Ebony Hill (11 page)

“Nothing is gained from thinking like that,” she interrupts. “And not even Esha could have changed the outcome for that scout, or for any of the others we’ve lost. There will always be people we can’t save. And Ness.” She comes over and takes my shoulders between her hands. “It was never a choice between you. Things just happen. You have to accept that.”

“But she’d have been more use than me. She—”

Saice shakes me a little, till I meet her gaze. “We can’t change what’s already happened. What will happen, we can. I wouldn’t have coped without you last night, Ness.”

I shirk off the “but” that bubbles to my lips. This is no time for speculation on “might have been’s”. “Dales is under attack,” I tell her. “Brenon doesn’t want to send anyone to help them in case it’s a ruse to draw off our
defenders before Home Farm is attacked.”

Saice reels back, her hands slipping to her sides. “How do you know?”

I tell her and the tension creeps back into her face, deepening lines, puckering her mouth. Guilt swells inside me, for causing it.

“Have you two had anything to eat?” Aiya pokes her head around the door. My stomach rumbles a reply, eager to remind me that I’ve had no more than a cup of tea since dinner last night. “I’ll fetch you both something.”

“I’ll do it,” I tell her.

The kitchen has emptied, the scouts either catching up on sleep or out on another patrol. They must be feeling Vidya’s losses even more than we are with the tally of dead weighted so heavily on their side.

Aiya watches critically as I smear honey onto bread. “You need more than that,” she says, ladling soup into a bowl.

My stomach grumbles again and she smiles. “Sit down,” she says, nodding her chin toward the table. “I’ll take a tray to Saice.”

The first mouthful has barely tracked its warming way to my belly when a commotion in the yard sends us both skimming to the window. Aiya mutters an entreaty as she unbolts the door.

The trio who stand forlornly on the step are mud-spattered and sodden. With my world shrunk to the four pale walls of the med room, I hadn’t noticed that it had begun to rain. I stare at the bedraggled group, uncomprehending.

“Come in,” Aiya says. “Sit – no, over here by the stove.
Let’s get you warm, now, and fed. It’s all right, darling. You’re safe now.”

The girls look about ten or eleven. One is weeping, both shivering. Another child, a toddler, lies limp and silent in the arms of a sentry from Decon. Aiya catches my eye. I don’t need to be told.

From the hall I call for Saice then duck into the meeting room for blankets, pausing just long enough to check they haven’t any obvious stains. As I race back towards the kitchen I nearly run her down.

“What is it?” she asks, steadying my armload of blankets.

“The children from Pinehill,” I tell her.

As I drape blankets around the girls’ shoulders, Saice takes the toddler in her arms and begins to unwind his saturated wrappings. Another tap at the door heralds Mardon, supported on either side by two sentries. As soon as they’ve lowered him into a chair, they nod briskly and hurry off – in search of Brenon or Lynd, I suppose. The woman who carried the child crosses the kitchen to re-bolt the door.

“How’s the boy?” Mardon croaks.

Saice murmers something inaudible, her fingers at work, face lightening as she finds a pulse. “We need to get his core temperature up,” she says. Stripping off the child’s clothes, she bundles him up in a blanket. “Fetch Manet.”

I do as she bids and Saice hands the child over. “He needs body warmth,” she murmurs, before turning to Aiya. “How are the older ones?”

Neither girl has moved. I wonder whether they’re suffering from shock as well as cold and exhaustion. Saice has the same thought and studies their pupils. Both girls flinch from her stare. She lifts their hands and inspects their white fingers. “You’ll be fine,” she tells them. “Your fingers will tingle as the blood starts to come back into them – your toes too. Aiya, can you warm some milk? Nothing for the little one yet.”

She nudges Manet closer to the fire. The woman is absorbed by the child in her arms, her face calm in a way it hasn’t been since Ben’s death. I wonder whether Saice’s choice was less than accidental.

Having checked the boy’s pulse, Saice turns her attention to Mardon. “Are you injured?”

“Sprained my ankle.” Such an everyday injury feels almost welcome.

Zeek must have heard the news for he comes into the kitchen at a gallop, his body sagging with relief as he takes in the group.

Saice touches his and Mardon’s shoulders. “Well done, both of you.”

“It was Mardon who got them here,” Zeek says.

“It was both of you. And Decon.” She acknowledges the sentry, now kneeling in a puddle on the floor, chafing one of the girls’ hands.

