“Ready? Brace yourself.”
He yanked away to the side. She nearly went with him, but at the last moment she dug in her heels—I am good at that sort of thing—and held back while the joint whined into place and snapped between her fingers. Dammerung let out a gusty sigh and fell back in the chair, his elbow on the arm of it, his face in his hand. Rubico approached and butted in gently, snuffling along his master’s neck for a bit of something to eat. Margaret, seeming to wake out of a curious numbness, said absently,
“I’d better take off his tack and rub him down.” Then, casting about for a brush, she added, “I suppose a handkerchief will have to do.”
“Get on with your bad self!” The War-wolf jerked away from the horse’s fingery lips. “Margaret, may I have a kerchief for Widowmaker as well?”
Out of the rubble she found his clothes chest and rummaged about inside. She found two linen handkerchiefs, both of which would be ruined in a moment, passed one off on Dammerung—whose face, though bloody, was looking less torn—and began rhythmically rubbing the steaming warhorse down. A soft silence, full of the tinsely rustle of fabric and candle-flame, fell about them. In the distance Margaret could hear the splutter of horsehooves and calls in the night, but in their tent there was a snatched moment of quiet in which her own soul, at least, stooped and ached and found time to rest.
“Why didn’t I do what before?”
She turned at the sound of his voice. He was still burnishing his sword, leaning down over the blade with the soiled cloth running with the grain of the metal.
“I beg your pardon?”
He looked up. “As we came in you asked me why I didn’t do something before.”
Memory jarred her. “Oh yes, that. I meant the magic. I’ve seen what you can do—tear down things and build them up—but I couldn’t understand why you didn’t do it out there with Centurion when he was in such a hard place. Wouldn’t it have been easier?”
He continued burnishing, his movements slower now. “Would easier have made it better?” he asked presently.
She was silent for a moment, thinking. “No,” she admitted. “Not necessarily. But what about the lives of your men? If you had a chance to save them, shouldn’t you?”
He leaned forward, shifted, and tucked his ankles one over the other under the chair. He was quiet, looking up at her with the feeling of a smile on his face—when she looked hard at his lips she could see there was no smile—a kindness, a wistfulness in his eyes. She waited for him, but as the silence drew out she realized he was not going to speak.
If they love her, isn’t it their right to die for her?
“I think you see now,” he said.
She nodded and continued rubbing down the horse. Once she glanced back, thinking perhaps to say something more, but he had gone back to his own work and something in her self forbade her from speaking. But she noticed for the first time, in glancing back, that Dammerung had a fine feathering of silvered hairs at his temples, mingling with the tousled brown.
She thought he had marked her staring for, without warning, he flung up his head; but he was poised tense listening, and in a moment Margaret, too, heard the quick half-run of steps along the rough walking-path. A moment later Brand came ducking into the tent, carrying urgency with him, and blurted out,
“It’s Skander Rime, sir. Best come quick.”
Margaret had the distinct sensation of leaving her stomach behind and her heart falling down where her stomach had been. Dammerung was in the entryway almost before she had flung down her handkerchief. She stumbled after him through the light-shot dark, through the hanging smoke and thick night—which was becoming lightning-flicked—along the narrow walk-path down from the hill toward the long tent that belonged to Skander. She did not think: she did not have time to think. Already she expected the worst, Brand’s drawn, white face etched with nausea’s clarity on her mind. Its pale illumination seemed to light her way.
Ahead of her was the sharp splash of light coming from the open entryway of the tent. Someone was standing outside, pacing, but Margaret never got a clear look at his face. She went in, blinking in the stab of lamplight, skipping the low, damp depression that had been trod in the middle of the entryway, and suddenly hung back, struck in the face by the surgeon atmosphere that hung about the room. The whimper of nightmare struggled in her throat.
