Plenilune (82 page)

She could hear the blush in the dark. “Sooth, sir, and thank you!”

They went on.

“I saw you get thrown out of the saddle and thought you were lost. Lived to fight another day, eh?”

“Oh, aye, Lord Dammerung. Bit of a bump, ’tis all.”

“Best have it looked at.”

“There be men that need the surgeon’s attention more than me, my lord.”

“A fine weapon, sir. An heirloom?”

“My Lord Dammerung! I—yes, sir. ’Twas of my family’s line, my father’s and his father’s before him.”

“You bear it proudly.”

“Trouble thee about thy horse, my lord. I’m going to fetch fodder. May I bring thee a pitchfork-full?”

“No small thanks to your courtesy, captain, but Rubico has an iron stomach. He will pass for now with a mouthful of grass and a handful of grain. There are others need your pitchfork-full of hay more.”

“Good-night, Lord Dammerung!”

“Good-night, sir! Good-night, lady!”

The voices called across the darkness as the light went out of the sky and the last brazen clang of sword-work finally vanished from the woods. Margaret walked wordlessly along the incline beside Dammerung, tired beyond reckoning, her eyes wandering from new-sprung fire to new-sprung fire.

I wonder where the enemy goes when we defeat them. Do they slink back to their own camp? How strange that it is so quiet now, like every night in camp before this, like this morning, before…

Out of the surf-sound of the rising wind she heard in memory the noise that raised the bile in her throat: the sound of panic, the sound of a battle in the heart of the camp, so sudden, so unexpected, upon them before anyone could think. It had been some moments, not until the war-lords of the camp had sunk their teeth into the threat and stayed its rampage, before she had felt anything but terror. And then she had been angry.

“Oh.”

Dammerung had stopped. She had come blindly up a bit of earthy, shelving ground, across a burnt patch of grass, and stood beside him before what had been his tent. Her bottle of perfume must have been broken: she could smell it distinctly.

“I don’t care,” she said wearily, not sure if she meant the bottle or the tent.

Dammerung, putting one arm over the horse’s neck to support himself, waved his other hand unceremoniously through the air. The fabric of the tent hissed and snapped; the bones of the tent came together, bone to bone. With awkward, jerky movements, like a camel getting to its feet, the thing came back together and stood, shivering in the wind, the flap over the entryway burnt and shredded, but beckoning half-heartedly.

“Why didn’t you do that before?”

Dammerung went in, pulling Rubico after him. Candles—it did not seem to matter where they were, on the ground or on tables or chairs—lit up at once. Margaret blinked and staggered back in the sudden light.

Dammerung picked up a chair from the mess—there were still a few charred bits of Púka lying about—and sat down heavily in it. His first two fingers flickered wordlessly and she went to him. “Put your left hand against my right shoulder,” he told her, “and take hold of my shoulder with your right hand.”

“Oh, this game?” She felt her stomach clenching already.

There was a brief flicker of laughter in his upturned eyes. “This game. Have you got it?”

She took hold and felt the limb out of joint beneath her palm. Distaste pulled at her mouth.

“Ready? Brace yourself.”

He yanked away to the side. She nearly went with him, but at the last moment she dug in her heels—
I am good at that sort of thing
—and held back while the joint whined into place and snapped between her fingers. Dammerung let out a gusty sigh and fell back in the chair, his elbow on the arm of it, his face in his hand. Rubico approached and butted in gently, snuffling along his master’s neck for a bit of something to eat. Margaret, seeming to wake out of a curious numbness, said absently,

“I’d better take off his tack and rub him down.” Then, casting about for a brush, she added, “I suppose a handkerchief will have to do.”

“Get on with your bad self!” The War-wolf jerked away from the horse’s fingery lips. “Margaret, may I have a kerchief for Widowmaker as well?”

Out of the rubble she found his clothes chest and rummaged about inside. She found two linen handkerchiefs, both of which would be ruined in a moment, passed one off on Dammerung—whose face, though bloody, was looking less torn—and began rhythmically rubbing the steaming warhorse down. A soft silence, full of the tinsely rustle of fabric and candle-flame, fell about them. In the distance Margaret could hear the splutter of horsehooves and calls in the night, but in their tent there was a snatched moment of quiet in which her own soul, at least, stooped and ached and found time to rest.