The woman dips her head in reply, the wet tails of her hair plastered to her neck. “We found them easily enough, and they kept going like troopers.” One of the girls whimpers. “They’re exhausted though.”

“We can remedy that easily enough,” Saice says, “but
first we need to get them out of those wet clothes. You too,” she adds, eyeing the woman. “Dry, warm and fed, you won’t know yourselves.” Saice’s hearty smile is at odds with the despair etched on her face only minutes before. I watch her in admiration.

“What about our families? Will they be all right?” the taller girl asks. “Only, if the soldiers are attacking Dales, then …” Her words trail away in a hiccough of fear.

“They’ll be fine,” Saice says briskly. “Another unit of scouts arrived last night. There’s no need to worry.”

I wish I could believe her words. The sentry looks equally sceptical as she glances at Zeek, head tilted to obscure her expression from the girls.

“You didn’t see any sign of Opi and Ronan?” I ask, though I know already what their answer will be. Mardon shakes his head.

“Ness, can you take a look at Mardon’s ankle?” Saice says, leaning to check on the boy in Manet’s arms.

Gentle as I can, I unlace Mardon’s boot and slide it off his swollen foot. He winces as I peel back his sock. It’s badly sprained but not broken. It must have pained him to walk on it, even with help. As my fingertips probe gently for the lines of the bones and I test the joint’s movement between my palms, a memory of Merryn springs up in my mind. On the heels of that comes a vivid image of Dev, of the shoulder he dislocated and that I set – by luck as much as anything – in the cave at Skellap Bay.

I’ve not thought of Dev in days, nor of anyone in Vidya. We’ve become immersed in our own narrow world.

“You’ve done that before.” Saice’s voice, close by my
ear, startles me out of my thoughts.

“A few times.”

I move aside but she shakes her head. “If nothing’s broken, you can bind it.” She hands me a bandage.

I glance at Mardon and he nods. With fingers that feel suddenly clumsy I do as I’m bid. Saice watches over my shoulder but makes no comment till I’m done.

“Right,” she says, helping him to his feet. “You need to get into dry clothes and get your head down for a while. Keep the foot up on a pillow while you catch up on sleep. And that’s an order.”

He puts up no argument. Both he and Zeek have been up all night. “You should sleep too,” I tell Zeek.

Aiya bustles the girls off to find dry clothes and beds. With all the patients settled, Saice reaches for the kettle. “Tea, Ness?”

Only then do I remember my soup, gone cold on the table. I eat it anyway. I’m mopping the last with a fat hunk of bread when the sentry reappears, freshly clothed and with her hair dried in a fluffy ball around her head.

“Better?” Saice asks.

The woman nods. “I was wondering,” she begins. “The unit who came in last night. I heard that some of the survivors—” She stops.

Our bubble of normality disperses. Saice pushes her mug aside. “Two died,” she confirms. “All but one of the other twelve are out of danger.” She pauses. “Was it someone in particular?”

The woman nods. She can’t seem to find any more words.

“Come with me,” Saice says gently.

I stare into my mug, hoping she’ll find her friend among the survivors. I know that it makes no difference overall: that everyone who dies has people somewhere who’ll grieve. Even the paras. But we’ve enough grief here. More than enough.

I’m still at the table when Aiya returns, flanked by two of the farm’s permanent residents. “How are you, Ness?” Aiya asks.

I nod a reply. My body seems to have lost the will to move.

As if to some choreographed score, the women slip into preparing the evening meal. Watching their hands peel and chop, I wonder how many they’ll be catering for tonight, but the calculation is beyond me.

“Do you want soup for the patients who weren’t awake at lunchtime?” Aiya asks me. “There were four I think.”

“I’ll check,” I tell her, grateful to be given a task. My chest feels tight, as though I’ve been caught up by a wave and tumbled and churned till I can’t remember where the surface lies, or how I might breathe when I find it.

I take orders from the dormitory ward, and look in on our patient in the med room. He’s still deep in a drugged sleep. There’s no sign of the Decon sentry or Saice. As I walk back to the kitchen I remember the injured para and add him to the total, together with the prisoner from the previous night. The break-in seems weeks ago, not days.

Aiya has already begun setting bowls on a tray. I tell
her how many I need and she adds an extra serving. “Can you manage on your own?” she asks.

“I think so.”

