Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “That’s all?” Darian asked incredulously. “And on that basis the Collegium gave you leave to come to a battle zone? Are they crazed?”

  “So far I’ve had a grand total of four days of training in my Gift,” Shandi said tartly. “It’s not exactly under my control, all right? I have to make do with what I get. It was good enough for the Senior Herald at the Collegium.”

  “Now why am I so certain that the Senior Herald at the Collegium didn’t even know that we’d contacted the barbarians yet?” Darian shook his head in disbelief, but didn’t challenge her any further, which made Keisha grateful. Shandi didn’t lose her temper often - at least, the Shandi she knew didn’t - but when she did, the results were often spectacular. At the moment, that was one spectacle she’d prefer not to witness.

  Darian took a deep breath, closed his eyes a moment (probably counting to ten, or invoking patience), and then opened them again. “You’re probably tired,” he said. “You must have ridden like a madwoman to get here as quickly as you did. Why don’t you get some sleep while I make sure someone gets a billet set up somewhere else for me? A bed’s a bed, and I don’t care where I sleep.”

  Shandi heaved a great sigh and lay down again. “Thanks. Sorry to be so sharp - I am pretty tired - ”

  She closed her eyes, and didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out; she did it so quickly that Keisha realized she must have gone without sleeping - except in the saddle - for her entire journey. Darian obviously realized it, too; he managed a little smile, and took Keisha by the elbow, leading her silently away through the rows of tents.

  “You’re the only one of us that looks like she got any sleep last night,” he observed, when they were out of earshot.

  “I probably am,” she replied, noting with concern the deep shadows under his eyes. “That was awfully good of you, to give up your bedroll to her.”

  He waved the compliment aside. “It’s just a bedroll, the hertasi can move my things elsewhere, and they will as soon as I - Heyla!” He interrupted himself, as a hertasi poked its snout out of a larger tent. It waited expectantly while he hissed something at it, bobbed its head, and ran off.

  “There,” he said with satisfaction. “I’ve got myself a new bunk with Wintersky, and you one with the Healers - which I’d better take you to, so you can all get your heads together over this Summer Fever thing.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, feeling more confident than she had since Shandi carried her off this morning. “Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems more important to me than the barbarians fighting with us.”

  “And maybe you’re right,” was Darian’s thoughtful reply. “After all, there’s always the tactic of bottling them up in their camp and starving them into submission, but a line of fighters isn’t going to keep a plague inside their pickets. Listen, I hope you weren’t of fended by the way I treated your sister, but - well - ” He scratched his head, then shrugged. “I’m not impressed. She strikes me as used to getting her own way a lot, pretty immature, actually. Honestly, she hasn’t half the brains and good sense you have.”

  “She’s probably so tired that half her brains aren’t working,” Keisha pointed out. “Besides, she’s not used to boys who treat her like - like - ”

  “Like a brat who’s getting away with something she shouldn’t?” Darian offered, with a half smile. “Like a spoiled village princess who expects fellows to melt just because she looks at them with those sweet, brown doe-eyes? Oh, please!”

  Keisha was so surprised by his answer that she simply stared at him for a moment. “Well - she is so very pretty - ”

  “Not prettier than you,” Darian said bluntly. “And you have a great deal more than being pretty, if you’ll pardon my saying so. A Hawkbrother could turn a mud-doll into a beauty; we aren’t that impressed by prettiness alone.”

  For all his bluntness, he started to blush as he said that, and looked quickly away as she continued to stare at him in further astonishment.

  “Right, here’s the Healers’ tent,” he said quickly, waving at the large tent pitched at the end of the path they were on. “You go right on up. The hertasi will have told them you’re coming. I’ll find Wintersky’s billet and get a nap myself, before something else happens.”

  Still blushing, he left her and made a sharp turn to the right, as she watched him hurry away with bemusement.

  Then she shook herself into sense, and made straight for the Healers’ tent and business. Granted, it was entirely a new and rather delightful feeling to have a young man tell her she was pretty, and blush over her, but this was neither the time nor the place to get moonstruck.

  When she got within earshot of the tent, she heard the debate already going on inside; she pushed open the flap, and was greeted immediately.

  “Keisha!” Nala called with relief. “Good, we need all the minds on this that we can get! What do you know about this wasting disease?”

  The Healers had arranged themselves in a rough circle in the middle of the large infirmary tent - which at the moment had no patients in it. Nala and her apprentices squeezed over on the bench they were using, and Keisha took her place beside them. She detailed everything that Darian had told her, and then added, “Tyrsell the king-stag is the one who had direct contact with the chieftain’s mind; would you like him to come give us everything he got?”

  “That would be extremely helpful,” Gentian said thoughtfully, not at all disturbed by the notion of having the dyheli dump a basketload of mental images directly into his mind.

  Keisha turned in time to see a hertasi coming into the tent with what must be her bedroll. In Tayledras, she asked it if Tyrsell could be invited to the tent, and why.

  “Easily done, Healer,” it answered, with a bow of profoundest respect, and left the bedroll on the tent floor to answer her request personally.

