Kethry gave an involuntary shudder of sympathy at the sight of her partner's nearly-emaciated frame. Tarma was always thin, but as this campaign had stretched on and on, she'd become nothing but whipcord over bone. She hadn't an ounce of flesh to spare; no wonder she complained of being cold so much! And the scars lacing her golden skin only gave a faint indication of the places where she'd taken deeper damage -- places that would ache demonically in foul weather. Kethry gave her spell another little mental nudge, sending the temperature of the tent a notch upward.
I should have been doing this on a regular basis, she told herself guiltily. Well -- that's soon mewled.
' -- so there's not much more I can do.' The sweet-faced sorceress gathered strands of hair like sun-touched amber into both hands, twisting her curly mane into a knot at the back of her neck. The light from the shaded lantern which hung on the tent's crossbar, augmented by the light of the shielding spell, was strong enough that Tarma noted the dark circles under her cloudy green eyes. 'Tresti is accomplishing more than I can at this point. You know my magic isn't really the Healing kind, and on top of that, right now we have more wounded men than women.'
'And Need'll do a man about as much good as a stick of wood.'
Kethry glanced at the plain shortsword slung on the tent's centerpole, and nodded. 'To tell you the truth, lately she won't heal anybody but you or me of anything but major wounds, so she isn't really useful at all at this point. I wonder sometimes if maybe she's saving herself -- Anyway, the last badly injured woman was your scout Mala this morning.'
'We got her to you in time? Gods be thanked!' Tarma felt the harpwire-taut muscles of her shoulders go lax with relief. Mala had intercepted an arrow when the scouts had been surprised by an enemy ambush; Tarma had felt personally responsible, since she'd sent Warrl off in the opposite direction only moments before. The scout had been barely conscious by the time they'd pounded up to the Sunhawk camp.
'Only just; an arrow in the gut is not something even for a Master-Healer to trifle with, and all we have is a Journeyman.'
'Teach me to steal eggs, why don't you? Tell me something I don't know,' Tarma snapped, ice-blue eyes narrowed in irritation, harsh voice and craggy-featured scowl making her look more like a hawk than ever.
Oops. A little too near the home, I think.
'Temper,' Kethry cautioned; it had taken years of partnership for them to be able to say the right thing at the right time to each other, but these days they seldom fouled the relationship. 'Whatever happened, you can't undo it; you'd tell me that if the case were reversed. And Mala's all right, so there's no permanent harm done.'
'Gah -- ' Tarma shook her head again, then continued the shake right down to her bare feet, loosening all the muscles that had been tensed against cold and anger and frustration. 'Sorry. My nerves have gone all to hell. Finish about Mala so I can tell the others.'
'Nothing much to tell; I had Need unsheathed and in her hands when they brought her inside the camp. The arrow's out, the wound's purified and stitched and half-healed, or better. She'll be back dodging arrows -- with a little more success, I hope! -- in about a week. After that all I could do that was at all useful was to set up a jesto- vath around the infirmary tent -- that's a shielding spell like the one I just put on ours. After that I was useless, so I came back here. It was bad enough out there I figured a jesto-vath on owr tent was worth the energy expense, and I waited for you to get in before putting it in place so I wouldn't have to cut it. Can't have the Scoutmaster coming down with a fever.' She smiled, and her wide green eyes sparkled with mischief. 'Listen to you, though -- two years ago, you wouldn't have touched a command position, and now you're fretting over your scouts exactly the way Idra fusses over the rest of us.'
Tarma chuckled, feeling the tense muscles all over her body relaxing. 'You know the saying.'
'Only too well -- 'That was then, this is now; the moment is never the same twice.' '
'You're learning. Gods, having a mage as a partner is useful.'
Tarma threw herself onto her bedroll, rolling over onto her back and putting her hands behind her head. She stared at the canvas of the tent roof, bright with yellow mage-light, and basked in the heat.
'I pity the rest of the Hawks, with nobody to weatherproof their tents, and nothing but an itty-bitty brazier to keep it warm. Unless they're twoing, in which case I wish them well.'
'Me too,' Kethry replied with a tired smile, sitting crosslegged on her own bedroll to fasten the knot of hair more securely, 'though there's only a handful really twoing it. I rather suspect even the ones that aren't will bundle together for warmth, though, the way we used to when I wasn't capable of putting up a jesto-vath.'
'You must be about Master-grade yourself by now, no?'
Tarma cracked her left eye open enough to see Kethry's face. The question obviously caught the mage by surprise.
'Beyond it?'
