Llesho thought he’d lost his mind. The prince was unconscious, or close enough to it to make no difference. He fretted mindlessly against the soft bonds that held his hands out of his wounds, but otherwise showed no sign of awareness. Then, the teacher upended the coconut shell over the vast open wound across Tayy’s belly.
“AAAAHhhhhhh!” The scream that followed echoed from the hills and reverberated in Llesho’s ears, in his head, in his gut. Prince Tayy lifted physically up off the ground in one convulsive heave as his body reacted to the cold touch of the spring water against his tortured flesh.
“Oh, gods and ancestors! Stop!” Tayy whimpered, reaching for his wounds. His hands remained tied to his sides.
“Please!” he gasped, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
“Stop!” Llesho balled his fists at his sides, scarcely noticing that his left hand had clenched around his knife. “What are you doing to him?”
“We have to keep the wound clean.” Master Den rummaged around in the bits and pieces from his pack that he’d spread out next to the patient. He took up a piece of gauzy white cloth and poured more of the water on it, then laid it gently across the wound.
Tayy scrabbled at his sides with his fingers, as if he could walk them up his body and snatch away the wet cloth. He was sobbing openly, though apparently not aware that he was doing it.
“Ssshhh, ssshhh,” Master Den soothed. He held out his hand. “The other shell?”
Llesho handed it over, watched as he tilted it first to moisten Tayy’s lips, then, when he had the prince’s attention on the water, lifted his head to the shell. “Drink,” he said, “But slowly.” He pulled the makeshift cup away again and Tayy craned his neck to follow it.
“Shush, shush,” Den continued in the warm soothing tones that Llesho remembered from long ago, at a hospital in Shan. “You can have more in a moment.”
Master Den settled Tayy’s head back against the tussock of grasses where he lay surrounded by broken stone. A worried frown creasing his brow as he studied the contents of his pack spread out before him. Taking up the pouch of herbs, he deftly gathered a pinch of leaves and shredded them between his fingers. “Here, boy, let me put this in your cheek.” He tucked the bundle between Tayy’s teeth and the flesh, complaining, “This would work better in a tea, but we haven’t time to build a fire.” The prince twitched his head away, moaning, but Master Den lifted him again, crooning, “Drink, there’s the thing. Let the water soak the herbs. It will help with the pain.”
Llesho thought he’d been forgotten, but the trickster god had another request, which he gave without looking away from his patient. “We need two strong sticks as long as your two arms spread wide.” He lay Tayy down again to demonstrate his need, opening his own arms so that they stretched from the prince’s head to his feet.
“You’re going to make a litter with the nets,” Llesho deduced. He didn’t need an answer. “I won’t be far, if you need me.”
As promised, he didn’t stray far from the clearing. Nearby, however, a stand of young bamboo grew to just about the right height. Drawing his knife, he went to work on the woody stems. It took longer than he’d hoped to free them. By the time he had finished, soft padding feet were coming nearer, rustling in the undergrowth. The she-cat, drawn to the smell of fresh blood.
Llesho hurried back to the bare campsite, remembering another time, other predators. On the Long March, Harnish raiders had led their Thebin captives on a brutal journey across all the grasslands to the slave markets in Shan. Predators had prowled beside them every step of the way, picking off the sick and the weak and the children, anyone who fell behind. His people had saved him, passing him hand to hand, carrying him across a thousand li and a thousand more. He’d do the same for Tayy if that was what it took.
Bursting into the clearing with a long bamboo pole in either hand, he announced, “We’ve got company.”
“I know.” Master Den tied up his supplies in their white wrap, which he knotted over one shoulder.
“Leave me a knife,” Tayy begged. The herbs had dulled his pain, but his eyes were dark with the terrible knowledge of his condition.
“Don’t be a fool. We aren’t leaving anything, least of all you.” While Master Den tended to his patient, Llesho carefully wove the bamboo rods between the knots of the netting.
