Jegrai was dazed; at his easy escape out of the hands of the wizards, at the near-miracle of a truce, at the thought that the wizards might, indeed, be of the same brotherhood as the Holy Vedani, and therefore to be trusted as he had trusted no one but his four councilors since he had become Khene.
Dead men cannot speak, the strange old woman had said. And, We seek knowledge.
He hoped, and feared to hope. He feared and wondered if his fear was valid or foolish. He scarcely knew where he was going as he walked away from the woman, only realized after several moments that he was back among his riders and they were besieging him with questions.
He cut their babble short. "We have sworn truce for three days," he said curtly, handing the truce-staff back to Abodai and mounting his spent gelding. "After that we talk greater truce. Perhaps more; it may be that these folk are of the same brotherhood as the Holy Vedani. All that is for myself and my advisors to decide."
"And the cost to us?" Abodai asked shrewdly.
He looked over his shoulder at the tracker, the oldest man in the party. Was that a challenge?
No, he decided. It was just Abodai, who had to know the track he was set on. "No raids during truce-time," he told them, looking from one fearful face to another. "And—we move the Clan."
They clamored to know to where.
And when he told them, their faces went as white as when the wizards had thrown the lightning at them.
It took them most of the afternoon to bring their tired mounts to the camp, and the wizard's mountain stood black against a bloody sunset when they finally reached that haven.
Jegrai had a great deal of time to think about what had happened during that slow progress. It occurred to him that the Vredai stood on the brink of either disaster or tremendous change. And he was Khene; ultimately it was up to him to lead them, whichever the outcome.
Wind Lords, he thought, cold in his gut as he looked back over his shoulder at the looming mass of the wizard's mountain. I don't want this. I wasn't afraid of death at the hands of Khene Sen—but I fear those wizards, I fear that strong old woman and her lightning. And yet—my heart tells me they can be trusted. Fear. Trust. Which path, Wind Lords?
But as he came to think about it, he began to wonder why the wizards hadn't used that lightning before this time. And the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Until gradually a thought began to creep in—
Could it be they hadn't used it—because they couldn't?
Could it be that their weaponry had its limitations, even as the most powerful of bows had its range? Could that be why they had insisted on the Vredai moving to the base of their mountain?
And could it be—could it possibly be—that they had not slain the raiding party out of hand because the Vredai had something they wanted?
But what?
Information; knowledge, perhaps?
Or even, as the old woman had said, the strength of the Vredai fighters?
Could it be that these truce-talks would not be so one-sided as they first appeared?
And could Jegrai even begin to hold his own in such talks against a canny, clever old wizard-woman?
The prospect of trying to do so was nearly as frightening as his first impression of godlike powers.
When they reached the camp in the crimson sunset, Jegrai sat in his saddle and stared at the wizard's peak long after the others had dismounted and had led their mounts away. The lore of the Wind Lords said that a red sky at days end was a portent of change; Jegrai found himself only hoping that the scarlet of the sunset did not betoken an omen of spilled blood to come.
" . . . so, now you know all."
Jegrai was as weary as he'd ever been in his life, but he had called this council together as soon as he reached camp. By now his raiders were spreading the news of what had occurred, for he had not forbidden it. He did not know if that had been wise, but he did know that trying to keep this a secret would be like trying to stop a plains fire in a high wind. It would have to burn itself out.
He took the cup of good spring water Aravay offered him with a nod of gratitude, and waited to hear what his advisors had to say.
"A woman—" Shenshu said doubtfully. "A woman is Khene to these wizards? It hardly seems likely."
"These are wizards," Vaichen reminded her. "Magic power does not depend upon strength of arm, eh, Shaman? So the strongest could be a woman. Certainly the cleverest often is!"
The Shaman only gave him a shrug of the shoulders and a wry look. "I see no reason why a woman could not be Khene to these people. Wizards need follow no laws but their own. They may not even pass the office by kin-right."
