by Dana Marton
He turned from me then and sent the group of refugees—who’d been listening with rapt attention—on their way. As the bedraggled men and women moved off with their skids, the soldiers who’d gone after the runaway horses returned.
I stepped back toward the forest, and the tiger and Orz backed away with me. But the captain had other ideas.
“You are wanted in Ker for questioning by the city fathers. You will come with me to the border. When I return to the city in a few days’ time, I shall take you back with me.”
He nodded to the men, and they raised their weapons again. I wanted neither the tiger nor Orz hurt because of me. I could not see a way out of the trap in that moment. I thought of Batumar, of what I had learned from him during our nightly talks when he discussed with me everything from city matters to military strategy.
“A warlord always looks for the position of advantage,” he had told me once. “If he cannot take the position of advantage, he must wait until the circumstances change, or do something to change the circumstances.”
The circumstances at the moment were not to my advantage. Changing them was not in my power. But the trek to the border would take at least another day. Our stay there a day or two. Then many more days back to Ker. All that time, the soldiers would not be facing me with their swords drawn, all eyes on me.
I had to wait for my circumstances to change.
I patted the tiger’s neck and asked her in a spirit song to leave me. I gave an encouraging nod to Orz, my eyes begging him not to interfere, but I had been around warriors long enough to know that the fisted hands at his sides meant whatever blood he had left in him sang for battle.
I could almost see the warrior under his robes for the first time, his body subtly changing, making me consider once again whether he had once been Captain Gramorzo of the city guard of Ishaf.
“Orz? Please,” I whispered. He could not possibly fight. He would be cut down within moments.
My breath caught even as I thought that. Was death what he wanted?
His head was down, his hood over his eyes and most of his face, but I could feel him hold my gaze through the burlap.
“I wish not that you would come to harm on my behalf. Or come to harm at all,” I said quietly. As unusual companions as they were, Orz and Marga were all that I had left. “I will escape. I promise.”
His fists would not unclench, but, barely perceptibly, he nodded.
I walked toward the captain, reached the boots I had dropped when I had run to protect Marga. I picked them up and threw them toward Orz. I hoped he understood that they were for him.
I glanced back only when I reached the road. The tiger had gone back into the forest. Orz stood where I had left him.
The captain said, “Whether a simple healer or a powerful sorceress, I have one warning for you. Should you try to turn me or my men into hollows, you will not long live.”
I looked him straight in the eye. “His name is Orz. He was turned into a hollow by the sorcerer of Ishaf.”
The captain must have accepted this, for he extended his hand to me. “We will travel faster with you on horseback.”
When I accepted the offer of help, he hauled me up behind him. The horses needed little encouragement to move forward. They were anxious to put some distance between themselves and the tiger.
Orz still stood in the middle of the field between the woods and the road, his head turned toward me. He had improved, and his movements had grown faster and easier over the past few days, but I did not think he could keep up with the horses. Yet, I did not doubt that somehow he would find a way to catch up with me sooner or later.
In that dark robe, he reminded me of the Guardians who had been good friends to me, and even more—like grandfathers. Suddenly I wondered how old he was. Warlords were men in their prime, the strongest warriors of the land. But if Orz had been the captain of Ishaf’s city guard, he could have been a man more advanced in age. Maybe even as old as the Guardians. He would not have had to fight in battle, just supervise his guards’ training.
On an impulse, I waved at him.
He lifted his hand in a broken gesture that I interpreted as his way of waving back.
“Why are you going to Regnor?” the captain asked after we moved some distance down the road.
I did not want to lie to him. I could not see what harm he could find in my true purpose. It threatened him not, nor his people. “I wish to find Lord Karnagh.”
He turned to look at me. “How would a Shahala healer come to know him?” he pounced, thinking he had caught me in a lie.
“Lord Karnagh came to Karamur. He was a friend and ally to the High Lord of the Kadar. I met him at the High Lord’s feast.”
The captain turned forward. “The Kadar cannot abide sorcerers.”
“I am not a sorceress. I was the High Lord’s concubine.”
He spent a moment in silence at that. Then he said, “Concubines do not travel without their lords, and rarely with them.”
He clearly was not a man to trust easily.
“I traveled with the High Lord. He was lost at sea.” My heart bled inside my chest, those last five words sharp blades that slashed it into ribbons on their way up to be spoken.
“You sailed with the pirates?”
“On One-Tooth Tum’s ship.”
The captain was silent longer this time. But after a while, he spoke again. “Batumar, the High Lord of the Kadar, was a great warrior. If what you say is true, his loss will be felt.”
We rode in silence for a while, both lost in our thoughts, before he spoke again, summing up my predicament. “You cannot return to your island.”
I said nothing. He wasn’t asking a question.
But then he did a moment later. “Are you in search of another protector lord? A comfortable castle? Not many of those left, I fear. Few freeholds survive. The best of our castles have been burned.”
“I am not seeking protection for myself.”
Another moment passed. “For your country, then?”
“For our people.”