She turns back to her tasks and I walk carefully down the corridor. Most of the men and women in the dorm can feed themselves. Several thank me; one stares blank-eyed at the wall. About half of them are having trouble with their ears as well as the lacerations and fractures we treated last night. I wish that there was more we could do.

When they’re settled I carry my tray to the door at the top of the cellar stairs. The sentry looks sceptical, but I eventually persuade him to let me through. The guard below proves less co-operative.

“Waste of good food.”

“They have to eat. They’re no use to you otherwise.”

“They’re little enough use as it is,” he answers. “There are better things I could be doing.”

“There are better things we could all be doing,” I snap.

The scout raises an eyebrow but my burst of temper seems to have mellowed his mood. “Leave the tray,” he says. “I’ll see to it.”

I shake my head. “I’m supposed to check their wounds as well. For infection,” I add, hoping to strengthen my bluff.

After a moment’s hesitation he shrugs. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocks the padlock on the first of the cells. Almost, I expect he might get his weapon ready in case the prisoner should try to break out, but I soon see why he doesn’t.

The man in the cell is unrecognisable. It’s only by the position of his stained bandages that I can tell which of the prisoners he is: the man Lynd brought in. His face is a swollen, bloody mess. He is lying on the bare floor, hands tied behind his back. The cell stinks of vomit and urine.

I swallow my desire to shout at this outrage. The scout misreads my expression. “I can see to it, if you’d rather,” he says.

Brushing past him, I put the tray down and kneel on the filthy floor at the man’s side. “Help me get him upright,” I say. “And untie his hands.”

The scout grabs the prisoner by one shoulder and hauls him to sitting. The man groans. “I’ll retie his hands in front,” he says. “That’s my best offer, lass,” he adds. “Take it or leave it.”

I purse my lips. “Who did this?” I ask.

“What? The interrogation?” He shrugs. “He chose to make it harder than it needed to be.”

I bite back the answer that springs to my tongue. With the cloth I’d laid over the food and a little water from the jug, I wipe the man’s face. He flinches from my care. I hold a mug to his lips. He swallows and coughs. “Can you feed yourself?” I ask. “I’ve soup.”

One of his eyes opens a slit and focuses on me. He doesn’t answer. I lift the spoon to his mouth. He takes it, swallowing noisily. Then a second. And a third.

“Should have been a little more co-operative yesterday,” the guard says. He nudges the man’s elbow with his boot, just below the soiled bandage. The prisoner cries out.

“Stop that!”

“Just checking. He was complaining about it last night,” he says.

I glance down. The flesh below the bandage is puffy and inflamed. “I’ll fetch Saice.” I stand up.

The guard shrugs. I drop back to my knees. “Can you feed yourself? I’m going to fetch a medic to look at that wound.”

The man moves his head slightly. I place the spoon into his re-tied hands. He has difficulty holding it. His wrists, chafed raw from the over-tight ropes, have begun to swell. “This is inhumane,” I say, turning on the guard. “I wouldn’t treat a pig for slaughter such a way!”

“A pig wouldn’t have blown your friends to pieces,” the guard says, angry now. “Listen, girl, before you go making judgements, just have a think about what these bastards would do to you and your friends here, if things were the other way round. Like they are up at Summertops.”

The prisoner makes a low snarling sound that might almost have been a laugh. The guard catches my eye. He’s right, and I know it, but he’s wrong as well. “I want to see the other man,” I say.

He holds my gaze a moment then turns on his heel. Leaving a bowl of soup and mug of water within the prisoner’s reach, I pick up the tray and follow him. As he bolts and padlocks the door, I glance around the main cellar. It seems scarcely possible that it was just yesterday that Ronan and I cleared these cells. Would Ronan share my sympathy for the prisoners? Or is he even now a prisoner himself? Or worse.

The second prisoner has also been beaten, less badly than the first. He sits leaning against the wall. As I kneel and reach my cloth to his face, he twists his head away.

“I just want to help you,” I say.

He mouths an obscenity.

The guard moves closer to my side. “You should learn some manners,” he says.

With an abrupt thrust, the prisoner lashes out towards the guard with both legs. He misses, but the tail end of the kick catches me in the ribs, knocking me backwards. The bowl clatters onto the floor as I fall, its contents pooling out across the stone. The guard slams a boot into the man’s face, sending him reeling along the wall.