Cold Iron

by Stina Leicht

  The wound in the corporal’s right thigh gave off a sickly stench when she tugged at the filthy bandage. His skin was hot. She peeled off his blood-stiffened uniform coat and shirt.

  Gangrene. That’s going to take a lot of energy. Another day, and he’d have been gone. Thank Stjarrna, they got him to me in time.

  “There’s a tea tin on the hearth,” Ilta said. “Use the blue kettle. I’ll need the hot water from the big copper one. Cups are in the cupboard.”

  Nels shook his head. “There are more. I must go back for them. You’re—you’re sure you’re all right?” His question tore the scab staying her misery. Much as I wish otherwise, I can’t be with him. I have to tell him. Letting him think there’s hope is cruel.

  But I can’t do it now, can I? That would be selfish. She smiled but didn’t meet his eyes. He needs someone to take charge of something, anything to ease this burden. She pushed back her errant hair and stood tall. When she finally braved his gaze, she saw his irises weren’t black. They’d changed color with his moods because he couldn’t control it. So, unlike any normal kainen, his eyes tended to be blue or green. However, at the moment, his eyes were hard gray flints.

  He’s using up everything he has to keep himself together, she thought. A part of her wanted to cry into his chest while he patted her head and told her it would be all right, but she couldn’t. “Go. Everything is fine. We’ll talk later. We can’t—not now. I—I missed you.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. I love you.”

  She paused but couldn’t think of a reason not to say it. “I love you too.”

  With that, he went back outside and left her to her vocation. She selected a knife from the small table where her surgeon’s tools were neatly arranged. Then she settled into her work, cutting away the corporal’s trouser leg. More patients arrived while she washed blood from his thigh. She attempted to ignore the filling cots for the moment and laid a hand on his wrist and closed her eyes. A warm tingle began in her palm and worked its way up her arm.

  Ball only nicked the bone. Infection is the worst of it. The corporal’s fever remained high, his heartbeat slow but strong. She concentrated on destroying the last of the gangrene. That was when the confusion of battle blotted out everything and—

  The smoke is thick and she is surrounded by the deafening explosions of musket shot and cannon, the knelling of crossed swords and cries of the wounded. Running. Then she hears the jeers from laughing Acrasians and the screams of the dying. No Eledorean standard is to be seen. Foreign flags are waving in their place on the battlefield—a golden eagle flying against a background of gray and red.

  A crushing wave of despair and rage overpowered her. With difficulty, she tore herself from Corporal Jori Kalastaja’s mind and did what she could to fortify him. As she blinked, the images melted away and became Nels stooping over another of his fallen comrades.

  All of this and he lost his mother, too. Oh, Goddess, how terrible this must be for him. Is his sister still alive? She decided to check the auguries when she had the chance.

  Viktor arrived with a lieutenant, and together they transferred a wounded private from a makeshift litter to a cot and left. Ilta moved from Corporal Kalastaja’s side to her next patient. She recog­nized him with a start. Private Ketola. The one who took Nels’s message to Suvi that night. And the full weight of her duty formed in her mind. Nels’s troops hadn’t had enough supplies or time to tend the wounded. Her patients’ injuries were well over a week old and hadn’t been properly cleaned. With a glance at her next patient, it was clear the best she could do for Private Paiva was make his last hours comfortable. Worst of all, after she assessed two more patients, she understood she must make a terrible decision. It hadn’t occurred to her that she would need to choose who lived or died. She believed such things beyond her. Now two patients required help at once, and it was a close enough thing that she couldn’t make an easy determination on who could wait. Gran had always handled those decisions before, making them seem easy. Ilta’s thoughts became enmeshed in a thick ooze of terror.

  One of them will die, and I must choose which. Oh, Stjarrna, I don’t want this.

  In her mind she heard her grandmother’s voice, hard-edged like steel. Don’t shirk, girl, or you’ll lose them both. Time is wasting.

  Ilta decided to first stabilize the straightforward chest injury and leave Private Ketola’s more difficult head wound for last. She needed help. If she had someone to handle the simpler tasks, she could save both patients.