Everyone—Aikin Ironside, the blue-jay man, Woodbird, Lord Gro, Centurion—looked round as Brand and Dammerung came whirling in. Brand joined his brother and at once everyone gave back, save the blue-jay man, from the body that lay stretched in gory wrath on the low couch. Margaret felt her stomach clench. All over blood, Skander still clutched Gram, his arm dropped off the side of the couch almost listlessly, but she could see the veins standing out like cords in his arm, and his knuckles were stark-white. It was his leg that was the trouble. His right leg was a mess of blood and splinters, some of which were as long, though half as thin, as Margaret’s forearm. It looked past repair.
“It was a supplies cart,” Woodbird said in a strained, carefully schooled voice. Her owlish eyes were quieted; everything about her face was careful and reserved. “A runaway team took him and his horse down a ravine; everything fell on top of him. His leg is smashed, at least, if not other things.”
“I dare say other things have come out serviceable, don’t worry,” said Dammerung with a grim kind of humour.
The blue-jay man looked up from where he squatted at his master’s head, his blond forelock hanging low and damp between his eyes. They were hard, daring, soulful eyes, stabbing straight up into Dammerung’s face. “Well, lord?” he asked quietly, challengingly.
Dammerung’s face, too, was hard, and carefully turned away from all eyes, fixed on Skander’s leg. He moved forward, putting out one hand upon the blue-jay man’s shoulder, and said softly, “Well done, Tabby-dog. I will take the matter from here.”
“Can you do the witching-thing?” Aikin’s voice cut down hard and bright.
With a fierce, mirthless jerk of a smile Dammerung flung a warning look at him. “The witching-thing? Would that I could! But I must have the devil’s teeth out, and that by finer skill.” He tapped his thumb and forefinger together. “I must be at it the hard way. Now look you all—” he gestured markedly at Woodbird and the blue-jay man “—can a man breathe in such close quarters? Get about your business.”
The blue-jay man’s face looked to be disagreeing but Dammerung’s tone, though quiet, was firm. No one dared cross him, and with an eerie silence they went out. Aikin took Woodbird’s arm to help her, though she did not look as though she welcomed any help, and the blue-jay man hunkered down dismally just outside the tentflap, his head craned round to listen within.
It was then that Margaret realized she had not gone out. Inexplicably she felt that she alone was allowed to stay, not because she was anyone special or could be of any service, but because Dammerung had put her in the back of his mind as one might put down and temporarily leave a glass on a table, and she was, for the present, no bother. She felt no offence: she felt ill and not at all as though she wanted to stay, but she thought she would find it worse to be away. She could not go back up that dark path to Dammerung’s tent with no one but a horse for company, leaving this business behind her and having to wait for hours not knowing how the task went ahead, not knowing whether Skander, who seemed to be hanging in the agonized balance, would make it. Gingerly, shakily, she sank down into a chair.
Dammerung shoved his torn sleeves up above his elbows and crossed to the low battered washstand at the head of the couch. Deliberately, and with an eye on his patient’s face, he washed his hands, rinsing off his own blood before he got mussed up in the blood of his cousin. “Look at that brute,” he said conversationally to Skander. Skander seemed to be just beneath unconsciousness; at the sound of his cousin’s voice something flickered in his face. “You never do things by halves, do you? You and I both. It must run in the family. I did tell you, you would e
nd up under my knife one day.” He smiled gamely, lowering himself onto a milking-stool by Skander’s leg. “You stay with me now. I hear Acheron is bloody cold this time of year, and we can’t let that black cat have her vaunting-day. You and I, let’s see to this hedgepig that has got in your leg.”
He fell silent for awhile. Margaret shuddered and bit her lip as his long, lean, powerful hands began to deliberately work in the long wound. Skander’s frame jumped and shivered with a quick convulsion of pain, then lay rigid again, held under the surface of consciousness by the sheer weight of agony; sweat began to run down his standing veins and drip off his knuckles. Dammerung worked on, unhurried, his lips set hard but his fingers gentle. The wind kicked up, blowing the canvas sides of the tent so that the backdrop of this gory play shuddered like Margaret’s own stomach and made things hard to see clearly. The wind buffeted the sides of the tent but the air within seemed oppressive.
