To Ride Hell's Chasm

by Janny Wurts

  Vensic swallowed. ‘I apologize.’ Since no one else volunteered, he stood as his captain’s spokesman. Even given the gentlest phrasing, the debacle that had occurred on the tourney field seemed an act of unparalleled ferocity.

  ‘You’ve driven out Mykkael?’ The portly physician thrust to his feet. ‘Powers save us, that’s madness! That desert-bred knows more about marauding sorcerers than any man I’ve ever known who’s survived the vile touch of experience. Hates spell lines so deeply, he’s scarred from within. He would lay down his life before serving such evil!’

  Jussoud stared at his empty fists. ‘We already know. It’s Sessalie’s high council, and northern-born prejudice, that’s forced Captain Mykkael to take flight.’

  The physician stared, poleaxed, his dimpled hand pressed to his shirt-front. ‘Such stupidity could kill us,’ he whispered point blank. ‘I would offer to testify, though I see you don’t think words of character will be any use to mend a good man’s maligned standing.’

  The nomad healer extended a massive, warm palm, and steadied the physician’s rocked balance. ‘Come upstairs,’ he urged. ‘Help me treat the wound in Commander Taskin’s right shoulder. I’d appreciate your trained touch. After that, if you think Mykkael’s plight is not hopeless, we will all weigh his problem, and hear through your list of suggestions.’

  In the upstairs seclusion of Taskin’s bedchamber, the mullion windows stood open to let in the light. Morning breezes flowed off the ranges, sharp with the ice scent of snow. The air carried sound with high-altitude clarity: the echoes of horn calls drifted up from the vales, cut by the baying of hounds.

  Vensic tried not to let the distant progress of the hunt drag his thoughts to fretful distraction. He trailed Jussoud into the brightened room, where Taskin’s daughter kept anxious vigil from a quilted chair by the bedside.

  ‘You may not wish to stay,’ the nomad opened. ‘Your father’s wound is severe. The treatment he needs will be difficult.’

  The young woman straightened, determined. ‘I will stay, if you will permit, and hold his hand throughout the duration.’

  The physician from Fane Street resettled his spectacles. ‘Brave heart, your presence can do nothing but help.’ He sized up the room, with its lofty ceiling, its dyed carpet, then the four-poster bed spread across with fresh linen and bleached wool, which couched the stricken commander.

  His uncertain glance flicked back to Jussoud. ‘Are you sure the setting’s appropriate?’

  Jussoud tempered his answer as much for the distraught lady. ‘I can’t promise that the procedure will be neat. However, the commander will do best not to be moved. This east-facing chamber provides the best light. If you wish, ask the servants to spread canvas.’

  Taskin’s daughter arose, fingers laced through her father’s limp hand. ‘I thought you just said it was dangerous to move him.’

  ‘I can’t do the fine work of stitching on a mattress,’ Jussoud explained, unwilling to hide his deep apprehension of the trial that must lie ahead. ‘Your father will need to be strapped to a plank to hold him perfectly still.’ The nomad swallowed, grey eyes locked to the woman’s pinched face. ‘We don’t dare dose him numb with a soporific. His vitality is already too low.’

  The daughter gamely lifted her chin. ‘I won’t leave him.’

  ‘Very well.’ Jussoud signalled to Vensic, who admitted the servants to make preparations. Swift hands rolled aside the rich carpet. Under the house steward’s tireless efficiency, plank and trestle were readied, and trays and tables arranged within a matter of minutes.

  When Jussoud and the rotund physician moved at last to shift the stilled man on the bed, Vensic trailed them. ‘I might help support him, if you wish.’

  The physician nodded encouragement, then noticed the daughter’s small start of alarm. ‘Don’t worry. The garrison men have been rigorously trained. The young sergeant knows how to handle the injured.’

  She released Taskin’s hand, stepped aside with reluctance. ‘The desert-bred’s work?’

  ‘No one else’s.’ Vensic took charge of the rag strips, hung them over his sturdy shoulder, and moved close as Jussoud peeled back the sheets.

  Two stout servants steadied the plank, while three pairs of hands moved in smooth co-ordination and eased Taskin’s prone form on to the rigid support. The commander showed no sign of awareness throughout. The sculptured, lean limbs they arranged at his sides stayed cool to the hand as grain marble.

