Authors: Marion Z. Bradley
"Away with you now, child. Battle scenes and blood- no place for a little
maiden. Damon, is it you? Kinsman, take the child away from here."
And, besides, you can't curse until she's gone, Damon though wryly, seeing the
old man's teeth worrying his lip and knowing Dom Esteban's iron prejudices. He
laid his hand on Ellemir's shoulder as the healer-woman knelt down beside Lord
Alton, and after a moment she permitted him to draw her away.
Damon looked swiftly around the courtyard. Dom Esteban was not the only wounded,
he saw; not even the most gravely wounded. One of the men was helped down from
his horse and supported, half carried, by two men, toward the stone seat at the
center, where they laid him out full length. His leg was wrapped with a crude
bandage, blood soaking through; Damon's stomach turned at the thought of what
must lie beneath.
Ellemir, pale but controlled now, was quickly giving orders for hot water,
bandage linen, cushions. "The Guardroom is too cold," she said to Dom Cyril, the
grizzled old coridom, or chief steward. "Carry them into the Great Hall; have
beds moved in there from the Guardroom. They can be tended there more easily."
"A good thought, vai domna," said the old man, and hobbled toward the leader of
the Guard-now that Esteban was out of it-the seconde, or chief officer of the
Armida Guardsmen; Eduin the man's name was. He was small and gnarled in stature,
broad-shouldered and hawk-faced, a long bloody gash now lending a fierce, wild
look to his features. There were rips and slashes in the sleeve of his tunic.
"-invisible!" Damon heard him saying. "Yes, yes, I know it's not possible, but I
swear, you couldn't see them until they were killed, and then they
just-they-well, they fell out of the air. Sir, I swear it's true. You could hear
them moving, you could see the marks they left in the snow, you could see them
bleeding-but they weren't there!" The man was shaking all over with reaction,
and under the smeared blood his face was dead white. "If it hadn't been for the
vai dom-" He spoke Dom Esteban's name in his own far-mountain dialect, calling
him Istvan. "Except for the Lord Istvan, we'd all have been killed."
"No one doubts you," said Damon, stepping forward to grasp the man by the arms;
he seemed about to fall. "I met them myself, crossing the darkening lands. How
did you escape?" Not as I did, running away and leaving my men to die. Suddenly
his disgust with himself and his own cowardice rose up and sickened him. He felt
for a moment as if he would choke. Before Eduin's words he forced himself to be
calm and listen.
"I'm not sure. We were walking our horses, and all at once they all shied,
started to bolt. While I was trying to get mine under control, there was
this-this howl, and Dom Istvan had his sword out and there was blood on it. And
this cat-man just-just materialized out of the air and fell dead. Then I saw
Marcos fall with his throat cut, and heard Dom Istvan yell, `use your ears,' and
Caradoc and I got back-to-back and started swiping at the air with our swords.
There was a sort of a hiss, and I thrust at it, and I felt the blade go in, and
there was this cat-thing, dying in the snow, and I- Somehow I got the blade
free, and kept cutting at everything I could hear. It was like night fighting-"
His eyes fell shut as if for a moment he fell asleep where he stood. "Can I have
a drink, Lord Damon?"
Damon broke the eerie paralysis that held him. Servants were running into the
court with pails of hot water, blankets, bandages, steaming jugs. He beckoned
quickly to one of them, wondering who had had sense enough to order a hot brew
of firi at this hour. He poured a cupful and thrust it at Eduin. The man swilled
down the hot raw spirit as if it were watered wine at a banquet, and stood
shuddering. Damon said, "Go into the Hall, man; your wounds can be tended better
there." But Eduin shook his head. "Nothing much wrong with me, but Caradoc-" He
gestured toward the heavyset brown-bearded man who lay, fists clenched, on the
stone bench. "He took a wound in the leg." He strode toward his friend and bent
over him.
"The Lord Alton-" Caradoc muttered between clenched teeth. "Is he still alive? I
heard him cry out when they picked him up."
"He is alive," Damon said, and Eduin held a cup of the strong liquor to
Caradoc's lips. The man gulped at it greedily, and Eduin said, low-voiced,
"He'll need it when we move him. Give me a hand, vai dom. I'm still strong
enough to help carry him, and I'd rather help him myself than leave him to the
servants; he took the stroke that was meant for me."
