by Myers, Karen
A small body, leaning against the far wagon, raised its head weakly. *Here.*
He dodged the injured awkwardly, impeded by his fetters, and stopped a few feet away.
She was covered in blood, all across her chest and down both arms, all of it dripping into the dust or coagulating, and her left hand was pinned under her right arm. He hoped that was the only source of the blood.
Dzantig was supporting her. “Help me with her,” he called.
“What do you need?” Zandaril asked.
“Clamp your hands around her arm above the wrist. She can’t lose any more blood. I’ll go find something to wrap it in.”
Zandaril lunged forward and grabbed her left forearm in a tight grip with both hands. “You can let go now,” he told her, nudging her right arm away with his elbow. “I’ve got it.”
She sank to her knees, and he went down with her, saying, “What have you been doing now, with these ungrateful wizards, eh? Getting yourself into trouble? Let’s take a look now.”
She let him pull the hand into view and it was all he could do to control his face. The top of the palm had been sliced away diagonally, taking all the fingers with it, and only the thumb remained.
“Ah, we’ll get that fixed up in no time, don’t you worry.”
“He’s dead. I killed him,” she muttered, into the ground.
“And a good thing,” he said. “You’ll tell me all about it later.”
A foot poked him, and he looked up. Dzantig stood over him with a canteen and a torn shirt.
“Now you just think of something else while we clean this up a little.”
She glanced up at the canteen and shuddered in anticipation. “Save some for my neck.”
Dzantig met Zandaril’s eyes, and then reached down and pushed her hair aside. The chain was blackened and scorched, and raw, blistered flesh wept all around it.
“Hand, first,” Dzantig said, and Zandaril nodded. They washed it off as efficiently as possible to see the extent of the damage, and Penrys trembled in pain at the process. Zandaril inspected it, then called Dzantig to take his place holding the forearm clamped.
“I’m going to just tidy things up a little, then we’ll wrap it all up and you’ll feel much better,” he told her. “Don’t worry, I do this for horses all the time.”
She didn’t respond.
With Dzantig’s help, he positioned her open hand against the wood of the wagon and used Dzantig’s knife to trim the ragged bits of skin and tendon that protruded. Then he wrapped the palm as tightly as he could manage in strips torn from the shirt.
“Loosen your grip slowly,” he told Dzantig. “I want to see what happens.”
The wrapping reddened wherever it contacted the wound, but the bloodstains didn’t spread much after that.
“I think the bleeding has already slowed down,” he said. “Now let’s take a look at that neck.”
He used a strip from the shirt to wrap her hair up, out of the way, and then looked at the chain.
“Not much room, here. Maybe we can put a padded cloth around it, then roll the chain up her neck a little higher to rest above the bandage.”
He looked up at Dzantig. “You should hold the chain higher on her neck.”
When Dzantig hesitated, Zandaril snorted. “Nothing will happen if you touch it, trust me.”
He smiled for a moment, thinking of more pleasant touches, but the trembling body under his hands recalled him. He patted the burns gently with a soaked cloth, then dried it to see how bad the seepage was. It needs lotions to soothe it, but that will have to wait. Just get it covered for now.
He wrapped two strips of cloth in a third and laid that as lightly as he could around her neck, tying it firmly at the throat. The released chain lay on the upper edge, but didn’t press directly on the damage.
He cupped her cheek in his hand gently. “There, Pen-sha, that should be better. We’re all done for now.”
She drew her knees up and rested her right arm on them, and her forehead on her arm. Her bandaged hand was drawn against her bloody chest.
*Just let me sit here for a little while.*
“I’ll leave you with her,” Dzantig told Zandaril. “And… I’m glad to see you—I was worried.”
Zandaril watched Rinshradke and Zongchas together sorting out what could be salvaged. The dead were ignored for now while the walking wounded tended to the others. Some of the captive wizards reunited with friends, and there were little cries of recognition, but most of them seemed to be strangers from other regions within Rasesdad, united now only in their survival.
After a few minutes, Penrys drew a shuddering breath and lifted her head. “That’s better. What about you? You’re hurt, I can feel it.”
“That’s nothing worse than a beating. No, it’s the boots I mind.”
She glanced sideways at his torn boots, the shackles eating into the leather.
“What, again? How do you manage that?”
“It’s a mystery to me, it is.” He smiled to see her keeping up the banter.
Dzantig passed, and Penrys called out to him. “Dzantig, I want power-stones. I saw at least one sack of them on the wagons from before. Can you fetch it?”
“I know where it is,” he said.
In a minute, he returned with it. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’m going to try something. Zandaril, come over here.”
Obediently, he stood in front of her, and spread his feet apart at her gesture until the chain between them was taut.
Dzantig put the bag next to her on the ground and opened the top for her. She reached in awkwardly and placed a little heap of stones on top of a link in the middle of the chain.
“Wouldn’t it be better at the end where the shackle is?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “Don’t know how much control I have. Didn’t want it too close to your skin.”
Deadpan, she added, “Of course, if you’d rather…”
“No, no, forget I asked. You go right ahead.”
