The Bonemender (15 page)

Gabrielle jerked out of her trance with a violence that left her gasping and dazed. She felt pain and saw with dull indifference that her own thigh was bleeding from a shallow slice just above the knee. The terrible body in her arms was beyond her; her mind simply refused to see it. First came a growing sense of dread so dark she felt it would smother her. She ground her teeth and whimpered from the effort not to know. That head, that gray face and staring eye, that was not, could not be, her father.

Then her eye caught a glint of copper—an earring, small and wide, chased with engraving, and she could pretend no longer. The memory rose within her, tearing at her heart: her father young and brawny, opening Solange’s birthday gift and protesting, “But I don’t have a pierced ear!”

“I have always thought you would look very handsome with one,” Solange had replied, and they had laughed and kissed, while little Tristan tried to climb up their legs. Now Jerome was beyond the skill of any healer from earth or sky. He was dead.

A terrible groan clawed its way out of her. You didn’t save him, a cold voice accused. She could not answer it. She could only hold on to what was left of him and cry out in anguish for the man who had made her his daughter.

G
ABRIELLE BARELY FELT
the hard grip of the soldier who hauled her off her father’s body and set her on her feet, though he left a set of deep bruises in the flesh of her arm. Dazed with grief, she peered at the man through swollen eyelids. Only slowly did she understand her situation: she was an unprotected woman on an enemy field. She was booty. With a jolt of fear, Gabrielle looked more closely at the ring of men surrounding her. Her fate was as clear as the wolfish hunger on their faces. There was nowhere to run.

Better to have fallen under a sword than this. They were tight around her now, more falling in behind and jostling those in front. She heard a voice raised in blustery threat—the man who first found her. Defending his claim, she thought bitterly.

Gabrielle was shoved hard from behind and stumbled forward into the soldiers. Hands grabbed and pulled at her, then she was pushed again. Someone tripped her as she staggered off balance, and she fell to a burst of rough laughter. It was a sound so predatory it turned her belly to ice. Her mouth filled with the taste of brass. The taste of fear.

A harsh shout and the crack of a whip rang through the air. Gabrielle flinched, but the whip was not for her. A soldier on horseback harangued the men angrily. Gabrielle thought she caught the word “commander,” but in her terror she understood little else of the thick dialect. Muttering sullenly, the soldiers backed away. Tossing his horse’s reins to a nearby soldier, the
officer dismounted, dragged Gabrielle up by the arm and strode across the field.

Gabrielle struggled to keep up. She knew only one thing: It was better to be at the mercy of one man than ten. They stopped at last before a tent with a posted guard. Gabrielle guessed she was to be presented to the commander.

He was powerfully built, nearly bald, forceful in his manner. He did not seem pleased at the interruption.

“What do I want with this?” he snapped. “Do you suppose I am in the mood for a woman now?”

It took all Gabrielle’s concentration to follow their conversation, but the language was similar enough to her own to catch the meaning.

“I’m sorry, Commander Col,” her rescuer said. “I thought it best to enforce the rule, nevertheless.”

There was a silence. “You’re right,” Col replied. He ran a hand over his smooth head. “Leave her here.” His eyes swept her up and down. She forced herself to stand straight, defiant. “She’s a bloody mess. Can’t even tell if she’s worth the bother.”

Col dismissed the soldier and pointed to the far corner of the tent. “Sit down there. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir. I understand some,” said Gabrielle, hating the quaver in her voice. She slumped to the ground.

“Tired?” Col said, his manner indifferent. “It’s a tiring business.” He lowered himself onto a low stool, crossed his arms and studied her more closely. “You look like you’ve been swimming in blood,” he said. “Take those dirty clothes off; it would be a big improvement.”

In the silence that followed, Gabrielle did her best to become invisible, but the commander’s interest in her had been kindled.
He jumped to his feet. “Ah, maybe the good captain was right. Take my mind off the boy.” He reached for Gabrielle’s wrist. “C’mere, you.”

Gabrielle stiffened and shrank from his touch. “I am a bonemender!” she heard herself babble. “You cannot violate a bonemender!” What pathetic nonsense, she thought. This man wouldn’t care if I were the Spirit of the Gray Sea herself.

Strangely enough, though, Col hesitated. He looked at her sharply.

