Justice

by Ian Irvine

“I can see a road,” said Rannilt, looking down.

  Below them a broad track wound its way towards a pass, only to disappear beneath an avalanche of snow and broken ice that had long, dark shapes scattered through it. Many long shapes…

  “What’s that in the snow?” said Rannilt.

  Tobry covered her eyes and walked the other way.

  She yanked his hand aside. “Put—me—down!”

  He kept walking. With a furious squirm she slipped free, landing on her good foot and the foot of the walking stick. She let out a yelp and hopped down towards the track, every jarring step sending stabs of pain through her ankle. How dare he treat her like a little kid!

  By the time she was halfway she could smell the dead, and not long after that she was close enough to see what—or who—they had been before the scavengers came. Soldiers wearing the uniforms of Rix’s army and Grandys’ Herovian force. At least fifty of the former and hundreds of the latter. And more buried under the snow, she thought.

  “Rix’s men fought at three passes, one after another,” said Rannilt. “This must be the third pass.”

  Tobry howled.

  “Those poor men shouldn’t be left here like this,” she added hoarsely, for her mouth was as dry as paper. “It ain’t right.”

  But there was nothing she could do—she couldn’t bury hundreds of men with her bare hands. She licked her dry, cracked lips. She was scanning the slopes of the pass, looking for a spring or seep where she could find good water, when she made out a dark mark a third of the way up the slope on the other side of the pass.

  “That’s a cave,” said Rannilt.

  They crossed the track and headed up. The ground was wet here; a few minutes’ excavation with a flat stone created a hole which slowly filled with clear water. She drank as much as her belly could hold, washed her face and hands and continued towards the cave.

  “We’ll need a fire. Can you find some dry wood?”

  She collected kindling and sticks from sheltered spots beneath ledges and boulders, and dumped it in the cave entrance. It was broad and low, with an overhang at the front. Rannilt lowered herself to the ground, sighing as the weight came off her throbbing ankle. She made a nest with the kindling, wove a network of smaller sticks over it and had just struck sparks into the kindling with her flint and steel when someone groaned behind her.

  Her hair stood up. She dragged herself around on hands and knees.

  “Who’s there?”

  CHAPTER 88

  There came another deep groan; a man’s groan. Behind Rannilt the tinder caught and a little blaze flared up through the nest of sticks. She peered into the back of the cave, which was too dark to make him out. Whoever he was, he sounded ill. How could he be a danger to her… unless he was one of Axil Grandys’ cruel followers.

  Tobry was nowhere in sight, and as a healer she had no choice—if the man was injured she had to help him. She made a bundle of half a dozen sticks, poked the ends into the fire until they caught and held them up.

  The flickering light revealed a pair of bloodshot green eyes, a lean, tanned face and a strong chin covered in a week’s growth of dark stubble. His clothes were dark with dirt and she could not tell what uniform he was wearing—wait, there was a sergeant’s insignia on his left shoulder.

  “You’re one of Rix’s men, aren’t you?”

  “I am.” His voice was weak; he sounded in great pain.

  “Where are you hurt?” Rannilt said warily.

  “Thigh bone—smashed.” He tried to sit up, gasped, and slumped sideways, breathing shallowly. “Avalanche.”

  She took several steps up the sloping floor. His pants were bloodstained above the left knee and the whole limb was swollen—no, bloated. She caught a bad smell, one that sent a shudder down her spine.

  “Tobry!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Come here!”

  She wasn’t afraid of the soldier now. She crawled to him, since the back of the cave wasn’t high enough to stand in. The smell was really bad here.

  “Seen—you before,” said the man. “You’re Pale, aren’t you?”

  “I’m Rannilt,” she said absently. “I’m a healer.”

  “Won’t be—healing me. It’s gangrene! I’ll be dead tomorrow.”

  She cut his pants leg away, inspected the mess and gagged. A piece of broken bone just above the knee was sticking out for a full inch through the swollen, livid flesh. How had he crawled all the way up from the avalanche with such a terrible injury? It must have been agony. And how long had he lain here, waiting to die? Ages—the battle for the third pass had been more than a week ago.