A quarter of an hour went by. Dammerung paused once, flung back his head and arched his back until his spine crackled. His hands were now thoroughly bloodied and the splinters, as he drew them out and dropped them on the ground, were beginning to slip in his grasp. He swung aside to wash them again, saying as he did so,
“Spencer, bring the light. My eyes cross and darken at this closeness.”
Margaret hesitated, then, putting aside the confusion, she pushed herself out of the chair and took the lamp off the table. It flickered under the movement, doubling back on itself and fanning out into a fragile, perfect petal of flame. It was warm and beautiful and seemed to Margaret just then to be the very preciousness of the living soul.
“Where do you want it?”
Dammerung looked up, visibly startled by her voice. “There,” he gestured, recovering. “At the end of his couch. Nay, never mind that. Come across from me and hold it. That will do better.”
She had been afraid he would ask her that and had prepared herself, her stomach kept in tight rein, her jaw pulled back and set hard. She knelt on the other side of the couch across from Dammerung, sinking into the rich, throat-catching scent of blood and open flesh, her elbows raised on the side of the couch to steady her hands, the lamplight shining full upon the operation. Dammerung reached up once and shifted her wrist, leaving a bloody print there, then wordlessly returned to his work.
For a few minutes the smell became almost unbearable. Her stomach was a continual mess of sickness rising and falling, twisting, threatening her with a dishonourable upheaval, but at last she seemed to acclimate. A bit of wind came in through the tent-flap, stirring a coolness over her face. She hitched up her heels and got more comfortable, leaning over Skander’s leg so that Dammerung would have as much light as possible.
That’s not so bad, she thought when she got a level-headed look at the wound. A bit of broken bone and torn muscle, but Dammerung can mend that. It is the splinters that are the trouble. And the time lost.
Dammerung sniffed and put up one hand to rub the crook of his wrist against his nose—that was all: he went back to work, digging his long fingers into the running mess, fiddling for every last splinter. Margaret glanced up, half expecting him to speak, and when he went back to work her gaze lingered a moment on his blood-streaked face. She realized for the first time that he had freckles, myriads of tiny, dark freckles all over his face; but one was so captivated by the clear, fierce eyes, darkened now with concentration, that one did not notice the freckles at first, if at all. Her mind wandered off, wondering if Skander had noticed, if Skander had known.
Or Rupert…
“Who-o-o…” With a gusty sigh Dammerung dropped his forehead against his cousin’s thigh.
Margaret sat up. With the sudden movement her back and legs cried out in cramped agony. “Oh—is that it? Is that all?”
He drew back. His face was as bloody as before. “I think so. I don’t think we have to worry about ill humours—I think he has bled them out by now. I may or may not have picked a bit of bone out with the splinters. C’est la vie. We’ll make good shift of a bad job. Oh, I’m done with the light.”
Too readily she dropped the light on the floor. It rocked and nearly upturned into the carpet, but righted itself at the last moment and the wick, after fumbling with the flame, caught it again and held it tight. She did not care. She hefted herself up by the edge of the couch and looked into Skander’s face for any sign of relief. It was deathly still but death had not yet stolen over it. Dammerung was speaking softly, and ever afterward she was not sure what language he was using.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, sir, but we’ve come to a clearing. The halloo is quiet for a moment. There is a fountain. A unicorn. Softly—don’t startle the animal spirit. It is stirring the water and there is scarlet coming from its horn. The halloo again—”
His hands lay flat against the wound, flat, then clenching, drawing the lips of skin together.
“—The summons to go on. We’re going upward, sir. Swef, my heart, my bold, my brave. The arbour is behind. The sphere of Mars is calling…”
It was the simplest thing. She had never been one on the outside looking in. She had been the one under the knife, under the questing, healing hand. This time she paused, half-stooped over Skander’s brow, and looked back to see the War-wolf, master of death, pass his hands over destruction’s handiwork and bind the severed flesh together again. The simplest thing.
Dammerung smiled.
Margaret laid her hand on Skander’s brow. It was damp and warm, but still. The eyelids were motionless.