“It’s ready,” he said when he had finished. The litter had a bamboo handhold on each side, separated by the width of the nets Llesho had used to form the sling where Tayy’s body would rest while they carried him to the shore.
“Come, help me load him up. And don’t drop him when he screams.” Master Den had already taken up his end of the litter. Llesho slung the net filled with fruit over his back and picked up the other end of the bamboo rods. They carried the litter over so that it lay next to Tayy.
“This is going to hurt, but we’ll have you comfortably tucked in bed before you know it.”
“They’re here?” Llesho tilted his head, listening for the sound of a shore party, but heard only the sounds of the birds and the skulking cat pacing in the trees.
“Soon. Very soon.” Master Den lifted the prince in his arms. The herbs had helped with the pain, but not enough. An agonized growl rumbled deep in Tayy’s throat and he tugged at the belt that held his hands out of his wounds. The mountainous trickster god just held him more securely, as if he were a child, and bent to place him on the litter.
“Now help me get him out on the beach, where they can find us.”
The shore seemed farther away with a wounded burden to carry, but they reached it in a fairly short time. At the edge of the forest, their hungry escort left them to go in search of easier prey. Setting down their burden on the cool, damp sand, both master and pupil looked out to sea. There was no ship waiting for them.
“They’re not here,” Llesho stated the obvious. The lagoon lay placid and still, a mirror in which no ship reflected. Beyond the headlands all the way to the horizon the sea was empty. Not a sail, not a pennon dotted the vast expanse of empty sky.
“Wait.” Master Den dropped to his haunches and took one of Tayy’s hands in his own. Gently, he stilled the restless wandering toward the wound moistened by a cloth laid over it and dampened to translucence.
There didn’t seem to be much else that he could do. Llesho sat himself down on the other side of the litter. Like his teacher, he took Tayy’s hand in his and stroked it to soothe his friend. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, “I never imagined Master Markko would come after you.”
When he looked up again, the ship had appeared, sailing out from behind the hills that enclosed the lagoon.
“Impossible.” He blinked to clear the mirage from his eyes, but the ship remained on course around the headland and into the protected cove.
“Not impossible,” Master Den instructed. “Not even magic. Just a shift in direction to come up undetected in case there were pirates still about. Our friend Habiba would have seen to that.”
Habiba. The ship had come as near as it dared, and someone had let a small boat over the side. Llesho hoped that Habiba was in it. Her ladyship’s witch would know what to do. He could let go. Three figures climbed down, but they were two small to identify at the distance the ship was forced to keep. The osprey that rose from the deck, however, had watched them from above when they made landfall on the island. In moments, the bird had scrambled to a landing on the sand.
“What happened?” Kaydu asked.
Chapter Twenty-three
“THE WINDS that drove theShark onto these shores carried Master Markko in the same direction. He found Prince Tayy alone and attacked before I could stop him.” Llesho pulled the gauzy covering away to reveal the wound. It had begun to stick, so he poured more water on the cloth. Tayy moaned and his knees bent as if he would draw them protectively around his middle, but the effort left him gasping in pain.
“Hush, hush,” Master Den smoothed the long, thick hair from the prince’s brow, lulling him with th
e hypnotic sound of his voice.
Kaydu ruffled as if she still had feathers. “And the pirates?” she demanded, and he thought she would rise on the next thermal and attack the galley in her sea eagle form.
“The pirates stranded us here, but they knew help was coming.” He gave her a wry smile. “Their new captain has no fondness for the uncanny.”
She settled then, waiting for the rest of the tale. Llesho explained as briefly as he could while keeping a watchful eye on the advance of the longboat. When he got to where he allowed Master Markko to escape, Kaydu glared darkly at him. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
“I’m not finished with him yet. I’ll know when it’s time.” He didn’t mention Marmer Sea Dragon’s son or reveal his intentions to free the dragon-prince. He was pretty sure she’d damn him for a fool if she knew, but he hoped that wasn’t his reason for keeping the information from her.
