Owlsight

“I hope it spreads by fleas,” sighed Nala when Kerowyn had left. “Dear and gracious gods, I hope it spreads by fleas, the way Boil-Plague does. Fleas, we can do something about, but who can stop the air from flowing?”

Keisha got up for a moment and took a quick peek outside the tent. Then she returned, as the others watched her curiously. “I actually have an idea,” she said diffidently. “If you want to hear it.”

“Go right ahead,” Gentian urged. “At the moment, we’re dry.”

“If we could get the barbarians to send one of the sick people out, one of us could go into quarantine with the sick person. That way no one would be at risk except a single Healer.” She swallowed, then continued. “I figured I’m probably the best one to do that; you can’t send an apprentice, and you know that. You all say I have a really strong Gift, you all agree that I’m as good as any of you with herbs and medicines. I’m the obvious choice because I’m the easiest one to replace.”

That started another argument entirely, with all three of them coming up with whatever they could think of to deter her from any such idea. The strongest argument against her plan was that she didn’t have experience in using her Gift, especially not against something deadly. “Oh, I agree that you’ve done very well so far,” Gentian half- scolded, “but that was against tiny infections, colds, belly-aches! Not against a fatal illness, not against some thing no one has ever seen before!”

Keisha shrugged, pretending indifference. “Diseases work the same whether they’re mild or serious,” she pointed out. “A tiny infection and a rotting limb are the same. It’s just a matter of degree.”

“The idea does have merit, though,” Nala said, after keeping her own counsel while the others argued. “It would keep infection from spreading to the rest, and it would keep the Healer out of the hands of the barbarians. I’ d be willing to try treatment on that basis. We’ve survived plenty of plagues before this; what’s one more?”

“And just how are we going to get a volunteer barbarian?” Grenthan asked shrewdly.

“We could ask?” Keisha suggested timidly.

No one laughed at her, although she more than half expected them to.

“Well, the barbarians have obliged me by falling in with my second choice of tactics,” Kerowyn sighed, as Darian belatedly scrambled into his place in the council-circle, feeling much better for a good, long sleep. “Your Hawkbrother scouts reported that they were building up walls around their camp and fortifying them; I sent a deputation out to them to see what they’d do. They didn’t meet my people with arrows, but they also didn’t show so much as the tips of their noses.”

“Grand,” groaned Lord Breon. “We’ve frightened them, and now they aren’t going to move one way or the other.”

“Not without a visitation from their miraculous Ghost Cat, is my guess,” Kerowyn agreed, and ran her hand along the top of her hair. She cast a speculative eye at Firesong, who shook his head.

“Don’t evsn start on what you’re thinking,” he warned. “I wouldn’t create a Ghost Cat illusion for anyone under circumstances like this. Firstly, I don’t know how it’s expected to behave, and secondly, what if it is an Avatar? Are you willing to risk the anger of a god? I’m not! Not even one who’s working outside his own lands!”

“It was a thought,” she replied wistfully.

“A bad one,” he countered, leaving no room for further argument. “Why don’t you just set up a siege and hold them in place until they give up and surrender?”

“They do have to eat, so they are going to come out at some point, but a siege under these conditions is far from ideal,” she responded. “It certainly wasn’t what I had in mind. And only their gods know what they’re planning in there; it could be anything. Remember, only a third of our troops have seen combat. All of theirs have.”

There’s that sickness of theirs, too; what if part of their plan is to somehow spread it to us ? What are we going to do then? Darian was worried, and he wasn’t the only one, for he heard Lord Breon confide to Eldan in a whisper, “I wish I could just pour oil on that entire nest of vipers and burn them out.”

“Perhaps we’re pushing them too hard,” Eldan said aloud, in reasoned, measured tones. “After all, these people have been through a very great shock in meeting us; they’ve had their lives threatened, and they’ve seen that we have animal spirits of our own. We meant to intimidate them; we may actually have intimidated them so completely that they feel they are in a corner. What we should do, I think, is to give them time. We need to cultivate patience in dealing with them. In fact, I think we ought to pull back all our visible troops, and leave only the birds as sentries.” He smiled thinly. “They’ve seen that we have birds who might well be totemic spirits with us; the birds standing sentry alone should be enough, because now they will never know when a bird is one of ours or just a simple forest creature.”

Kerowyn shot him a strange glance, as if she hadn’t expected that from him, began to open her mouth, then closed it again, looking very thoughtful. “That’s got some merit,” she said, after a moment. “What do the rest of you think?”