  “What’s your name?” said Rannilt.

  “Jackery.”

  She looked up in surprise. “I heard about you in Garramide. You saved Rix’s life.”

  “He’s—good man,” said Jackery. “Is he—?”

  “He’ll beat that lousy Axil Grandys, you’ll see,” she said stoutly.

  Jackery lay back and closed his eyes, as if the brief conversation had exhausted him.

  Rannilt could hear Tobry coming. She returned to the blaze and pushed the burning sticks together. He climbed the slope and dumped his load by the fire with a crash.

  “One of Rix’s men is here, and he’s hurt bad,” she said in a rush. “His leg’s got gan-gangrene.”

  He sniffed and made a questioning sound.

  “His name’s Jackery and he saved Rix twice. I’ve got to do some-thin’.”

  Tobry went to the rear of the cave, squatted beside the soldier then came back, shaking his head. He piled wood on the fire until the blaze lit the whole cave and reflected off Jackery’s feverish eyes.

  “You can’t heal gangrene,” said Rannilt. “What if I… cut his leg off?” That was the darker side of healing, and terrible to contemplate, though if it had to be done she would try her best.

  Tobry made another enigmatic sound. It might have meant, Maybe.

  “I’ll need hot water. And more firewood. And bandages.”

  “No job for—eight-year-old girl,” said Jackery.

  “I think I might have turned eleven,” Rannilt said vaguely, as if that made it all right.

  Jackery held out a metal canteen. Tobry took it down the slope, filled it with water and put it in the fire, then hurried off. Was he running away, as he had run so many times before?

  She sat by Jackery, sharpening her knife on a stone. While she worked she studied the wound in the firelight. Could she cut a man’s leg off? It would be a terrible, agonising operation.

  “I’d have to cut well above the bad flesh,” she said aloud. “But the shock could kill you… or you could bleed to death.”

  “Dead man—anyway,” said Jackery. “You’re a brave girl.”

  “I’m a healer,” said Rannilt with a touch of pride. “It’s what I got to do.”

  But could she still heal? She’d failed with Tobry, and her own broken ankle. She had to try. Without her help Jackery would die.

  Tobry came running, carrying an army healer’s pack covered in icicles. He’d been all the way down to the avalanche. He opened it to reveal packets of bandages and jars of lotions and balms. She washed her hands, set her knife and various balms out on a piece of rag, and knelt beside Jackery’s broken leg.

  “Come here,” she said to Tobry.

  She wasn’t sure he would come, but he knelt beside her and looked down expectantly. Rannilt felt a tiny grain of hope for him as well.

  “This is good,” she said. “You and me, workin’ together like friends.”

  He began to smile, glanced at Jackery’s strained face and the smile faded.

  “Not so good for him,” Rannilt agreed. “Now, first we got to tie off the leg, else he’ll bleed to death. We’ll need rope or somethin’.”

  “My belt,” said Jackery.

  Tobry removed Jackery’s belt and handed it to her. Rannilt poked several more holes in it with the point of her knife, ran it around Jackery’s thigh above the injury and moved i
t back and forth until she felt the position was right. She pulled it as tight as she could and sat back, frowning.

  Tobry took hold of the strap and pulled it two notches tighter, then looked meaningfully at the knife. Rannilt swallowed. It’s just like cutting meat, she told herself. No, Jackery wasn’t a piece of meat—he was a brave man who had done great things for Rix and for his country, and she had to do everything in her power to save him. Yet she was just a kid, pitifully small and weak and ignorant about healing…

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Jackery. “This is really gunna hurt.”

  “Yes, it will,” he said.

  Some healers talked all the time but she did not know what else to say. She raised her knife, put it down and, with a piece of charcoal, drew a line around his thigh. Taking up the knife again, she studied it in her small hand.

  “Your hand’s nice and steady,” said Jackery. He slipped a twisted rag between his teeth, bit down on it, and nodded.

