The War, page 38
“Please shut the window,” said Mordred with a sudden swiftness as Inspector Dickson spun away quickly with taut shoulders and a darkened brow.
Inspector Dickson wheeled back on him, eyebrows arched high in astonishment, as though of all the insult Mordred had ever done him, this was the most outrageous. He glanced at the peaceful, warm sky with one evening star pricking out in the falling night. “Shut the window,” he repeated incredulously.
Mordred shrugged with a slight disdainful sneer and stiffened his chin. “Would you please shut the window,” he said with careful, distant politeness.
Inspector Dickson, lips thinned, swung about and in painstaking care reached out to draw the shutters in.
He staggered and sank to his knees.
For one second all was still.
“Inspector Dickson?” Mordred sat up in a panic. “Inspector Dickson!”
Inspector Dickson’s breath sucked in sharply and let out in a soft cry of pain. He sank down and Mordred saw the long, feathered shaft protruding from his right side. He did not turn or try to rise but knelt there on the floor, his breath hitching in short, painful gasps.
“Fenris,” said Mordred inaudibly. His hands shook. “Fenris.” Had Fenris gone? Fenris could not have gone, must not have gone, Laufeia—where was Laufeia? Gone, not to come again till morning—His head swirled with dizziness, his eyes frozen on the lone figure kneeling in front of the window. Fenris—
“Mordred!” The cry rang out in the doorway. Fenris’ eyes were wide with alarm.
“I asked him to close the window,” said Mordred dazedly, covering his face with his shaking fingers.
Fenris’ footsteps crossed the room and the shutters crashed shut. Something struck the wall with a dull thud outside.
“I asked him to close the window.” The dizziness washed all through him; his voice trembled like his hands. His thoughts were horribly clear, yet stifled with the enormity of his guilt.
“I can’t move him myself, Mordred.” Fenris was beside Inspector Dickson, looking up with hesitancy.
“You can, Fenris.” Mordred struggled vainly to steady his voice. “You must.”
Fenris bent and slipped his arms under Inspector Dickson’s, and attempted to drag him towards the side room. But Fenris, who had carried his older brother in his arms nearly half a mile to the hospice’s doors, could not summon the strength to lift Inspector Dickson now.
“I—I can’t, Mordred.”
“Find help then.”
Fenris turned and ran out the door.
~
Fiona stared at Fenris, her legs all at once weak under her. “Shot him? The enemy is here?”
“Please, Fiona—please help me with him.” His soft voice stumbled over the urgency of his plea.
“Inspector Dickson, yes.” Fiona pushed aside the terror threatening to swamp her mind and body and started quickly down the hall, Fenris close beside her.
Together they managed to get Inspector Dickson into the little closet where Fenris had once slept. The cloths that had made his bed were still there, discarded, dusty, and they laid him there.
“Can you—” Fenris’ voice was barely a whisper. “Can you get the arrow out?”
Fiona’s eyes traveled down to the black shaft jutting out, its fletching mangled. Something in her balked. “I can’t, Fenris! I’ve only tended wounds, I know naught about how to remove things . . . ”
“Someone has to, Fiona.”
She looked up at him and saw that his eyes were bright with desperate tears, and her own filled. She realized that as sickening as the thought of taking out the arrow was, the thought of leaving it in the man any longer was still worse.
It is only like taking out a splinter, she told herself. You can do it, you must.
She reached out and gripped the wood with her fingers. Inspector Dickson flinched violently and let out a hard gasp.
Fiona found that she was trembling. Willing her fingers to be still, she tightened her hold and began a steady outward pull, twisting slightly as she went to ease the passage. Inspector Dickson twitched again, writhed, and suddenly he went quite limp.
Afterwards Fiona was grateful he had fainted. She did not think, if he had remained conscious, that she would have been able to continue. Even as it was, by the time that the arrow was completely out, blood was covering her hands, the blankets, and Inspector Dickson’s side, and she was dizzy and nauseated.