"She had the presence of Khene; I could not doubt her." Jegrai sighed tiredly. "To tell the truth, she had the presence of Khene, the strength of Ghekhen, and the shrewdness of Shaman. It comes to me that if she had bent her mind against me with full will, I would have held few secrets from her, for all that we shared only Trade-tongue."
The Shaman hissed softly, but when Jegrai looked over to him, his face in the flickering lamplight bore only a deep thoughtfulness.
"How say you, Northwind?" he asked.
"Sa-sa. I would see this woman. You say part of the truce is that we must move the Clan to the foot of their mountain?"
Jegrai nodded. "It may be that they cannot reach us with their lightning, but I do not wish to risk Vredai lives on that gamble. Shaman—warlord—I want to please these wizards. I want alliance with them! I want some of what they hold! Is that so wrong? Is it a fool's wish to think we might have it, if we are careful enough?"
"I think not," Vaichen replied, after a silence broken only by the noises of a restless and uneasy camp beyond the walls of the tent. "Some would call me coward—but I see no profit to any in opposing these wizards, and much, much good that may come of treating with them."
Shenshu nodded vigorously. "You know my feelings. There has been enough death."
Aravay looked to be deep in thought, and took a long time to answer that question. "It may be," she replied at last, "that there is a certain deception on both sides."
Jegrai bit at a ragged thumbnail. "I had thought of that," he said. "It came to me that both of us may be setting up empty tents and dragging brush behind the scouts. It came to me that although they hold the pass and live in stone walls, it would be easy to isolate them. It came to me that perhaps they cannot send lightning to strike what they cannot see. But it also came to me that their words are very like that of the Holy Vedani, and it were folly to throw away the chance at such wisdom as that one held. I truly wish to trust them; I wish to believe in their honor."
The Shaman nodded vigorously, and Shenshu nearly bobbed her head from her shoulders. "If this woman is indeed Khene, then it means there are other wise women among them. There are no secrets when wise women trade learning, Khene. I burn to speak with the wise women of these people, I thirst for what they can tell to me and my healers. And doubtless there is that we can teach to them; it is ever so when healer speaks to healer."
"In many ways, Khene, we have no choice," the Shaman said at last. "If we were to fling this gift of the Wind Lords back into their faces, they may truly turn their eyes from us."
"Is that how you read this, Shaman?" Jegrai said, hope making him tremble inside, although he would not betray such weakness even to these trusted councilors. "That this is indeed the way set for us by the Wind Lords?"
"I can see no other reason for these things, at this time, and this place," Northwind said positively.
"Very well. Then I, and you, my councilors, will meet with these wizards in three days' time. Tell the people that it is my will that we move to the new camp-place at dawn. We will know something of these people by the place they give us, I think."
And Wind Lords, Jegrai prayed, as his advisors rose from their places at his hearth and slipped from his tent, each wrapped in thought, Wind Lords, if ever you have heeded me, let me be right in this. . . .
The Vredai murmured, the Vredai looked fearfully over their shoulders, but the Vredai obeyed their Khene. In the pale grey light of early dawn they were packing up their belongings and their tents; by the time the sun showed a bright rim over the eastern horizon, they were on the move. They ordered themselves in a compact file that filled the road and spilled over it on both sides, but there were no laggards. Vredai with a tendency to lag behind had been buried many leagues and moons ago on their backtrail.
Halfway across the valley, one of the outriders came pounding back to Jegrai and his advisors with word that there was a strange man waiting for them on the road ahead.
"What manner of man?" Jegrai asked the sweating, wide-eyed outrider.
"A young man, Khene; he speaks Trade-tongue and said he was come from the wizards to guide us." The young warrior wiped at this forehead with his sleeve, leaving a smear in the dust that covered his face. "Truly, he must be; he is a man as tall as the mountain, and his horse as tall as two mountains!"
Privately Jegrai thought that the outrider's fear had inflated the stranger, but when they came close enough to see the calm, patient figure waiting in the middle of the road, he thought better of his scout. The man was huge; standing, he would best Jegrai by a head, and Jegrai was reckoned the tallest of all his folk. And his horse was proportionately large. Behind him, Jegrai could hear the mutters of wonder and fear at the sight of such a prodigy. To send out a giant to guide them seemed unlikely. But to guard them—that seemed likelier.
