CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The skill of the physician shall lift up his head.
Like a man possessed, Kelson ran toward the billow of canvas that Jodrell pointed to, dreading what he would find. Heat and fatigue dragged at his limbs, weighted by armor, and his breath burned in his lungs as he ran, but he did not let his steps slow until he had reached his goal, heart pounding with fear as much as the exertion as he staggered to a halt.
Partially under the shelter of the tent some men-at-arms were hastily erecting, familiar heads were bent over a supine, nearly nude figure who surely must be Duncan; but before he could make sure, Kelson had to duck his head between his knees, suddenly light-headed, until the throbbing in his temples eased. He tugged loose the buckles of his gorget as he straightened, still breathing hard, but no one even looked up. He tried to tell himself that things were not as bad as they appeared as he slowly stumbled closer to the crouching men.
It was, indeed, Duncan who lay there. Kelson’s stomach threatened to revolt as he saw what had been done to him. A broken-off arrow protruded from his thigh, angry looking burns marked his bare legs, and his filthy, blood-caked toes were raw and nailless. What Kelson could see of his chest, past the men working over him so intently, was bloody and crisscrossed with welts, and at first seemed not to be moving.
But Morgan was one of those who knelt at his head, one hand across Duncan’s closed eyes, the other rising and falling very slightly with Duncan’s shallow breathing, his bright gold head bent close to Dhugal’s more reddish one. Beside Dhugal, his back to Kelson, was Father Lael, Cardiel’s chaplain; and Cardiel himself watched over Lael’s shoulder, hands braced on his thighs.
The presence of the two priests sent a chill of dread through Kelson’s already fear-numbed brain, and another wave of nausea made him stumble as he moved closer still.
“Dear God, he isn’t dying, is he?” he whispered.
Cardiel turned and caught him by the shoulders before he could fall.
“Easy, son! He’s holding his own.”
“But, Father Lael—”
“Is here as a surgeon, not a priest—at least so far. And I’m just here to lend moral support.”
Swaying on his feet with relief, Kelson let himself sag against Cardiel for just a second, fighting sudden light-headedness.
“Oh, thank God! How bad is he?”
“Bad enough—but I think he should make it. The burns are superficial, and the nails will grow back, and his back looks worse than it is. He took some arrows, though, and he’s lost more blood than we’d like. The wound they’re working on is the worst.”
“Easy,” he heard Dhugal murmur, as Lael cut deftly around the arrow embedded in Duncan’s shoulder and Dhugal tried to work it free. “Are you sure it’s missed the lung?”
Kelson moved around behind Lael as the little priest grimaced and slipped a fingertip along the shaft and partway into the wound, probing to free the barbed arrowhead.
“The angle looks good. I don’t think we’re in the lung. He’s bleeding from somewhere, though. Be ready when this thing breaks loose.”
“I’m watching,” Dhugal breathed. “Easy—”
Suddenly the arrow came away in his hands, Lael’s hand with it, and the wound began to pump bright red.
“Damn!”
As Lael slapped a compress over the wound, leaning most of his weight on the heels of both hands as he shouted for Ciard, Duncan moaned and went greyer around the lips, his breath rasping in his throat. With a whispered oath, Morgan shoved Lael off balance and ripped away the compress, shuddering as he rammed two fingers into the wound and shut his eyes, drawing a ragged breath.
“Alaric, no!” Dhugal cried.
He tried to pull Morgan off as Lael, too, clamped a hand around Morgan’s bare wrist in an attempt to stop him, but Morgan only shook his head. Kelson dropped to his knees and stared, all but paralyzed by shock, and Cardiel tripped over him trying to get around to Morgan.
“Morgan, are you crazy?” Lael gasped, still fighting him.
“He’s hemorrhaging!” Morgan answered, though he was beginning to shake with exertion. “I’ve got to stop it.”
“There’s merasha in his system, for God’s sake! Get out of there!”
“I can’t let him bleed to death!”
“He won’t bleed to death if you’ll let me at him,” Lael retorted, still trying to pull Morgan away while he blotted frantically at the blood seeping around Morgan’s fingers. “He’ll die of shock, though, if you don’t do something about that. And you can’t, if the merasha gets to you. Ciard, where’s that iron?”
