The Battle of Ebulon (20 page)

A shadow fell across me;
I turned and saw a riveted brigantine over a mail shirt. Shoulders
wrapped in bear fur. Above that, a scowling, scarred man in a
battered helmet.

“
Who else
comes?” he demanded, glaring at the green cloud of kir I’d stepped
through. It faded now, shedding tiny stars. “Who else! King Yadi
begged for aid and you —” The knight gestured at me, half
shrugging. “Who are you?”

I gripped the strap of my
medicine bag, across my chest, in both hands. That steadied me.
“I’m Kate Bockmann.” I straightened as much as I could, but I still
didn’t reach his shoulder; he was a huge man. “Saint Qadeem heard
your call for help and sent me.”

A second knight, striding
across the square from a formation of some hundred, looked puzzled
by me, but not so angry. “Vess, what do we have?”

“
We have a
girl,” Vess answered, stepping aside and presenting me with a sweep
of his arm. “Fifty thousand Orcs at the gate and they send us a
fucking handmaid. One with — what the hell are those?” He pointed
at my Blessing ridges, which parted my blonde hair in two lines
across the top of my head.

My resolve quavered as
the shouting on the walls above drowned in a rising, inhuman howl.
No; Qadeem and my teacher had seen fit to trust me with this, as
they had the secret mission.

“
I’m a Blessed
of Saint Qadeem and the student of the Elect, sir, and I’ll aid you
however I can. These are my Blessing.” I ran my fingers over the
ridges where they pushed up through my scalp. Being so tall, Vess
must have a good view of them. “I remember every moment of every
day since I received them. All my skill, all my kir, are at your
service. We face invasion, as well, and Wodenberg could hardly
spare me, let alone — Prince Kiefan, or…”

The howling on the wall
broke and men’s voices surged. I glanced up and saw a red banner
with gold crowns advancing across the battlements. Who were they
fighting, up there? Orcs — what manner of men were
those?

“
And what do
you do, miss?” Vess asked.

“
I’m a
Physician.”

His brow furrowed in a
frown, then he threw up his hands and turned away.

“
We begged for
aid,” the second knight told him. “King Yadi begged, and you know
what that cost him. If her people face war as well, that they sent
anyone at all — oh, have a little faith, will you?” His reasoning
tone slid toward anger. “We’re all to die under the sword, if we
fail, and your hangman’s humor only feeds the men’s
fears.”

“
Watch your
tongue, lieutenant.” The bigger man took a sharp step toward him,
pointing.

“
Sirs!” My
standing there was poor use of my healing skills. They both looked
to me, the scarred officer scowling, the lieutenant — well, he
looked doubtful, but far kinder. “You must have an
infirmary?”

Across the square, metal
clashed, rattled. We all startled; I whirled around. A grate
bounced, among the paving stones, and then flipped open. A drain,
it was a grate covering a drain. Up leaped a stocky, mail-shirted
man with a heavy spear in both fists. With a roar, he charged as
his brothers followed him.

Straight at me. The man,
the… Orc had tusks. Piggish ears sticking from his helmet. Dusky
grey skin. I froze for a heartbeat. They’d brought me to the Winter
Wood itself, to face kobolds?

The spear plunged at me
and I threw up my arm, kir spinning out. The stubby green shield I
knit stopped the iron blade. The blow threw me to the ground with a
numbed arm. The Orc raised the spear again and a sword took him
through the ribs. Blood spurted when the lieutenant kicked him off
the blade, and the dying monster fell. He met the second Orc
head-on — and I was scrambling away, out from underfoot.

The knights rushed across
the square before the stream of Orcs could organize. I pressed
against the statue’s pillar, watching them cut the monsters down.
True enough, I was no knight. Surely Kiefan or Anders would’ve been
better suited to this.

But surely I could help,
too.

Vess carved through the
enemy, sword slinging off blood with each stroke. Soon enough,
they’d fought their way to the open drain, and the big captain
threw a dying Orc down the hole. Two men flipped the grate back
into place, and a third jammed a spear in to wedge it shut. A cheer
went up.

