Movement III: Healing Song

    There was little to laugh about two weeks later.
    Haleth cursed her pride and foolishness to have sent Kellan to serve the women. In protest, some warriors, not many but enough to make a telling difference, refused to serve beside Haleth, although she still remained behind with the archers. Haldad was forced to ask the injured to fight beside him, and Gelvar was the first to volunteer.
    Their food was running low as well, and the orcs knew it. They attacked again, and the defenders thew them back as they had before, but it cost more effort and took more lives.
    When the orcs fled, the men carried their wounded in, and her heart hammered in her heart when she saw the weeping Cullan bearing his son alone, with a brace of rabbits hung on Kellan’s neck. When the healers and their assistants saw the near-fatal wound, they shook their heads and murmured a word of consolation to Cullan before moving on to try and save others. Although they could try and stitch his side together, it would take too long.
    “I am sorry,” one healed paused long enough to say. “It is hard, I know, but we cannot try to save him. It would take us at least an hour to stitch his side together, and in that hour, if even one of us tries to help your son, another ten men may die.” Cullan did not say anything, but only bowed his head in despair.
    It was a nightmare filled with screaming victims, and too many were left to die because there were not enough women. Haleth noticed that had all the women come, fewer would have died, but they cowered behind walls, sickened by the blood and the pain and the horror. At last, she understood what Haldar had meant by battle’s pain.
    “He was checking his snares,” he wept as Haleth saw Kellan’s side wound and blanched, “and they fell upon him. He had no weapons, no armor, and they wounded him grievously before leaving him to die. He lay there for an hour, unconscious and without aid. He will die now, and there will be no heir to my family’s name.” He saw Haleth looking at him and snarled, “If it hadn’t been for your high-handed sentence, he would have at least been armed.”
    Haleth bowed her head in shame, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. She was not fond of Cullan and Kellan, but she felt she owed it to Cullan to apologize—and to try her best to save Kellan’s life. I can order one of the healers here; they will obey Haldad’s daughter. But they have others to save who need them more than one willful brat. There is only question that remains: do I try or do I not? The question haunted her mind as she stood frozen in indecision, and a voice inside her whispered, Yes.
    But she still hesitated, remembering all the ill will both had borne towards her, and then she saw his eyes. They were begging with her, pleading for life, and Haleth could not stand mute against it. Even though she held doubts, she silently resolved to try and save her once-enemy’s life.
    With a start, she remembered what might be of use here, more than her authority as Haldad’s daughter. She shoved through the crowds to her former bower, now converted into a nursing area, and grabbed her sewing kit and herbs. She raced down again, hoping against hope that Kellan had not yet died.
    I am a fool, to have rejected my woman’s heritage. Though I may seek battle, my skills in herbs and sewing may yet save Kellan’s life. She no longer even questioned her decision to try to aid Kellan; she had made her decision and she would hold by it.
    She pushed Cullan aside and placed her hand on Kellan’s brow, frowning when she felt his fever. Wetting a clean cloth, she wiped away the blood that caked his head and winced when she felt the sizeable bump. She rinsed the cloth and washed his side, then daubed it with some of the ointment she had once spent hours brewing. It would prevent infection in his wound.
    Kellan groaned, and Cullan spun around to look at his son, but someone she did not recognize pulled him out of Haleth’s way as she continued her desperate work. She gave him water, and then forced down a sleeping draught before cleaning the blood on his side once more. It was a deep wound and bled heavily, and she had to calm herself by reciting the rules of battle before she felt steady enough to stitch his side.
    She threaded her needle and licked dry lips, wiping her sweaty palms on her now blood-drenched breeches. Kneeling beside him, she pierced his side, and she blocked out the screaming and the pain around her, concentrating only on the task before her. To maintain her sanity, she imagined that Kellan’s flesh was nothing more than stubborn cloth, and she carefully stitched his side together.
    I once hated my hours spent in my bower doing embroidery, or brewing herbs. How ironic that what I once cursed is now what I bless, and that what I once scorned shall now save lives while that which I sought only takes lives.
    She did not pause or falter in her exhausting task, blue eyes hard and steady. There was a surreal quality to all of this, as if she only dreamed, for her mind and body seemed to be completely separate of each other. Only part of her mind remained with Kellan, and the rest wandered elsewhere into her past. She remembered how disappointed she had been when Haldar had received his first sword while she had received the very sewing kit she was now using. She remembered how she had railed against her father, but Haldad had been resolute, saying that it was past time she learned a woman’s arts if she wanted to wed. She, of course, had replied that she had no desire to wed and bear children. Yet she had learned these useless skills anyway to please her father.
    But they were not useless, as her young arrogance had once believed. A sword could only destroy. What she had learned before could now save another’s life.
    Her hands were slippery with Kellan’s blood when she finished even as the sleeping draught wore off. Before he could try to stand, she beckoned Cullan forward, and he seized his son gently and looked at Haleth with tears in his eyes.
    “Thank you, my lady Haleth,” he said in a parched voice, “healer… and warrior.” Before she could respond to this astonishing acknowledgement, he hurried away with his son in his arms. At least he has a chance of surviving now, she thought. If not, I have bought him time to speak with his father, and have given him a less painful death. Then she heard another man shriek in pain and anguish as the healers left him to die. She walked towards the source of the scream, her back unbowed and her heart filled with courage, to try and heal another, or to grant him a merciful death.
    She looked back frequently to watch Cullan and Kellan, but when she reached the now-whimpering man, she set aside all thought of her two opponents.
    “Quiet now,” she murmured as she gave him water to drink. “All will be well.”
    And as she said so, she bent to her task of healing once more.

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