It wasn’t his story to tell. Pig had taken everything else the dragon-king held dear. Llesho could leave him his privacy. Missing that key intelligence, however, Kaydu arrived at the wrong conclusion. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten the second rule of a soldier!”
“Never.”
Not a rule in the strict sense, Kaydu was talking about the common sense that soldiers sometimes needed to remember, “Don’t let revenge get in the way of a clean shot.” Llesho had heard the complaint it addressed, that death was too easy for this enemy or that. He’d have said the same about the raiders who had invaded Kungol. The truth was, though, that while you were stewing over how to cause the enemy more pain, he was usually sneaking up on your flank. So said the hardened campaigners, that a dead archer can’t shoot you in the back.
“That isn’t why I let him go,” he answered the question she asked in the speaking of the proverb. For himself or his captain, he wasn’t sure which, he added the reminder, “I hate all this. Hate the fighting, hate seeing my friends die. I don’t know how people do this for a profession.”
He was thinking of Master Jaks, who had once led his troops in battle and who now lay in an unmarked grave on a battlefield a thousand li away. And Shou, who had suffered a broken mind in the camp of the enemy. Kaydu already knew that about him, of course, that hatred of the waste of lives to death and memory. He spoke his fears aloud now for Tayy, who had lived for the war games of his people and might die on this beach of his first battle. Rules didn’t matter when you made war with magicians. The Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war, had tried to teach him that. She moved them all like pieces on a board, he thought, and shied away from the notion that sometimes he hated her as well.
The longboat had grounded its nose on the shore and Lling jumped out, arrow knocked, bow drawn. Bixei and Stipes finished stowing the oars and then they, too, leaped into the shin-deep water, dragging the boat higher on the beach so that the tide didn’t wash it away.
“Over here!” Kaydu stood up, waved a hand to alert the rescue party to their presence. While they waited, she rested a hand on Llesho’s shoulder. “We all know how you feel,” she said, “It’s why we follow you. But sometimes even the most honorable soldier falls to dark thoughts. Master Markko has given you more burdens than a reasonable man might expect to carry. We might worry less if you let us carry more of the weight.”
Any clearer and she’d be inviting a confrontation over the secrets behind his reasoning. Llesho shook his head, grateful she’d left him room to refuse. “It’s not about revenge.” He gave her that much. “It isn’t even about me.”
She laughed at that. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Llesho? It’sall about you.”
He returned her laughter with his own ironic twist, pretending she hadn’t meant it. They were saved from further discussion by the arrival of their companions.
“What should I be looking for?” Lling swept a glance over the trees at the edge of the shore, her arrow pointed where her gaze fell.
“There are some hunter cats in the forest, but they seem to avoid the beach,” Llesho reported for his guard. “They have kept their distance while their prey is so closely watched anyway.”
“Pirates?” she asked.
“Gone,” he confirmed. “They don’t seem to have left a lookout behind.”
Bixei had turned his gaze to the hills above them on either side, and he added a caution to that. “I don’t see anybody keeping watch, but it won’t hurt to get out of here as fast as we can. Who knows when they’ll come back?”
There was more than one reason to hurry. “We need to get Tayy to a doctor, fast.”
The wound was visible through the damp cloth. Lling winced, her vision closing in around memories they all shared. Llesho had nearly died of his own wounds inflicted by the magician. And Hmishi—she’d been there when Master Markko had tortured him. The god of mercy had returned his life to them, but he hadn’t wiped away the memory of his death at the magician’s hands.
“Let’s go, then.” Bixei picked up one end of Tayy’s litter, and Stipes, in perfect step with his own partner, lifted the other. Surrounded by the company on the shore, they carried him to the longboat and settled him on the bottom. Together, they pushed the boat into the water.
Bixei and Stipes took the oars—Llesho knew better than to offer, which was just as well. He’d be happier if he never had to row a boat again in this lifetime. He found a place toward the bow and settled himself, felt the bump and shimmy as his companions joined him.
“How are we going to get him over the side?” Llesho asked. Almost as round as a washtub, the sailing ship Kaydu had commissioned for them rode high in the water. Her hull rose well above their heads even standing in the longboat, which Tayy couldn’t do. He wouldn’t survive a seat hoist either.