  ‘Nice job, with the field dressing,’ the physician admired. ‘The shoulder wound has cut terribly deep?’ He absorbed the details of Jussoud’s murmured answer, while Vensic dispensed strips of flannel rag and helped bind the commander’s slack frame across chest, wrist, thigh and ankle.

  ‘Support his head, please,’ Jussoud requested, then asked Vensic to bear up one end of the plank.

  Slowly, with no jostling bump, the delicate burden was transferred to the waiting trestle. The cook’s boy brought wooden stools from the pantry, then filed out with the other servants. Only the grizzled head stableman stayed. He had handled enough ugly wounds with the horses to manage the requisite steadiness. Bashfully silent, he stood by the brazier, ready to heat irons for cautery, or shed more light with a mirrored candle.

  Jussoud shed his silk robe. The fitted garment he wore underneath was fine linen, tied with a sash at the waist. From his satchel, he added thick cotton wraps to catch sweat that might stream down his wrists, then a brow band tucked around his head. Last, he washed his hands in a bucket of salt water, then dipped them in a soak of strong iodine. ‘Do the same, if you please,’ he asked of the physician. ‘I expect you’ve seen use of clamps, before this? That’s good.’ Next, the nomad tipped a nod towards Vensic. ‘You wash as well. Do you think you can mind the tray with the instruments? Just pass over those items I ask for.’

  ‘Should I falter, I’ll tell you.’ The garrison man tried not to look at the face of the proud man Mykkael’s sword had left senseless. Taskin seemed far removed from the vigour of life. His chest scarcely stirred with the effort of breathing.

  The daughter was already poised at his side, her fingers clasped to her father’s hand, and her head held high as a spirited hawk’s in the grip of unflagging hope.

  ‘Make sure he stays warm,’ Jussoud instructed her. ‘Over there, on the stool, do you see? I’ve got bladders of hot water folded into the blankets to heat them.’

  ‘All right then, we’re ready’ The nomad reached out, slipped the tight knots binding the bandages, while the physician, unasked, unwrapped the bundle containing the healer’s instruments.

  The bleeding gushed no matter how deftly the sodden wrapping could be eased away. Jussoud’s swift touch moved and pressed down on a point at the shoulder, and another between the layered muscle above Taskin’s elbow. The physician proved to be deft with the clamps, in spite of his stubby, plump fingers. In terse bursts of movement, the deep, severed veins were pinched off in the grip of locked tweezers.

  ‘I’ll need that lamp,’ Jussoud said to the stableman.

  Despite clammy palms, Vensic threaded a strand of gut filament on to the smallest, curved needle. Time trickled by in strung tension. No one spoke, as Jussoud’s patient hands tied off the severed veins, and one by one, stopped their bleeding. The delicate task was accomplished at last, without falling back on the scarring expedience of cautery.

  ‘Amazing, how the swordsman managed to avoid cutting the exposed artery,’ the physician murmured, rock-calm. ‘You have damage, assuredly, but most can be sewn.’

  Vensic stole one fleeting glance at the wound, and wished in sick fury that he had refrained. The tendons were sliced just over the joint, with the gaping, raw meat of the muscle sheared from the bone to lay bare the cartilage cuff of the shoulder.

  A moment longer, the two healers conferred, crosschecking their store of skilled knowledge. Techniques might differ, and yet they agreed in their cautious prognosis.

  ‘We can save the use of his
arm, perhaps, lady,’ Jussoud informed Taskin’s daughter. ‘If blood loss, or infection, don’t bring him down first, he could heal strong enough to bear weapons. But I warn you, if he lives through the shock, the convalescence will be severe and prolonged. No remedy can make such a shoulder wound comfortable. If he wakens, and I can’t promise he will, he’ll face a fortnight of intractable pain. Many weeks after that, he can’t be permitted to lift anything, or raise his right arm, even to put his wrist through the sleeve of a dressing robe. If he tries, he will tear these slashed tissues past mending. If we do the hard work, can you handle him?’

  ‘If she can’t, I will,’ Vensic vowed in dead earnest. Across the stilled chamber, the door latch clicked open, but failed to draw anyone’s notice. ‘I can’t believe Captain Mykkael intended to leave the king’s first commander a cripple.’

  ‘Bright powers!’ cracked an incredulous voice from the threshold. ‘How can you and Cade still maintain the belief that your disgraced captain is innocent?’

