279 - Through the grinder in victory

The two other javelins were in my shield-side thigh and my sword-side back, cross-wise so it hadn’t gone deep, but too close for comfort to the kidney. “Niku,” I said, trying to lick bone-dry lips with a bone-dry tongue. “The A-niah…” Or thought I said; Sorala wiped my brow with her sweat-rag, then looked away from me and said, “Only enough of us need to be here to guard the entrances, and one to stay with him. The rest of us should be fighting… I wonder if the squires and healers are in yet?”

“There’s still fighting on the walls, so I doubt it,” said Kuriya, looking out a window. “Maybe one more of us should stay to run messages, if we have to. Is he worsening or staying steady?”

“Staying steady,” Sorala said and I tried to say, at the same time. “I think,” she added. “Bang some more whack-weed for me. We should wrap him up, too, he’s getting cold.” The moment she said it, I yearned desperately for that. The shivers were ebbing and flowing like long waves, with the doses of the medicine. My mouth was dry beyond bearing. As if she read my mind, she lifted my head extremely gently, so as not to make me move against the javelin-heads, and gave me more water. Someone found two feather-quilts, and they laid them over me, tucking them in around my feet.

By pure will, I pulled myself together enough to clear my throat and find a scraping of voice. “How many of them did I lose?”

“You didn’t lose anyone, Chevenga, you’ll be all right, everything will be all right,” she said, her hand on my brow. “Just relax, tishu.”

Anger cut through the haze in my mind, somewhat. “I was just fighting this wounded, and now I have to be healed, apparently, before people will talk to me as if I’m not an idiot or a baby.” Putting more strength into my words, unfortunately, worsened the pain. “The A-niah… Niku… she saw me like this, she’ll be wondering where I am, if she’s all right…” She, and all the A-niah who were walking, would have their hands full helping those who were not. “One of you go find her and tell her I’m all right and I’ll see her when things are more settled. And ask about their losses.” None of them moved; I’d let my eyes drift closed, I realized. I opened them and fixed them on Kuriya. “That’s an order. Would you like the love of your life not knowing whether you’re alive or dead?” He a-e kras’d and went.

Outside the battle for the city went on—it sounded like it had moved further away, at least in part—and I tried not to let it tear my heart that I was here, not there. I’m wounded, I can’t, and that’s that, I told myself.

Kuriya was soon back, with Kaninjer, Sishana and Iperaiga. “Cheng, she’s all right and she knows you are, but she wouldn’t tell me the losses.” Kyash… that bad… she doesn’t want me to know while I’m weak…

“I’m not life-and-death,” I said to Kaninjer. “If I haven’t gone shocky by now, I won’t, you should go to those who are… the A-niah, go to the A-niah, Kuri, show him where.”

“We will make sure you won’t,” he said, filling a vein-needle. I had never seen his hands work so fast; it was heartening right to the bones. “Close your eyes and take a deep breath, Chivinga; you, hold his head; he’s averse to these.” In truth I barely felt it go in or come out, just the faint coldness inside my sword-arm. “I will go to the A-niah and then where Amintris calls me, and I will be back with you as soon as I can. He needs more water. Don’t trust him to tell you he’s thirsty, he’s not clear enough.” He hugged me around the head and ran out the door.

The pain slowly melted away as if it had never been, so long as I kept still, and I felt a dulling of the mind, too. I might have slept except for weapon-sense not letting me forget there were still barbed points in me—everything is backwards when you are wounded, so that blessings become curses—and the battle. Since Sishana and Iperaiga were here, Sorala, Kuriya and some of the others slung on their weapons, donned their helmets and left. I posted Sishana at the window to give me reports.

The fighting went all over the city, taking far too kevyalin long to converge on the citadel. “There are fires everywhere, as if the city’s getting sacked,” she told me. All-Spirit, I thought, I’m only to blame for one of them; is this Larianas’s idea? “We should put together a litter, in case fire heads this way,” Iperaiga said, then did it himself. Sish couldn’t see what was happening down in the harbour. I’m wounded, I can’t, that’s that, I’m wounded, I can’t…

As daylight was just beginning, someone tried the door without tapping. “Entry’s forbidden!” snapped whoever was posted there.

“But this is our house!” a man’s voice said, plaintively. The whole family was on the doorstep, loaded with bags.

“Prove it.”

“Upstairs, first room on the shield-side, drawer in the night-table next the bed, front shield-side corner of it, there’s a potpourri bag made of white cheese-cloth,” he said. Sishana ran upstairs. “Chalk!” she yelled back down.

“Sorry we challenged you, kerel, but we’ve got the semanakraseye wounded in here.” It was embarrassing, to be lying dripping gore all over their dining-table and red-staining their quilts, but they were so kind and hospitable to me, clasping my hands and kissing my brow and offering me whatever I needed or wanted of what they had, I stopped feeling it in a moment. All around me, they checked whether the Arkans had stolen or broken anything, and put the things they’d been carrying away. They had two dogs, a bitch and a big-footed half-grown pup, and the bitch planted herself on a chair near my head, reaching gently to lick my face now and then, as if she’d adopted me as a second pup. Animals can sense injury.

There was nothing to do but what I am worst at: wait. All-Spirit… how many of my people are life-and-death? I’d brought the lion’s share of the Haians to Hirina. Towards mid-morning, the painkiller began wearing off, and my guards started grumbling. “That Haian should drop everything and work on you, if you ask me, Cheng, or you should order him to… you’re you… I know you’re thinking he’s saving lives, and yours doesn’t need saving, but the longer you have those things in you the longer you’ll take to heal up, and you being out of action endangers lives... You’ve got beads of sweat on your brow again, kyash on it!”