  If I’m quick enough.

  She glanced around the room full of soldiers before taking a deep breath to strengthen her resolve, and motioned for Sergeant Wiberg. “You’ve been serving as surgeon?”

  Wiberg, a sturdy middle-aged kainen with graying hair, nodded.

  “Wash up,” Ilta said. “I need your help.”

  Tired, soaked, and cold, Wiberg didn’t hesitate. He went straight to the basin and washed his hands. She turned her attention to Private Larsson and the chest wound, and tried to forget about the passing of time. She stole away as much of his pain as she could, dug out musket balls, and stitched with expert motions. The process took longer than she’d hoped, despite asking Wiberg to take over bandaging. She paused to give Private Larsson a boost of healing energy before moving to Private Ketola.

  Ketola looked terribly vulnerable in the lamplight. When she touched him, she understood he was on the verge of slipping away. Images of his wife and family swam in Ilta’s mind. His wife was gone, but his children were alive when he’d last seen them. However, his family had been following the Eledorean army. They’d been at Virens. Oh, Goddess. Ilta took a deep breath to fight off a rush of panic.

  Oh, please don’t let him die. I didn’t choose. I didn’t. She selected a clean scalpel and began the fight to save Ketola.

  FOUR

  It was nearly dawn when she finished the last suture. Her mind was numb, but the muscles in her neck and shoulders were tense knots of pain. She washed her hands in the basin a final time and wiped them dry on a clean apron. Across the room, Overlieutenant Larsson slept with her head resting on the edge of Private Larsson’s cot, her hand on top of his chest as if she were monitoring her brother’s breathing.

  It must be awful to see your own family shot like that.

  “You should get some sleep too,” Nels said.

  Ilta turned, and Nels pressed a warm cup of tea into her hand.

  “I don’t think I can just yet.” She pushed hair out of her eyes again. “Rain’s stopped. Would you mind sitting out on the porch with me?” She sipped the tea and warmed her fingers on hot porcelain. She let the cup be the reason she didn’t touch Ketola one last time to check his progress. “Tomorrow’s going to be another long day, isn’t it?”

  Nels stared at the sleeping troops and then whispered, “I’ve hidden the rest of the company in a cave not far from here. These were the most in need. I should go back.”

  “You need to rest. You’ve been up all night.”

  “We were attacked south of Gardemeister. It was my fault. I should’ve been more careful. I should’ve seen them. If I had Viktor’s ears, I’d have heard them. If I had any power at all—”

  “Magical power doesn’t fix every problem,” Ilta said. For what felt like the hundredth time, she stopped herself from reaching for his hand. “Sometimes it creates more problems than it solves.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do,” Ilta said with more frustration than she’d intended to reveal. “It’s normal to blame yourself after something like that, but you can’t rip yourself apart. Think of what you’ve accomplished. You got the others here safe, didn’t you?”

  Nels nodded.

  “And that was most of your company?”

  “Of the half that was with me at Virens, yes.”

  She glanced to Viktor, who was sound asleep in a chair by the hearth. He’d taken charge of the hot water for tea and whatever she needed for surgery. It n
ever failed to amaze her how quickly soldiers could drop off. In Viktor’s case, she was certain he could sleep standing up.

  She lowered her voice even more. “Did you know Viktor has been practically crowing? He seems to think he taught you to be quiet or something.”

  “I had to abandon a majority of my wounded.” A hand curled into a fist. “The Acrasians don’t take prisoners.”

  Remembering Ketola’s family, she winced. She didn’t know what to say. “I know you did everything you could.”

  He turned as if avoiding her words. “Front porch?”

  Exhausted, she was having trouble keeping up her defenses. Quick images from the minds of her patients threatened to invade her skull. “Yes. Please.” She snatched an extra blanket from the sofa and fled after Nels. Cool early morning breathed the post-storm scent of freshly washed air into her face. In a weary daze, she tossed the blanket onto the porch to soak up rain water and sat on the ledge. Nels perched next to her. She stared into the gunmetal sky and swung her feet as she always did when content. Sitting made the standing stones in the dooryard tall enough to block most of the view. Ilta shut her eyes and pretended everything was as it used to be. She drank in the comfortable silence, letting the stress of the evening melt into the beams of the porch, and imagined it flowing into the ground. Then she pulled fresh energy up from the moist earth. When she opened her eyes once more, the sky had acquired a warm orange tinged with blood red in the east.