Until Jegrai came close enough to see the man's face.
It was not a handsome face; very craggy, as rough as the side of one of these mountains about them. But it was a good face, and in many ways, a gentle face, the face of a man who knows that he is strong and tempers that strength so as not to overpower others. Brown of hair, of eyes, of skin and beard, of clothing, even—he could have been the personification of one of the Earth Spirits the Suno called upon, save that he showed none of the fierce harshness of one of those bloodthirsty godlets. His flat nose gave him a little of the look of one of them, and the shy smile on his face told Jegrai that it was very likely that he and this stranger were of an age.
"You are the Khene?" the strange man said when they were within speaking distance. His voice was deep, and held a note of diffidence. At Jegrai's nod, he continued, pronouncing his words with great care. "My name is Teokane; I am sent from Master Felaras to show you the way to a place of water and good grazing. The Master wishes also to know if your people have provisioning for the next four days."
"We will do well enough," Jegrai replied, carefully.
The young man blinked, and looked a bit doubtfully back at the thick column of Vredai behind the Khene. Jegrai's outriders gathered in a little closer, and there was some quiet loosening of blades in sheaths.
"I am sent to tell you that if there is any need, you must tell me of it," Teokane persisted. "The Master holds herself your host in this—she offers to you guest-right for the time until we speak together."
Jegrai felt as if the wizards' lightning had struck him directly, and from the dropped jaws about him, the others who had heard were no less thunderstruck.
"This is no trick?" he managed, recovering long before the rest did. "You mean by this our notion of guest-right?"
The young man nodded, almost desperately, and nudged his horse forward a little. "I am to offer you bread and salt, Khene Jegrai. More, I am to offer you bread, salt—" he paused significantly "—and water from the well of our home-place."
The world dropped out from underneath Jegrai's saddle for a moment. To offer bread and salt was a guarantee of safety—but to offer the water was a pledge of life for life. Not even Sen had dared to violate that bond; he had once shared Talchai's water with Jegrai's father, and had been forced to wait until the Khene was dead before moving against the Vredai.
This was more than unexpected—it was impossible. Impossible that the wizards should know this pledge of Jegrai's people. Twice impossible that they should offer it.
"You know what this means?" he croaked harshly, determined to try this young man, even though he heard the Shaman gasp in dismay at his rudeness and audacity even as he said the words.
Three times impossible, for the young man nodded. "That we are bound from harming one another if you accept the pledge, Khene. Even if the talk comes to nothing, we shall not send the lightning against you. But you will be equally bound."
Shock on shock; and Jegrai almost chuckled as he realized the young man called Teokane was right. If he accepted the water, he bought safety for the entire Clan—but he also bound the Clan from further depredations, not only in this valley, but for however far the wizards claimed territory.
Teokane fumbled out a packet from his saddlebag; unwrapping it, he revealed a small brown loaf of bread, a little pile of salt in a separate wrapping, and a flask that presumably held the water.
"I am to offer, I am to stand for my people," Teokane said formally. "Khene Jegrai, do you accept for yours?"
"And if I do not?" he asked, startling a further gasp from the Shaman.
"Then I guide you nevertheless, and the truce holds until we talk, and thereafter as your gods and ours decree."
I like this man, Jegrai decided suddenly. I like him. I trust him. And, with a ferocity that surprised him in a day of surprises, I want this man for my friend.
He looked up into those frank brown eyes, and thought, perhaps, he detected some of the same sentiments there.
"Friend of the Vredai," he replied, feeling the muscles of his face stretch in an unaccustomed smile, "I do accept."
"It's a gamble," Teo'd said, when Felaras had finished reading the chronicle herself. "We don't know how accurate this is. We don't even know if we're facing a Clan of the same type as this one in the chronicle—"
"It's entirely possible their customs have changed," Felaras said into the silence when he left his thought unfinished.
