Skifr shrugged. ‘I have only five beans,’ and she turned towards the ruins with the ministers of Gettland and Vansterland at her heels.
Gods, Koll wished now he’d stayed with Rin. All the things he loved about her came up in a needy surge. He felt then he’d rather have faced ten of the High King’s armies by her side than walked into the cursed silence of Strokom.
But, as Brand always used to say, you’ll buy nothing with wishes.
Koll shouldered his pack, and followed the others.
Wounds
Men lay on the floor, spitting and writhing. They begged for help and muttered for their mothers. They swore through gritted teeth, and snarled, and screamed, and bled.
Gods, a man held a lot of blood. Skara could hardly believe how much.
A prayer-weaver stood in the corner, droning out entreaties to He Who Knits the Wound and wafting about the sweet-smelling smoke from a cup of smouldering bark. Even so there was a suffocating stink, of sweat and piss and all the secrets that a body holds and Skara had to press one hand over her mouth, over her nose, over her eyes almost, staring between her fingers.
Mother Owd was not a tall woman but she seemed a towering presence now, less like a peach than the deep-rooted tree that bore them. Her forehead was furrowed, stray hairs stuck with sweat to her clenched jaw, sleeves rolled up to show strong muscles working in her red-stained forearms. The man she was tending to arched his back as she probed at the wound in his thigh, then started to thrash and squeal.
‘Someone hold him!’ she growled. Rin brushed past Skara, caught the man’s wrist and pressed him roughly down while Sister Owd plucked a bone needle from her loose bun, stuck it in her teeth so she could thread it, and began to sew, the man snorting and bellowing and spraying spit.
Skara remembered Mother Kyre naming the organs, describing their purpose and their patron god. A princess should know how people work, she had said. But you can know a man is full of guts and still find the sight of them a most profound shock.
‘They came with ladders,’ Blue Jenner was saying. ‘And bravely enough. Not a task I’d fancy. Reckon Bright Yilling promised good ring-money to any man could scale the walls.’
‘Not many did,’ said Raith.
Skara watched flies flit about a heap of bloody bandages. ‘Enough to cause this.’
‘This?’ She hardly knew how Jenner could chuckle now. ‘You should see what we did to them! If this is the worst we suffer before Father Yarvi gets back I’ll count us lucky indeed.’ Skara must have looked horrified, because he faltered as he caught her eye. ‘Well … not these boys, maybe …’
‘He was testing us.’ Raith’s face was pale and his cheek scraped with grazes. Skara did not want to know how he got them. ‘Feeling out where we’re weak.’
‘Well it’s a test we passed,’ said Jenner. ‘This time, anyway. We’d best get back to the walls, my queen. Bright Yilling ain’t a fellow to give up at the first stumble.’
By then they were hauling another man up onto Sister Owd’s table while the minister rubbed her hands clean in a bowl of thrice-blessed water already pink with blood. He was a big Gettlander not much older than Skara, the only sign of a wound a dark patch on his mail.
Owd had a rattling set of little knives strung on a cord around her neck, and she used one now to slit the thongs that held his armour, then Rin dragged it and the padding underneath up to show a little slit in his belly. Mother Owd bent over it, pressed at it, watched blood leak out. He squirmed and his mouth opened but he made only a breathy gasp, his soft face shuddering. Sister Owd sniffed at the wound, muttered a curse, and stood.
‘There’s nothing I can do. Someone sing him a prayer.’
Skara stared. That easily, a man condemned to death. But those are the choices a healer must make. Who can be saved. Who is already meat. Mother Owd had moved on and Skara forced herself up beside the dying man on trembling legs, her stomach in her mouth. Forced herself to take his hand.
‘What is your name?’ she asked him.
His whisper was hardly more than a breath. ‘Sordaf.’
She tried to sing a prayer to Father Peace to guide him to an easy rest. A prayer she remembered Mother Kyre singing when she was small, after her father died, but her throat would hardly make the words. She had heard of men dying well in battle. She could no longer imagine what that meant.
The wounded man’s bulging eyes were fixed on her. Or fixed beyond her. On his family, maybe. On things left undone and unsaid. On the darkness beyond the Last Door.
‘What can I do?’ she whispered, clutching at his hand as hard as he clutched at hers.
He tried to make words but they came out only squelches, blood speckling his lips.
‘Someone get some water!’ she shrieked.
‘No need, my queen.’ Rin gently prised Skara’s gripping fingers from his. ‘He’s gone.’ And Skara realized his hand was slack.
She stood.