  “I believe that we must assume that this illness is both contagious and a grave danger to us,” Nala said, as Keisha turned her attention back to the group. “Remember the description, that it first went through the barbarians like a wildfire? Now we can expect them to have built up some immunity, but we have no such protection at this point.”

  Grenthan mopped his brow and the back of his neck with a kerchief. “You surely know what the villagers and even Lord Breon would insist on, if we let it be known that we consider it very dangerous,” Grenthan said reluctantly. “They’d want us to surround the camp and burn them and it down to the ground.”

  “That’s unacceptable!” Gentian snapped, rounding on his fellow Healer as if Grenthan were an enemy. “We cannot condone anything of the kind!”

  “I don’t advocate that,” Grenthan protested, his hands up as if to ward off a blow. “I’m just telling you what Lord Breon would say!”

  “But we have no cure, no treatment,” Nala pointed out. “We don’t even know what we’re facing. Where does the Oath put us? Are we to serve everyone, or the greatest good? Are we to try to save outsiders at the possible expense of unleashing a plague on thousands of our own, innocent people?”

  “I don’t think that there is any doubt that we are to serve everyone, friend and enemy alike; the Oath is crystal clear on that point,” Gentian replied stiffly. “I can’t imagine how you could interpret it otherwise.”

  “You can’t serve anyone if you’re all dead,” Keisha said slowly, and shook her head. “We don’t even know how this thing spreads. You could all be infected by now; for all we know, Eldan and the rest brought it back with them from their parley, and it’s only a matter of time before we all get it.”

  Instantly, their faces all went blank; she waited while they searched within themselves for signs of infection of any kind. It didn’t take very long, they were so used to doing so, and the looks of relief told her that at least that fear was groundless.

  “So it isn’t instantly contagious. Still - ” She let the sentence hang in the air, not needing to add, “it could have been.” She let the thought sink in, then continued. “I can’t see how we h
ave the right to expose our own folk just so we can treat these strangers.”

  “We won’t get anywhere by not treating it,” Nala said, at last. “The question is, how? From what you told us, these barbarians would welcome us if we just marched straight into their village!”

  “And they might equally slit our throats if we couldn’t provide instant cures,” Grenthan countered, fanning himself with his sleeve, as the air inside the tent became close and warm. “Yes, I agree, we must act, but I don’t relish the notion of putting myself so completely at their mercy, which might well be nonexistent. Look, I do agree with the Oath in principle, but I have serious reservations about applying it to a pack of folk who eat their meat raw!”

  At that moment, the hertasi returned, with Tyrsell at its side. Keisha quickly explained what she wanted, and the king-stag readily agreed.

  :Do brace yourselves, please,; the dyheli said calmly. :You are unused to this, and it will be something of a shock to your minds.:

  The experience wasn’t anywhere near as traumatic as getting the Hawkbrother language, but the “lump” of memory-images hit each of them with a palpable impact, much as if they’d been struck by a stone, leaving them reeling for a moment. Keisha managed to stammer thanks; Tyrsell nodded gravely in return and left the tent without a word, giving them all the peace to sort out the jumble of sights and sounds, emotions and visceral sensations that came with the memory fragments.

  The three experienced Healers actually sorted things through a lot faster than Keisha would have thought, possibly because they were all used to sorting through the chaos of a battlefield. Of the six Healer Trainees, three felt unwell and had to go lie down, and the other three sat blinking owlishly and a little stunned during the rest of the discussion. Keisha had been ready for the experience, and was the first to recover, waiting for the rest to make what they could of what they’d been given.

  “This definitely isn’t anything we’ve seen before,” Grenthan acknowledged. “At a guess, it spreads through direct contact, the way a cold does.”

  “I think it might be less contagious than a cold,” Nala added thoughtfully. “Otherwise, everyone would have been struck down when it first appeared. And I think that low temperatures, winter-chill, probably kills it, or at least makes it dormant - after all, these people spend their winters in tents in a chillier climate than we have - did any of you get that memory? Of the way they go from fall to spring without ever once getting out of their fur clothing, not even to couple? They must smell to high heaven, but that might be why they don’t catch the disease in winter. It can’t spread through the frigid air, and there’s nothing I’d call physical contact during the cold moons. It could spread through flea-bite, I suppose. Fleas hibernate, when the cold doesn’t outright kill them.”

  “I did get those memories,” Gentian seconded, and shuddered. “The cleanliness of these people leaves a great deal to be desired, at least in winter.”

  “Well, given how cold it gets, I can’t see that I blame them,” Grenthan said diplomatically. “It’s also beside the point, which is the question of what we are to do.”

  “I’ll tell you what you won’t be doing,” said a wrathful voice from the open tent flap. “You won’t be marching into a barbarian village, giving aid and comfort to plague carriers, not while I’m in command here!”

  Kerowyn strode into the center of their circle, and glared at all of them with impartial impatience. “What’s more, if any of you try, I’ll personally have you bound hand and foot and tied to a tree to prevent you from going anywhere! Dear gods, why am I being saddled with a wagonload of idiots? Where is your sense? Where is your loyalty?”

  “Our loyalty is to our Oath, as it should be,” shouted Gentian, who had gone red in the face with anger as Kerowyn spoke. “Captain, I might remind you that it was a Healer who stuck to his Oath many years ago who kept you from becoming a cripple!”