He nodded helplessly.
"On the other hand," she continued, "everything else has held up so far—and to our benefit. If we take the gamble and it pays off, we've guaranteed not only our safety, but that of the Vale folk. What do we stand to lose besides face?"
"Felaras, with these people, loss of face could be a catastrophe."
"Teo, look at me."
He found it very hard to brave those penetrating hazel eyes, but he lifted his head and met them as squarely as he could.
"Teokane, knowing everything we have at stake here, do you think it's worth the risk to try this bread, salt, and water ceremony on these nomads?" Her voice was level, her face without expression. Teo swallowed, and nodded.
"I do not dare to leave the Fortress; the Order would have my head for it at this point. They're livid enough about the truce-staff business. Of the three whom I trust, you are the best at reading people. On your honor as an Archivist of the Book, on your Oath to the Order, do you think you'd be able to read this young man well enough to know if this wasn't going to work before we found out the hard way?"
Oh gods—he closed his eyes, tried to shut out his fear, his feeling of uncertainty, and tried to weigh and measure himself. It all rests on my being able to do what she does without thinking. Oh gods. I haven't her years, I haven't her experience—but—
"Yes," he heard himself saying. "Yes. I can."
He opened his eyes; Felaras was smiling faintly, and nodding. "Well, as it happens, I think so too. Get yourself down to the kitchen; pick up whatever you need down there. I'll have your horse readied for you."
They differed in size, in language, in every way—except the ones that mattered, Teo thought a little dazedly. He liked this Jegrai, with the kind of liking that came all too rarely to him. It was almost as if they had been old friends for years without knowing it. They rode side by side in the warm spring sun, Teo towering over Jegrai, and neither of them much noticing the fact—except that once Jegrai remarked with a laugh that he would be pleased if Teo would always ride at his side—for shade! They chattered away at each other like adolescents, learning each other's language, Teo finding with a shock of pure delight that Jegrai was as quick at picking up a tongue as he was.
And they shared so many things; Jegrai even had a keen appreciation of the beauties of the Vale that was so like Teo's own that he found himself pointing out this twisted, blossom-covered tree, or that boulder-covered, evergreen-topped hillock, knowing that Jegrai's eyes would widen with delight the way Teo's must have the first time he'd seen it.
And the Khene's flat-footed surprise at seeing the campsite Teo and Felaras had chosen was well worth the long, dusty ride.
It was a lovely little side canyon, well shaded by clusters of trees, with grass that was knee-high even this early in the season, and watered by its own clear spring. The Order used it for grazing their horse-herd in the summer, but the herd had other pastures. There was no other place so well suited to the needs of the nomads.
And the steep sides of the canyon should reassure them that the Order was not going to attack them in the night. They would feel reassured that nothing human was going to scale up those walls. A few of the Watchers—a very few—could have climbed down from the greater heights above, but Jegrai wouldn't know that. And no Watcher was going to be a threat to them while Felaras was Master, anyway—not unless they broke truce.
"By the Wind Lords," Jegrai breathed, as the outriders gathered at the mouth of the place and gaped in awe. "She is generous, your Khene. Had I this place in my keeping, I would think twice on giving it over to strangers. With five men I could hold off every Clan on the plans." He looked skyward for a moment, then shrewdly back down at Teo. "And your wizards cannot overlook this place."
Teo shrugged, mouth twitching. So he's already figured we can't bombard without being close to the walls, hm? Felaras will be interested to hear that, seeing as it bears out her assessment of him.
But he pointed out, "We have shared bread, salt, and water, Khene. What have we to fear from you? What have you to fear from us? The only questions lying between us now are how far we are willing to aid each other."
"Sa-sa," Jegrai agreed. He stood up in his stirrups and waved to the people crowded behind him, even as he nudged his own horse aside so that they could pass. He shouted something in his own tongue that was answered by a weary cheer, and the dust-covered nomads began pouring through the mouth of the valley in a tired but increasingly cheerful stream.