“Why didn’t I do what before?”

She turned at the sound of his voice. He was still burnishing his sword, leaning down over the blade with the soiled cloth running with the grain of the metal.

“I beg your pardon?”

He looked up. “As we came in you asked me why I didn’t do something before.”

Memory jarred her. “Oh yes, that. I meant the magic. I’ve seen what you can do—tear down things and build them up—but I couldn’t understand why you didn’t do it out there with Centurion when he was in such a hard place. Wouldn’t it have been easier?”

He continued burnishing, his movements slower now. “Would easier have made it better?” he asked presently.

She was silent for a moment, thinking. “No,” she admitted. “Not necessarily. But what about the lives of your men? If you had a chance to save them, shouldn’t you?”

He leaned forward, shifted, and tucked his ankles one over the other under the chair. He was quiet, looking up at her with the feeling of a smile on his face—when she looked hard at his lips she could see there was no smile—a kindness, a wistfulness in his eyes. She waited for him, but as the silence drew out she realized he was not going to speak.

If they love her
,
isn’t it their right to die for her?

“I think you see now,” he said.

She nodded and continued rubbing down the horse. Once she glanced back, thinking perhaps to say something more, but he had gone back to his own work and something in her self forbade her from speaking. But she noticed for the first time, in glancing back, that Dammerung had a fine feathering of silvered hairs at his temples, mingling with the tousled brown.

She thought he had marked her staring for, without warning, he flung up his head; but he was poised tense listening, and in a moment Margaret, too, heard the quick half-run of steps along the rough walking-path. A moment later Brand came ducking into the tent, carrying urgency with him, and blurted out,

“It’s Skander Rime, sir. Best come quick.”

Margaret had the distinct sensation of leaving her stomach behind and her heart falling down where her stomach had been. Dammerung was in the entryway almost before she had flung down her handkerchief. She stumbled after him through the light-shot dark, through the hanging smoke and thick night—which was becoming lightning-flicked—along the narrow walk-path down from the hill toward the long tent that belonged to Skander. She did not think: she did not have time to think. Already she expected the worst, Brand’s drawn, white face etched with nausea’s clarity on her mind. Its pale illumination seemed to light her way.

Ahead of her was the sharp splash of light coming from the open entryway of the tent. Someone was standing outside, pacing, but Margaret never got a clear look at his face. She went in, blinking in the stab of lamplight, skipping the low, damp depression that had been trod in the middle of the entryway, and suddenly hung back, struck in the face by the surgeon atmosphere that hung about the room. The whimper of nightmare struggled in her throat.

Everyone—Aikin Ironside, the blue-jay man, Woodbird, Lord Gro, Centurion—looked round as Brand and Dammerung came whirling in. Brand joined his brother and at once everyone gave back, save the blue-jay man, from the body that lay stretched in gory wrath on the low couch. Margaret felt her stomach clench. All over blood, Skander still clutched Gram, his arm dropped off the side of the couch almost listlessly, but she could see the veins standing out like cords in his arm, and his knuckles were stark-white. It was his leg that was the trouble. His right leg was a mess of blood and splinters, some of which were as long, though half as thin, as Margaret’s forearm. It looked past repair.

“It was a supplies cart,” Woodbird said in a strained, carefully schooled voice. Her owlish eyes were quieted; everything about her face was careful and reserved. “A runaway team took him and his horse down a ravine; everything fell on top of him. His leg is smashed, at least, if not other things.”

“I dare say other things have come out serviceable, don’t worry,” said Dammerung with a grim kind of humour.

The blue-jay man looked up from where he squatted at his master’s head, his blond forelock hanging low and damp between his eyes. They were hard, daring, soulful eyes, stabbing straight up into Dammerung’s face. “Well, lord?” he asked quietly, challengingly.

Dammerung’s face, too, was hard, and carefully turned away from all eyes, fixed on Skander’s leg. He moved forward, putting out one hand upon the blue-jay man’s shoulder, and said softly, “Well done, Tabby-dog. I will take the matter from here.”

“Can you do the witching-thing?” Aikin’s voice cut down hard and bright.