“Poor brute,” she murmured. “A third time will do him for sure.”
“Nay, not him.” Dammerung twisted back and forth to get the kinks out of his spine. “Fortune favours the bold. Sa cy avaunt.” He waved toward the tent-flap.
Out of the darkness the blue-jay man rose, ducking back in with eyes curiously bright in a pale, drawn face. Neither he nor Dammerung spoke; one look between them seemed sufficient. Margaret was almost pathetically glad to get out of the manservant’s way and follow after Dammerung into the windy dark. The air on her face was cool, but the horror of the whole day, which she had not realized she had been holding in check, whelmed up at her out of the blackness. She went doggedly after the sound of Dammerung’s feet, but she knew the game was up. The warm water welled in her mouth; her stomach, punching round against her diaphragm, stopped her breath and clogged up her throat. She made it nearly to the entryway of Dammerung’s tent before, with a little cry of warning, she doubled over and vomited. She did not know what was coming out of her mouth, only that it tasted like shame.
He was there with an arm round her hourglass, one hand bunching back her hair out of her face. He was saying something softly, soothingly, which made her cheeks burn hotter with shame, but she could not hear him until the last heave subsided and she was bent panting, empty, shaking—and by then he had fallen silent.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped.
“Come in-by,” was all he said. “You need some wine. You’re all peaky.”
The stuff in her mouth screwed her lips into a grimace. Looking up through the lamplight at his face, with his hand still hauling back the tangled mass of her hair, she saw the same sort of twist to his own mouth and wondered if he was going to be ill.
“What about you?” she blurted.
He let down her hair and held out his hand. In the light she could see it was shaking.
A laugh stuttered out of her throat.
29 | The Pale Ports O’ the Moon
“Well, if that doesn’t take the salt out of you…”
The War-wolf folded up the missive and tossed it aside, but he did not try to stop Skander Rime from hefting himself up on the couch and reaching, stiffly, for his boots.
“Not a moment’s peace,” Skander went on grumblingly. “Not a bit of land but he has to rouse the Wild Hunt on it.”
Dammerung got up and whistled shortly, shrilly, and the blue-jay man was gone at once, ducking out into the grey-and-gold welter of an o
vercast dawn—to see to Skander’s horse, Margaret presumed.
Dammerung turned back and put a hand under his cousin’s elbow to help him up. “Well, not that, else I should be going in your stead. You had better take Woodbird with you, if her sisters will spare her.”
Skander spoke through clenched teeth as he wrenched his harness of leather over his head: “They had better spare her…”
Moving aside, Margaret’s curious, questing fingers picked up the letter. It was only a little weather-stained: the letter-head bore a date antepenultimate to the day. She recognized Periot Survance’s hand from the notes he had made in Songmartin’s book.
“The border defences are falling,” she read, mouthing the words, feeling again the quickness of the blood roiling in the cauldron of her heart. “Rupert has raised the Carmathen against us. The border defences are falling. Come, lord—come soon.“
Sha-ang! Gram sang home into the sheath. Margaret looked over the crumpled edge of the letter to see Skander, leaning to the side to get his weight off his weakened leg, standing in the doorway of the tent, Dammerung beside him, the pre-storm tempest of the morning winging them with a shadowy glory.
“I can’t come,” Dammerung was saying frankly. “I can’t come—not yet.”
“No,” mused his cousin. “Your way lies through the plains of Orzelon-gang.”
A brief silence.
“There is a storm coming.”
“I can hear the ravens on the wind of it.”
Skander looked to Dammerung. Withdrawn on the outskirts, Margaret watched his face become a strange thing, a foreign thing, grimly carved and pale. “You hear them too?”
Dammerung stared out across the landscape, his face to the lifting wind. “The names they are calling? Yes, I hear them.”
She, too, listened, but she heard only the rushing of the wind and the growing drum of hoofbeats drawing nearer. The two men moved apart as a flea-bitten mare charged into the entryway and Woodbird’s voice, imperious, called down,
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