‘A few lowborn survivors from Adric’s retinue were recognised, and brought back. A journey of miles bouncing around on a litter. It brought them the services of the fort physicians, who have done, as you can see, very little. The lowborn who are not soldiers get the least patching. Bring me that knife. Is your stomach as strong as your arms? Hold him down. Like this.’
Damen had seen physicians at work before. As a commander he had done the rounds of the injured. He had also some rudimentary field knowledge of his own, taught to him in case he should ever find himself wounded and separated from his men, which as a boy had been a thrilling prospect, though it had not, in those days, ever been likely. Tonight was the first night he had ever worked alongside a physician trying to keep life inside of men. It was ceaseless, involved and physical.
Once or twice, he glanced at the low stretcher in the shadowed back of the room with a sheet passed over it. After a few hours, the door hanging was pushed open and tied back, as a party entered.
They were all lowborn, three men and a woman, and the man who had tied back the hanging directed them to the stretcher. The woman sat down heavily beside it and made a low sound.
She was a servant, perhaps a washerwoman judging by the forearms and the cap. She was young too, and Damen wondered if this was her husband, or her kin, a cousin, a brother.
Paschal quietly to Damen, ‘Return to your Captain.’
‘I’ll leave you to the room,’ said Damen, nodding.
The woman turned, wet-eyed. He realised that she had heard his accent. He knew that he possessed the colouring characteristic of Akielos, especially of the southern provinces. That alone might not have been enough to identify him as Akielon here on the border, except that he had spoken.
‘What is one of them doing here?’ she said.
Paschal said to Damen, ‘Go.’ It was too late.
‘You did this. Your kind.’ She moved past Paschal, who was stepping forward.
It wasn’t pleasant. She was strong, a woman in the prime of her life, with strength born of hauling water and pounding linen. Damen had to exert himself to hold her off, gripping her by the wrists, and one of Paschal’s tables was knocked over. It took her two male companions to pull her back. Damen raised a hand to his cheek where one of her nails had scratched him. It came back with a smear of blood.
They took her out. Paschal said nothing but silently began righting implements. The men returned after a while and took out the body, bearing it on a wooden support between. One of them paused his progress in front of Damen and just regarded him steadily. Then the man spat on the ground in front of him. They left.
Damen tasted something unpleasant in his mouth. He recalled with perfect clarity the herald who had spat on the ground in front of his father, in the war tent at Marlas. It was the same expression.
He looked at Paschal. He knew this about Veretians.
‘They hate us.’
‘What did you expect?’ said Paschal. ‘The raids are constant. And it was only six years ago that Akielons drove these men out of their homes, out of their fields. They have seen friends, family killed, children taken as slaves.’
‘They kill us too,’ said Damen. ‘Delpha was taken from Akielos in the days of King Euandros. It was right that she revert to Akielon rule.’
‘As she has,’ said Paschal. ‘For now.’
*
Laurent’s cool blue gaze revealed nothing about the meeting, not even that it had been long: four hours of talking. He still wore his jacket, and his riding boots. He regarded Damen expectantly.
‘Report.’
‘I didn’t manage to make a full circuit of the walls, I was stopped on the west side. But I’d say there are between fifteen and seventeen hundred men stationed here. It looks like Ravenel’s usual defensive contingent. The storehouses are full enough, but not at capacity. I didn’t see any signs of war preparations, aside from the outriders and doubled guard since this morning. I think this attack took them by surprise.’
‘It was the same in the great hall. Lord Touars did not have the manner of a man who was expecting a fight, for all he wants one.’
Damen said, ‘So the border lords are not working with your uncle to incite this war.’
‘I don’t think Lord Touars is,’ Laurent said. ‘We ride to Breteau. I have won us two or three days. It was grudging. But it will take that long for any communication from my uncle to arrive, and Lord Touars is not going to wage a breakaway war on Akielos all by himself.’
Two or three days.
It was coming; it was visible on the horizon. Damen drew in a breath. Long before troops assembled on either side of the border, he would return to fight on the side of Akielos. Damen looked at Laurent, and tried to imagine facing him over battle lines.
He had been caught up in the energy of—creating something. Laurent’s determination, the ability he had to beat odds had infected him. But this wasn’t a chase through a town, or a game of cards. This was Vere’s most powerful lords unfurling their banners for war.
‘Then we ride to Breteau,’ said Damen.
And he stood, without looking again at Laurent, and began the last preparations for bed.
*