  “I’ve never seen you at work before,” Nels said in a quiet voice. “You’re amazing.”

  Private Ketola.

  “You expected otherwise?” she asked, frowning at the sky.

  “Not really.”

  Tick-tick. He was rolling something in the palm of his hand that made the small clicking sound. Tick-tick. She leaned over and looked into his palm. He showed her two mushroom-shaped bullets she had cut from Private Paiva’s ruined body. She knew Paiva wouldn’t see the noon sun but had felt she must try anyway. Gran would’ve chided her for wasting the energy, but she wasn’t hard like Gran had been. She couldn’t bring herself to give up on anyone. Tick-tick.

  Ketola.

  Tick-tick. She felt a double cut of grief and guilt. The quiet sound of the ruined musket balls suddenly made her want to weep. Tick-tick.

  “The Acrasians call it cold iron,” he said, staring into his palm. “They’re iron-coated lead. Shoots farther. Makes a bigger hole. Always kills unless you’ve a healer, and most of the time even then.” Tick— He wrapped the bullets in a tightened fist and frowned. “I told Father not to underestimate the Acrasians. Why couldn’t he have listened for once?” He threw the musket balls at the woods with a growl. The thoughts that followed came with such force, she wondered if he shouted them aloud at first. My fault. I failed. Again. If I had magic, I could have saved them. He would have listened to me, then. I could have influenced the nobles if I had magic like a proper Ilmari.

  He hopped down from the porch ledge and strode across the dooryard. Turning his back on the witnessing windows, he kicked at a tall weed next to the circle of standing stones. She saw him wipe his face with the back of his hand.

  The tea she’d drunk sank in her stomach, hitting the bottom like a stone. She felt more inadequate than ever before, wanting to comfort him but unable to approach. Let him grieve. He needs it. It occurred to her that this was the first opportunity he’d had to release any emotions. She didn’t have to read his mind to understand. She watched him settle with his back against one of the stones, hiding from the house. She took a sip of cooling tea and watched the sun rise. Later, she would fetch him a fresh cup of tea. In the meantime, she allowed herself to think of things she had been too busy to deal with before. How much longer can we stay here? Certainly not too long. If they waited until too late, they’d be trapped.

  So tired. She leaned against a porch column and rested her eyes. Just for a moment.

  When she started awake, the sun was feather-touching the tops of the trees. She went inside to make Nels a cup of chamomile tea. Everyone was still sleeping. She went back outside as quietly as possible, balancing the cup in hand. She’d gotten as far as the stones when she saw Nels was sleeping. She backed up a step. The cup clinked against the saucer.

  His eyelids snapped open. He looked up at her with a hand to his pistol.

  “It’s only me. I brought you this.” She offered the tea with one hand. The whites of his eyes were red and the irises were still dark gray. However, they had that smoky quality they took before changing color again. Outwardly he looked calm, but stinging thoughts still buzzed under his skull. She could sense them without trying. She didn’t think it was entirely because she was tired, either. He needed rest, more than he’d gotten napping in the wet grass. She considered giving him a little valerian to make him sleep. It felt good to know solutions for simple problems.

  He rubbed his eyes and refused the tea with a shake of his head. “I should go. The others will be wondering what happened to us. Although it’s more likely they’re drinking the whiskey we found hidden in that cave.” Nels stood up and gingerly stretched his right arm up in the air with a wince. The other he kept to his side.

  There are more wounded waiting in the caves. For a moment, Ilta couldn’t breathe. I used all that energy on Private Paiva, and he’s going to die anyway. She turned to Gran’s house—my house now—with its three floors, wraparound porch, and tower jutting into the morning sky. Oh, Gran. Why didn’t I think?