Moving as carefully as he could, Damon helped Eduin support Caradoc's great
weight up the stairs and into the Great Hall. Caradoc moaned and muttered, half
coherently, as if the raw spirit had loosened his control over himself. Damon
heard him mumbling, "Dom Esteban was fighting with his eyes closed. killed near
a dozen of them. a lot of us were dead, and more of them. heard them running
away, can't blame them, felt like running myself, but one of them got him, he
crashed into the snow. we were sure he was dead until he started swearing at
us." Caradoc's head fell forward on his chest and he slumped, unconscious,
between the two who were carrying him.
With Damon's help, Eduin arranged his comrade carefully on one of the camp-beds
which had been hastily set up in the hall, and covered him tenderly with warm
blankets. He refused help for himself when Dom Cyril offered bandages and
ointments, saying that he was almost unhurt. "-But Caradoc will bleed to death
unless someone gets to him at once! Help him! I did what I could, but it wasn't
much in the cold."
"I'll do what I can," Damon said, gritting his teeth. He felt sick, but like all
Comyn Guardsmen commanding even small detachments, he had had sound training in
field-hospital techniques; he had, perhaps, had more than most because his
deficiencies in swordplay had made him feel he should have a special skill to
counterweight his shortcomings. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, that
Andrew Carr had come down into the Great Hall and was staring at the scene of
carnage with wonder and horror. He caught a glimmer of thought, Swords and
knives, what sort of a place have I landed in; then he forgot him completely
again. "The healer is with Dom Esteban, but this can't wait. Dom Cyril, give me
a hand with these bandages."
For the next hour he had not a breath to spare in thinking of Andrew Carr or
even of Callista. Caradoc had a wound in the calf of the leg and another in the
upper thigh, from which, despite the rough tourniquet Eduin had tied on, blood
still oozed slowly. It was a struggle to stanch the bleeding, and an awkward
spot for a pressure bandage: one of the great blood vessels in the groin had
been nicked. At last he thought it would hold, and he turned to sewing up the
flesh wound in the calf-a messy business and one that always made him feel sick;
but by the time he had finished that, blood was oozing again from the wound in
the groin. He looked down at the man, bitterly, thinking. One more for the
damned cat-things, but under Eduin's pleading glance he shook his head.
"No more I can do, com'ii. It's a bad place."
"Lord Damon, you're Tower-trained. I have seen the leronis stop worse wounds
than this with her jewel-stone. Can't you do anything?" Eduin pleaded. He had
withstood all attempts to get him to rest, or eat, or leave his friend for a
moment.
"Oh, God," Damon muttered. "I haven't the skill or the strength-it's delicate
work. I could just as easily stop his heart, kill him-"
"Try, anyway," begged Eduin. "He'll die, anyhow, in a few minutes if you can't
stop the bleeding."
No, damn it, Damon wanted to lash out. Let me be, I've done as much as I can..
Caradoc didn't run from the cat-men. He probably saved Esteban's life. Thanks to
him Ellemir is not this moment fatherless. Is he still alive? I have had not
even an instant to go and see! Reluctantly, he said, "I'll try. But don't hope
for too much. It's just a bare chance."
He fumbled with tense fingers for the jewel around his neck, drew it out. Now I
must do the work of a sorceress, he thought bitterly. Leonie said it, as a woman
I would have made a Keeper.
He stared into the blue stone, concentrating savagely on controlling the
magnetic fields. Slowly, slowly, he focused his heightened psi awareness,
carefully down and down, to the molecular level and beyond, feeling the pulsing
blood cells, the fumbling heart. careful, careful. For an instant his mind
merged with the unconscious man's, a dim swirl of fear and agony, a growing
weakness as the precious life's blood oozed away. down and down, into the cells,
the molecules. the blood vessel severed, broken, the gush, the pressure.
Pressure, now, directly against the severed vessel. telekinetic psi force, to
hold together, together. cells knitting; careful, don't stop the heart; ease up
just there. . He knew he had not moved a muscle, but it felt as if his hands
were inside the man's body, gripping tight on the severed vessel. He knew he was
holding pure energy against the flowing blood.
With a long sigh, he withdrew. Eduin whispered, "I think the bleeding's
stopped."