I was already slipping
from my safety, running to the first fallen knight. Touching his
bare cheek, I called his kir-pattern but it didn’t answer. He was
dead, bled out on the trampled snow. The second was weak and
wilting, the whorls of kir in his flesh stumbling and fading as I
watched. Among the whorls, the bright lines of his meridians
pulsed, fighting death and losing.

Kir powered all charms,
and all flesh was kir bent into shape and set to dancing — life was
its own charm, my teacher had said. Wounds and sickness broke the
flesh’s patterns, sending the whorls and threads into tangles and
jumbles. Too much confusion, and the patterns lost their dance.
Died.

The third was the
lieutenant. The spear jammed through his gut wobbled in his hands
as he gasped for air. Knuckles white, he tugged at it, and the pain
curled him on the paving stones.

“
Don’t touch
it!” I pulled his hands away. His pattern, whirling up in all its
dance, frothed around the blank space of the spear shaft. It had
missed his prime meridian, along his spine, thank Mother Love. And
the cruel thing held in his blood, for now. “The infirmary! Where’s
your infirmary!”

“
Del! Fucking
whoreson —” Vess dropped to one knee beside the lieutenant,
catching his hand and gripping it. “I shouldn’t have let you stay,
little cousin — you had to sign up!”

“
Who else is
wounded?” I glanced around the other knights, seeing some blood.
None too serious; they were still on their feet. “Come with us.
Where’s your infirmary?” I dared shove big Vess, to get his
attention. “Let him lie here, and he’ll die.”

Vess blinked at me, as if
I’d told him Del would sprout wings and fly. Then he scrambled up
and hoisted his cousin by the shoulders. A second knight took his
ankles and they carried him between them. I had to run to keep
up.

# # #

The tavern was just a block up from the
square.

Its main doors stood
open, as did full-length shuttered windows, to let in the clear,
winter sunlight. The bustle of wounded soldiers and goodfolk
pressed into service for them was dense, but my Blessed memory
recognized it. I’d seen as much while assisting my teacher in the
surgery during the battle at Ansehen.

When the knights slowed,
uncertain what to do, I strode ahead of them toward the man by the
door. By how the traffic swirled around him, he had triage
duty.

He saw me coming, and the
spear through Lieutenant Del, and put up one hand. “Light bless
you, child, but he’ll not last the watch. Pray with him till he
passes.” He pointed toward the open doors of a chapel across the
street.

“
I can mend
him. Lend me a table and a pair of hands, no more,” I said,
stopping before the man. Past his shoulder, I saw the large common
room arrayed in a fair infirmary, if over-stocked with patients and
thin on physicians. The goodfolk served as orderlies and
nurses.

“
Miss, you
can’t know what to —”

Enough of this. I put
some kir in my voice, to strengthen it. “Your King Yadi begged my
saint for aid, and I came. Now let me save what lives I can. Who
has charge, here?”

That cut through the
noise. All froze and stared at me. Vess stared, too. I folded my
arms; yes, I was only a slip of a girl, sixteen, with a long braid
wrapped around my head. I’d watched my teacher cheat death and
saved my share of lives. I meant to do more.

One of the surgeons, who
hadn’t so much as looked up from his work, pulled an arrow free of
a soldier’s thigh — the man screamed, writhing on the table, and a
spurt of blood flew over the surgeon’s head. In the quiet, all
heard him curse as he reached into the wound. He looked up at
last.

Across the room, he
answered me with a bitter twist in his voice. “Doctor Ceros at your
service, miss. If you’re such a wondrous life-saver, come see to
this.”

I could guess what it was
as I trotted across the common room, weaving through patient-laden
tables and more laid on the floor. When I reached Ceros’ side, he
started to speak but I held up one hand. The patient’s kir patterns
told me all.

The arrow had nicked his
artery, in the thigh, and his meridian wavered. The wound was full
of blood; Ceros’ fingers, pinching the nick shut, were buried in
it.

“
Think you can
stitch through the spray?” he asked, snide.

I’d had a belly-full of
such attitude, at home. On the tip of my finger, I wove a little
patch charm. “Don’t move,” I told Ceros, and slipped my finger in
next to his. The patient’s patterns glowed under my call, showing
me just where to place the patch. “Done.”

