Fatal Revenant

dwellers. But when she offered to treat his hurts, he declined. His wounds were honourable. He meant to bear them honourably.

She was far too weary to protest. And she saw a certain logic in his refusal. Those Woodhelvennin who were able to understand what he had endured for them responded to the authority of his torn flesh.

Leaving the Master to live or die, Linden followed Hyn back toward the battlefield where she had last seen Bhapa, Mahrtiir, and the Humbled.

Vaguely she noticed that the Sandgorgons stood together on the far side of the carnage. Stave was with them: he faced them as if he could communicate with them. But she had no fortitude to spare for what passed between them.

Her vision was a blur of fatigue. Yet she needed to watch where she walked. The ground was littered with the corpses of Cavewights, their long limbs jutting at odd angles where the bones had been twisted or split. They baffled her senses: she might trip over them. And if she could not see, she would be unable to find those whom she sought.

Fortunately Pahni’s sight was keener; less bewildered by the ramifications of slaughter. Abruptly she cried out in anguish. Racing ahead, she dropped to her knees amid the stench and confusion of the dead.

Liand hurried after her; but Linden could not hasten. She could only blink and stare, and try to find her way.

The Humbled waited near Pahni: they appeared to stand in attendance. Like Vernigil, they were all severely injured; cut and battered from scalp to shin. Runnels of blood flowed down their arms and legs. Yet they retained their wonted upright intransigence, as if neither pain nor death could touch them.

Now Linden saw four Ranyhyn there. She recognised Narunal. Bhanoryl, Mhornym, and Naybahn were less familiar to her, but she squinted at them until she was sure. They, too, were gravely wounded; almost staggering with blood loss. But they, too, seemed to stand in attendance, as though they had come to pay homage.

They would let Linden treat them, if the Humbled would not. But it was possible that neither the great horses nor the Haruchai absolutely required her aid. In their separate fashions, the Ranyhyn and the Masters were preternaturally hardy. They might survive as they were.

Then Linden reached the place where Pahni and Liand knelt over Mahrtiir, Bhapa, and Whrany. Pahni fought tears as she fumbled at her pouch of amanibhavam. Beside her, Liand’s face was pale with dismay. The orcrest rested, inert and forgotten, in his fist. He could find no use for its magic here.

Bhapa huddled on his knees between the Manethrall and Whrany, beating his forehead on the blood-raddled ground. He did not permit himself to howl or weep, and so he had no other outlet for his pain. Peering at him, Linden discerned that he had suffered less physical damage than the Humbled or the Ranyhyn. He had a few broken ribs, a few slashes and contusions. Infection would kill him eventually: his injuries themselves would not. And a poultice of amanibhavam might suffice to save him, if Linden’s stamina failed.

But Whrany was dead. The Ranyhyn’s head had been almost severed from his body. His blood drenched Bhapa. The Cord wore it as if it were a winding-sheet.

Mahrtiir still breathed. That was unfortunate. Death would have been a kinder fate.

He lay on his back, gasping at the dusty reek of bloodshed. In spite of his Ramen toughness, he writhed as though he knew that he should not move-and could not restrain himself. He had been cut and pierced as severely as the Humbled; as often as the Ranyhyn. But some weapon, possibly a spear, had struck him near his left temple and carried straight through the front of his skull, ripping away both of his eyes.

Only countless hours in County Hospital’s emergency room enabled Linden to study the Manethrall’s face until she was sure that the bones behind his eyes remained essentially intact; that this wound had not reached his brain.

Unable to efface her weakness, she strove to ignore it. With desperation and willpower, a kind of grieving rage, she fanned embers of Earthpower into unsteady flames and spilled them over Mahrtiir until he was laved in fire.

In some sense, Linden was still a physician. She could not behold his suffering and remain passive.

Please, she prayed, although there was no one who might have heeded her. Please.

Please don’t die.

Don’t hate me for not letting you die.

The Manethrall had chosen to accompany her because he chafed against the predictable and unambitious lives of his people. He had craved a tale which would deserve to be remembered among the Ramen. And he had supported her with complete fidelity.

This was the result. He might live, but he would never see again.

Exhaustion left her defenceless: she could not control the intensity of her health-sense. It was empathy transmogrified into excruciation. She saw every detail of his torn tissues-flesh and muscle, nerve and bone-as if it were replicated in her own body. She could have counted every ripped blood vessel, numbered every delicate channel of lymph and mucus. And she descried precisely how each tiny increment of damage could be repaired by Earthpower and Law.

She did not have the strength for the task. Even if she had been fresh and ready-even if she had not done so much killing-she could not have restored his eyes. There was nothing left of them. But everything that was possible for her, she did, and more. When she began to falter, she reached out to Liand, mutely asking for his aid. Instinctively he gave her what she needed. Summoning light from the orcrest, he gripped her hand so that the Sunstone was pressed between his palm and hers.

With that influx of power, she brought Mahrtiir back from agony and the borderlands of death.

His breathing grew quieter in spite of his pain. Now Linden was the one who gasped. As she released Liand’s hand, her surroundings seemed to turn themselves inside out, and she felt herself begin to fall.

But Bhapa surged to his feet and caught her in a fierce hug, ignoring his damaged ribs; staining her with Whrany’s blood as well as his own. “Ringthane,” he whispered, calling her away from collapse. “Mane and Tail, Ringthane! My life is yours. It was so before. Now it is yours utterly.” She heard weeping in his voice. “If the Manethrall and the Ranyhyn do not forbid it, I will accompany you into the depths of Gravin Threndor, or the inferno of Hotash Slay, or the bitter heart of the Sarangrave, and name myself blessed.”

She had no answer. She could bear neither his gratitude nor his sorrow. Mahrtiir would never see again. She had given the Manethrall a life of irredeemable darkness.

When Bhapa eased his embrace, she pulled away. “Amanibhavam,” she replied, panting raggedly. “Poultices. Bandages. Stop the bleeding.” Mahrtiir had too many other wounds, and she had tended none of them. “Then help the Ranyhyn.”

“Yes, Ringthane.” At once, Bhapa turned to obey.

Pahni had already set to work. Together the Cords mixed water with the crushed, dried blades of their potent grass to make a salve.

Helplessly Linden looked to Liand. Again he gave her what she needed. Supporting her with one arm, he lifted springwine to her lips. At the same time, he kept his orcrest alight. He may have hoped that the Sunstone’s eldritch possibilities would lend vitality to the springwine.

His instincts had not misled him. As she drank, Linden tasted something akin to Glimmermere’s lacustrine potency. If she could have bathed in the tarn, she might have been able to wash away the charnel stench of what she had done: the Cavewights burning like brittle sticks, the wolves scoured by sheets of flame-But Revelstone was too far away. She would find no healing there.

Nevertheless springwine and Liand’s considerate exertion brought her back from the brink of herself once more. Soon she was able to leave Mahrtiir and the Ranyhyn to the ministrations of Bhapa and Pahni. The Humbled she consigned to their stubbornness. First Woodhelven’s people needed more than she had done for them; far more.

There was a breeze blowing, some vagary of the undisturbed sunlight. Gently it carried the dust of battle and butchery away. But it could not shift the raw choleric stink of bloodshed, or the implications of Linden’s inadequacy.

Liand offered to accompany her. She told him to find clean cloth for bandages instead. She felt as laden with death as the dirt of Gallows Howe. If she were alone, she might finally find tears for everything that had been lost.