Abruptly, Kelson became aware of Dhugal’s gillie bending closer with a red-hot poker wrapped at one end with an insulating cloth—and that Lael’s hand was lifting to take it.
“Morgan, get his blood off your hands now!” Lael ordered. “Sire, he needs your help!”
Somehow, Kelson knew that Lael meant Duncan, not Morgan. As Morgan withdrew with a little sob, plunging bloody hands into a basin of water a whey-faced squire offered, Kelson clamped his own hands to either side of Duncan’s sweat-slick face and reached for rapport—and recoiled instantly as he nearly got intertwined in the merasha disruption Morgan had been fighting.
God, how had he stood it?
He made himself go back, though, and his body arched in shared response with Duncan’s as Dhugal threw himself across his father’s body to hold him steady and Lael thrust the tip of the glowing iron into the wound.
Kelson’s scream intertwined with Duncan’s weaker cry as the agony jolted his concentration. He tried to damp both their pain, feeling his own pulse rate soar in response to Duncan’s, but the merasha muddling Duncan’s controls interfered with his own functioning. The stench of scorching flesh immediately catapulted him back to Duncan’s memory of the stake, and the flames reaching hungry fingers toward his body, beginning to scorch—
Only Morgan’s dripping hands forcing him aside enabled him to break the link, Morgan’s more experienced control driving through even merasha fog to jar him back into his own mind and keep him there while he moderated Duncan’s distress. Ciard caught the king by the shoulders as he reeled, overcome by vertigo, and quickly hauled him back from the three laboring over Duncan as he became aware he was about to be violently ill.
He fell to his hands and knees and retched himself empty. Then he shuddered with dry heaves until he thought he must surely cough up his guts with the bile, though the reaction gradually began to abate. But his vision went grey after that, and then black.
When Kelson came to himself again, he was lying on his side, the front of his brigandine unbuckled, and Archbishop Cardiel was bathing the back of his neck with a cloth wrung out in cool water. With returning consciousness, all the horror of the past few hours came flooding back as well, but when he tried too soon to sit up, his vision blurred and the bile rose in his throat again.
“Lie back and drink this,” Cardiel murmured, easing him back to lean against his knee and pressing a cup into his hand.
“What is it?”
“Water. You’re exhausted from the heat. Drink it down, and I’ll give you some more. You’ll be all right in a little while.”
Kelson rinsed his mouth to get rid of the bile taste and spat weakly to one side. Then, as he drank more deeply, praying for the pounding in his head to cease, he realized that he was not where he had been. A curtain had been strung between himself and the rest of the tent, and low voices spoke of the presence of several people behind it: Morgan, Dhugal, Father Lael, and—
“Oh, Jesu! Duncan—is he—?”
“He’s alive,” Cardiel said, closing a hand firmly around Kelson’s on the cup and topping it off. “And he’s in good hands. Now, drink up. There’s nothing you can do to help him until you’ve got yourself in order.”
“But, Alaric—Dhugal—”
“They’ve stopped the bleeding. He was given some drug that interferes with Deryni power, so they have to wait before they can do much more.”
“Merasha.”
“I think that’s what they called it. Now, drink that, or I’m not telling you another thing. They don’t need another patient to worry about. None of the surgeons do.”
Shaking, Kelson drained the cup. There was no arguing with that logic. When Cardiel refilled the cup, Kelson drained it again.
He was beginning to feel waterlogged as the archbishop refilled it a third time, but he kept sipping dutifully, propping himself on his elbows as Cardiel balled up a cloak and shoved it under his feet. After a few minutes, with some careful nudging on his part, the pain in his head began to abate. Unfortunately, awareness of his other responsibilities came flooding back to replace it.
“I’ve rested enough,” he said, setting his cup aside. “I need casualty reports. Where’re Ewan and Remie? And Gloddruth?”
“Lie flat for a while longer, Sire,” Cardiel said, pressing Kelson’s shoulders back when he would have tried to sit up instead. “Actual losses were relatively light, at least on our side, though the surgeons will be busy through the night patching up the wounded. All the fight seems to have gone out of the Mearans. Most of the prisoners seem eager to reaffirm their allegiance to you.”
