Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (52 page)

Should he speak?  He was still the crown-appointed
general.  He would be expected to take command of any situation.  But they
looked to already be doing everything he could think of.  Only an idiot would
try to assert himself into a routine that ran smoothly and efficiently.  It
only caused disruptions.

A shadow knelt beside Marik without warning, startling
him into banging his head against the wall.  Wyman bestowed a hard eye on him
before returning to his tasks.  He had recovered nine tightly rolled bandages
from the packs.  When unrolled, Marik’s experience told him each might be
roughly fifteen feet in length.

“Pain?”

Marik returned the gimlet stare in kind.  Expressions,
like swords, could be honed.  Rather than with a grindstone, surviving through
the carnage born of multiple battles provided a sharper edge with each year.

It gratified him to see Wyman’s soften the slightest
bit.  Only an experienced fighter could have discerned the difference, and he
felt pleased at his ability to do so.  Marik relented as well, answering, “A
little.”

“What type?  I didn’t wrap you before in case the
bindings made it worse.”

“Cracked, I think.  Nothing moving that shouldn’t be.”

Wyman nodded.  He began unrolling a bandage while
Marik slowly shrugged out from his tunic.  “No salves.  Just have to make do.”

“It probably won’t matter.”

“Your leg might.  It’s not deep, but you have a gash.”

Marik tugged off the blankets cocooning him to see
what he had failed to feel.  The looser cloth allowed his left leg the freedom
to complain.  A dull ache grew under the rent torn through his breeches.  When
had he sustained that?

“It might be a problem,” Marik acceded as he flexed
his leg carefully.  “Though it’s a nuisance more than anything.”

“We’ve kept it washed since we first stopped to
breathe.”  Wyman slipped the bandage across Marik’s back and started winding it
tightly around his chest.  “The others have been…
looking
at it every few
marks.  They say it probably won’t go septic.”

“I guess I’ll have to talk to them tomorrow.”

The talk lapsed.  He felt ill at ease speaking when
Wyman clearly felt the same.  Was it the general dislike loners had for all of
humanity, or a personal feeling stemming from his mage talent?  His friendship
with Dietrik had always allowed him to know more about the rest of the squad
than what he saw in person.  Older members accepted him as an oddity while the
newer members were hard pressed to warm to him.  Being a mage never sat easy
with the newest faces.

Wyman was a perfect example.  A loner who could work
as part of a larger group, who valued his privacy yet interacted enough with
the others that they accepted him as ‘one of us’.  But he showed naught but a
cold shoulder to Marik whenever the
mage
showed up.  Marik could not
call it shunning so much as wariness.  Nor could he blame them in the
slightest.

Marik was uncertain whether Wyman had ever actually
spoken to him before.  Not since his first day in the band, anyway, and perhaps
not then either.  Most of what he knew about the man came secondhand from
Dietrik.

Wariness.  I would be too, if I were still an ordinary
squad fighter and a mage were suddenly thrust into the unit.  Perhaps mages
aren’t as power mad as we all thought, Ilona was right about that, but that’s
still a far cry from being trustworthy.

Ilona.  His thoughts returned to her while Wyman
worked his way along his body, binding limbs that had been scratched, scraped
and heavily bruised.  She was the most amazing woman he had ever met, and she
was waiting for him.

Or…not precisely the most
amazing
if one
considered Celerity’s powers, yet all the more incredible for her lack of
magical ability since she could still bewitch men’s minds.  Nor could she
really be said to be waiting since she was busier than an entire beaver family
setting her business’ new location into motion.  But she would have a warm
smile ready for him when she saw him walking through the door of Kerwin’s newly
constructed inn.

He pictured Ilona smiling at him like that. 
Skeptical.  At best.  It was likelier she would send him to deal with a
troublemaker first thing before uttering any phrases that resembled ‘hello’ or
‘welcome back’.

Wyman finished and, following standard merc field
ministration practice, gave him a hearty slap on the bandaged area.  Marik
winced.  He held back a yelp only because he had half-expected the treatment,
and he was pleased that he had received it.

“Caresse!  Your light is about gone.  If you are going
to do whatever you do, do it soon if you don’t want us to freeze.”

She raised her eyebrows at Wyman’s pronouncement. 
Marik waited for a retort, but it never came.  He watched her study the dimming
entrance…and felt his spine tingling.

Through his magesight he watched the purple hole of
the entrance in the jet black wall shift.  The glowing purple brightened to a
sheen of amber streaked with vermillion.  After a moment the geomantic aura
glowed a brilliant ruby.

Caresse drew into the crevice the elemental essence of
fire extracted from the sunlight.  She embedded the aura’s energy in the pile
of stones around which the blankets were laid.  Flames burst from the stones as
if logs burned merrily in a cook fire.

Marik withdrew his sight from the mage’s domain to
ordinary vision, intrigued by Caresse’s achievement.  The stones glowed
slightly, the fire strangely silent since no fuel was being broken apart to
produce the flames.  He guessed she had imbued enough fiery energy for the
flames to last until dawn, yet not so much that the heat would overcome the
rock and melt it.

Geomancy was as alien to him as magician-style magic. 
Was it so simple as his assumptions perceived, or did this apparently simple
trick require her to alter the stone’s elemental structure all night long to
maintain it?  Something else to speak to her about in the morning.  She needed
down time as much as the rest of them.

“No wood for a fire?” he asked when the loner rose. 
“The Stoneseams have plenty of trees.”

“Lots of trees out there.”  Wyman gestured with a jerk
of his head.  “But let’s see you try to get to them and back.”

