“Hm?” Bea patted my arm. “I’m sorry, I’ll be more careful.” She said it, but her fingers kept poking and mashing, not a bit gentler than before. “You look a bit like a mongrel with a flop ear.” She giggled and stifled it.
I let my mind drift.
A man screamed from someplace down the trail. More men shouted, and weapons clanked, but I didn’t hear a woman scream. Of course, Pil couldn’t scream if she were stabbed in the throat. Or gotten her head cut off. I tried to stand up again, but Bea pushed me back down, and she didn’t have to strain to do it.
Soon, Pil, Halla, and Whistler walked back toward us from the ambush. Blood covered Pil’s shoulder and spattered her chest. She stared at the ground, but she walked steadily.
Halla stopped near me and lay her spear across her shoulder. “We should leave before any more come.”
Whistler spit on the ground and glanced at Halla. “If we had hung their heads in the trees, then their friends might have thought all this fighting was a bad idea. You should have let me.”
Halla’s head swung toward Whistler in a greased arc. “You fought well, so I will answer you. Hanging their heads was a bad idea for many reasons. At least four. You did not fight well enough for me to tell you what they are. Bib, can you walk?”
“Hell yes, I can walk.”
Halla frowned at Bea. “Why is he not bandaged yet?”
“We don’t have anything even a little bit clean to cover that with.” Bea’s cheeks were turning pink.
“That’s a limp excuse,” Pil said.
Bea took a step toward Pil. “How do you know? From bandaging your horse?”
“Hey, that’s not nice . . .” Whistler shut up when Pil and Bea both glowered at him.
Halla twisted around to unlace a large pouch on the back of her belt. I hadn’t given it any thought. Maybe she carried the fingers of her enemies in it. Now she pulled out a huge, yellow chemise that shouldn’t have fit in that pouch except that the garment was made of fine silk. She shook it out, and I saw detailed, green embroidery at the collar and cuffs. It probably cost more than every stitch of clothing our group was wearing, including our boots.
I wondered why she was changing clothes out here in the middle of the swamp. Then a moment too late. I realized what she was doing. She started cutting the big shirt into strips. Everybody stared and let her do it.
“Don’t,” I wheezed. Halla glanced up, and I went on. “I have to heal this. I can’t guess what kind of filth is floating in this swamp air. If we just bandage it, my head will rot off in a day.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before, you ass?” Bea said.
I gazed at Bea and shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Halla stopped, chewing her lip. Mounds of yellow silk and silk strips dangled from her hands. Without commenting, she twisted around and began stuffing it all back into her pouch.
I closed my eyes to begin pulling my scalp back together, but then I peeked at Pil with one eye. “Pil, are you all right?”
The young woman stared up from the ground. “Sure.” She smiled at me, shrugged, and shook her head all at the same time. “Everything’s wonderful. I’ll tell you later how I killed him, you know, after your head’s not about to fall apart. I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I killed him, I mean.”
My manacles and chains complicated the healing somewhat. I pondered removing them the way I had Pil’s, but I was already regretting the power spent to heal my scalp when I had so little in reserve. My survival was the most worthwhile of causes, though. The healing didn’t improve the pain much, but my faculties cleared remarkably.
Halla stood over me until I finished.
I patted her arm, and she only flinched away a little. “I owe you one silk nightgown.”
“You do not. There is no debt.”
“Thanks just the same.”
“Put it from your mind.” Halla peered toward the horses.
“All right.” I nodded and wished I hadn’t. “It’s just a lemon-colored nightie. But thanks.”
Halla stiffened. “Stop.”
I grinned and poked at her arm but missed. “Why don’t you want me to offer you a little gracious thanks? Will it make you cry big, embarrassing tears? That can’t be it. I won’t accept it.” I realized I was feeling more light-headed than I’d thought.
Halla turned away from me. “Very well. Do not accept it. Do not accept that you are an ugly, old man now too. Also, go back to your cursed house and do not accept that your wife and children are dead forever.” Then she pushed past me toward her horse.
I expected I’d yell at her, call her a whore’s crusty ass crack, and maybe throw whatever objects I could reach. But all the anger fell out of me instead. She wasn’t who she had been before, so this was what I should expect from now on.
Well, to hell with that shit. Maybe she was a grim chunk of brutal iron now, but she’d have to prove it to me. I’d poke her with a stick all the way to the northern kingdoms and back until she either laughed or broke my arm.
I followed Halla into the bog, leading my horse. We had entered the southern part of Graplinger Bog, which forced a decision on us. We could tramp fifteen miles north through it toward the sea and Fat Shallows. Or we could walk inside the edge of it a few miles north and then pop back out. Leddie’s hooligans couldn’t be everywhere waiting for us.
Sadly, the bog was perilous to about the same extent everywhere, including just inside the edge. The path led deeper into the swampy lands, not along the edge, and I didn’t fancy skipping