There seemed to be no end to them, and the noise was incredible. As were the people themselves. Children that Teo thought hardly old enough to walk sat atop their own sturdy ponies and managed them as well as most Seekers or Archivists (Watchers didn't count, not to Teo's mind. They were riders equal to the adult Vredai fighters). Women held smaller children balanced on the saddle-pads before them, and frequently rode with wrapped babies in a kind of pack on their back. The chatter of the children as they passed Teo and looked up at him in fascination made him grin like a fool.
But then the noise faded to almost nothing—and Teo saw the living cost of their flight.
Gods—oh gods, I was right. They were driven here.
That was his first thought. His second was pure shock, a blow to the gut. He was seeing things he had only read about—and they were horrible. Men with one eye, or one arm, or half crippled. Some younger than he was. And not just men. There were young women—armed and with Kasha's dangerous grace, but with a hollow look in their eyes that said they had faced terrible things the like of which Kasha had only seen in chronicles.
We—we've been so sheltered. The only person I ever saw die was another novice, in a fall. I've never seen wounds like this, inflicted in war, in anger. He couldn't look away, somehow. We've been so sheltered. . . .
And near the end, a horse-litter, with a plump, middle-aged woman riding beside it. It was at this point that Jegrai's face lost all signs of pleasure—that it went shadowed, and brooding. He nudged at his horse with his heels and threaded his way through the last of the riders toward the litter; and, moved by some impulse he didn't understand, Teo went with him.
Jegrai spoke briefly with the woman as she stopped for him; Teo looked down at the litter. It held a boy—not yet a young man, and by the look of him, not likely to reach that state without some help. His face was greyish, the color of someone with a bad head injury, and his head was wrapped and padded. He was bandaged in several places, and though the bandages were clean, they were stained with blood and other fluids.
Teo's heart lurched, and he spoke on impulse. "Khene -Jegrai—who?"
Jegrai touched the boy's forehead before answering. "My cousin. Yuchai. The night of the great storm he was riding guard; his horse shied and went into a pit-trap." He sighed. "He grows no worse, but he grows no better, either. He has not woken except to rave since he took the fall. He has taken an injury to his head, he burns with fever, his wounds do not heal, and we can do nothing."
"But—" the words burst from him; he couldn't have stopped them if he tried. "My brother, why aren't you giving medicine for the fever? Why have you not seen to his head? Why do you let him lie in pain?"
The light in Jegrai's eyes was as bright and sudden as the lightning. "You can do all this?" he cried.
"Not I, but those of our Order can—and by the gods, by the brotherhood we swore, we will if you'll trust us with him!"
Jegrai swiveled in his saddle. He reached out like a striking snake and clasped Teo's wrist with a steel hand. "You will swear this by the bond of water?"
The hope and fear in his face were painful to see. Teo did not pull away; instead he clasped his free hand over Jegrai's. "I will swear this on my own blood," he said tightly. "Give me but long enough to ride to the top of the mountain and back, and what we can do, my brother, we shall do."
"A head injury, you say?" asked Boitan, carefully packing a traveling basket with herbs, clean bandages, and boiled scalpels. "Did you see it?"
"No, sir," Teo replied, packing a second basket with the traveling surgery lantern and other oddments Boitan laid out. The cool of the rock-walled infirmary was pleasant after the wild ride up the mountain. "The boy's head was bandaged—all I can tell you is that it didn't seem to be the temple. And although they had his wounds bandaged up, I would guess that they don't suture wounds, that they just use pressure bandages and hope the flesh heals. From what little I know, it looked like they'd wrapped him awfully tight, and he was leaking fluid."
"Probably a depressed skull fracture, by the symptoms," the physician muttered, packing something that gave off a pungent odor when he squeezed the packet to fit it in. "And if that's how they're dealing with wounding—you know that half the time pressure bandages do as much harm as good, cutting off the blood and letting the tissue rot. I'll probably have to open him up and cut out dead tissue. I hope to hell they don't have any taboos about surgery, or you and I may be decorating stakes down there. There. That's it."