He crossed to the place he had staked as his own. 
Dropping to a squat, he withdrew his ten-copper coin and began flicking it into
the air off his thumbnail.  Catching it easily, the coin would emerge from his
fist at his small finger, roll over his knuckles to rest on his thumb, then
shoot into the air again.

Marik watched, knowing the coin would repeat its path
without error for candlemarks until Wyman crawled into his blankets…and found
it comforting.

*        *        *        *        *

Jerked meat had been the primary staple of foot
soldiers on the march since time began.  Marik must have eaten enough since his
first days on the road after leaving Tattersfield to rebuild a small herd. 
Whoever had stocked their pack with a supply probably had done so without a
second thought, must have been an experienced traveler rather than a lifelong
city mage.  Good thinking on their part, but he chewed the tough meat without
relish.

As long as men were on the march or needed new boot
soles, the meat would never be wasted.

Spinning coins of light revolved around the crevice
fast enough to make him feel sick if he tried to follow them.  Wyman sat near
the entrance, leaning easily on the sloping rock.  He kept an eye out for the
others’ return.  Caresse had led the search party today, exasperated at the
mercenary’s inability to follow her directions to the nearest mountain spring. 
She elected to find it herself and then direct the others in investigating
potential escape routes her earthsense groped for.

The sunlight bounced off the walls, the floor and the
ceiling every time he flipped the copper coin.  A golden shaft shone directly
through the entrance during midmorning.  Wyman’s whirling ten-copper caught the
light, which turned the humble currency into a brilliant, sparkling star.

Marik shifted his mind inward to decrease his
queasiness.  None of them were Healers the likes of Glynn Allegra Eyollandish
III, yet a comment made in passing by Lynn that morning stuck in his mind. 
They had watched his wounded leg with concern, knowing they could do nothing if
infection set in.  That they could tell anything at all centered on their
ability to see his life energies and observe their behavior around the wound.

During his first sojourn in the Chirurgeon’s Wing, the
head chirurgeon had told him not to fight the need to sleep, whatever his
personal feelings about being invalid.  The body needed to redirect its
available energies into healing processes.  Being asleep was the state in which
the body consumed the least amount of energy on necessary functions.

The ramifications of that had never occurred to him
before.  Always there had been Healers, or chirurgeons, or someone
knowledgeable
in the ways of recovery to give him instructions on what would be best for
him.  He could not Heal himself, but perhaps he could…
nudge
his body
along a bit quicker.

He studied his ribs carefully through his magesight. 
The complex life energy network enmeshed in his flesh glowed its usual pure
white.  It wrapped around the bones he had learned to strengthen along with his
muscles in the course of perfecting his own original working.

Marik looked intently into his body as closely as he
could.  With his magesight open to its fullest extreme, he could make out the
smallest pathways in the network that were usually swallowed by the aura’s
larger glow.

The minute channels were disrupted.

He could see small tendrils that had never been
present before.  They wrapped around the fractured ribs in a tight net, life
energy pulsing through channels narrower than a single hair.  Hard as he tried,
he could see nothing of sharper detail than that.  The energy flowing through
the channels must be marinating the damaged bone, providing the substance the
body needed to mend.

A study of his gashed leg revealed similar results. 
New hairline pathways wound through the torn skin and muscle, channels
redirecting energy around the gashes torn through the original network by the
wound, fresh life force working tirelessly to repair the damage, replace blood,
re-grow skin.

Marik relaxed against the cold stone with his eyes
closed.  His mental hands reached into the etheric plane to gather the
free-floating mists.  When he felt a comfortable amount pouring into his
reserves, he released it to flow through his body’s channels.  He usually sent
them as a flood to swell the muscular channels and increase his physical
strength.  This time, he let them ease gently along, a leaf floating on a
placid stream, interested in nothing except providing an increased amount of
energy cycling through his entire network.

The immediate effect, when he had not been so hopeful
as to expect any, was a lightening of the general soreness throughout his
myriad of bruises.  He optimistically looked for any signs that his wounds were
Healing, rather than simply mending, but if their recovery rate had accelerated
at all, the signs were too infinitesimal for him to recognize.

Laying on the cool mountain’s flesh, feeling the
energy’s warmth flowing through him, Marik succumbed to a relaxation he rarely
ever felt.  It would have been complete if only his head could rest against
twin olive-colored legs, as bare as the rest of her.

He watched Wyman across the way, feeling at peace
enough to say, “You don’t look complete without Churt holding your shadow in
place.”

The coin halted briefly on the central knuckle.  Wyman
gazed at him sideways until it flipped high anew.  “Is that supposed to be an
observation or a conclusion?”

“A curiosity, I guess.  You were all new and unknowns
when Sloan brought the year’s greenies in from the entrance trials.  We were
keen on knowing who had been cherry-picked to be our shieldmates since we had
been shorthanded since the war.  It was an odd portrait you lot painted, but if
anyone was easiest to read it was probably you, since loners always seem to
stick to secret conduct codes you haven’t let the rest of us in on.”

Wyman stared at him wordlessly.

Marik really did feel excellent!  He continued, “What
I meant to say is that it’s no surprise Churt latched on to a fellow entrant. 
Being so young and having lost his family, it would have been worrisome if he
tried to be a tough old wolf.  He’d be bound to snap eventually under that sort
of pressure.  I’d rather not have that happen during a difficult battle, and
the others wouldn’t either.”  When Wyman still offered no response, Marik
concluded, “I think I made a short story long, but the easier way of saying it
would be that I’m a little surprised he latched on to you, of the whole lot.”

“No one has ever called me a man-eating troll before.”

Marik laughed.  “How did you reach that conclusion
from what I said?”

Wyman caught the coin.  This time he held it tight in
his fist and shifted on the rocky pile until he face Marik fully.  “You’re full
of ideas about human nature.”