IN THE TENT OF THE MENDERS
The encampment was roused ahead of daybreak, and before long, voices, the sounds of equipment being readied, and the whinnying of horses filled the air. Karigan was alone in the tent when she woke up. Tegan had already been up and about as a good Chief Rider ought.
She rubbed her eyes and stepped outside into the dull morning light. She was greeted by Riders she had not seen since her departure from the mountains—Brandall, Garth, and Daro, among others. They gave her cheery greetings and a mug of tea.
“Good to see you all,” she told them. “We were getting a little anxious in the city.”
“Got here as fast as we could,” Garth told her. “Second Empire was on us the whole journey.”
“And what was left of the Raiders,” Brandall said. “Nasty.”
“I’m glad you’re all in one piece,” she told them.
Constance brought over bowls of gruel, and they caught up while they ate. Sandy appeared, and when he saw Karigan, he retreated to his tent.
“Something I said?” she asked.
The others laughed.
“I think he has something for you,” Daro said.
When he reappeared, he came bearing a swordbelt equipped with saber and longknife.
“Missing something?” he asked her.
“Wait . . . Is that mine?”
He grinned. “Not sure who else it could belong to. It’s a Rider sword with black silk wrapped beneath the guard. We found it tossed into some brush near that old hut where the Raiders kept you prisoner.”
“What Sandy means to say,” Daro told her, “is that he spotted it. There was no we involved.”
Karigan took her words to mean that he had seen it with his special ability.
“Cleaned it up a bit,” he told her as he handed it over.
“I don’t know what to say,” she replied. She’d been given it after she’d lost her first saber in Blackveil. “I’ve been using the colonel’s all this time.”
“ ‘Thank you’ works well enough,” he said.
She smiled. “Thank you. Now I won’t have to beg a new one from the quartermaster.” Thus avoiding any stern rebukes.
She unbuckled Colonel Mapstone’s swordbelt and left it in Tegan’s tent. She then buckled on hers, the leather smooth and pliant. If it had been sitting out in the weather for so long, it was clear that Sandy had cleaned it up more than “a bit.” She drew the sword and was taken aback at how much longer and heavier it was than the colonel’s. She might, she thought, want to keep using the colonel’s until she was back to her old strength.
Just then, Tegan joined them.
“Good news,” she told all the nearby Riders. “Trace is awake and back in contact with our captain.”
There were murmurs of relief. Karigan hoped they didn’t overextend Trace again, especially during her recovery.
Tegan turned to Karigan and said, “Now that we’ve contact with the castle again, you are not to return. You are ordered to stay with the army and perform duties as required.”
“And what duties are required of me?”
“Helping me get those Riders mounted up. The army is preparing to meet the enemy on the field of battle again, and our Riders will be essential for running messages and errands for the king.”
Karigan did just that, rushing with her fellow Riders to the pickets to help them ready their horses and mount up. Tegan, meanwhile, handed out orders.
“Constance, you’re liaison to Horse Marshal Martel. Sandy, you’re going to be General Washburn’s second pair of eyes.”
And on it went until each Rider was off on his or her assignment. It was only then that Karigan realized that much of the encampment was emptied but for support personnel. She could not see the action from where she stood at the pickets.
“We should saddle our horses, too,” Tegan said, “in case we’re needed to ride.”
Karigan checked Condor over as she groomed him, and found him in good condition and spirits. He seemed to want to join his fellows in battle. He arched his neck and dug at the mud.
“You’ll get your chance, boy,” she told him. “Don’t get yourself all splattered.” She left his girth loose and secured a blanket on him to help keep off the rain.
“Now what?” she asked Tegan.
“The hardest part. We wait.”
They were posted outside the king’s tent where Zachary and his officers coordinated their strategy. Several Weapons stood in the rain with them, on guard. Fastion gave her an assessing look and what appeared to be a nod of approval.
“Welcome back, Sir Karigan,” he said.
She returned the nod with a smile.
Riders came and went with messages for Zachary. Mostly Karigan played the part of groom, holding the reins of horses, and walking those that were sweating and breathing hard from exertion. Fortunately, with the cloud cover and light drizzle, it wasn’t overly warm, the condition of the horses a testament to how hard they were working.
She gained little sense of how the battle was going. The Riders couldn’t waste time informing her, and she couldn’t really hear what was being discussed in the tent. Of the battle itself, she heard distant horns and drums signaling troops to do one thing or another. There was the occasional roar of the soldiers, a sound that sent chills through her body, but none of it indicated how it was going.
Tegan was in and out of the tent, passing messages to the Riders, the feather brooch on her shortcoat gleaming. Had things been different, Karigan would be the one wearing that feather and directing the Riders. It was just as well she was not, she thought, because Tegan was doing a very good job.