"I've already gotten fresh horses ready."
"Good man. Damn good thing I'm a rider." Boitan smiled crookedly; Teo returned it. The absent Vider was not a rider; rather than the fast horses Teo had called for they'd have been taking ambling old cobs—and would have probably reached the nomad camp well after midnight.
"Tell you the truth, sir," Teo replied, slinging one of Boitan's two baskets over one shoulder, and heading past the bench to the door. "If Vider had been here I would have—uh—not been able to find him. Besides, you're a better surgeon."
Boitan followed on his heels. "I'd be a happier physician if we just had some way of keeping incisions from infecting. Duran had it—but his notes are so vague, as if he expected the method to be common knowledge." Boitan sighed, and hitched his basket a little higher on his shoulder. "Given that, there's not a lot I can do—"
"It's going to work out all right, sir, I just know it is," Teo said fiercely. The surgeon gave him a strange, sideways look, then shrugged. "Sir—" he ventured again, just as they reached the door to the courtyard, "This is the one opportunity we have to show them that they can trust us to keep our word. To show them that they can trust us, period."
"Ah." Boitan paused by the closed door. "I wondered if you'd seen that."
"Yes, sir, I did. This is our testing, I think. If you do everything you can—well—I don't think we'll fail it."
Boitan smiled thinly and reached for the door-handle. "I could wish," he said, as they stepped out into the blue dusk, "that I had your faith."
It was fully dark and the stars were blossoming overhead by the time they reached the canyon; Jegrai himself was waiting for them at the entrance to the canyon, looking much gaunter than he had this afternoon by the light of the torches held by the two men standing sentry there. He led the way to a round, white tent that appeared to be made of felt; the flaps were standing open to the warm night, and the sides were tucked up a little to permit a breeze to come through at the level of the floor. Teo had expected the "floor" of the tent to be bare dirt, or flattened grass at best, but the tent was carpeted with what seemed to be several layers of thick rugs.
The boy was on a pallet near one side; the middle-aged dusky woman knelt beside him, but moved deferentially away when they entered. There was no one else in the tent, and only one lantern hung from the centerpole. Boitan took one look at the amount of light within and shook his head. "We'll have to do better than this, Teo, or I won't be able to see my own hands. Tell them to bring me some water, would you? Two buckets full, at least."
With that he began rummaging in the basket Teo had brought, bringing out a wooden frame with leather slings on it, four hollow glass globes, and an oil lamp. Teo asked for the water as Boitan began setting up the cube-shaped frame, putting the oil lamp in the middle and the four balls in their slings on all four sides of it. When the water came—within a few breaths of Teo's asking—he filled the balls with it, and lit the lamp.
There were sighs of wonder all around the tent as the water-filled balls picked up and magnified the light from the flame. Boitan nodded with satisfaction, set the lamp on its collapsible stand beside him, and pulled out a metal bowl, filling it with water. There was already a small fire in a kind of pot or brazier burning over at one side. Boitan nodded again and set the water there to heat. He dropped some herbs in it, washed his hands in one of the other buckets, and turned to his patient.
"Now, let's see about this boy."
The middle-aged woman inched forward on her knees and said something. Jegrai translated. "This is Shenshu; she is our chief healer and one of my advisors. She wishes to watch, and help if need be."
Boitan, who also spoke Trade-tongue, gave the woman a careful looking over. He lifted one eyebrow at Teo, who replied to the unspoken query softly. "Vider is also not as—ah—flexible as you are, sir."
"If laughing weren't so out of place at the moment—" He turned, bowed slightly, and gave the woman a real smile. "From what I can see you haven't done at all badly, lady," he said to her, directly, as if she could understand him. "I'll be able to use a pair of hands used to this sort of thing, if you think you can follow my pantomime. Teo, I fear, lacks the stomach to help me except in an emergency."
"Pan-to-mime?" Jegrai said, puzzled.