  She took a swift, gasping breath. Panic surged; she fought it down. Don’t think about it—just do it! She pressed the blade against his skin and began the cut, as straight and steady as she could. Blood flooded out.

  “Tighter, Tobry!” she cried, panicking. She hadn’t thought healing would be this hard and she’d only just begun.

  Tobry tightened the belt another notch. Rannilt continued the cut until she had gone all the way around, taking care to make the line straight and neat. Jackery’s fists were knotted, his arms shaking, his eyes bulging as he bit down on the rag with all his strength. There was nothing she could do about his pain save to finish the job as quickly as she could. She cut deeper, and deeper.

  “I can’t see where to cut. Wipe the blood off.”

  Tobry mopped it up with a clean bandage, which he tossed onto the fire.

  After several minutes the first part of the gruesome business was done—she had reached the bone. Rannilt swallowed. Now came the really hard bit—cutting cleanly through his thigh bone. She drew Jackery’s heavy sword, raised it as high as the low roof would allow and aimed at the point where she had to cut. Her arm shook; she lowered the sword.

  After taking three deep breaths she raised the sword, but again let it down.

  “Sorry. I’m really scared.”

  Jackery took out the sodden rag and wiped his face with his sleeve. His skin was sallow, sweat-beaded, and his lips colourless. “Afraid you’ll miss—and do more damage?”

  She nodded. “Never used a sword in my life.”

  “Just do your best.” He took up the rag and bit down on it again.

  As Rannilt picked up the sword, her arm shook so badly that its tip hit the floor, clang. “I can’t,” she wailed. “I’m useless!”

  Tobry plucked the sword from her hand, took aim and with a single sharp blow sheared through Jackery’s thigh bone. He shrieked and the twisted rag shot from his mouth. His severed leg slid six inches down the sloping floor, as if to emphasise that it was no longer part of him.

  Tobry thrust the sword into the coals and helped Rannilt up. She threw her arms around him. “Thank you. I knew we could do it, together.”

  She eyed the severed leg. Jackery was staring at it too, perhaps wondering what use he would be without it. Rannilt turned away. The worst was yet to come, and it was going to be really bad. The stump had to be cauterised, otherwise he would bleed to death as soon as the belt was undone.

  “Fire’s ruining my sword,” said Jackery. He added wryly, “But then, I won’t be using it again.”

  Rannilt shuddered as she inspected the bloody stump. Being a healer was harder than she had ever imagined. How could she press the red-hot blade against his raw flesh until it charred, again and again? How could she bear the screams of the bravest man she had ever met?

  “If you’ve got the courage,” said Jackery, “I might survive. If you can’t do it, I will die.”

  “I don’t think I can bear to do it,” she whispered.

  “Healing is the hardest profession of all, but I believe in you.”

  It wasn’t enough. “Tobry, do you think—?”

  He let out an echoing howl and bolted. She had pushed him too far.

  “For pity’s sake, be quick!” said Jackery. “Or if you want to see the depths a man can be reduced to, draw it out…”

  If I can’t do it, Rannilt thought, it means I don’t have the courage to be a healer.

  Her knees shook as she rose and, supporting herself on her stick, went to the fire. She wrapped several layers of rag around the hilt of the sword and drew it out. The blade was a dull red—she could feel its heat on her face.

  She limped to Jackery, head bent. When she was close he spat out the twisted rag and sat up, the stump of his leg extended.

  “It’ll take a few goes to do the whole stump,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Jackery.

  She wanted to toss the hot blade aside and run, but his quiet courage gave her strength. Rannilt lined up the flat of the blade with the end of his stump and pressed the red-hot metal hard against the bloody flesh. He screamed, and every muscle in his body was at full strain, yet he did not pull his stump away. As the smoke belched up, sympathetic agony speared through her own thigh.

  Her arm shook. She steadied it, lined up a different part of the blade with the underside of the stump and jammed it against the flesh again. Again he screamed, and again when she cauterised the left side, then the right, and finally the little triangles of raw flesh she had missed.