“Prisoners …?”
Kelson closed his eyes for a few seconds, remembering Sicard toppling from his horse, an arrow protruding from one eye socket, then sighed dismally and laid an arm across his forehead.
“Did they tell you what I had to do to Sicard?”
“Aye.” Cardiel’s voice was low, expressionless. “He was taken in arms against you, Sire, and he refused to surrender.”
“So I shot him,” Kelson muttered.
“Aye, he shot him,” Ewan said sternly, poking his head through an opening in the flap that led to the outside, as Kelson lifted his arm to look. “An’ don’t ye dare let him wallow in self-pity for that little lapse, Archbishop. The lad has guts. He executed one traitor to force the peaceful surrender of many others.”
Unconvinced, and suddenly deadly tired, Kelson lurched to a sitting position, not caring that the sudden movement made his head throb for a few seconds.
“I still should have tried to bring him to trial.”
“That was his choice, Sire.”
“But—”
“Kelson, he was a dead man already, an’ he knew it!” Ewan said, crouching down to take the king’s forearm and look him in the eyes. “Think on it. He was sore wounded. He’d been taken in rebellion, an’ his last son already killed. D’ye think he didna’ know what his fate must be? Is it nae better to die wi’ sword in hand, than face trial and execution as a traitor? Is nae one arrow better than the rope, or the headsman’s sword—or drawin’ an’ quarterin’—”
Kelson swallowed and glanced at the ground between his knees. “I—hadn’t thought about it that way,” he admitted.
“I didna’ think ye had,” Ewan muttered. “’Tis not an easy thing, growin’ up an’ bein’ king all at once, is it, laddie? If it’s any consolation, it was no easier for yer father, God bless ’im.”
Kelson smiled bleakly. “I suppose not.”
“Let’s have nae more o’ this, then.”
Kelson nodded and drew a deep breath, making himself brace against Ewan’s words, the logical part of him knowing that the old duke was right, even though he would have wished it otherwise.
But then he thought of Loris, who ultimately had brought about this whole sorry state of affairs, and set his jaw resolutely as he looked up.
“Aye. You’re right, Ewan,” he said. “And I know another who is even more to blame than Sicard for this day’s work. Where is Loris?”
“Secure, Sire,” Cardiel said promptly, locking down his hand on Kelson’s shoulder when the king would have gotten to his feet. “And Gorony as well. I think it might be best if you waited until morning to see them, however.”
Kelson’s grey Haldane eyes went dark and cold, and he sensed it took all of Cardiel’s strength not to quail before them, even though he extended not a jot of Deryni control.
“I saw Gorony and managed not to kill him in cold blood,” he said evenly. “What’s the matter? Do you think Loris would be too much temptation?”
“Edmund Loris is enough to tempt even a saint to mayhem, Sire,” Cardiel replied. “I know I would not trust myself to see him just now, knowing what he has done to Duncan, and what he did to Henry Istelyn.”
“I’m not going to kill him without a trial, Thomas! Nor do I torture prisoners, however much I might be tempted.”
“No one said you would, Sire.”
“Then, why shouldn’t I see him now?”
Cardiel braced his shoulders against Kelson’s continued hard gaze, refusing to be baited, until finally Kelson lowered his eyes, regretting his outburst.
“You aren’t afraid of me, are you?” he whispered.
“No, Sire. Not for myself, at least.”
“Th’ Archbishop is right, though, Sire,” Ewan interjected, hunkering down for more intimate conversation with the king. “Why not wait ’til mornin’? Bein’ captured by Deryni is torture enough for the likes o’ Loris an’ Gorony. Let ’em stew for a while! The longer ye make ’em wait, worryin’ what yer goin’ t’ do to ’em, the weaker they’ll be.”
Pulled up short again by Ewan’s unarguable logic, Kelson glanced aside at the flap leading out of the tent.
“I wish I had that option, Ewan.”
“An’ why not?”
“I need to know where Caitrin’s gone to ground. This war isn’t over until she’s taken, you know.”