She powered the stones, and continued to power them until they overloaded and melted both sides of the link.
Gingerly, Zandaril pulled the chain on either side of the softened link until his chain had separated into two pieces. “I can tie these ends up to the leg shackles and keep them out of the way until we can get them off altogether.”
“If you can bring the captives over to me, I’ll do them all, as long as I can.”
*Are you sure?*
*I’m better, really. This isn’t hard to do.*
He snorted his skepticism, but nonetheless he walked over to Rinshradke to set it up. Soon a steady stream of tired wizards clanked by, and Dzantig was kept busy finding rags they could use to tie up the broken chains.
The last in line was Rinshradke, and Zongchas came with her, talking earnestly. When Penrys had finished with her chain, she raised her right arm to Zandaril. “Give me a lift,” she said.
He pulled her up and looked at her closely. The color in her face was better, and she seemed more energetic, if you could look past the appalling blood on her clothing.
“We need to go help Tlobsung, send everyone who can ride back to him,” she told Zongchas. “Can’t you hear them?”
Now that the injured were quieter, the distant sound of battle was audible.
Whatever these Rasesni decide, I’m getting Penrys out of here.
“I’ll go fetch us some horses,” he told her. “Don’t move.”
She laughed.
“She’s lovely, but how will I get on her?”
Penrys looked at the two horses Zandaril brought back and thought about mounting with one hand. She wondered briefly if their owners were living or dead, but it didn’t matter right now.
“Leave that to me,” he said. He tied both mares to the wagon wheel and unhooked the canteen from the saddle.
“First, you’re going to drink this, as much as you can.”
“Blood loss,” she muttered, and he nodded.
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�That’s right. Water is good for that.”
She took the canteen in her good hand after he opened it, and chugged it down, surprised at how dry her mouth and throat seemed to be.
She stopped when her stomach told her it couldn’t take any more, and handed it back. He closed it and hooked it back on his saddle.
“Now, pay attention,” he said. “Dzantig and I will get you on your horse, and you don’t need to do anything. In fact, you’re going to put this on, first.”
Another shirt from someone’s saddlebag was pressed into service, and Zandaril fashioned a sling for her left arm. The instant he slipped it over her neck and shoulder, it started to soak up blood from her clothing, but it helped keep her hand from knocking against anything.
Zandaril sent Dzantig to the far side of her horse to catch her, then he had her bend her left knee into both his hands.
“Just put your right hand on the saddle for balance, but don’t try to haul yourself up.”
He fairly threw her into the air and she swung her right leg automatically over the horse’s back. Dzantig reached up and kept her torso from swaying too far to the right, and she thumped into the saddle more easily than she would have thought possible, considering how much of a challenge just standing up had been.
As the two men adjusted her stirrups for her, a thought struck her. “Can’t be this easy when men do it, surely.”
Zandaril chuckled. “Can get a bit painful, it can.” Dzantig grinned.
Penrys gestured for the reins, but Zandaril shook his head.
“Can’t have you doing that. Leak a little more blood and there won’t be much left. You just sit there and try not to fall off.”
She was indignant for a moment, but then gave up, relieved.
All around them she saw about twenty of the wizards also on horseback, some of them injured. The remainder would stay behind for the wounded. None of the one-time captive wizards joined them.
Penrys watched Zandaril walk over to the older woman who’d been the last of the captives whose chain she’d separated, the one who’d been talking to Zongchas. He clasped her arm and bowed his head to her, before he returned to mount up.
Dzantig handed the reins of her horse to Zandaril, then mounted his own, and the little troop walked away from disaster and death.
CHAPTER 56
“Stop here,” Penrys said, and waited for the throbbing in her wounds from riding a trot to subside.
Everyone had made it to the fork in the road. The sounds of combat were off to the east down the main road.
She scanned the near portion of the battle. It was a swirl of confusion to her mind, the Khrebesni mixed in with the soldiers.
Zandaril looked back at her, her reins clasped in his left hand.
*Got a plan?*
She shrugged. *I can’t just make them all stop. Let me try something.*
She picked out the nearest knot of fighting and zeroed in on a tribesman in the thick of it. She reached out as she had for Vladzan and stopped his heart, then found another and did the same. That knot broke apart.
*How do you tell the difference?*
With a shock, she realized Zandaril was watching through her, as he was accustomed to do while she was teaching him. Watching her cold-bloodedly killing men. No help for it now.
*By their native language. It’s all the same for the Khrebesni.*
She looked for the next knot of conflict and resumed her work.
Zandaril quietly relayed what was happening to the others.
After half an hour, her interference was clearly having an effect. The groups were separating, and the tribesmen were gathering and retreating back down the road.
Penrys twisted in her saddle and called out, “They’re coming this way. Hold your ground.”
The noise of a couple hundred men or more jogging down the road was hard to mistake. When the first of them reached the fork and saw the mounted wizards, he hissed and came to a stop.
What must we look like, all bloody?
Like survivors. We look like survivors.