"Hand signals," Teo filled in hastily, and Jegrai translated in a burst of speech too quick for Teo to follow any of it. The woman Shenshu nodded, and scooted over to wedge herself between the boy's pallet and the tent wall, out of Boitan's light.
"Let's get the worst over first," Boitan said, unwrapping the boy's head and not looking up. "Explain to them, Teo. Then tell them how I'm going to open up the wounds again and cut the bad tissue out—maybe scrape bone if I have to."
Right. Explain to them that this stranger is about to cut open the head of the Khene's cousin, then mutilate the rest of his wounds. Thanks, sir. Teo took a long, deep breath, and launched into it.
At the description of how Boitan planned to raise the bit of broken skull off the brain, Jegrai looked as if he was repressing revulsion or horror; Teo couldn't read the woman. The description of cleaning out the wounds seemed to sit better; the woman exclaimed sharply once, but this time her expression was plainly one of "Why didn't I think of that?" There were many questions from the woman, some of which baffled Jegrai's ability at translation, for he could only shrug after failing to find the correct words.
Teo did his best to answer them. It was a tense moment, although Boitan, carefully examining the purpled, pulpy place on the boy's head, seemed to be able to ignore the tension.
Evidently his best was good enough.
"Wind Lords," Jegrai sighed, finally. "If you do this, Yuchai may die, but if you do not, he certainly will die. Shenshu says that she is satisfied you mean no harm and perhaps know what you do—"
"He's done this before, about half a dozen times that I know of," Teo said tentatively.
Jegrai shrugged. "Gods guide him, then."
At this point Teo couldn't watch. He really didn't want to stay in the tent, but Boitan needed his command of Trade-tongue. So he compromised, and hoped he could control his stomach. He turned his back on the physician, the healer, and their patient, and sat in the open tent-flap, resolutely ignoring the moans of the boy, and Boitan's murmurs.
The camp beyond was mostly dark; a few flickers of fires in carefully watched fire-pits, and the two tiny sparks of the torches at the mouth of the valley, but otherwise the camp might have been deserted. Teo looked up at the bright stars overhead and reflected that, given how weary the Vredai had looked, the quiet wasn't surprising. They were trusting the water-pledge, and taking what was probably the first unguarded rest they'd had in a very long time. For a moment he had to hold back tears of pity. All those bright-eyed children—the vacant and haunted eyes of their parents and other siblings. It wasn't fair. . . .
Boitan spoke up, interrupting his thoughts. He sounded a little more optimistic. "Well, the worst is over—the fracture wasn't bad, Teo. This boy's gods were surely looking after him."
A nasty stench wafted by, telling Teo that Boitan was now cleaning the boy's wounds out. He gagged, and held his stomach under control only because there was nothing in it at the moment but water.
There was a whisper of movement and a presence at his elbow. Teo noted the same thing Felaras had—Jegrai was as cleanly as anyone in the Order. He smelled at the moment only faintly of horse and more strongly of herbs. Some time before they'd arrived he must have taken time to bathe. These are no barbarians, no matter what some of the others think. Nobody who keeps themselves and their camp as clean as these folk do is a barbarian.
"I—cannot watch either," Jegrai whispered, his voice shaking. "Strange, is it not? I, who have faced battle many times, have faced death and seen it pass me to strike one at my very side, am aquiver, and I cannot bear to watch the healers at their work. I had to see what they did with Yuchai's broken head, but now—"
He made a little choking sound.
"—my stomach rebels. And my courage flees at the sight of all those little knives at work."
"Boitan is very good," Teo ventured. "He—the only thing that has ever defeated him is when—uh—rot comes back after he has cleaned wounds, or when it comes into the cuts he made."
Jegrai's head jerked around, his face registering a look of surprise. "What, you do not have the powder-of-mould?"
"The what?"
"The powder-of-mould, that we put on wounds—do so and they do not rot."
Teo kept himself from jumping up only by a powerful -exertion of will. If he startled Boitan—but this was something the physician needed to know, and now.