  “Healers don’t take sides,” Nala seconded, with a little less volume, but no less force, and a glare just as fierce as Kerowyn’s. “That’s the Oath, and a good thing, too!”

  “Damn you, people, what about the rest of us?” Kerowyn shouted right back, her eyes so cold with rage that they sent chills down Keisha’s spine. “Just what are we going to do if you all get sick and die, and the barbarians decide to make a fight of it anyway? What are we supposed to do if they decide you aren’t trying hard enough to cure them, and figure to encourage you with a bit of creative torture? Or slit your throats, because you couldn’t help the ones already crippled?”

  “What idiot would assume all of us would go into the camp?” Grenthan countered with derision. “Great Lord, since when have Healers ever abandoned a post they’d been assigned to?”

  “The same idiot who heard you discussing just that would naturally make that assumption,” Kerowyn snarled right back.

  “Whoa!” Keisha shouted, jumping to her feet, and bringing the entire shouting match to a halt. When they all turned to stare at her, she fought down the impulse to run out of the tent, swallowed, and sat down.

  “We can’t go into the camp, Herald-Captain,” she said in a more normal tone of voice. “We’d already decided that. We don’t know these people or what they’ll do, we don’t know their language, customs or superstitions, and we have no way of predicting anything they might assume. All we do know is that they have legends of Healers, and as we are aware, legends are difficult things to live up to.”

  “Not to mention that not even an idiot puts himself completely into the hands of people who already considered kidnapping and coercion,” Gentian said gruffly. “Cap’n Kero, some of us have been with you for a very long time, and the very last thing we’d do is leave you in the lurch. What we do agree on is that our Oath demands that we try to help these folk, and that the Oath comes first, even before our loyalties. And vow wouldn’t have it any other way. There’ve been plenty of your people who’ve been cared for by the Healers on the side opposite yours, and you know it.”

  “The other thing we agree on is that this disease is enough of a danger to Valdemar that we don’t dare ignore it and hope it sticks to the barbarians,” Nala said stiffly. “Whether you like it or not, we can’t leave until we’ve found a treatment, and we can’t do that without treating the barbarians.”

  “Even burning the camp and its occupants might not stop it,” Keisha put in, softly but shrewdly. “Since we don’t know how it spreads at all, some of the biting insects might well be carrying it now, and it will be only a matter of time before it spreads to us. We really do have to find a cure, or at least a palliative.”

  Kerowyn looked very sour indeed, but conceded their points. “Just promise me that you won’t do anything until after you’ve consulted me,” she added, with a look that told Keisha that if they didn’t agree, she would follow through on the threat to truss them up like dinnertime fowls.

  She got that promise - from everyone but Keisha, and Keisha could hardly believe it when she didn’t seem to notice the omission.

  “I hope it spreads by fleas,” sighed Nala when Kerowyn had left. “Dear and gracious gods, I hope it spreads by fleas, the way Boil-Plague does. Fleas, we can do something about, but who can stop the air from flowing?”

  Keisha got up for a moment and took a quick peek outside the tent. Then she returned, as the others watched her curiously. “I actually have an idea,” she said diffidently. “If you want to hear it.”

  “Go right ahead,” Gentian urged. “At the moment, we’re dry.”

  “If we could get the barbarians to send one of the sick people out, one of us could go into quarantine with the sick person. That way no one would be at risk except a single Healer.” She swallowed, then continued. “I figured I’m probably the best one to do that; you can’t send an apprentice, and you know that. You all say I have a really strong Gift, you all agree that I’m as good as any of you with herbs and medicines. I’m the obvious choice because I’m the easiest one to replace.”

 
That started another argument entirely, with all three of them coming up with whatever they could think of to deter her from any such idea. The strongest argument against her plan was that she didn’t have experience in using her Gift, especially not against something deadly. “Oh, I agree that you’ve done very well so far,” Gentian half-scolded, “but that was against tiny infections, colds, belly-aches! Not against a fatal illness, not against some thing no one has ever seen before!”

  Keisha shrugged, pretending indifference. “Diseases work the same whether they’re mild or serious,” she pointed out. “A tiny infection and a rotting limb are the same. It’s just a matter of degree.”

  “The idea does have merit, though,” Nala said, after keeping her own counsel while the others argued. “It would keep infection from spreading to the rest, and it would keep the Healer out of the hands of the barbarians. I’ d be willing to try treatment on that basis. We’ve survived plenty of plagues before this; what’s one more?”

  “And just how are we going to get a volunteer barbarian?” Grenthan asked shrewdly.

  “We could ask?” Keisha suggested timidly.

  No one laughed at her, although she more than half expected them to.

  “Well, the barbarians have obliged me by falling in with my second choice of tactics,” Kerowyn sighed, as Darian belatedly scrambled into his place in the council-circle, feeling much better for a good, long sleep. “Your Hawkbrother scouts reported that they were building up walls around their camp and fortifying them; I sent a deputation out to them to see what they’d do. They didn’t meet my people with arrows, but they also didn’t show so much as the tips of their noses.”