With a fierce, mirthless jerk of a smile Dammerung flung a warning look at him. “The witching-thing? Would that I could! But I must have the devil’s teeth out, and that by finer skill.” He tapped his thumb and forefinger together. “I must be at it the hard way. Now look you all—” he gestured markedly at Woodbird and the blue-jay man “—can a man breathe in such close quarters? Get about your business.”

The blue-jay man’s face looked to be disagreeing but Dammerung’s tone, though quiet, was firm. No one dared cross him, and with an eerie silence they went out. Aikin took Woodbird’s arm to help her, though she did not look as though she welcomed any help, and the blue-jay man hunkered down dismally just outside the tentflap, his head craned round to listen within.

It was then that Margaret realized she had not gone out. Inexplicably she felt that she alone was allowed to stay, not because she was anyone special or could be of any service, but because Dammerung had put her in the back of his mind as one might put down and temporarily leave a glass on a table, and she was, for the present, no bother. She felt no offence: she felt ill and not at all as though she
wanted
to stay, but she thought she would find it worse to be away. She could not go back up that dark path to Dammerung’s tent with no one but a horse for company, leaving this business behind her and having to wait for hours not knowing how the task went ahead, not knowing whether Skander, who seemed to be hanging in the agonized balance, would make it. Gingerly, shakily, she sank down into a chair.

Dammerung shoved his torn sleeves up above his elbows and crossed to the low battered washstand at the head of the couch. Deliberately, and with an eye on his patient’s face, he washed his hands, rinsing off his own blood before he got mussed up in the blood of his cousin. “Look at that brute,” he said conversationally to Skander. Skander seemed to be just beneath unconsciousness; at the sound of his cousin’s voice something flickered in his face. “You never do things by halves, do you? You and I both. It must run in the family. I did tell you, you would end up under my knife one day.” He smiled gamely, lowering himself onto a milking-stool by Skander’s leg. “You stay with me now. I hear Acheron is bloody cold this time of year, and we can’t let that black cat have her vaunting-day. You and I, let’s see to this hedgepig that has got in your leg.”

He fell silent for awhile. Margaret shuddered and bit her lip as his long, lean, powerful hands began to deliberately work in the long wound. Skander’s frame jumped and shivered with a quick convulsion of pain, then lay rigid again, held under the surface of consciousness by the sheer weight of agony; sweat began to run down his standing veins and drip off his knuckles. Dammerung worked on, unhurried, his lips set hard but his fingers gentle. The wind kicked up, blowing the canvas sides of the tent so that the backdrop of this gory play shuddered like Margaret’s own stomach and made things hard to see clearly. The wind buffeted the sides of the tent but the air within seemed oppressive.

A quarter of an hour went by. Dammerung paused once, flung back his head and arched his back until his spine crackled. His hands were now thoroughly bloodied and the splinters, as he drew them out and dropped them on the ground, were beginning to slip in his grasp. He swung aside to wash them again, saying as he did so,

“Spencer, bring the light. My eyes cross and darken at this closeness.”

Margaret hesitated, then, putting aside the confusion, she pushed herself out of the chair and took the lamp off the table. It flickered under the movement, doubling back on itself and fanning out into a fragile, perfect petal of flame. It was warm and beautiful and seemed to Margaret just then to be the very preciousness of the living soul.

“Where do you want it?”

Dammerung looked up, visibly startled by her voice. “There,” he gestured, recovering. “At the end of his couch. Nay, never mind that. Come across from me and hold it. That will do better.”

She had been afraid he would ask her that and had prepared herself, her stomach kept in tight rein, her jaw pulled back and set hard. She knelt on the other side of the couch across from Dammerung, sinking into the rich, throat-catching scent of blood and open flesh, her elbows raised on the side of the couch to steady her hands, the lamplight shining full upon the operation. Dammerung reached up once and shifted her wrist, leaving a bloody print there, then wordlessly returned to his work.

For a few minutes the smell became almost unbearable. Her stomach was a continual mess of sickness rising and falling, twisting, threatening her with a dishonourable upheaval, but at last she seemed to acclimate. A bit of wind came in through the tent-flap, stirring a coolness over her face. She hitched up her heels and got more comfortable, leaning over Skander’s leg so that Dammerung would have as much light as possible.