He raised his voice and forced himself to speak calmly. "Boitan, the Khene tells me these people have something that prevents infection."
There was a long moment of silence behind him. Then Boitan spoke, though not in Trade-tongue; he was too preoccupied. "Teo, it is a very good thing that I am not Vider, or this boy would have a new wound, and I would have a deal of explaining to do. They have something that prevents infection. Do they also have the elixir of immortality? No, forget I said that; I believe you. The crippled men you described couldn't have survived without something like that. Would the woman happen to have any of this gods-given stuff here in the tent?"
Teo translated, but Jegrai did not even have to ask. "Of course!" he said in astonishment. "How not?"
"Then I trust when I am finished here, this good lady will instruct me, please?" said Boitan, an edge of pleading in his voice. Behind them, the woman actually chuckled.
After that, Teo and Jegrai watched the stars, and the silent camp, for what seemed to be an eternity, trying to ignore the sounds behind them when Boitan did scrape at bone. It was one of the longest nights Teo had ever spent and he was amazed when light showed in the east, and it proved to be the moon, not the sun.
At last Boitan gave a grunt of satisfaction, and the woman spoke Jegrai's name. Jegrai let out a sigh of relief as she chattered at him, and his shoulders slumped. "Never, never will I regret pledging to you, my friend," he murmured, almost to himself. "Shenshu says that Yuchai will undoubtedly live, that he looks better already. And—"
There was more than a hint of rueful self-mockery in his voice.
"—that it is 'safe to look now.'"
Teo craned his head over his shoulder as Jegrai inched back into the tent. The boy did look better; there was color in his face that hadn't been there before. Even as he watched, the boy's eyes opened and he spoke, dazedly. The healer Shenshu grinned and said something in a voice too soft for Teo to hear anything but a murmur. The boy didn't much seem to notice the presence of the two strangers, but Shenshu and Jegrai he recognized, and seemed comforted.
"Hah!" Boitan snatched at the bowl of stewing herbs and decanted some into a wooden cup, handing it to the woman. She took it, as he mimed drinking, and propped the boy up enough to help him sip at it. She managed to get more of it in him than on him before his eyes closed again.
"That was for fever and pain," Boitan told her as Jegrai translated. "Willow bark and poppy gum. You saw me make it up; I'll leave some with you. Give it to him whenever he wakes for the first three days, after that, be careful—the poppy gum calls up a craving for it." The woman nodded at that, and mimed frantic scrambling after the bowl. Boitan smiled, a bit grimly. "Exactly. We don't want that to happen. Be very careful with it. Now, tell me why it is that wounds rot."
The woman listened to Jegrai, frowning slightly, then began speaking—but this time slowly. "It is—she says—poison. Poison in the dirt, on hands that might have touched something rotten, on knives, on arrow-points. On the teeth of animals. It makes raw flesh rot. Powder-of-mould is the antidote."
"Mould?" Boitan's eyebrows shot up. "You mean, like bread-mould? Forgive me, lady, but that's an old wives' tale."
Jegrai translated, and Shenshu laughed. "She says, is she not an old wife? But she says also, look to our fighters, all the scars they bear. That speaks for the truth of the tale."
"Then why did this boy—"
"Ah, that I can tell you," Jegrai interrupted. "Yuchai was hurt when we had very little of the powder left, enough to keep the rot from killing him, but not enough to prevent it from coming. We did not know what to do then—boils I have seen lanced and drained, but never deep wounds. Never have I heard of this—to open a wound again and cut and cleanse—and then to sew it like a garment! It is a great wonder to me. To Shenshu, also. And the lifting of the bit of bone from the brain—I would not have had the courage."
The woman spoke.
Jegrai laughed, and reached over to stroke his cousin's forehead. The boy was sleeping peacefully, and Teo felt his heart lift to see it. "That is an even greater wonder to Shenshu also, and she begs that you will teach her—even if you are not a woman, you are wise, she says. So she will forgive you not being a woman!"
The tent filled with the wondrous sound of soft, but heartfelt, laughter.