“Simple,” Kaydu told him. “The rest of us will use the ladder, then they’ll hoist the boat.”
It did seem simple enough—as long as the sailors didn’t drop the boat on the way up, which they did pretty regularly. This time, however, it worked as well in the doing as it sounded in the planning. Hmishi joined them on deck and they soon had Tayy off-loaded and in the captain’s cabin. Stipes swept the luxurious coverings off the bed to reveal the simple linen beneath. They tried to be gentle moving the prince from the litter, but even half unconscious he moaned in pain.
“Where did Master Den go?” Llesho asked. He’d done this so much more smoothly before, but he was nowhere to be seen now.
“I saw him heading toward the galley,” Stipes seemed as confused by it as the rest of them.
“Well, somebody fetch him.”
A noise at the hatchway drew their hopeful glances, but it was the captain of the little ship who popped through it. Lling gave a nod of courtesy as she brushed past on her way out.
“I heard you were bringing a wounded boy on board,” the ship’s captain announced, “so I’ve brought up our own surgeon to tend him.”
Llesho wondered where she had brought him up from, until he appeared in the hatchway behind her. The man was almost as big as Master Den, and as dirty as the other was neat. Sweat glistened on his brow and across a chest that looked more like a fortress than mere flesh and blood. His arms were brawny, ending in huge hands that looked like they’d last had a wash on shore before the voyage began. If then. In one of them he carried a hammer the size of Llesho’s head, and in the other, a leather bag that clanked when he put it down.
“He needs sewing up, is all.” The man dropped his bag on the table and took out of it a needle used for mending sails and a length of cotton thread. “It was wise of you to tie his hands. Now if someone will sit on his legs, and two more hold down his shoulders, we can get him closed before you know it.”
Adar would be having a heart attack about now, Llesho figured. Still, he didn’t want to abuse their captain’s goodwill. “Do you think it would help to wash up, and maybe give him herbs for the pain?” he suggested as graciously as he could manage under the circumstances.
“No point,” the blacksmith/surgeon licked the end of
the thread and aimed it at the eye in the needle. “That there is what we call a mortal wound. Means he won’t live through the night, if he’s lucky. He might linger a few days more, to all of our regrets, but he’s not getting up from that bed except sewed in a sailcloth to go over the side, and you can lay your money on that.
“No, we’ll just stitch him up for tidiness’ sake. And if he’s still alive at the end of the sewing, I’ll have Cook fix up a nice porridge to keep his strength up. But it won’t do no good.”
The surgeon bore down on the bed but stopped short as Llesho’s cadre formed a wall between the patient and the dirty needle.
“Where’s Habiba?” Llesho asked. He’d hung all his hopes on the magician being aboard to take over. He would know what to do for Tayy.
But Hmishi was shaking his head. “He left when the boat was sent to fetch you off the beach. He said to tell you he’d meet you in Pontus with a doctor.”
“Doctor won’t do you any good.” The surgeon gave a shrug as if to say he took no professional slight from their preference for a foreign healer. “That’s a gut wound. I’ve never seen a gut wound survive.”
“His name is Prince Tayyichiut,” Llesho objected. “He’s not a gut wound; he’s a Harnish prince wounded in the gut. And he will survive. I’ve promised his uncle.”
Mergen had absolved him from that promise, but Llesho held himself to his word. At least until Tayy recovered enough to make his own decisions, now that he knew the danger.
The surgeon shrugged again, clearly at a loss in dealing with these mad strangers. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ll send the porridge up anyway. But open or sewed shut, he’s dead by sunset.” With that he left them to their vigil.
When he had gone, Llesho collapsed into a chair. It seemed inconceivable to him that he was among friends again, that they might, if not for Tayy’s wound, have been safe. For all that he refused to believe the surgeon’s prognosis, he was afraid he might be right. “We need to do something before Pontus,” he said.
Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven Page 31