“Bonemender.” He didn’t seem to know the word. “You are a ... surgeon?”

“I help sick and wounded people get better. If that’s a surgeon, then yes.”

A shadow darkened the man’s hard face. Some deep pain was hidden here. “Are you any good?” he demanded.

It was hardly the time for false modesty. “Better than most,” she said.

“My son is dying,” he said. “My surgeons can do nothing for him. You want to save yourself? Save him.” He headed out the door. “Come,” he ordered.

C
OL THRUST HER INSIDE
the tent. A slight figure lay hunched on a pallet against the wall. Gabrielle had not expected this: Col’s son was so young, no more than fourteen or fifteen, she judged. A bracing flame of anger licked at her: The brute, to send his own boy into battle! The boy stared at her, frightened eyes huge in a white face.

“Are you the Angel of Death?” he whispered. She realized suddenly how sinister she must look, so filthy and disheveled, and smiled in spite of herself.

“No, no,” she said softly. She did not know if he would understand her speech. “I’m here to help you.” She gestured at Col, asking him to explain. While he did, she knelt beside the boy—Derkh, his name was—and did a more careful appraisal. It was an abdominal wound, covered with a greasy bundle of bandaging, soaking red even now. The boy’s skin was ghostly pale, his dark eyes hectic. She touched the back of her hand to his forehead and neck, no apparent fever yet, at least. His hands were pale and cold; he had lost a great deal of blood. A groan escaped him; he clamped his lips together hard but could not stifle the little mewing grunts that ended each breath. He was in terrible pain, Gabrielle realized, and struggling fiercely to be brave in front of his father.

Until this moment Gabrielle had not thought she would treat Col’s son. She had imagined herself refusing boldly and going bravely to her death. Now the healer in her asserted itself. She had sworn to relieve suffering. This boy suffered; looking on him now she knew that nothing else mattered. He was not her enemy. He was her patient. She did not know if she had the skill and power left to help him, but she meant to try.

“I’ll need boiling water, lots of it. Clean bandaging, not these dirty rags. I need healing herbs from my kit. It’s on the battlefield where I was found.” Gabrielle’s tone was as clipped and commanding as if she were addressing a servant. Col raised an eyebrow but did not strike or rebuke her. He went to the door of the tent, rattled out a string of orders and turned back to her.

“What else?”

“I need to wash.”

He grunted. “Don’t we all?”

“I need to wash before I treat your son,” she persisted. “Any dirt that gets in a wound can cause infection. In an abdominal wound, that could kill him.”

Col yelled through the tent door again, and a bucket was brought in. As Gabrielle rose to her feet, a wave of dizziness washed over her and her vision blurred. She bent over her knees, fighting the faintness.

“What is it?” Col’s voice was sharp. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Gabrielle said. “But I do not remember when I last ate or slept.”

“You can have water now. Food tonight, if my son is improved.”

Col spoke again to the guard outside the tent and left without a backward glance.

W
HEN THE SUPPLIES
arrived, Gabrielle was already at work. The sword had thrust up under the boy’s ribs, damaging the liver, and he was losing blood rapidly. Gabrielle’s first priority was to seal the largest of the cut blood vessels. There was no prospect of reattaching them; she just hoped Derkh’s body would be able to compensate for the blocked passages.

Before looking at the wound itself, she brewed up a light dose of the mandragora, mixed with a milder, and safer, willowbark mixture. It was the strongest painkiller she dared give the boy. Patiently she coaxed it into him, one small spoonful at a time. He gagged once or twice but fought it down, desperate for some relief. As the tea took effect, he closed his eyes.

“Derkh,” she said, choosing the simplest words she could find. “It will hurt when I change the bandage. But the tea will help, and you will sleep after.” He nodded; nobody needed to tell him that Gabrielle was his last hope.

The injury was ugly, all right; but Gabrielle was relieved to find a fairly clean layer of cloth next to the skin. She had been afraid the filth of the bandage alone would kill him. Derkh groaned and clenched his teeth as she began to rinse out the wound. “Cry out if you need to,” she said, working as gently as she could. “Your father is not here, and I will not think the less of you. I’ve seen many a grown man show less courage than you.” He must have understood at least some, for the rigid tension in his body eased a little, and though he did cry out—and cry—at the worst parts, he seemed calmer and less afraid. As promised, he dropped into a deep, exhausted sleep as she finished up the bandaging.

