The concerns of the few were drowned out as most of the men roared their approval. They even began chanting his name.
Dara very nearly spoiled his gains just then by throwing up. A veil of pulsating, painful blackness menaced from somewhere beyond the corners of his eyes, ready to rend and tear his sanity.
He did not actually hear Methwold’s response, nor was he conscious of what was said to give the Englishman leave to depart. It was all he could do to remain upright in the saddle and not beg for a pipe to ease his pain.
Chapter 50
Red Fort
Pavilion of the Healers
“Who are these men?” Jahanara asked. From the quality of his bloodstained robes and fine armor, the patient was clearly a Rajput umara of some note and likely someone she should know, but Jahanara could not place him. He might have been any age, really, so much of his face was covered in savage burns.
“One of the sons of Samarjit Khan, I believe,” Smidha supplied after a moment’s thought.
The veranda had become a triage area for the wounded. Three quarters of the pallets set out in preparation for the injured were already full, and the men out here were those the medics deemed would survive without immediate care. The stretcher-bearers of the corps had been bringing them in, first in a trickle, but in the last hour the flow of wounded had become a continuous stream.
“I thought they’d all declared for Aurangzeb,” Jahanara said.
“They did.” Monique had just entered the pavilion proper. “Your brother has decreed all wounded will be treated for their injuries, those who served the pretenders just as those who fought for Dara.”
Like her older brother, Jahanara considered herself a student—even a disciple—of the teachings of the great Sufi saint Mian Mir. So she could appreciate Dara Shikoh’s mercy while at the same time stifling a curse at his impracticality. Their medical capabilities were already on the verge of being overwhelmed, just treating their own wounded. If they had to treat those of the enemy as well…
She thrust that issue aside. They would just have to do as best they could. At the moment, she was more concerned over her brother’s own well-being.
“Have you heard anything of Dara?” she asked Monique. “He’s alive, or he couldn’t have given that order. But is he injured himself?”
The young Frenchwoman shook her head. “No, I haven’t. But—”
A stir at the entrance to the pavilion drew their attention. Another stretcher was being brought in. Pushing his way ahead of the stretcher-bearers was a man whose vigor indicated that the blood that covered much of his armor was not his own. Not most of it, at least.
When he looked up, searching for a space to set down the stretcher, Monique could see his face.
“Bertram!” she cried out, rushing toward him.
Bertram fended off her attempt at an embrace. “Careful! You’ll get blood all over you.”
Most of the blood was already drying, but he had a point. So she satisfied herself by leaning forward to give him a quick kiss. To hell with Mughal notions of propriety. She could manage that because he wasn’t wearing a helmet any longer.
Unless—
“You did wear your helmet out there, didn’t you?”
Bertram ignored the question. “Where can we set John down?”
For the first time, Monique looked down at the man on the stretcher. Sure enough, it was the up-timer John Ennis. He was very pale and didn’t seem conscious.
By then, Jahanara had arrived. “Over there,” she said, pointing to an adjacent pavilion whose entrance was flanked by two of her personal guards. She’d kept that in reserve for wounded men of high rank, not so much due to concerns over status but simply because the survival of such men and their quickest possible recovery was likely to be important. She’d stationed two of her best medics there for that reason also.
Speaking of best medics…
She looked around and spotted Priscilla in a corner of the main pavilion. Turning Monique in that direction with a hand on her shoulder, she pointed. “Get her,” she commanded.
* * *
When Ilsa saw her husband lying on the medical bench where the stretcher-bearers had placed him, her face grew tight but she gave no other indication of concern other than a quick hissing intake of breath.
Priscilla arrived just moments later. She turned to Bertram. “Where is he injured? Injured worst, I mean.”
Before Bertram could answer, John himself did. “My back,” he mumbled. But his eyes remained closed.
“It’s a wound in his back,” Bertram confirmed.
“Help me turn him over.”
Once Pris got a good look at the wound, the expression on her face seemed to ease. “It’s bad,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s fatal, although if infection sets in it will get nasty. Ilsa, see what you can find in the way of disinfectants.”
After Ilsa left, she turned back to John. “Can you move your legs?”
His left leg shifted a bit, then his right. “Sorta. Hurts, though.” He managed a soft chuckle. “Of course, they already hurt. Everything hurts.”
Pris wasn’t surprised. The wound in John’s back was the worst one he’d suffered, but there were several others. More than anything else she’d seen, that drove home to her just how savage the fighting must have been. He was lucky that no vital organs seemed to have been pierced, even if he’d lost a lot of blood.
Thankfully, she had plenty of one of the trade goods they’d come to India to find.
“Opium,” she commanded.
What she was actually handed by an orderly was what would have been called “laudanum” by Americans—those of them who knew their history, anyway—although it didn’t bear much resemblance. It was a tincture of opium in distilled palm wine, a reddish-brown liquid that was roughly eighty proof in terms of alcohol content.
And very bitter.
“Shit, that stuff is horrible,” John complained.
“Take another swallow,” Pris commanded. “What I’m about to do is going to hurt.”
John did, grimacing.
“And another.”
Despite his anxiety
