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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