A man brought soup, cheese and a chunk of coarse bread, and Gabrielle made herself eat every scrap. Then she sat by Derkh’s rough pallet and worked over him far into the night, until fatigue overcame her and she too collapsed into uneasy sleep.

F
OR
two days the Greffaire forces camped just far enough away from the battlefield to be free of its stench. The official reason for the delay—and it made perfect sense to Col’s troops—was to allow the men to scavenge valuable arms and armor from the dead of both sides. The true reason, which Col confessed to no one, was to give his son a chance to live. The strange “bonemender” had somehow pulled Derkh through that first night, when his own surgeons had left him for the dark road. Now she and his son would both have a second chance.

While the Greffaires tarried, La Maronne was on the move. The Verdeau troops, down to about twenty-five hundred men, marched southward toward Gaudette. Two thousand Maronnais, supported by some eight hundred soldiers from Gamier, marched west from the Eastern Gateway to meet them. Envoys galloped for Gaudette to request reinforcements from the castle garrison. And traveling faster than any of them, loping almost silently along secret forest pathways known only to the Elves, Féolan and his Stonewater warriors closed in on the Skyway Pass.

They found the battlefield easily. A valley strewn with death soon attracts clouds of carrion birds. Screened by the flanking woodlands, the Elves watched with disgust as
Gref Orisé
soldiers stripped the bodies of the fallen. Too late, thought Féolan. It is already lost.

But his military commander, Haldoryn, pointed out that there were too few bodies for a total defeat. “The losses were not all on the Verdeau side,” said Haldoryn. “They gather plenty of their own armor. Plus if what you say about the use of conscripts is true, those poor souls must number many of the dead.”

“So there was a retreat,” concluded Féolan. “A retreat, perhaps, to join with fresh troops.”

“That is my hope,” agreed Haldoryn. “A retreat to buy time.”

“Can we help to buy them that time?” asked Féolan. Haldoryn thought, curling his lip in distaste at the sight of a soldier hacking a gold wristband from a dead soldier. “I have no taste for killing sleeping men unawares,” he confessed. “But after looking upon this desolation, I believe I could stand it. I suggest we scout out the
Gref Orisé
camp.”

G
ABRIELLE SPENT THOSE
two days in Derkh’s tent. The two guards posted outside were hardly necessary; she had no desire to take her chances among the Greffaire soldiers. Besides, in the deep healing trance she found a little oasis of oblivion, a respite from the pain of Jerome’s death. Several times a day she changed Derkh’s bandage and poultice and coaxed soups and medicines into him. The rest of the time she left the world and poured her mind into his healing, working until sleep pulled her down into blackness.

The first morning she had awakened on the ground beside Derkh’s pallet, aching and chilled. She grimaced as she rose to her feet; her clothing was stiff with dried blood and gave off an acrid, meaty smell. Her thigh, where the sword had glanced off it, had bled and stuck to her skirt; the wound throbbed. Ironic, she thought, if she healed this half-dead boy, only to die herself from
an infected flesh wound. She gave her leg a hasty wash, sprinkled dried goldenseal directly on the cut and covered it with what little bandaging she could spare. Then she turned to her patient.

He was watching her. His eyes looked better this morning, she saw with relief, clear and lucid.

“Your clothes smell awful,” he said. Gabrielle nodded.

“Why don’t you change them?”

“I have no others.”

Derkh considered this while Gabrielle prepared new medicine for him. She could see the pain was starting to bite again.

“You can have some of mine,” he announced as she tipped his head up to spoon in the tea.

Gabrielle hesitated. “Your father might not ... “

“If my father is displeased, let him beat me,” Derkh replied harshly. “It is my order. They are in that carryall. Take whatever is least dirty.” He motioned with his chin.

Gabrielle took the top suit of clothes—a kind of tunic and strange, wide-cut pants. They were none too clean, but she wasn’t about to paw through her captor’s possessions. Derkh closed his eyes while she changed; the tang of young man’s sweat enfolded her as she pulled the tunic over her head, and even so she was grateful for the improvement. There was a strange intimacy to wearing someone else’s clothing.