She spoke to him in his own language, in a carrying voice, and made sure her chain was visible. “He’s dead. We’ve reclaimed his captives and the horde.”
He lifted a blood-stained spear and stepped forward, and the men behind him followed.
She sighed, and stopped his heart. He wavered in place for a moment before he fell.
The indrawn breaths behind her almost matched the ones in front, and all movement ceased.
Penrys gestured to the western side of the fork and the northern of the two roads. A new leader bulled his way forward and led what was left of his people around the wizards, leaving them alone on the western edge of the interrupted battle.
It’s over.
She slumped in her saddle, until Zandaril’s voice penetrated.
“Look at them.”
She lifted her head and surveyed the wizards. There was apprehension on their faces, and a brief scan showed fear and resignation. They expected her to take over from the Voice, as Veneshjug had tried to do. As she herself had done already, drawing upon them for the power she needed to fight against him. They hadn’t come with her to stop the fighting, they’d come because they feared her.
Her thoughts felt slow. Did she want to control them? She looked at their faces, her gaze passing over Zandaril’s without pausing. With this much power, she could perhaps hold Tlobsung’s force, what was left of it, use it as a better-armed horde. And twice the wizards, if she consolidated the survivors.
I could do it. But why? What for?
She shook her head silently, and restored power to the wizards with her, taking it back from her chain. While the startled wizards before her backed away, she reached to the ones who’d stayed behind with the wagons, and restored them, too, the ones who were alive. It was all she could do.
They still don’t like us much.
She smiled sardonically. “Better stay close,” she told Zandaril. “They’re not our friends.”
More noise on the road to the east resolved itself into a marching column. Zongchas trotted over to the officer in charge.
A space grew around Zandaril and her, with Dzantig the only wizard who kept his horse with them.
Zandaril leaned toward her. “Do you want to stay?”
“With them?” She tilted her head toward the wizards sidling away. “There’s nothing for us here.”
Dzantig said, “My colleagues are fools but…” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
He bowed to them from his saddle. “Thank you, brudigna, brudigdo. We would be dead now, or worse. I know this, if they don’t.”
Reaching into a saddlebag, he pulled out the half-full sack of power-stones, what was left after melting through the foot chains. He handed it to Zandaril, then turned and followed the rest of the wizards.
Penrys looked down in bemusement at the wealth in Zandaril’s hand. “On the whole, I’d rather have some of their books.”
Zandaril snorted, and stashed the sack in his saddlebag.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Not our fight any more.”
They rode at a walk east on the road, keeping to the margin to let clusters of soldiers march past headed west. No one bothered them, after one good look at the blood, and Penrys pulled the remnants of her shirt’s collar up and bent her head to let her hair obscure the chain.
After a while, they had passed the worst of the fighting—the dead on the road, and the living tended by their fellows.
When they reached the turnoff to Kunchik, Zandaril stopped, and Penrys brought her head up.
“What…?”
He looked at her patiently. “The nearest help is in Kunchik. You need a doctor, and me, I want to get these shackles off.”
She looked down and saw how he’d twisted the tied-up chains around to the outer side of his boots to keep from hitting the horse with them. It looked uncomfortable.
“Do we have to? I want nothing from these Rasesni.�
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Zandaril stared at her. “What, you want to ride all the way out the Gates to Chang? That must be thirty miles or more.”
Penrys glanced at the sun, not yet very high in the sky. “It’s only mid-morning, hard as it is to believe. We can do it.” She swayed in the saddle, belying her words.
“Kunchik is much closer. What about your packs, the things you brought with you?”
She snorted. “You think they’re going to let me take Veneshjug’s books and his power-stones back with me?”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing there I can’t replace. What about you?”
“Everything I care about is back in Hing Ganau’s wagon,” he said. “Or right here.”
He looked at her speculatively for a moment, and she straightened her spine under his gaze.
“Seven hours, it is, at a walk. Less if we trot for some of it. Think you can?”
She forced herself to be honest. “I think so. Maybe. We’ll stop if we have to.”
She waved her hand in its sling at him. “Won’t make any difference to this.”
Blinking back the fog that threatened to engulf her, she added, “Oh, Zandaril, I want to. Can we?”
He clucked and turned his horse to the east, leading hers behind him. “We’ll do it, Pen-sha. We’ll sleep in our own bedrolls tonight.”
CHAPTER 57
Down one of the turnoffs that ran to the rapids of Gonglik Jong, where the water rushed over the stepped falls, Zandaril led her to a grassy spot near a backwater and pulled her off her horse, careful of her left arm. He tethered both mares where they could graze the autumn-tinged herbage and walked Penrys over to the bank before letting her rest.
“That hand needs looking at, now that we have lots of water,” he said. “And you’ll feel better if you can get cleaned up proper.”
Penrys let herself be handled. It was pleasant to sit and do nothing, the music of the falls drowning out everything else, and the spray soft against her skin, if a bit chilly.
Zandaril came back with yet another shirt, and someone’s tunic, too.
“Well-stuffed saddle bags,” she commented.
“I didn’t just look at the beasts when I chose these two.” He grinned at her.