Fifth moon, afternoon, day forty-three of the siege
Main hospital, Second Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘How can someone so small weigh so shitting much?’ Tara groaned as she adjusted Dalli’s weight over her shoulder. The other woman’s hand knocked against her back with every wobbling, burning step, but the hospital was only strides away and healers were already running towards them with stretchers.
Hands reached for her. ‘Easy,’ Tara barked, ‘gut wound.’ They lifted her gently off Tara’s shoulders and she half expected to be left with a string of intestines festooned around her neck, but the bandaging had held and, though Tara was wet with Dalli’s blood and the Wolf was grey, she still breathed.
‘How long?’ a healer asked.
Tara glanced at the sun. ‘I don’t know. Hour or two?’
‘Which, one or two?’ he snapped.
‘Did you see gut?’ another asked. ‘Was there a bulge?’
‘Yes,’ Tara said, bracing herself against a wall and answering the one she could. ‘Soaked the bandages in water and kept dousing them every time we stopped so the gut didn’t harden.’
The healers exchanged a glance. ‘Might be enough if we move fast.’ They hoisted the stretcher and trotted for the hospital. Tara groaned and stretched the kinks out of her back before following them, breath whistling through her mouth and barely able to see through the swelling around her eyes.
She stopped at the hospital entrance and counted her warriors in. Walking, limping, slung over shoulders or on stretchers. Fewer than three hundred Wolves had made it this far. She put a hand on Ash’s arm and stilled him and together they watched the rest file in, haunted.
‘Talk to me,’ she murmured when they were all inside.
Ash’s face was expressionless. ‘Lim was our chief. Despite his rashness after Sarilla was killed, his denial of Crys’s … true nature, he was the best of us.’
Tara kept her face stoic. She’d seen a lot of good Wolves in the last months; her opinion and Ash’s differed over Lim. But now wasn’t the time for her famous lack of tact.
‘And we had to leave him,’ Ash went on, pushing sweat-lank curls out of his eyes. As his hand came away it touched the new scar, the dent in the jaw.
‘He was dead,’ Tara began.
Ash cocked his head. ‘So was I,’ he said quietly.
Tara scowled. ‘Ash … they beheaded him. Crys couldn’t heal that. No one could.’
‘Suppose not.’ His face was bleak.
She put her arm around his waist and squeezed. ‘Let’s go in, have a sit down, and then see how we can help.’
Ash had the ghost of a smile on his face. ‘And for the love of the gods, get someone to fix that nose, woman. It’s fucking hideous.’
Tara bit back a retort and gestured him inside, then turned and cast one final look up and down the road, lingering and suddenly reluctant to enter the hospital. Second Circle was locked tight, but Tara found she didn’t trust anyone or anything these days.
Finally, she ducked in through the door and followed the corridor to the main room. Every bed was occupied, as were the spaces on the floor in between. Soldiers lay on stretchers on the floor; walking wounded queued up for treatment in a second, smaller room, while blood-curdling shrieks echoed from the operating room deep inside the hospital. Healers, apprentices, soldiers and civilians moved among the beds, administering water, changing bandages, feeding soup to the injured. Praying.
She found Mace sitting in a chair in the second treatment room, stripped to the waist, while a woman dabbed his burns and wrapped them. Tara spared a second to wonder where they’d even found fresh linen among all this horror. Then she noticed the embroidery around the hem and realised it was a lady’s fine scarf. Seemed as though at least some of the nobles were prepared to help the war effort.
‘Major Carter reporting for duty,’ Tara croaked.
Mace looked up at her and his eyes widened. ‘Bloody hell, Major, what happened to you?’
Tara touched a fingertip to her nose. ‘You know, I don’t even remember.’ She tried to think, realised she was swaying gently, and put her hand on the wall again. ‘Oh, yeah. It was Galtas. He was in the city. Gone now,’ she mumbled as the room began to spin. ‘Fucker.’
She was sitting on the floor, legs splayed in front of her and no idea how she’d got there. Mace crouched at her left, the woman to her right. ‘Hello,’ Tara said, knowing she was grinning stupidly and unable to stop.
‘Hello,’ the woman said, ‘I’m Elissa Hardoc, Lady of Pine Lock. I think you could do with some food and water and a lie-down. What do you say?’
Tara pawed at her arm; then she patted her own face. ‘Can you fix this?’ she asked.
Elissa looked horrified. ‘Me?’
‘Tara.’ She turned to look at Mace and he put one hand on the back of her head, grabbed her nose and wrenched it sideways. Elissa fell backwards, shrieking and flapping her hands, while Tara bellowed snot and blood and contemplated puking on him. After a long moment full of white lights and the peculiar almost-scent of pain, she dropped her head forward and let the blood run into her lap.
Now would be a really good time for hysterics, she thought, and gave it a moment’s serious consideration.
‘Lim died,’ she said instead and Mace grunted, lowered himself to sitting.