“Fenris,” she whispered, desperately keeping command over her senses. “Find me something to bandage him with.”
She pressed her fingers against the wound fiercely. The amount of blood streaming out of it frightened her. But by the time Fenris reached her with several strips of cloth, it was beginning to clot and the dark flow had lessened.
When at last it was bandaged, as tightly and cleanly as she could do, she rose from her kneeling position and felt the room tilt around her. Her legs still trembled. But in that moment she knew she could not yield. The night was far from over, and there would be much to do before it was. By some strength she had never used or known before, she pushed down the sickness and felt it fade. “Fenris, come. They will need help out there.”
Fenris nodded. He glanced unwillingly at the bed. “Mordred—”
“I’ll be fine, Fenris.” Mordred’s face was ashen, but not from fear. A great, unnamed torment stirred behind his eyes. Fiona, looking at him, could see that the calm he held in place was a facade as thin as a hair; it was that close to crashing down in panic and desolation.
“Mordred,” said Fenris again. His chest heaved in one short, quick breath, and his troubled eyes held a strangely intense anxiety. “I will be back,” he said, like a promise.
As Mordred looked at his brother, his mask crumbled. The fragile composure was seconds away from shattering. “Fenris—I—”
Fenris turned around and fled the room.
Fiona looked at Mordred, her heart sensing the agony within him, although she could not quite guess its nature. And she ached for him.
It is time to go—
But she slipped forward, so swiftly, like a dipping Mayfly, and bent over him and kissed him gently on the brow, even as he had set his lips on her in a desperate moment half a year ago. And she drew back and passed softly out of the room.
~
“Braegon! Braegon King! What are you doing back here, man?” Sergeant Hawke frowned in a kind of disapproving dismay. “You’re not fit for action yet—not on that leg.”
Braegon shook his head, leaning his weight on the doorframe as he returned the Sergeant’s stare. “I’m well enough to be released from the hospice, Sergeant.”
“Released or no, you’re due for leave, soldier. Go back to Ceristen till you’re healed.”
“That might be a long time, Sergeant.” Braegon held himself straight and still, refusing to let the pleading display itself across his features.
“Private King,” said the Sergeant curtly, though the tightness around his eyes showed that he understood and hated to deny Braegon’s plea, “a lame soldier is worth nothing in a battle. Go home and rest.”
Braegon’s chest lifted sharp and sudden. For an instant it seemed he would not dare flaunt a direct order, but he plunged recklessly on. “Sergeant, I do not want to rest. I want to fight—I want to defend my own while there is still breath left in me, Sergeant, do not make me go! Let me fight!”
“Private King, you are discharged!” Sergeant Hawke took a step forward, his broad shoulders overshadowing Braegon’s slim stance of defiance. The hurt in his eyes was contested by the harsh line of his set jaw.
A dead silence had fallen over every man in the barracks. There was not a breath to be heard.
Into that silence came the hiss-thwack of an arrow.
Before any man could move another came ripping through the door, straight between Braegon’s side and the frame. With a splintering thud it landed in the opposite wall.
Braegon hurled himself to the side, and Sergeant Hawke sprang forward and slammed the door to in a lunge.
“Shut that window,” he barked, jerking a finger towards one window whose shutters were swinging wide open in the breeze. Someone obeyed.
For a little while no one spoke among them. There was a shaken look in their eyes, a stricken dread. Suddenly, the war had sprung over the threshold.
“What do we do, Sergeant?” asked a fearful voice.
Sergeant Hawke looked around, his gaze flitting from one man to the other. “We wait for orders.”
“Sergeant.” It was Therelane Grey stepping forward. “May I depart the barracks?”
“Why?”
Therelane hesitated. “I—I want to go to the hospice, sir.”
“What?”
“They—they may need alerting, sir.”
“They’ll know soon enough, if they do not already.”
“Sergeant, they may need help if they need to make a defense—or if they need to flee the city.”
