Chapter Thirty-One
The spring melt came early. On the day the First and Second left Fort Flood for the northern front the snow was shrinking in uneven crusty clumps, and the sound of trickling water was everywhere. The river roared.
Gentian's army at Fort Flood, still led by one of Mydogg's now bedraggled Pikkians, had not surrendered. Hungry and horseless, they'd done something far more desperate and foolish: they'd tried to escape on foot. It was not pleasant for Nash giving the command, but he did it, because he had to, for if they were allowed to go, they would find their way to Mydogg and his army at Marble Rise. It was a massacre. By the time the enemy laid its weapons down, they numbered only hundreds, in a force that had begun, months ago, as fifteen thousand.
Nash stopped to arrange the conveyance of prisoners and wounded back to Fort Flood. Fire helped Gentian's medics. Their need for her was overwhelming. She knelt in a sheen of water that slid across the rocks to the hungry river, and held a man's hand while he died.
Fire, her guard, several other healers, the armourers and other staff persons – and, at a distance, the dappled grey horse – rode north on the tails of the First and Second.
They passed very near the city, near enough that they could see the river swollen almost as high as the bridges. Fire stretched as hard as she could for Hanna and Tess, but though she could just make out the black turrets of the palace rising above indistinguishable buildings, she could not reach them. They were out of her range.
Soon after, they approached the vast northern camps, startlingly close to the city. The sight was not cheering – the rise was desolate, crowded with musty and soaked tents, some sitting smack in the middle of newly formed streams. Mute, exhausted-looking soldiers from the Third and Fourth wandered among the tents. At the appearance of the First and Second, their faces lit up slowly, hesitantly, as if they didn't dare to believe in the mirage of mounted reinforcements kicking up such a spray that they seemed to be emerging from a lake. Then there followed a sort of quiet and tired jubilation. Friends and strangers hugged each other. Some in the Third and Fourth wept involuntary, depleted tears.
Fire asked a soldier of the Third to take her to the army hospital. She got to work.
The healing rooms of the northern front were situated at the south and back of the camp in hastily constructed wooden barracks with the stone plain of Marble Rise for a floor. Which meant that at the moment, the floor was slippery with seeping water, and in some places slick with blood.
She saw quickly that the work here would be no different and no more desperate than what she was used to. She uncovered her hair and moved down the rows of patients, stopping at those who were in need of more than her presence. Hope and lightness came to the rooms like a clean breeze, as it had in the camp with the arrival of reinforcements, except that here the change was her doing, and hers alone. How strange it was to understand that. How strange to have the power to cause others to feel something she herself did not feel; and then catch the hint of it in their collective minds, and begin to feel it herself.
Through an arrow loop in the wall she saw a familiar horse and rider tearing across the camp toward the healing rooms. Brigan pulled up at Nash's feet and dropped from the saddle. The two brothers threw their arms around each other and embraced hard.
Shortly thereafter he stepped into the healing rooms and leaned in the doorway, looking across at her quietly. Brocker's son with gentle grey eyes.
She abandoned all pretense of decorum and ran at him.
After some time, a cheeky fellow in a cot nearby said aloud that he was inclined to disbelieve the rumour that the lady monster was marrying the king.
"What tipped you off ?" asked another fellow, one cot over.
Fire and Brigan didn't let go of each other, but Fire laughed. "You're thin," she said to him between kisses, "and your colour is off. You're sick."
"It's just a bit of dirt," he said, kissing tears away on both of her cheeks.
"Don't joke. I can feel that you're sick."
"It's only exhaustion," he said. "Oh, Fire, I'm glad you're here, but I'm not sure you should be. This isn't a fortress. They attack arbitrarily."
"Well, if there are to be attacks, then I need to be here. I can do too much good not to be."
His arms around her tightened. "Tonight when you're done with your work, will you come find me?"
I will.
A voice outside the healing rooms called for the commander. Brigan sighed. "Come straight into my office," he said dryly, "even if there's a queue outside the door. We'll never see each other if you wait until no one else is looking for me."
As he left to answer the call, she heard him exclaiming in wonderment on the rise. "Rocks, Nash. Is that a river mare out there? Do you see her? Have you ever laid eyes on a more gorgeous creature?"
The King's Army's numbers at the northern front were now practically doubled. Their plan was to launch a massive attack against Mydogg in the morning. Everyone knew that it would be the battle to determine the war. That evening, an anxious pall settled over the camp.
Fire took a break from the healing rooms and walked among the tents, through clammy patches of fog that rose from the melting water, her guard making a loose circle around her. The soldiers were untalkative, their eyes latching on to her, wide and tired, wherever she went. "No," she said, when her guard made a move to stop a man who reached for her arm. "He doesn't want to hurt me." She looked around and said with conviction, "No one here wants to hurt me." They only wanted a bit of reassurance on the night before a battle. Perhaps it was a thing she could give.
It was fully dark by the time she came upon Nash sitting alone in a chair outside the command tents. The stars were pricking into place in the sky, one at a time, but his head was bent into his hands, where he could not see them. Fire came to stand with him. She put her good hand on the back of his chair to steady her balance as she turned her face to the universe.
He heard her, or felt her, beside him. He reached rather absently for her other hand, stared into it, tracing the living skin at the base of her dead fingers. "You have a reputation among the soldiers," he said. "Not just the injured soldiers – you've developed a reputation that's spread through the entire army. Did you know? They're saying the beauty of you is so powerful, and the mind of you so warm and insistent and strong, that you can call people back from death."
Fire spoke quietly. "There are many people who've died. I've tried to hold on, but still they let go."
Nash sighed and gave her back her hand. He tilted his face up to the stars. "We're going to win this war, you know," he said, "now that our army's together. But the world doesn't care who wins. It'll go on spinning, no matter how many people are slaughtered tomorrow. No matter if you and I are slaughtered." After a moment, he added, "I almost wish it wouldn't, if we aren't allowed to go on spinning with it."
Most soldiers in the camp were sleeping by the time Fire and her guard left the healing rooms and crossed again to the command tents. She stepped through the flap of Brigan's office to find him standing at a table covered with diagrams, rubbing his head while five men and three women argued a point about archers and arrows and wind patterns on Marble Rise.
If Brigan's captains did not notice her unobtrusive entry at first, they came to notice, for the tent, though large, was not so mammoth that seven newcomers could hang back in the corners. The argument dissipated and turned to stares.
"Captains," Brigan said with obvious fatigue. "Let this be the only time I ever have to remind you of your manners."