She pulled up her hood when the rain fell more persistently, glad of her greatcoat. Harry, on Bumble Bee, trotted right up to the king’s tent. He staggered when he dismounted.
“Harry?” she said.
“Got nicked is all,” he mumbled. He held a wet, bloody rag against his thigh and limped into the king’s tent. It didn’t look like just a nick.
They would not send an injured Rider back out, so Karigan led Bee to the pickets, where she untacked him and tried to slick the rain off him as best she could before blanketing him.
She slapped his neck and said, “Harry’ll be just fine.”
Bee grunted and swished his tail.
She hurried back to the king’s tent where Tegan was emerging with Harry.
“Karigan,” Tegan said, “could you see that Harry gets to the menders’ tent?”
“Don’t need help,” he said.
“Orders,” Karigan said.
He insisted on limping along without assistance, however.
“How is it out there?” she asked him.
“Second Empire is using the catapults,” he replied. “Throwing our lines into chaos, lots of hurt people.” Then he snorted. “Moving those things, though, has gotten hard in the mud, so they can’t be easily aimed.”
That was good, at least, and boded well if Zachary decided to go forward with breaking the dam that held back the lake. However, the rain created problems for their own side, as well, forcing the army to slog through the mud, and drenching soldiers. It would be exhausting and unpleasant work. She thought back to a long-ago sword training session she’d had with Master Drent. He had made her train in a downpour. When she grumbled about it, he’d demanded, “Do you think the battle stops for a little rain? It slows troops down, it rusts steel, it makes soldiers miserable, but battle does not stop for rain.”
And so it did not, which was more than apparent as she and Harry approached the large tent of the menders. Other wounded were being carried in on stretchers or over shoulders. Some limped along, like Harry.
The interior of the tent was a scene of chaos with wounded everywhere and menders shouting and hastening from one patient to the next. The tang of blood and bile was thick on her tongue, and she tried not to look too closely at what went on in there. An apprentice in charge of checking in the wounded, her expression unfazed, glanced at Harry.
“Yes?” she asked.
He peeled the rag from his leg. She looked at it briefly and said, “A few sutures most likely, but you’ll have to wait while we treat the more critically injured.” She directed him to sit on a bench with other of the less wounded.
“Will you be all right here?” Karigan asked him.
“Not liking it very much,” he replied, “but, yeah, I’ll be all right.”
She turned to leave, but a mender caught her arm. “Rider, I need you to help hold this man down.”
The man in question was stretched out on a table. He wore the colors of her own province, L’Petrie. His leg was a mangled mess and she grimaced.
“I must return to my post,” she said. And she was no mender.
“I need to take care of this man’s leg now, and there are no extra hands to help. Hold him down now. Orsin?”
“Yes, Master Clemmet?”
“Tourniquet.”
That didn’t sound good, Karigan thought. She placed her hands on the man’s shoulders. He was moaning insensibly, which was probably a mercy, because the master mender suddenly produced a saw. Orsin, a journeyman by the knot on his shoulder, tightened the tourniquet above the wound. He passed Karigan a thick strip of leather with bite marks in it.
“Put this in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his tongue off,” the journeyman told her.
Karigan obeyed, trying to speak in soothing tones to the soldier while she worked his jaw open, her hands trembling.
When the saw cut into his limb, she had to use all her strength to hold him down.
Upon her return to Zachary’s tent, Tegan asked, “Is Harry all right?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?” Tegan then gave her a long look. “You’re kind of pale.”
Truthfully, Karigan wasn’t sure how she’d managed to keep her gorge down. She’d seen a lot of things since becoming a Green Rider. She’d even severed limbs off enemies. But to actually be present as a man’s leg was being sawed off? The sound of the toothy blade scraping bone, the soldier’s screams of agony . . . It felt like it had taken forever. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then told Tegan about the experience, how the soldier’s leg had been smashed by a large rock hurled by one of Second Empire’s catapults and was too damaged to be repaired, how she tried to soothe him as he screamed and thrashed, and how Master Mender Clemmet, when he’d finished with the sawing, simply tossed the dismembered leg aside.
“Thank the gods you went with Harry and not me,” Tegan said. “I’d have passed out.”
Karigan had been close. She would never make it as a mender, but those who chose it as their vocation seemed to thrive on it.
As she resumed her post in front of Zachary’s tent, she could not shake the image of the poor soldier from her mind. The method of mending used on him had seemed cruel, but she did not doubt its necessity. She knew only too well that he had a long road ahead of him to overcome the trauma, if “overcoming” were even possible. She fisted her shaking hands and thrust them into her pockets.