  Vensic turned his head, the tray bearing the instruments jostled by his startled movement. ‘I don’t know what Cade thinks,’ he said, icily truthful. ‘Though he may well feel as I do, having served under the man for eight months.’

  Guard Captain Bennent strode into the room, imposing and angry, and wrestling unrestrained grief. ‘And how do you feel, soldier?’

  ‘Not here!’ Taskin’s daughter implored. She thrust to her feet, ready to spring like a wildcat to keep peace in her father’s sickroom. ‘No discord, I beg you. Please hold your argument elsewhere.’

  Yet Bennent was too riled to placate. ‘Lindya, go out. This is become a matter of crown security.’

  Raised with the unmalleable tempers of fighting men, Taskin’s daughter had the wisdom to realize when she had no choice but give ground. She bestowed a razor-edged glower of warning before she slipped from the room. Bennent’s jerked nod excused the staunch stableman, who set down his candle lamp and left as well, without daring a murmur of protest.

  Bennent’s attacking tread advanced across the stripped floor. ‘Catspaw? Or worse, a traitor’s accomplice? Answer my question at once!’

  Vensic stood his silent, rankled ground, and passed Jussoud a freshly strung needle. The extreme tension built, while the physician looked on with shrinking apprehension. Only Jussoud stayed unmoved. Raised outside dissent by intense concentration, the eastern nomad applied steady hands to his work. The example of his determined calm restored the footing for patience and reason.

  Vensic drew breath, and somehow held on to his temper. ‘How do I feel?’ he repeated, accusations put aside before the looming threat facing his endangered homeland. ‘That I have never in my life known a fighting man of such unparalleled competence. Mykkael is direct. He’s hurtfully honest with everything he undertakes. If he were the ally of Sessalie’s enemies, by now, we would lie under conquest.’

  Bennent’s heavy footsteps snapped to a stop. What he saw, raw and brutal, under Jussoud’s skilled fingers disallowed any grounds for appeasement. ‘Then why should your vaunted outsider draw killing steel against Taskin?’

  ‘Ask Taskin!’ snapped Vensic. ‘If Mykkael cut him down, the mere fact he’s not dead begs the question.’

  ‘There’s truth, if you’ll hear it,’ the physician interjected. ‘In my time, I have served on my share of battlefields. Your commander stands a reasonable chance to survive. The foe who wished harm would have severed his arm, and with far less effort than the friend with the presence to pull the hard stroke that inflicted this desperate damage.’

  Yet it was Jussoud’s soft testament that defanged the aggression bristling between the two officers. ‘I would have been proud to count Mykkael my brother.’

  Forced to take pause, aware as he was that Taskin himself had respected the desert-bred’s competence, the guard captain loosed his clenched fists. ‘I have to pursue him as fugitive, regardless. The council is adamant, and the High Prince of Devall won’t be satisfied. His Highness’s honour guard has already mustered. They ride out under Prince Kailen’s backing, and no power short of King Isendon’s word can raise the authority to stay them.’

  Vensic cut off a fresh length of gut. On flat courage and nerve, he bent to the task of threading another fine needle. ‘You can at least keep the garrison from Jedrey’s brash hands?’

  Again Bennent demurred, this time with sincere irritation. ‘I can press my influence, but not guarantee. Until the king’s lucid, the council’s writ rules.’

  He refused to elaborate the grim prospects. Princess Anja’s disappearance had fanned Highgate prejudice the hotter, and cast fresh suspicion on the foreigner’s upset of the past summer’s tourney. Worn raw from an obstructive encounter with the seneschal, Bennent knew best of any: the storm winds of politics were unlikely to reverse in Cade’s favour any time soon. His pause turned thoughtful as he marshalled what resource he could in retreat. ‘I can reassign you, as Taskin’s ranked second.’ To the garrison man, who showed evident character, he offered by way of apology, ‘Where would you serve, given choice?’

  Vensic’s frank startlement changed to resolve. ‘Appoint me to guard Taskin’s door, if you please. His lordship must have a sharp sword to stand by him, and someone without court ambitions will need to make sure his sickroom stays warded with cedar.’

  Even Bennent was forced to acknowledge such fierce heart. ‘You do realize, if Taskin dies, you’ll be blamed as a traitor’s accomplice.’

