right thing, I thought darkly.
I went in to Virda and Morie. I told Virda about the note I left and that her house remained in good order; this news causing her to clap her hands under her chin like a delighted child. She already looked better since arriving in a decent bed, and her cough was breaking up. Morie sat on the bed with her, with Murr curled between them and Iggle tucked under the quilt, also.
“This is important, Morie. The soldier is in the kitchen, and I want you to stay away from him. No talking to him, no showing him Iggle, nothing. He is not our friend. Wieser and I are going to watch him until he is ready to leave. Do you know what you are supposed to do?”
“Leave the soldier alone. He’s mean.”
“Good enough.” I didn’t know how mean he could be just presently, but better if she thought so. Virda was giving me a questioning look, but I didn’t feel like discussing my choices any further today. “I’ll bring your supper in to you soon. I believe we have turnip soup, tonight.”
