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Madlenka herself took charge of the stretcher-bearing teams, partly because she thought her authority would get help to the wounded faster, partly because she dreaded the horrors of blood and pain that would unfold in the hall. In a way, she was being cowardly in choosing the danger of the battlements, and she remembered Father telling Petr that courage usually sprang from fear of being thought a coward.
Halfway to the barbican she realized that her mother had blundered when she set up the infirmary in the keep, for it was too far from the north gate. She should have consulted one of the Magnus brothers, any of whom would probably have advised her to requisition St. Sebastijan’s church, which was much closer. And as soon as this skirmish was over, they must organize another hospital near the south gate, probably in St. Petr’s. People forget how to fight wars after too many years of peace.
When she arrived at the fighting, Madlenka had no trouble sweeping up the casualties on the curtain wall, but collecting them from the roof of the barbican was a challenge that required every glint of aristocratic arrogance she could summon. Carrying loaded stretchers down a spiral staircase would be both slow and dangerous, so she moved her first-aid station into the machine room and issued orders that the porters taking materials up must not come down empty-handed. Soon screaming wounded were arriving piggyback, or over shoulders. The bolts had been falling at very steep angles, so the wounds were mostly in shoulders and feet. More than one man had been temporarily nailed to the floor, though, and one even had his helmet spiked to his skull; he died on the stretcher.
If anyone had asked her yesterday, she would have said that such gruesome sights would throw her straight into hysteria, yet in the heat of battle she found herself so caught up by the urgency of moving these suffering men to relief as fast as possible that she never lost her nerve for a moment. Neither the blood on her hands and clothes nor the crossbow bolts going zang! off the stonework distracted her.
She was only dimly aware of what was going on outside, but she knew that the Wends must either climb over the battlements above or force the main gate below, and in either case the fighting would head for the machine room. The thick stone walls muffled the noise, the shouted orders, the cheers and groans, the clamor of firearms and crossbows. But she registered the roar when the ladders fell.
Jubilation reigned. The defenders screamed their lungs out in triumph. The emergency was over for the day, and soon the Wends withdrew, leaving hundreds of dead behind them. Most of the defenders were allowed to stand down, and promptly rushed away in search of beer, song, and other means of celebration. The last of the wounded in the machine room were carried off to the infirmary, and Madlenka breathed for the first time in too long.
She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist and smiled at Giedre, who looked a freak. Her hair hung in a tangle, as if her head covering had gone for bandages. Her clothes and hands were filthy and bloodstained. Madlenka could be in no better shape, although at least she had retained her tur [ains aban. They had survived their first battle. Please God that it be their last!
“That seems to be all, my lady,” Giedre said, probably the first time anyone had used Madlenka’s title in… how long? An hour? Two?
“We’d better check.” She headed for the spiral staircase, just as Dali emerged from it. He carried his sallet under his arm, but he seemed to be unwounded, and was grinning as widely as any human being ever could, rattail hair plastered over sweat-streaked face. Forget transient visitors like Sir Vladislav Magnus. Officially Dalibor Notivova was in charge of the defenses of Castle Gallant and had just repulsed a major assault. One more for the history books, and perhaps the greatest moment in his entire life.
“Well done, constable!” she said. “Or are you Sir Dalibor now?”
“Not yet, my lady.” Incredibly his grin grew even wider. “But Sir Vlad has promised to dub me-tonight in the hall!”
Not too many years ago, when she was a child and he was a married man, she would have given him a hug over news much less grand than knighthood, but now it could not be. She congratulated him. So did Giedre. Was that a slight blush under her grime and bloodstains? Why did Dali abruptly put his sallet on, hiding his face? Madlenka had not suspected… but she had been too drowned in her own troubles. And why shouldn’t they? Dali needed a stepmother for his children, and Giedre could no longer count on accompanying Madlenka to some far- off land when she married some distant noble. Madlenka was going to be staying right here till the day she died.
Dali thanked them both for caring for the wounded.
“Any left up there?” Madlenka asked.
“Two or three still linger, but can’t be moved. The rest are beyond your help, ma’am.”
Corpses were men’s business.
Madlenka sent Giedre off to the keep, with orders to turn back any stretcher parties she met coming this way. She ran up to the roof to check on those wounded who were not to be moved, and see if Wulf was there. He wasn’t, and had certainly not been among the wounded carried off to the infirmary, so he was probably with Anton, wherever that was.
At least a score of bodies lay around the roof with their faces covered, to show that they were indeed dead and had received the proper rites. Surely Dali or Vlad would arrange to have the corpses removed as soon as possible? There was no sign of the biggest Magnus. Beside the unfinished trebuchet, though, a priest was administering extreme unction to a casualty, and Baron Ottokar was kneeling beside him, bareheaded. As she drew nearer, she saw that he was holding the dying man’s hand, which seemed an oddly touching gesture from so hard a man.
The victim was little older than she; she knew him by sight but not by name. He must have tripped o [avea man.
“I believe that’s all, Father,” Ottokar said, glancing around. “No, there’s one more over there, see?” He pointed to where someone was urgently beckoning, and the priest, having frowned disapprovingly at Madlenka, swished off to attend to another casualty.
Madlenka looked suspiciously at the unconscious man before her. She took his other hand and felt for a pulse. “I think he’s dead,” she said.
Ottokar nodded and laid the man’s arms gently on his chest. “You don’t happen to have a cloth on you, do you?”
She did, a spare bandage already badly bloodstained. She gave it to him and he covered the corpse’s face. Then he rose, and she did too. “How long has he been dead?” she asked.
The baron was very big, although not as huge as Vladislav. He was almost as tall as Anton, but much wider, and he had a broad, stony face, with very cold, dark eyes. On her first sight of him yesterday she had decided that he was both clever and potentially dangerous, and she saw no reason to change her mind now. But his eyes were red-rimmed and his face stubbled, reminding her of Father, the time he had been up all night directing a fire- fighting operation in the town.
“I have no idea,” he said softly. “He might have been dead when I got here.”
“You lied to the priest?”
He shrugged. “But now the holy man can in good faith tell the boy’s family that he died in a state of grace.”
She realized that a small smile was twisting the edges of His Lordship’s mouth. If it was mockery, it seemed to be directed less at her than at his own sentimentality. So there was a gentle side to this man after all? She had failed to find it at the banquet last night, when they had been seated next to each other.
“This is the worst part of battle,” he said, starting to stroll across the deck toward the northern battlements. “Counting the bodies, I mean. But thanks to you and your team, there may not be as many bodies as there might have been. I was watching. I congratulate you on a fine job.”
“Thank you.” She had only done what was needed.
“First aid is the best part of a siege. Sieges are the nastiest sort of war, you know, but at least the defenders receive decent medical care and aren’t left lying all night in the mud, waiting to have their throats slit in the morning.”
That did not sound like a hard man ta [a h
“And I congratulate you on a successful defense.”
He glanced down at her, sideways, and this time there was no doubt about the smile. “I don’t deserve any