‘Gods. Lim. How?’
‘Corvus. In the palace. We tried to hold them, sir, I swear, but there was just too many of them. We had to retreat, and then—’
‘Corvus is in the city? Is that who’s dug in in the temple district? Shit, if we can get him, this is over. How long ago?’
‘Fought them in Fifth,’ Tara mumbled. ‘Fought them again in Third. Couldn’t hold.’
Fresh tears ran, tears that had nothing to do with the pain in her face and everywhere else. ‘Tried, sir. Can try again.’
Mace squeezed her leg. ‘Not you. Take a breather, Major.’ His voice was soft. ‘Someone needs to attempt it, but the losses … How many more retreats before it becomes a rout? Or we run out of room to back into?’
‘We blocked the tunnel to Fifth; they can’t flank us, at least. They’ll be coming from First Circle and nowhere else.’
‘That’s a mercy, I suppose,’ Mace said, his tone dull with bone-deep weariness as Elissa patted at his burns again.
Tara swallowed a sticky mouthful of bloody mucus. ‘About the losses, sir. Dalli’s here. Gut wound. It’s bad, sir.’
Mace lurched to his feet, reached down and hauled her up. Both of them rocked on their feet and fresh blood pattered on to the floor. Elissa made a noise, half concern, half disgust, and shoved a wad of material into Tara’s hand. She clutched it on reflex.
‘Where?’
‘I didn’t see where they took her, but I’d guess the operating—’
Mace was gone before she could finish the sentence. She watched him disappear, still naked from the waist up, his burns half treated, swathes of blistered, weeping red standing proud and raw.
‘Lady Elissa,’ Tara said, turning to the woman. ‘Please take your bandages and your … whatever that is and follow the Commander. He’ll be fussing over his future wife, but when he realises he’s not allowed to help, he’ll stay still. When he does, treat him. And don’t take no for an answer. You’re a noble lady; if he protests, remind him of that.’
Elissa’s eyes were wide. ‘He’s to marry?’ she breathed and her bottom lip wobbled. ‘My dear, dear Ned fought today, you know,’ and Tara could see her winding up for a story. ‘He fell. Lord Hardoc of Pine Lock, he fell in First Bastion. A hero, they say, a true hero.’
Elissa sucked in a breath and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I will honour his memory by doing all I can here,’ she said before Tara could think up a platitude for a nobleman she’d never met but heard a couple of stories about. The woman gathered up the pot and the bandages, bobbed a curtsey as though Tara was the lady, and scurried after Mace.
‘I … have no idea what’s going on,’ Tara mumbled, dabbing at her face with what was, she now realised, a silk stocking. ‘Bloody hell.’ She stuffed it into her sleeve and made for the table at the side, replete with pitchers of water and trays of bread and cooked meat. Her stomach warbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten that day, maybe, and she grabbed a jug and drank until she sloshed with every movement.
She’d taken her first bite of pork when Ash found her and she didn’t like the look on his face one bit. ‘What now?’
‘Crys is missing. We need to find him.’
She blinked at him, and had another hard think about those hysterics as she chewed. ‘How long and from where?’
‘Apparently he went to disable the southern siege engines, stop them being used against us. He volunteered. This morning. No one’s seen him since. He sent a spotty lieutenant to do the ones on the northern wall and he got back within an hour, but Crys has vanished.’
‘He’s going to be stuck on the wall with Mireces between him and us, isn’t he?’ Tara said. She stuffed more meat into her mouth, as much as she could manage without choking, and then shoved a few more slices under her vambrace for later.
‘Probably. I’m sorry to put this on you, but there’s no one else. The Wolves, we’re done for a while, exhausted, and …’ Ash trailed off and rubbed his face.
‘They’re not the only ones,’ Tara mumbled and then patted his arm to take the sting out of her words. ‘Gods, Mace is going to kill me. All right, let’s go. He’s too good an officer to lose, whatever else he may also be.’
‘You’re a good officer as well,’ a voice said as she felt someone come into the room behind her. ‘Lieutenant Weaverson. The spotty one,’ he added and gave Ash a stare. ‘With so many senior officers dead, I’d have to report it if you took matters into your own hands and went off without informing the Commander.’
Ash rounded on him, but Tara recognised the look in Weaverson’s eye. ‘Hello again, Roger,’ she said. ‘The antics in the palace whet your appetite, did they? Want to come with?’
Weaverson grinned. ‘Lead on, Major,’ he said. ‘Six eyes are better than four, and Major Tailorson always treated me well. Least I can do now is watch his back.’
‘And his front,’ Tara muttered. ‘If we die because of him, I swear I’ll come back and haunt the bastard, Fox God or no.’
‘Fox God?’ Weaverson asked and then chuckled. ‘Oh yes, the eyes.’
Tara and Ash exchanged a glance; clearly the rumour hadn’t reached every corner of the city just yet. ‘That’s right,’ she mumbled. ‘The eyes.’