“And what do you think one man is going to do in that? Besides, we know not the situation. ’Tis more than likely that any escape is futile at this point for all save an able-bodied man with a sword to his protection.”
“Sergeant, please.” It was Braegon speaking up. “His sister is in there.”
“Braegon King, you have made things hard enough already,” said Sergeant Hawke between his teeth. “Enough now.”
“We can spare one man,” said Braegon earnestly.
Sergeant Hawke did not look at him. “Private Grey, the answer is no.”
Therelane’s eyes flashed in rebellion. Slowly he looked away.
“Prepare for departure,” said Sergeant Hawke, raising his voice to the rest of the men. “Have your weapons to hand. We may be called for at any moment.”
Therelane made his way to stand by Braegon. “He denied me—for no reason,” he said between shut teeth. “I am going.”
“Therelane, no!” Braegon gripped his arm.
“They could need help, and he will not let me go to give it!”
“Aye, but what you want to do is senseless, Therelane—bordering on desertion—don’t you understand—”
Therelane was pulling away from him, slipping along the wall, running out the door.
“What was that?” Sergeant Hawke swung sharply around.
The blank silence pressed heavily for several long seconds. Then Braegon said, “Therelane Grey has left, Sergeant Hawke.”
“So be it,” said the sergeant grimly after a moment. “Nay, don’t start after him. It is on his own head if he perishes out there, and none of the rest of you need risk your lives by bringing him back.”
Braegon turned his head away, sick in his mind. Did not Therelane understand?
He had tried to make him understand, but Therelane’s were not the loyalties of a soldier. He did not know—it was not in him to know or comprehend them.
And though Braegon hoped that Therelane would live through the battle, he dreaded what would follow if he should.
~
Therelane Grey ran as fast as he dared push himself through the city, very much aware that at any moment he could feel an arrow thud into his body, and there was nothing he could do to help it.
He stumbled to a halt, gulping for breath. Cries rang in his ears, and when he looked back flames were licking up the side of a wooden house. Suddenly he was terrified, and beyond terrified; he wanted to crawl away and cover his head and hide. How had they got in, so far, without warning and without opposition? The madness was too much, too much—it crashed upon Therelane that this was the beginning of the end. Orden was breached at last, caught unprepared. They were going to die.
He reeled against a wall, bent his face in the crook of his arm. What was the use of going on? What could he do? Nothing would avail in the end.
But Ceristen! Ceristen—there, on Mount Thiranu, the world was untouched and safe. He lifted his eyes and looked toward the dim bulk of the mountain growing lost in the shadows of night. And then, as suddenly as the horror and despair had come upon him, it fled. While Ceristen was safe, there was surety, there was courage, there was strength to go on.
Therelane turned his eyes away from the mountain and ran.
As he drew nearer the hospice, flaming missiles began to streak past him. He saw the flowering dots of fire springing up all around in the corners of his vision, but he fixed his eyes fiercely on the road ahead of him, would not let himself look at the city as it fell to pieces.
The hospice was towering above him, a tall, unbroken monument in the night. This, too, was still free.
For how long? his mind whispered mockingly.
He rushed up the shallow stone steps, into the door, and found himself colliding hard with a figure who was carrying an armload of boards. Therelane attempted to halt, but it was too late; the two of them went crashing to the floor, Therelane’s jaw scraping painfully along the edge of one wooden lath while another clipped his elbow.
An arm grasped his and pulled him to his feet. “What is this? You are in a hurry, soldier. Did you come to bring us word of the attack?”
“Aye—and to help, if you need it.” Therelane glanced at the person he had run into, who was getting quickly to his feet—Fenris Kenhelm, he realized.
Their eyes met, and Therelane had known Fenris long enough to recognize the anguished look in those eyes of his. Something had gone amiss with Mordred, and whatever it was Fenris could do nothing to mend it now.
“You have our thanks then,” the surgeon who had helped him up was saying. “So far we are safe, but we cannot expect that to last through the night. Come, help us bar up the doors, if you will. We can hardly make a defense of this place, if it is attacked, but we can attempt to stop anyone from getting in for a little while at least.”