“Ah, weel, if that’s all,” Ewan said, a sly grin splitting his bristling red beard as Kelson turned to stare. “Take ’em to Laas, an’ try ’em there. That’s where she is.”
“Caitrin?”
“Aye. An’ Judhael an’ what little remains of the rest o’ the rebellion as well—yer bishops, too, Cardiel.”
“But, how did you find out?”
Ewan made a snorting sound through his nose. “D’ye think only Deryni can make prisoners talk, lad, or that Loris an’ Gorony are th’ only ones we took?”
“No, but—”
“Believe me, Caitrin an’ the rest’re in Laas. I wouldna’ tell ye if I wasna’ sure.”
“We’ll want to leave first thing in the morning, then,” Kelson said, starting to get up again.
“Nay, Sire, we’ll rest th’ army tomorrow, an’ ride for Laas the day after.”
“But, she could get away—”
Ewan shook his head. “She willna’ flee,” he said. “She willna’ even fight, if ye handle her the way ye handled Sicard.”
“You mean, shoot her?” Cardiel asked, shocked.
“Nah. What has she t’ fight for, wi’ her bairns all gone, an’ her husband slain? Mark me, Sire. She’ll na’ fight. An’ yer army needs rest. An’ its king need his rest, too.”
“There’re still things to be done,” Kelson said stubbornly, beginning to buckle the front of his brigandine again. “I need to get reports off to Rhemuth, and—”
“And on the other side of that curtain,” Cardiel said firmly, “are men who you will not be able to help if you tire yourself out doing things others could do, Sire.”
Kelson’s eyes flew to the curtain, as if he could pierce it with eyes alone. He nodded. “Duncan.”
“And Alaric and Dhugal,” Cardiel added.
“But—they’re not injured.”
“No. In a few hours, however, when the worst of the Deryni drug has passed from Duncan’s system, I believe Alaric means to try a more—satisfactory healing. He—seemed concerned that he have support from you and Dhugal when he attempts it. He won’t be able to count on that from you, if you’ve pushed yourself too far. You already collapsed once from the heat and overexertion.”
Sighing, Kelson let his hands fall away from the buckles and bowed his head, suddenly feeling very tired.
“You’re right. Both of you are right. I’ve been pushing myself so hard, for so long, it’s sometimes difficult to realize there’s a time to rest, too.”
“That’s my braw lad,” Ewan muttered approvingly, detaching the plaid from his shoulders and shaking it out to lay under Kelson. “Dinna’ ye worry about a thing.”
“Make sure a report gets off to Nigel, though,” Kelson said around a yawn.
Ewan only nodded patiently as Kelson laid back on the plaid, Cardiel tucking a folded corner tenderly under his head.
“I do have one last question, Sire,” Cardiel murmured, glancing meaningfully at Ewan as Kelson closed his eyes and the old border chief leaned nearer. “Is it true that Dhugal is really Duncan’s son?”
Kelson barely had the energy to open his eyes and look at the archbishop.
“Who said he was?”
“Dhugal did, Sire,” Ewan said. “Everyone’s talkin’ about it. He said he was Deryni, an’ that Duncan was his father.”
Smiling, Kelson closed his eyes again and sighed.
“It’s true, Ewan,” he breathed. “And it couldn’t please me more that it’s finally out in the open.”
“It pleases you that your foster brother is a bastard?” Cardiel gasped.
“He isn’t a bastard,” Kelson said around another yawn, “though damned if I know how we’ll ever prove that to anyone else’s satisfaction. There was a secret marriage. His mother died soon after he was born, and Duncan didn’t even know there’d been a child until a few months ago. That was all long before his ordination, of course.”
“Well, I’d realized that from the timing,” Cardiel said, indignation in his voice. “I wasn’t concerned for Duncan’s priestly status. But the implications for Dhugal—”
“Tell you all about it in the morning, Thomas,” Kelson murmured. “Ewan, don’t forget that report for Nigel.…”
He was asleep before Ewan’s reply could register, only vaguely aware of the buzz of their voices, as they continued to speculate about Dhugal, and gentle hands beginning to remove his armor as he slipped deep into dreamless, exhausted sleep.