“Jessamy?” Steward Haredas’s voice cuts through the haze. “Good Goat! Are you wounded?”
At home the steward would never have touched one of Captain Esladas’s daughters. Now he hoists me and force-marches me up the steep embankment. The general’s carriage rolls at a walking pace with shutters open and my father inside. My lips move in a soundless thanks to all the gods that he is alive. Naturally he is leaning out the window, flinging commands like spears. Messengers appear and vanish, bringing him news, racing away to deliver new orders.
When I’m unceremoniously shoved into the still-moving carriage and slam down onto the bench opposite him, all I can think to say is “It’s not my blood.”
He’s seated with his injured leg stuck straight out in front, his boot resting on the bench beside me. A man wearing the coiled serpent badge of the physicians’ guild is holding aside the skirted plates of his armored coat so they don’t jostle the arrow sticking out of his thigh.
“By the creases and smudges on your riding gear, I see you have spent some time in a spider. Which I do not recall giving you permission to do.”
He beckons with a hand for me to come close enough that he can brush his fingers along the injury. My hair is still tied back although the scarf is working loose.
“Turn your head,” he orders so curtly I cringe. He is really angry with me. But he probes the wound with a touch as gentle as Mother’s.
To the doctor he says, “What do you think? It feels like a graze, not a deep wound. There’s a lot of blood.”
The doctor considers me with the dispassionate gaze of a person who has seen much suffering and death. He does not remove his hands from Father’s armor, however, and his feet are braced on the floor so he can absorb every shake and rattle of the carriage without allowing the armored coat to jostle the protruding arrow.
“Scalp wounds bleed a great deal. A salve of honey and alfalfa should set it to rights.”
“Have you this salve in your pouch?”
“Yes, General, and if you would be so kind as to allow me to stop the carriage as I have requested ten times now, I can treat her wound as well as get this arrow out of your leg before more damage is done.”
Father ignores the doctor’s sarcasm. He signals to a captain trotting alongside the window. “Take your squad to the rear. Cover the road with naphtha and wait, in hiding, until the enemy’s vanguard arrives. Then set it alight. That will slow them down.”
“Yes, General.” The captain taps his chest twice, the salute we girls learned when we were tiny. Father replies with the same salute, and the captain rides off.
“But Father, how can a few men sent back to enemy lines like that not get cut down as they try to run away afterward?”
“Quiet, Jessamy!” This stern look is the one that made me fear I could never win his approval, but I see the shadow in it now. How many men has he sacrificed in this way in his years in command?
“General, I need to get this arrow out,” repeats the doctor.
Father rests an arm on the window’s edge, leaning out. “Any news of Prince Kalliarkos?” he calls to someone I can’t see.
A male voice answers, out of my view. “By last report his troop was chasing the royal carriage.”
“Very good.” He calls out to the driver to halt, then settles back with a sigh. “Very well, Doctor.”
“Thank the gods, stubborn goat,” the doctor mutters.
We slow to a stop.
“Give me the salve,” says Father. He unties my scarf. On one side the fabric is soaked through with what must be my blood. Carefully he uses the doctor’s tiny trowel to press salve along the cut. At first the mixture feels oddly cool and then it stings so brutally that I’m dizzied by the pain and shut my eyes. My memory flashes to an image of a dead man crushed on the ground, and I open my eyes because I can’t bear to think of how I mauled through soldiers and kept walking.
Father takes the scarf out of my hands and does a creditable job of tying it around my hair, bloody patches and all. “As well I allowed your mother to teach me how to deal with you girls’ hair,” he murmurs so low he probably doesn’t even mean me to hear. The words carve misery straight into my heart. It’s a battle not to burst into sobs, but I manage to focus the agony into the burning gash.
He grasps my right hand between his. “Go ahead, Doctor.”
I tense, ready for anything. He fixes his gaze on a target spot behind my head as the doctor works the arrow loose from the flesh. His grip crushes my fingers, his lips pressed together until they lose all color. Sweat drips down his face.
“Ah!” The doctor gives a satisfied gasp. The arrow clatters onto the floor. After smearing salve over the wound, the doctor gives it two neat stitches and binds it with a cloth. “Not as bad as it could have been, General. You’re fortunate.”
Slowly Father unclenches his fingers. My hand aches, and I shake it to get the blood flowing. He gestures out the window to a waiting adjutant.
“Bring a horse.”
“General!” objects the doctor.
“Father! You shouldn’t be riding.”
A soldier leads a horse up. Father tests his weight on the wounded leg. He winces at first touch, then nods crisply when the leg doesn’t buckle. Finally he turns back to me.
“If we don’t capture and kill Nikonos now, we’ll lose our best chance to defeat him cleanly. I know it was you in the spider who warned me. But now you will stay in this carriage. Not because I believe you are incapable but because adversaries work alone while soldiers work in concert. Do not cause trouble for me by trying some new reckless stunt. You aren’t trained for this.”
“Yes, Father.”
An officer cups laced fingers under Father’s boot to lift him to the saddle. He mounts clumsily for all that, with a grimace of pain he would not normally show in front of me. I grip the windowsill, staring after him with my heart twisted into knots and my head stinging, blood gone sticky on my lips as he rides into the night.
I want to leap out of the carriage and race after him but strength also lies in knowing when to wait. Anyway, I’m so exhausted, dragged down by my vision of the crushed soldier, that when I brace my body into a corner of the carriage, its jostling and jolting shakes me into sleep.
I wake when the carriage halts. I’m alone, the doctor gone, the shutters closed. The stuffy air makes me sneeze, and the sneeze makes my head flare with pain. Just as I put my hand on the latch to look outside, the door opens. I jerk back in surprise, but it’s Kal who leaps up into the carriage. His face is smeared with grime, his hair looks crusted by sand, his hands are several shades darker from layers of dirt, and I could gaze at him forever.
He examines me with a frown, then carefully touches my head. “There’s blood on your scarf.”
“Just a cut on my scalp.” I lean across him and shut the door. “I’m fine, Kal.”