  The sword fell from her hand. She was shaking all over and so weak that she could barely sit up. She fought it as she had fought everything else today, drawing on the last of her strength. A healer could not stop until the job was done.

  Jackery lay on his back, as still as death. Pain speared through her heart; had the shock killed him? No, his chest was rising and falling. Mercifully, he was unconscious. She inspected the charred stump carefully, then slowly released the tension on the belt tourniquet, one hole at a time.

  Beads of blood appeared on the stump here and there, though it did not flow freely. She smeared the stump with the strongest balm she had and bandaged it carefully. Yet even now her healer’s job was not done. He had been weak before she began and the stump might become infected; he might get a fever. It would not take much for him to slip away.

  After an hour or so he shuddered and opened his eyes. “You can’t know how much I loved her.”

  “Your wife?” Rannilt took his icy hand.

  “The enemy treated her terribly… before they killed her. I couldn’t get home in time. I should’ve been there to save her—or die with her…”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I wasn’t there!” he wailed. “I should be with her now.”

  “Would she want you to die?” said Rannilt. “Or live?”

  Tears formed in his eyes. He turned away and drifted into a restless sleep. Rannilt felt that, despite his words, he did want to live. But did he want it enough?

  Tobry did not come back. She sat beside Jackery all the hours of that night, wiping his brow, giving him sips of water and making sure he was neither too cool nor too hot, and only leaving his side to put more wood on the fire. But despite her efforts, he was fading.

  There was only one thing left to do. Any good surgeon or nurse could cut a leg off the way she had done, but only someone with the true healer’s gift could heal an injury by laying on their hands and drawing on the power within them. It was how she had healed Tobry’s broken arm so quickly, weeks ago. She was afraid to test her gift in case it was truly gone, but there was no choice now.

  She laid her hands on Jackery: on his brow, over his heart, and on his thigh above the stump, trying to draw on her unfathomable gift and pour her golden glow into him. But the golden glow, which used to flood from her fingertips when she was healing, would not come. Not a glimmer.

  Rannilt’s mouth tasted as if she had been drinking the bitter, tainted water. Her gift was gone! Her eyes prickled w
ith tears. She went to rub her eyes but Jackery stirred restlessly and she lowered her hands again; she sensed that the human contact was helping him.

  Finally, after an hour that felt like a day, his eyes flicked open. “Water, please.”

  She gave him a drink and several small pieces of the cooked fish.

  “What’s the matter?” said Jackery, as he ate.

  “I’ve lost my healing gift.” She told him about being struck down in the Hall of Representation.

  “Don’t see why that would rob a healer of her gift,” said Jackery. “It comes from the heart, not the head.”

  “How would you know?”

  “My wife was a healer.”

  “I healed Tobry before, but it doesn’t work now. He won’t even let me try. I think he’s given up and just wants to die…”

  Jackery stared out into the darkness behind her, then closed his eyes and lay quietly for so long that she thought he must have gone to sleep again.

  “I felt the same way after she died,” he said at last. “I thought that way for months… until a ten-year-old girl taught me the true meaning of courage.”

  “I didn’t do—”

  “You saved me when I wanted to die, and should have died. You’re a great healer. You can heal Tobry, I know you can.”

  “No one’s ever healed a full-blown shifter,” she cried. “Never, ever!”

  “Then you’ll be the first,” said Jackery. “And you’d better start right away… at least, as soon as you’ve healed your ankle.”

  “No healer wastes her gift on herself,” she muttered.

  “Why would Tobry trust you to heal him when you won’t heal yourself? Besides, the gift can’t be wasted by using it. Using it only makes it stronger.”

  “I’m too tired,” she said feebly.

  “A true healer is never too tired to heal.”

  “You just made that up,” she said hotly.

  Jackery smiled for the very first time. “Get on with it.”

  “But I’ve lost my gift.”

  “No, you’ve just lost your confidence because Tobry turned you away. Don’t think about healing your ankle—just do it because you must. Because you’re a born healer and you can do nothing else.”