Therelane nodded, and bent at once to help Fenris retrieve the boards that had gone flying. As they worked, he bent towards him and asked softly, “What happened?”
Fenris wet his lips and spoke after a moment. “An arrow struck Inspector Dickson in the side. ’Twas the first warning we had.”
Therelane could scarcely remember who Inspector Dickson was. “Is that—the man that arrested—”
“Yes,” said Fenris swiftly, and at the darkness in his eyes Therelane dared say no more.
~
The squad of soldiers pounded through the darkened streets. Their swords were already blood-stained, and the dark purpose driving them on thirsted for more.
“Kurik!” shouted one. “Kurik, etti, turta!”
The group stumbled to a halt, blowing hard. Somewhere off to their right fires burned yellow in the night and cries resounded near and far.
“What?” said the captain in charge gruffly, swiping a hand across his clipped beard.
“See, that one.” The man waved toward the long, squared outline of a tall structure rearing up on the left. “Co’ rai int.”
The captain shrugged. “Maybe it is good. Maybe not. It looks like an army garrison.”
“It is a rich man’s house,” said someone else, and the rest took a liking to this idea.
The captain grunted. “We will move closer and see.”
They circled to the front of the building.
“See,” said the first soldier, “there is a lamp on the wall and it shines on words. It says in the common tongue that it is a home for sick people.”
“Aiee! Aha!” went up the cry from several throats. “That is good pickings indeed.”
“Nitta,” said the captain, and with a swift gesture he brought them around again to the side. They swarmed up the wall, and onto the colonnades on the upper level, and came into the hospice.
~
Two people came into the room, Priscilla and a man Mordred did not recognize.
“Come,” said Priscilla, taking hold of him. Mordred bit his tongue hard as she jolted his collarbone.
“What do you want?” he asked, resisting her hold on him.
“Irene Grey has ordered all the patients moved from the outer rooms,” said the physician. “You will be safer than here.”
They half-carried, half-dragged him out of the small bedchamber that had been his home for three weeks, and released him at last at the edge of a dark, pillared atrium, wide and grey-shadowed. Mordred caught glimpses of a few other huddled bodies scattered across the courtyard before they let him go and he slumped against a stone column, lurching forward with a loss of bearings. His cheek rested on the dusty, cold surface of the floor.
It was when they were gone that he remembered Inspector Dickson, left behind in the tiny closet.
A shudder ripped through him, and one tear fell, trickling down to dampen the dirty stone against his cheek.
His fault.
His fault.
He saw one face and one face alone in his mind, and it was not Inspector Dickson at all: it was Fenris. Again and again. I failed you, Fenris. I let you be hurt. And the resolve, formed so unconsciously and hammered over and over: Never again. Never again.
He choked on his anguish, driving his forehead into the stone. So many failures to his charge. So much blood upon his hands.
The leader took you because of me.
Bardrick died because of me.
Two thousand men died because of me.
And Inspector Dickson was shot because of him.
Now Inspector Dickson was alone in the outer chambers, in danger, forgotten, and Mordred could not mend his mistake by the least effort. He could not even go to Inspector Dickson himself and bring him here.
With a sudden, mad exertion he lunged to his feet, swayed for an instant, dizzy. His broken leg buckled under him, and he sprawled to the floor. He did not try to get up again.
~
The Runnicoran soldiers were eager for sport. They stormed through the colonnade and into the halls, singly, in twos and threes, killing little yet, looking mostly for plunder and diversion.
Because of this, the hospice was yet unalerted to their presence. The upper floor was largely quiet, few surgeons and nurses about; most of them had gone below to secure the doors, and those who saw the soldiers did not survive to give an alarm. The men grew bold.
A threesome slunk down a narrow, twisting side stair and into the lower level. “Naught up there,” grumbled one. “Maybe we shall find better spoils below.”