A Yeoli healer’s apprentice showed up with a second vein-needle and a note from Kaninjer. “You are joking, right?” said Perha, whom the guards had made their provisional commander. “You aren’t Kaninjer, or even a Haian, we don’t know you, and you think we’re going to let you anywhere near the inside of his veins?”

“Kaninjer’s up to his elbows in surgery,” the apprentice said—one of those times when a common expression and the situation referred to together bring an image into your mind that you’d have been happier without, especially if you’re lying open and in pain yourself—“he’s saying soon but not yet and the semanakraseye needs another stab of this…” I did, and I was inclined to trust him, because of the timing as much as the note, but I knew desperation for relief might be biasing my judgment. That desperation seized on the word ‘soon.’ “I know I know, you’re thinking it’s like Kaninjer’s human-shaped kyash of a girlfriend, fine, I’ll go back and tell him you wouldn’t let me and see if I can get him or some other Haian.” What I wouldn’t give to get up, I thought. What I wouldn’t give just to shift…

The pain and the chills were worse than before when Kaninjer came. He looked dead on his feet. “Just shut up and let him work, that’s an order,” I gasped to the guards when they started belabouring him for how long he’d taken. He put the needle in just as painlessly again, but said, “It’ll take too long to take effect,” and put the vague air mask in my sword-hand, to give myself as I needed. Thus I kept myself happily elsewhere while he stripped me naked, excised the barbs, washed the wounds out thoroughly and stitched them up, even as I could feel every bit of even the tiniest move he made. What amazed me most was how fast he could work, and still be careful. I started moving even before he was finished, shifting limbs he wasn’t working on. I was stiff as a board.

“What you need more than anything now is to sleep,” he said.

“While my people are fighting, you’re serious?” Without a word—I swear I read his thought, I am too tired to argue with you—he started mixing something.

“There were five hospitals in this city,” he said as he stirred. “Three of them are burned down, and the two others are jammed full… we’re setting up other places as infirmaries… For now I think you should just stay here, on a guest-bed if they have one.”

“Niku didn’t want to tell me what the A-niah losses were before I was closed up,” I said. “I’m closed up now.” I set my teeth.

“Dead right in the battle, I don’t know,” he said. He might be lying to me… but then, healers don’t usually count corpses. “But we lost two on the table, there are three more barely maintaining, and about sixty more of them are wounded, ranging from the worst to the least. Here, Chivinga.” I clenched my eyes shut, feeling sick, as I drank the sleep-juice. At least twenty of them are gone… at least… I told myself not to pretend to myself it could be less, even as I knew it could be more. Pain and fatigue and nausea all bled out of my eyes. I’d have sobbed if I’d had the strength. “Get his lesser wounds marigold and whack-weed-creamed and all of him washed and and into a soft bed, then stay with him until he sleeps,” he told my squires, as he washed and packed his things. I hadn't known I had lesser wounds. Whatever he gave me was so strong I was gone before they’d finished wiping the dried blood off me.

When I woke up I was in pain again, but it was smaller and duller, controllable in my mind, and I did feel it in more places, nicks and scrapes and bruises here and there. My muscles all over ached almost more than the wounds pierced. My heart ached worse still. Iperaiga was napping, too, cuddled up under the covers beside me in his shirt and kilt. We were in a smaller room. The bitch was curled up on the bed, leaning on my feet; as I shifted I heard her tail start thumping against the covers, and she came up to lick my hand and get stroked on the head.

I hadn’t smelled smoke at all before, the fires being downwind; now the air was heavy with it, thick and black-smelling with the evil of things burning that shouldn’t burn. The air must be still; by that and the goldenness of the light I saw through half-opened shutters, I guessed it was early evening. I couldn’t hear any distant sounds of fighting, or the roaring of fire, but perhaps the window was facing the wrong way. Report… report… will the whole world kyashin report… “Cheng,” Iperaiga said drowsily, and yawned. I’d lifted my head too fast not to rouse him, though I hadn’t meant to. He got up, and called down the stairs, “He’s awake.”

Krero and Sachara were here now. “They barricaded themselves in the citadel,” Krero told me, sitting on the bed. “So we stood down and threw everything into putting out fires. Since the wind died down, we’re doing better. We captured five riverships, so that was good. About fifteen hundred prisoners, too. They’re short-staffed in the citadel, thin on the walls. You don’t want to know about our losses, tishu. Let’s just say we’ve been through the grinder in victory.” I tried to gird my heart against the grief that would come when I learned more detail.

The work of setting up quarters in the city was underway. I wanted to be closer to the citadel, in the downtown; anticipating that, Krero had put both the darya semanakraseyeni and the A-niah—the wounded and hale all together—there, in office buildings that were intact or tents, for the hale. I kissed the hands of my hosts, Krero and Sach half-carried me downstairs, and Krero rode me double to where he’d quartered me.

Plumes of smoke still rose all over, but most were thin and slow-rising, from smouldering. In the streets it was a mix of mourning and celebration; when they spotted me they began calling, “Chevenga! Beloved!” and reaching their hands towards me, the crowd growing around us. I could reach down and clasp their hands with one hand, at least. The hardest part was holding my head up.

Reverence for myself personally, I thought acidly. At least I knew we’d liberated the part of town where the advocate my mila had recommended—a he, not a she, it turned out—kept his office. I hoped it was not ashes.