His head bobbed forward as he nodded. “No ordinary woman could do it. But you are a sorceress.”
“I am but hoping to find Lord Karnagh and plead for his help to save my people. He brought his warriors and their tigers to aid us in the siege of Karamur. I am hoping he and his people might come to our aid once again. We have enemy troops trapped on the island, more to come as soon as the Gate opens.”
The captain simply said, “He has not been seen,” but from his dark tone, I surmised he thought the Selorm warlord dead.
“He might be injured or kept captive,” I protested.
“He is no lesser man than the High Lord of the Kadar had been. He would not be easily killed,” the captain allowed. “I do hope you will find him. This world cannot afford to lose all its great men.”
We rode in silence for a spell.
He then said, “Other than the city fathers, there is a traveling merchant making much of your disappearance. He has searched every corner of the city for you.”
Graho. I wondered how the children fared. I missed them.
The captain turned his full attention to the road, asking no further questions.
When we stopped at nightfall, I helped the soldiers make camp and cook dinner. In exchange, they shared their meal of thin vegetable stew with me. They offered me a place by the fire, but by then the tiger caught up with us and chuffed for me.
With the captain’s permission, to keep the tiger from coming to me and scaring all the horses into running off, I walked to the tree line where she waited and made myself a nest of leaves that protected me from the worst of the cold radiating from the ground. Being snuggled close to the tiger kept me from freezing while I slept.
Orz did not catch up to us that night or by the following morning. We left at first light, and we reached the border around midday.
The army sprawled across fields of frozen mud on either side of the road, men gathered
in clumps in front of fires, tents scattered in a haphazard pattern. Horses grazed in a nearby field.
The soldiers were of every age, from beardless youth to grizzled old men. Some moved soldier-like and carried swords. Others had hunting and even four-pronged fishing spears. A great barrel-chested mountain of a man wore a blacksmith’s leather apron and carried a blacksmith’s hammer.
But though I saw many hale men, I saw twice as many injured. Most of them wore garments of different cut and color than the locals, probably men of other kingdoms, fleeing before the enemy. They had likely joined Ker’s army to make their last stand, hoping to stop the invaders from reaching the caravan yard and the port city beyond it.
Compared to Batumar’s trained and experienced warriors who worked like a unit, what spread before me looked more like a refugee camp than an army camp.
Perhaps the captain caught the doubt in my eyes, because he said in a bellowing voice that carried on the wind, “We will stop the enemy. The Kerghi hordes will come this far and no farther.”
Around us, men stomped their boots and rattled their armor in approval as the captain directed his horse to walk through their ranks. He sat spine straight in the saddle, shoulders wide. He looked suddenly like a much younger man, fed by the trust of his men and his vision for them.
He cast me a glance full of confidence. “What think you, Sorceress?”
“I am no sorceress.”
He lifted a hand, palm out, in a gesture that said he meant no harm. “In the country of the Selorm, on the other side of this border, sorceresses are revered. Sorcery does not bother me either. I am from a border town. Did I tell you that? When I was a child, a Selorm sorceress once saved our harvest.”
He slid from his horse and held out his hand, but I jumped to the ground without his assistance.
We barely took two steps before a commotion amongst the ranks up ahead drew our attention. A small crowd of men gathered around one of the fires. We heard them shouting in alarm. The captain hurried that way, and, since I could hear pain-filled groans and moans mixed in with the shouting, I followed him.
The captain pushed through the circle of bystanders, and I pushed right behind him, seeing the cause for the alarm as soon as we were through. A dozen men writhed on the ground around the cooking fire, their faces distorted with pain. In between grunts and moans, they were begging their fellow soldiers to kill them.
They were clutching their middles, but I could see no blood. They had not been stabbed.
The captain dropped to one knee next to the man who seemed the most coherent, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “What happened?”
I had a fair idea, and if I was right, every moment counted. I pushed my way to the cauldron on the fire and dipped the ladle into the bubbling stew. I smelled the steam. Nothing strange there; it made my mouth water. I fished through the contents: very little meat, some barley, and what roots could be collected in the woods, a few mushrooms here and there.
My hand froze when I recognized one of those mushroom caps. I’d seen those grow by the dozen in the Shahala forests. My people used them to fight vermin if they overran the fields to such degree that they threatened the wheat harvest.
I turned toward the captain, who had already moved on to another man. “Tennicap!”
I hadn’t meant to shout the word, but I did, and my outburst brought all eyes to me. None showed understanding.
I had no idea what the mushroom was called in their language. “Poison.”
The stew steamed in the ladle I held, but I reached in and picked out the mushroom, dropped the ladle back into the cauldron, then put the poisonous cap on my palm and held it out for them. I rubbed off the stew’s glistening coating so they could see the distinct stripes and dots that looked like the back of a fawn. “Make sure nobody else cooked with these.”
Word was passed around and, after each taking a good look at what I held, most of the men dispersed, running off to ascertain that the mushrooms did not make it into any of the other cauldrons that boiled over scattered cooking fires.
