Owlsight

“This definitely isn’t anything we’ve seen before,” Grenthan acknowledged. “At a guess, it spreads through direct contact, the way a cold does.”

“I think it might be less contagious than a cold,” Nala added thoughtfully. “Otherwise, everyone would have been struck down when it first appeared. And I think that low temperatures, winter-chill, probably kills it, or at least makes it dormant - after all, these people spend their winters in tents in a chillier climate than we have - did any of you get that memory? Of the way they go from fall to spring without ever once getting out of their fur clothing, not even to couple? They must smell to high heaven, but that might be why they don’t catch the disease in winter. It can’t spread through the frigid air, and there’s nothing I’d call physical contact during the cold moons. It could spread through flea-bite, I suppose. Fleas hibernate, when the cold doesn’t outright kill them.”

“I did get those memories,” Gentian seconded, and shuddered. “The cleanliness of these people leaves a great deal to be desired, at least in winter.”

“Well, given how cold it gets, I can’t see that I blame them,” Grenthan said diplomatically. “It’s also beside the point, which is the question of what we are to do.”

“I’ll tell you what you won’t be doing,” said a wrathful voice from the open tent flap. “You won’t be marching into a barbarian village, giving aid and comfort to plague carriers, not while I’m in command here!”

Kerowyn strode into the center of their circle, and glared at all of them with impartial impatience. “What’s more, if any of you try, I’ll personally have you bound hand and foot and tied to a tree to prevent you from going anywhere! Dear gods, why am I being saddled with a wagonload of idiots? Where is your sense? Where is your loyalty?”

“Our loyalty is to our Oath, as it should be,” shouted Gentian, who had gone red in the face with anger as Kerowyn spoke. “Captain, I might remind you that it was a Healer who stuck to his Oath many years ago who kept you from becoming a cripple!”

“Healers don’t take sides,” Nala seconded, with a little less volume, but no less force, and a glare just as fierce as Kerowyn’s. “That’s the Oath, and a good thing, too!”

“Damn you, people, what about the rest of us?” Kerowyn shouted right back, her eyes so cold with rage that they sent chills down Keisha’s spine. “Just what are we going to do if you all get sick and die, and the barbarians decide to make a fight of it anyway? What are we supposed to do if they decide you aren’t trying hard enough to cure them, and figure to encourage you with a bit of creative torture? Or slit your throats, because you couldn’t help the ones already crippled?”

“What idiot would assume all of us would go into the camp?” Grenthan countered with derision. “Great Lord, since when have Healers ever abandoned a post they’d been assigned to?”

“The same idiot who heard you discussing just that would naturally make that assumption,” Kerowyn snarled right back.

“Whoa!” Keisha shouted, jumping to her feet, and bringing the entire shouting match to a halt. When they all turned to stare at her, she fought down the impulse to run out of the tent, swallowed, and sat down.

“We can’t go into the camp, Herald-Captain,” she said in a more normal tone of voice. “We’d already decided that. We don’t know these people or what they’ll do, we don’t know their language, customs or superstitions, and we have no way of predicting anything they might assume. All we do know is that they have legends of Healers, and as we are aware, legends are difficult things to live up to.”

“Not to mention that not even an idiot puts himself completely into the hands of people who already considered kidnapping and coercion,” Gentian said gruffly. “Cap’n Kero, some of us have been with you for a very long time, and the very last thing we’d do is leave you in the lurch. What we do agree on is that our Oath demands that we try to help these folk, and that the Oath comes first, even before our loyalties. And vow wouldn’t have it any other way. There’ve been plenty of your people who’ve been cared for by the Healers on the side opposite yours, and you know it.”

“The other thing we agree on is that this disease is enough of a danger to Valdemar that we don’t dare ignore it and hope it sticks to the barbarians,” Nala said stiffly. “Whether you like it or not, we can’t leave until we’ve found a treatment, and we can’t do that without treating the barbarians.”

“Even burning the camp and its occupants might not stop it,” Keisha put in, softly but shrewdly. “Since we don’t know how it spreads at all, some of the biting insects might well be carrying it now, and it will be only a matter of time before it spreads to us. We really do have to find a cure, or at least a palliative.”

Kerowyn looked very sour indeed, but conceded their points. “Just promise me that you won’t do anything until after you’ve consulted me,” she added, with a look that told Keisha that if they didn’t agree, she would follow through on the threat to truss them up like dinnertime fowls.

She got that promise - from everyone but Keisha, and Keisha could hardly believe it when she didn’t seem to notice the omission.