He made for the largest tent pitched closest to the front lines. Inside, the heat was sweltering and thick with the coppery scent of blood. The wounded lay on litters set out in regimented rows from one side of the tent to the other. Physicians worked with women recruited from the camp followers to care for their patients. They swarmed like ants through the aisles as they delivered medicine and bandages to surgeons busy performing all manner of surgeries on patients who either screamed in agony or were grimly silent.
Sweat dripping into his eyes, Bron stood in the entrance, hunting for a place to lay Disaris down and capture a physician to tend her. “I need a bed and a leech!”
A trio of healers rushed toward him, their eyes widening when they spotted the woman draped in his arms. Bron recognized one of the group, a physician named Pyder.
Pyder and his colleagues saluted Bron. “A Dagger wife, Commander?” he said, gesturing to Disaris.
Bron nodded. “Not just a Dagger wife. The itzuli.” He wasn’t surprised when all three gasped. This wasn’t just any patient he held. Disaris was one of two reasons why the Daesin army had entrenched itself on this harsh plain for two years and laid siege to Baelok citadel, slowly destroying it stone by stone.
They led him to a litter set in a far corner before two of them rushed off with promises to return with supplies. Pyder stayed with Bron, instructing one of the many nurses to bring a bowl containing a mixture of water and vinegar. Bron gently laid Disaris on the bed, careful not to jostle her injured arm. Dried tears had striped pathways down her cheeks, and she clutched her satchel in a death grip, distress pinching her features as if she feared someone might try to steal it from her. She sighed when Bron bent to run his thumb gently over one of her eyebrows. “Disa, can you hear me?” he whispered in her ear. She muttered his name but didn’t open her eyes.
Pyder rinsed his hands and forearms in the bowl of vinegar water, drying them with a cloth the nurse held for him. The other two healers had returned, bearing trays loaded with rolls of bandages, jars of ointments, and vials of tinctures. The tray also held a thin envelope of soft leather.
Bron flinched at the sight. He’d been sutured more than a few times by different physicians, each one carrying their own preferred assortment of needles and threads, all tucked into a casing just like this one. Slender steel and linen puncturing and sliding through flesh, stitch after slow stitch, was an experience he didn’t wish on Disaris.
Pyder’s apologetic bow distracted him from the tray. “With all of us here, there’s little room to work, Commander. You’ll have to leave, or you can wait and watch over there if you wish.” He pointed to a spot not far from the litter.
Reluctant to give up his vigil, Bron finally moved to the corner the physician indicated – out of the way but still close enough to observe and be there within sight if she awakened.
The cloth wrapped around her arm was blood-soaked, rivulets of red seeping beyond its edges to trickle down her fingers. Pyder carefully unwound the fabric, revealing a deep, jagged slash that ran the length of her forearm. Bron had seenand been dealt enough wounds to recognize the cut would require stitches and prayers to merciful gods that infection wouldn’t set in.
Pyder and his team moved with speedy efficiency, tightly wrapping her arm in clean bandages to staunch the blood flow while they pried the satchel out of her grip and pulled aside her clothes to check for other injuries. They blocked Bron’s view of her as they worked, Pyder giving instructions for moving his patient one way and then another, cautioning his assistants to be careful of her arm. There was a smile in his voice when he announced, “No other wounds. Just the arm.”
Bron released a gusty exhalation, lightheaded with relief. He might even have prayed. He approached the litter, staring over Pyder’s shoulder as the man unwrapped the new, now-bloodstained bandage from Disaris’s arm.
The physician shook his head and made a clucking sound. “This will need more than ointment and a bandage.” He turned, frowning his disapproval at finding Bron so close. “Do you have to report to General Golius, Commander??
Bron ignored the polite dismissal. “Are you sure that’s her only injury? She looks worse than some I’ve seen bleeding out from gut wounds.”