The captain barked at two of the remaining soldiers, ordered the stew to be carried off and disposed of. Then he turned to me, a desperate urgency in his gaze. “Can you save them?”
I had already been thinking whether I had the right medicine. Noten flowers would have been the best, but there would be none of those in winter. What else?
“Rapice,” I said. “They must be made to vomit.”
I searched through my sack until I found a bundle of rapice roots. They had frozen in the ground before I had dug them up, but that would not affect their power.
I sat by the largest, flattest of the stones that surrounded the cooking fire and chopped my small store of rapice into enough chunks that each sick man could receive a piece.
“They must swallow one each.” I handed half the chunks to the captain, then grabbed a moaning man next to me and shoved the rapice down his throat, no matter how he struggled, holding his nose so he would swallow.
The captain followed my example, and we moved on to the next soldier and the next until they all received their share.
“We better step back,” I warned as the men began to gag.
Even the captain turned a greenish shade from the copious amount of vomiting that followed. Some of the soldiers standing around vomited themselves, without having taken the rapice.
I paid little attention to all that, for I was already making my next batch of medicine. As the soldiers carried back the cauldron, empty and clean, I had them place it in front of me, and asked for a bucket of fresh water. Once I received that, I emptied the water into the cauldron, then used the bucket to scoop charcoal from the edges of the fire and added that to the water, stirring with a stick to make a thick but ingestible paste.
“The sick men must drink this as soon as they can.”
The rapice would bring up and remove as much poison from the body as possible. Whatever stayed behind, the charcoal paste would bind, and the poison would pass the other way.
Already, the vomiting was subsiding.
“Move these men over there,” the captain ordered his soldiers, and they immediately dragged the sick a few paces away so they wouldn’t be lying in their own vomit.
Then, following my example and that of the captain, the soldiers began pouring charcoal paste down the throats of their unfortunate comrades.
I kept my attention on the sick, wiping sweat from their brows, but I could hear the gathered crowd talking about me. News that I was a great sorceress healer, half human, half tiger, in search of Lord Karnagh spread faster through the army camp than dysentery.
The soldiers who had escorted me into camp had heard everything I’d said to their captain on the road and now freely shared my words, heavily embellishing them with all they had heard in Ker. They had their chests puffed out, taking full credit for bringing a powerful sorceress into camp.
I busied myself with the sick, making them drink clean water after they finished all the charcoal paste. I bathed their sweating faces once again, then I set about cleaning the vomit off their clothes. Their concerned friends brought me as many buckets of water as I needed.
“Will they live?” the captain asked, his voice tight.
And only then did I realize that the young man he had been administering to looked very much like him.
“Your son?”
He brushed the wet hair out of the young man’s face, deep furrows lining his forehead. “The only one left living out of seven. Will he live?” he asked again.
“He will,” I said, in case the sick could hear me. “We removed the poison.” I raised my voice. “They will all live.”
And then I prayed the spirits would not make a liar out of me.
I stayed with the sick as day turned into evening, made sure they drank again. I lay among them all through the night, getting up if any of them moaned or cried out for help.
By morning, they rested more easily. Some had enough strength to s
it, among them the captain’s son. The captain clapped him on the back with pure relief on his face. Then he did the same to the other men, as if they were all his. I supposed, in a sense, they were.
“They will survive the poison.” I could say that with full certainty by then. “But they must keep drinking water and eat carefully for a few days. Nothing too greasy. Nothing too heavy. And as for the others… Only those who are from around these parts should go off into the woods to gather mushrooms and roots for the meals.”
The captain nodded. He watched me for a long moment. “You have done us a great service.”
I did what I knew how to do. “Why did you trust me?” I asked.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Because of the camel.” He offered a half smile. “Many people said many things about what happened in Ker. But Makmin said you saved his camel. On this, I took Makmin’s words over the others’. That caravan master loved his camel.”
I sighed at that as I thought how heartbroken poor Makmin must be.
The captain said, “I am Captain Witsel.”
I inclined my head, knowing what finally sharing his name meant. He had not when he thought I might be a dark sorceress, for giving a creature of magic one’s name could give them power over that person.
He continued with, “I owe you my son’s life, and the life of my men. I regret that I will have to take you back to Ker to face the city fathers.” He paused. “On the other hand, you are a powerful sorceress. How could anyone be surprised if you enthralled the night guard and escaped across the border through the woods?”
On the last word, he turned and strode away, leaving me looking after him with mouth agape.
I wondered what I was to do next but did not have to wonder long. Two soldiers came and escorted me to a tent. Then two more soldiers appeared, one carrying blankets, the other food.
“Captain says you best not freeze or starve before you can be taken back to Ker,” one said before they left the pile of goods with me.
Three wool blankets!
True luxury, even if one did smell like a horse. I ran my fingers over the incredible treasure. Then, like an impatient child, I picked up and sniffed the full loaf of bread I’d been given in a new food sack. Half a round of hard cheese. Goat jerky. Six carrots and a cabbage. Six tart apples.