Damon nodded, exhausted. He said hoarsely, "Don't move him for an hour or so,
until the clot's strong enough to hold by itself. Put sandbags around him to
keep him from moving accidentally." Once the bleeding was stopped, the wound was
no great matter. "Bad place, but it could be worse. Half an inch to one side and
he'd have been castrated. Keep him from moving, now, and he'll be all right. In
hell's name, man, get up. What are you about-"
Eduin had dropped to his knees. He murmured the ritual formula, "There is a life
between us, vai dom."
Damon said sharply, "There may be times coming when we're going to need brave
men like the pair of you. Save your life for that! Now, damn it, if you don't go
and get yourself some food and rest, I'll knock you down and sit on you. Go on,
teniente-that's an order!"
Eduin muttered groggily, "Dom Istvan-"
"I'll see what's with him. Go and have your own wound seen to," Damon ordered,
and looked around, coming up to sharp focus again. Ellemir, white-faced, was
still supervising the placing of beds and coverings for the wounded men, and the
bringing of food to the less severely wounded. The healer-woman still sat beside
Dom Esteban. Damon went slowly toward her, and noticed, as if his body belonged
to someone else, that he swayed as he walked. I'm not used to this anymore, damn
it.
The healer-woman raised her head at Damon's question. "He's sleeping; he won't
answer any questions this day. The wound missed his kidneys, by just a fraction;
but I think something's hurt in the nerves of the spine. He can't move his legs
at all, not even wriggle a toe. It could be shock, but I fear it's something
worse. When he wakes- well, either he'll be perfectly all right, or else he'll
spend the rest of his life dead from the waist down. Wounds in the spine don't
heal."
Damon walked away from the healer-woman in a daze, slowly shaking his head. Not
dead, no. But if, indeed, he was paralyzed from the waist, he might as well be,
would probably rather be. He didn't envy whoever it was that would have the task
of telling the formidable old man that his daughter's rescue must be left in
other hands.
Whose hands? Mine? Damon realized, with shock, that ever since he had realized
that Esteban lived, he had hoped that his older kinsman-who, after all, was
Callista's father, her nearest kinsman, and thus in honor bound to avenge any
hurt or dishonor to her-would be able to take over this frightful task. But it
hadn't happened like that.
It was still up to him-and to the Earthman, Andrew Carr.
He turned resolutely and left the Great Hall to go in search of Andrew Carr.
What kind of a world is this, anyway? Swords and knives-bandits, battles,
kidnappings. Carr had seen the wounded men, but had quickly discovered that he
was only in the way, that his hosts had no time or thought for him now, and had
retreated upstairs to the room where they had taken him. He had felt strange
about not offering to help, but the place was crawling with people and they all
knew more about what to do than he did. He decided the best thing he could do
was to keep out of the way.
What was going to happen now? He had gathered, from what little he could
understand of the servants' talk- mostly in a dialect he could barely
follow-that this was the Lord of this estate: Ellemir's father. With the owner
returned, would Damon still be in charge of whatever arrangements could be made
for Callista's rescue? It was Callista he was thinking about, almost to the
exclusion of everything else. Then, almost as if his thoughts had drawn her to
him (maybe they had, she seemed to think there was some such bond between them),
he saw her standing before his bed.
"So you are safe, safe and well now, Andrew. Have my kinsfolk been hospitable to
you?"
"They couldn't have been kinder," Andrew said. "But if you can come into their
house, why can't they see you?"
"I wish I knew. I cannot see them, I cannot feel their thoughts; it is as if the
house were empty, without even a ghost to haunt it! Or as if I were the ghost
haunting it- my own house!" Her face crumpled with sobbing. "Somehow, someone
has been able to barricade me from everyone, everyone I know. I wander in the
overworld and I see only strange, drifting faces, never even a glance from any
familiar face. I wonder if I have gone mad. ?"
Andrew said slowly, trying to explain the things Damon had told him, "Damon
believes you are in the hands of the cat-men; it seems that they have attacked
others, and that they keep you prisoner so that you cannot use your starstone
against them."
Callista said slowly, "Before I left the Tower, Leonie said something of this.
She said that something was amiss in the darkening lands and she suspected that
some unmonitored stones were being used-or misused-there. You are a Terran-do
you know what I mean by the stones?"