He hadn’t known her by sight at first, crouched in the shadows of the citadel’s last standing palace, surrounded by rubble and the silent dead, but her voice was unmistakable and sparked his recognition. He’d thought it was the tenebrous surroundings that made her appear so haggard and thin until they moved into the open and sunlight caressed her face. She looked even worse now—gray-skinned, with chapped, bloodless lips and hollowed cheeks.
Pyder sighed. “Blood loss and starvation combined will do that to a person. I can assure you, it’s her only wound. We’ll clean and stitch it, apply a salve, and wrap it. She’ll go to thehealing tent then. Someone there will pour a good broth down her gullet. I suspect she hasn’t eaten for some time.”
Bron closed his eyes for a moment, sick with guilt. Starvation was an effective weapon against an enemy under siege. He’d experienced it firsthand as a child, and its memory—with its attendant horror—was as clear now as when he was seven years old, holding desperately onto his mother as she escaped the nightmare landscape his childhood home had become. Had he known Disaris was the code breaker the Daesin army sought, that she’d been behind Baelok’s seemingly unconquerable walls, he would have torn them down with his bare hands to reach her.
One of the assistants had managed to pry Disaris’s bag out of her hands and offered it to him. “Do you want this before you leave, Commander?”
Bron took the pouch, curious as to what lay inside to inspire such protectiveness from Disaris. There was no way he’d leave her unguarded. Beyond his troublesome attachment to her, she was also an itzuli—the key to winning or losing this interminable war. As many as there were who wanted her alive, there were surely just as many who wished her dead. “I’ll send two guards to escort whoever takes her to the convalescent tent,” he said.
Pyder nodded. “Once she’s awake, I’ll send a messenger to let you know.”
Outside the tent, Bron scraped back his hood and pulled off his helmet, grateful for the immediate relief from the suffocating heat. He found a quiet spot under the shade of an awning pitched to provide surcease from the relentless sun, hooked the helmet to a strap attached to his belt and dropped his gloves inside. Disaris's satchel lay lightly in his palm. Hardly anything in it, judging by its weight and size. He untied the knotted ends, unfolding them to expose what lay hidden within.
A firestick with two or three uses at most, a comb and one more item that, for a moment, robbed him of the abilityto breathe. He held up the wooden hair bodkin, spinning it between thumb and forefinger, hardly daring to believe this was the same one he’d carved almost two decades earlier from a piece of oak. Two of his fingers still bore the scars from the bite of his carving knife.
It had been a thank you gift to Disaris, a humble offering he’d almost been too embarrassed to give her but which made her squeal with delight when she opened the handkerchief in which he’d wrapped it. He didn’t think her surprise then could have been any greater than his was now at seeing the bodkin.
He dropped the grubby cloth to the ground, tucked the hair accessories into a placket under his armor, and handed the firestick to a passing soldier. He doubted it had any meaning other than a source of light and fuel. The bodkin and comb, however, carried value beyond everyday usage. The way she’d clutched the bag earlier revealed a great deal. That the gift he’d given her was a treasure she still obviously held dear made his heart beat with a wonder he hadn’t felt since that organ had died in his chest three years earlier.
“Nothing so pitiable as a mage deep in troubled thoughts.”
Bron glanced askance at the man who’d approached him on silent feet. “The Sun Crow arrives,” he said with a faint smile. “And all shall fear their fate.”
Cimejen jin Orune snorted and rolled his eyes, taking the hand Bron offered in a friendly clasp. “I see you’ve been listening to the newest bard entertain drunk soldiers with tales of our exploits. Moon Raven, Sun Crow. A sorry coincidence that your mother’s name means ‘raven,’ and my mother’s means ‘crow.’ Why don’t they wax poetic about Bron and Cimejen? Perfectly good names.”
“But not nearly so majestic.”
“Horseshit.” Cimejen glanced around Bron at the entrance to the medical tent. “The code breaker’s in there? Her arm didn’t look good.”