  “Thank you,” Nels said.

  “For what?”

  “For letting me be.”

  If Nels can bear such things, I can too, she thought. “Isn’t it my duty to know what my patients need?”

  Nels made a futile attempt to brush wet grass from his torn and dirty uniform. There was a saber slash in the left side of his coat. She had been too busy to take notice, or perhaps it was all the grime.

  “You’re hurt.”

  He glanced down at his side. “Isn’t it my duty to be invincible?”

  “Come up to the porch. I’ll take care of it. Is it bad?”

  “I haven’t fallen over yet, have I?”

  She didn’t know how he managed to make her laugh even when she felt like crying. “The porch. Now. I promise not to let Overlieutenant Larsson witness your mortality. The others are too drugged to care,” she said, then ran into the house to grab what was needed. Larsson didn’t so much as stir while Ilta gathered supplies.

  When she told Nels to remove his shirt, he hesitated.

  “What is wrong now?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He shrugged the shirt off, and as he turned around, she saw his back and bit her lip. She’d seen scars like that before, quite often, in fact. The Eledorean army was infamous for beating the troops. She’d once heard an army officer claim that since a majority of the recruits came from Eledore’s prisons, there was no other way to maintain discipline. Still, the scars had come as a shock. She hadn’t thought anyone would punish Nels in such a manner. Understanding his embarrassment, she pretended she hadn’t seen and concentrated on the cut instead. The wound wasn’t deep—a narrow gash starting at the lowest left rib and running up his chest to just under the breastbone. Remembering what had happened with the variola, she decided to keep the healing magic to a minimum. She stitched the cut closed without removing the pain first. He held himself still. Once finished, she risked a small healing spell. Sharp pain bloomed behind her eyes, and her head pounded with the beat of her heart.

  That’s it. I don’t have enough power left for anything else today. If the wound had been worse, I could have lost him. The thought was sobering. “Were you planning on waiting for it to fester?” she asked, roughly tying the cloth bandage closed.

  “Ouch. Don’t tie it so tight.”

  “I thought you were invincible,” she said, and then smacked his hand as he reached for his shirt. “Don’t you dare put that filthy thing back on. It stinks.”

  “I didn’t e
xactly have time to pack a spare during the rout,” he said with a shocked look.

  “Yet you could save who knows how many bottles of whiskey?”

  His expression melted into a wicked smile. “You expect me to drown my sorrows in a clean shirt?”

  She sighed. “I’ll wash it.”

  He put a hand on her wrist. “I’ll survive without. You need to sleep more than I do. The others will need you tonight,” he said. His bravado faded into concern. “You will be able to see to them, won’t you? It won’t be too much?”

  The questions reminded her of her mistake, and she instantly felt horrible. She didn’t have the energy to shield herself from Sergeant Jori Kalastaja’s dreams or Ketola’s images of fishing with his sons or Larsson’s worries for her brother. All of it blended with the pain in Ilta’s head, and the disorienting combination made her nauseous. She saw Nels get up from the porch in a distant haze and shook her head to clear it. Careful. Stay present. “Don’t you dare pull those stitches. I’m not sewing you together a second time.”

  With his shirt in hand and his grimy uniform coat draped over his shoulders, he gave her a formal court bow. “Yes, Silmaillia.”

  “Do you know what you’ll do next? Where we’ll go?”

  Nels stared at the ground between his feet. His tightened lips indicated he was prepared for an argument. “We’ll need to go north. All of us.”

  “I’m ready. Viktor has been helping me pack and prepare the house for the winter. There are things I’d like to save, if I can. We may need them in the future. But I can’t take too much with us. Viktor says we’ll need to travel fast.”

  He gazed into her eyes and smiled. “I should’ve known you’d understand.”

  Shrugging, she smiled back.

  “I’ve missed you so much.”

  She winced, and that was all it took. That uneasy wall was between them again. If everything were normal, she’d go to him, put an arm around him, and kiss him. It would smooth everything over. She settled once again on the edge of the porch. He doesn’t need more bad news right now. She patted the space next to her.