Ceros snorted. I shrugged
one shoulder and turned away. “The bar.” I told Vess, pointing. It
was the only surface left to claim.

“
I’ll be
damned,” Ceros said, behind me. He’d let go of the artery, no
doubt. “Luzan, assist our little miracle-worker. Who are
you?”

“
I am your
surgeon. Kate.”

“
Clear that
table!” Ceros snapped his fingers, pointing at one in front of the
open, full-length windows. The soldier on it lay too still, and
looked too pale, to be alive.

“
Bring Del,” I
said.

Luzon, my new assistant,
looked to be a scrawny boy with a shock of black hair, but he
dragged the dead soldier off the table on his own. The infirmary’s
bustle whirled back to life. Vess bulled his way through it,
carrying Del by the shoulders. He and the second knight laid Del on
the table, spear jutting up. Del still clutched it in both hands,
chest heaving.

“
Get his
brigantine loose,” I said, putting my medicine bag on a stool and
opening it. “And the mail. Luzon? I’ll need a —”

When I looked, the boy
was sliding a piece of belt-leather into Del’s mouth, to bite.
Luzon knew his business, then. I reached into my bag, looking for
the wallet with my scalpel and curved needles. I had some catgut,
and a spool of wool thread. Iron shears. A few cleansing charms,
bound to little bone figures of Mother Love. Some boiled
bandages.

“
Tell Peren he
has command,” Vess told the second knight, as I turned. “Watch
those fucking drains.” The man saluted and went; the company of
knights moved off, first checking the drain in the middle of the
street before the tavern.

Vess eyed me up and down,
taking in the bright little blades in my open wallet. “You won’t
just magick his wound shut?”

I laid my wallet and a
cleansing charm beside Del’s head. His brown eyes flicked to it,
showing panicky whites. “I have only what kir my saint gave me,
before I came here,” I said, taking my larger scalpel. “With it, I
must save as many as I can, before the kir runs out and my mind
tires such that I lose focus. Should I lose that, I’ll only cause
more harm.”

My friend Ilya, lying
pale and dead, flicked through my perfect memory. I nodded to the
spear shaft. “You must let go, Del.”

Vess took it in both his
hands. Del’s hands twitched, unwilling to obey. I put mine on his,
worked my fingers between the wood and his skin. Called his pattern
as I did it; he’d bled, but his dancing kir-whorls and pulsing
meridians were still strong. The cruel, barbed spear-head was
blackness invading his pattern. As Del’s hands loosened at last, I
flipped aside his loosened brigantine and the mail underneath.
Slicing through his thin gambeson, I found skin at last.

A cut, and Del’s hands
slammed onto the edges of the table. I went deeper, widening the
gash where the barbs would catch and rip. He bit into the belt
leather, screaming through it. The spear had jammed through three
coils of gut, stopping just shy of his back.

Vess, despite being such
a bear of a man, had a fine touch. He and I eased the spear out,
the barb catching only on Del’s mail along the way. Blood gushed,
stinking and tainted by the contents of his gut. Vess swore as he
threw the spear aside. I shoved Del’s layers up higher and reached
into the wound — he screamed around the leather clenched in his
teeth and convulsed — to stop the bleeding.

My memory brought me all
the small vessels of the gut, from when I’d seen them on other
patients. A little blood-stop charm was enough for such. Vess held
his cousin down with both hands, talking to him in a tense mutter.
I kept my focus on the wound.

The gash in Del’s belly
was wide enough to clamp open. I gently shifted wounded coils of
gut aside, seeing the flesh’s patterns rather than the blood and
greenish slops. It overflowed, ran onto the table and floor. The
smell would need hard scrubbing to get out, I knew.

Luzon had threaded the
correct needle with catgut; I spared him a smile as I took it.
“Bring water,” I told him.

One slice, deepest in, I
could simply stitch. The second coil was worse off, having been
nearly cut in half. Del sobbed, clutching the table, honestly
trying not to thrash. Not entirely succeeding. Luzon poured water,
when I asked him to, and much of the gore rinsed away. What I could
see, at least; I knew that it was loose among his guts, now, and
would kill him with fever. The cleansing charm would mend that,
though.