  Vensic’s jaw tightened. ‘That’s why Commander Taskin can’t die,’ he agreed. ‘On Highgate turf, Mykkael has enemies who may not act for Sessalie’s best interests. Cade dispatched me here with sound forethought.’

  The unpopular fact that the commander’s staunch loyalty had the audacity to shed doubt upon Devall’s motives now left him a helpless target. Captain Bennent was anything but a fool. ‘All right. Under my auspices, Cade’s assignment will stand. You stay to guard Taskin’s safety.’ His blue eyes were flint, as he finished. ‘To uphold that honour, one of mine would not hesitate to lay down his life, if need challenged him.’

  Vensic nodded. ‘I’ve already helped carry such devoted men here, three of them laid out for burial.’ He passed the readied needle to the physician, who had seamlessly offered to spell Jussoud’s efforts. Freed, for the moment, to match Bennent’s regard, the young officer returned a calm that was almost provocative. ‘How dare you expect I would do any less, for your man, or the captain who trained me?’

  Bennent gave back his rapacious approval. ‘Powers! You’ll serve. I’ll have the Highgate watch release your held weapons.’ He paused, shook his head, then mused somewhat rueful, ‘You’ll stand out in this house, looking coarse as a farmer. I realize you’re not shamed by your Lowergate origins, but unfortunately, right now, appearances carry a bloodletting weight of significance. You’ll unbend your loyal neck for necessity? Good. Then go downstairs at once. Tell the first servant you find to fetch you a palace guard surcoat.’

  While Vensic relinquished the instrument tray and let himself out of the sickroom, Jussoud murmured, ‘No, that talisman stays. We’ll tuck the disc and the cord out of sight underneath the cloth strapping we use to bind up the shoulder.’

  ‘I was already aware,’ the physician answered, leaving the copper disc undisturbed against Taskin’s wax skin. ‘Mykkael left me one also, I’m grateful to say, after the sorcerer’s mark claimed poor Beyjall.’

  Jussoud glanced up, startled. ‘You’re protected as well? Bright powers, and give thanks for the blessing! I feared I might have no learned help.’

  Across the gaping wound that engaged their shared efforts, spoken words fell disastrously short. Allied by their store of worldly experience, the healers who tended the king’s stricken commander both sensed the pressure unbearably building: unless Mykkael was brought down, either killed or discredited, the sorcerer that had targeted Sessalie’s crown for destruction would strike openly, turning unimaginable power upon innocents with horrifi
c and violent force.

  The sound of horns and the baying of hounds always made Benj the poacher querulously restless. If game was being coursed, or a man hunt was in progress, he liked to observe from the hilltops, or follow along from the covert thickets. If the affray was no commoner’s business, he always insisted his livelihood required such prying vigilance.

  A man who trapped out of season ought to know where the crown’s wardens were treading. Benj preferred his lazy time in the taverns, rather than waste himself tramping over disturbed ground unlikely to harbour worthwhile quarry for days. Never mind that a fool might get caught red-handed, if he returned to collect from a snare the crown’s huntsman might have discovered.

  That Mykkael’s silver confined him at home left Benj in a pacing bad mood. He was particularly vexed, since the clever man himself had broken last night’s promised rendezvous.

  ‘Well, he’s paid you enough for the privilege of sitting,’ Mirag scolded, cheeks flushed as she drubbed dirty shirts in the wash tub. ‘You should kiss the soles of your boots and be grateful. While the rest of us work, and the girl weeds the melon patch, you get to rest on your arse doing nothing.’

  ‘I could do that part better at the Bull Trough, or the Cockatrice,’ Benj carped. He stalked away from the window, shot a liverish glance at his wife, and then added, ‘As for well paid, I’ve not seen a copper! How should I know? This stash of coin on your bragging tongue may not even exist!’

  Mirag unloaded a sopped wad of cloth and brandished her soapy fist. ‘Just because you lie like a fish? Doesn’t mean all the rest of the world acts dishonest and mulishly brainless!’

  ‘Woman, you’re a trial on all of my nerves, not to mention everyone else’s.’ Benj lashed a kick at a footstool. Deprived of his gin, and ornery as a bagged viper, he relished a bloodletting argument. ‘A cow with a bee-stung udder’s more reasonable. If this bribe Mykkael left us is more than a figment, show me the hard silver, woman. Else I’m going out, and bedamned to your louse-ridden promise that I shouldn’t drink!’