Now their home was a pile of smoking rubble, and its folk, who had dwelt there for generations, near the Vale of the Moon Maidens, were become beggarly wanderers.
Tending the paltry remnants of their flocks, she and Rohzah had strayed too far and been swept up by what she knew in her heart and bones had to be the Witchfolk, so strangely did they speak and dress, and so boldly did that woman Ehrikah stride out among the men, daring even to rebuke the man who now prevented her from striking Shahron again.
Nakharar and leader this man seemed, yet he deferred to Ehrikah like a youth to a priestess. He looked young, but he spoke like a man seasoned by many battles, even though many of his words were strange to her, and his accent wrapped them even more strangely.
“Let the chit be, Ehrikah,” he repeated, more quietly. “Clearly she wasn’t taken in by our ‘welcome,’ so she tried to escape. An honorable attempt, at that,” he added, glancing down at the ledge from which he had rescued Shahron.
If she had fallen . . . ! She swallowed hard against a sudden stab of dizziness and nausea.
“Two girls untrained in technical climbing, wearing skirts and those idiot boots, on a rock face that I’d want ropes and spikes for, assuming I was fool enough to try it in the first place? That girl has guts. Stand back, and let me set her arm.”
“Before you go all misty-eyed over the chit, as you call her,” Ehrikah snapped, “let me remind you, Jay, that that chit half-blinded a guard, whom we had to send back to the Institute to transfer, just when we need every able-bodied man and all of our equipment.” “She was within her rights to try to escape,” said the man Jay, “and is entitled to medical care. Now, can you control yourself, Doctor, long enough to provide it, or will you leave it to a mere soldier?” Ehrikah snorted something in the Witchman’s tongue that sounded like “geneva-convention sob stories,” and tossed her head, an arrogant one, too, with a dark mane of silver-streaked hair that any Ahrmehnee
woman would have taken pride in and adorned properly and bravely with scarves and the silver coins of her dowry.
“You can coo over little Miss Purple Heart later,” she told Jay. “Damn! I could have used her strength. But now, well, I guess that I have business with the cousin.”
Shahron could hear Rohzah gulp, suppressing a sob but not a quiver of fear. “I’m sick, I’ll make myself ugly,” threatened her cousin.
“Nonsense!” Ehrikah snapped. “I’m not after your paltry maidenhead, and I’m not going to hurt you. Now, come along, or shall I send for the men?” Rohzah went quietly, more afraid of the threat of men, of male lust and male violence, than of the present danger posed by Ehrikah, who—as Shahron suspected—threatened something else, though what it was she did not know. But then, Shahron had never based her love for her cousin on brains. A twinge shot up her arm, and before she could stop herself, she finally cried out. Her eyes filled with tears of pain and embarrassment.
“Brave girl,” the man whom Ehrikah called Jay and whom she had heard younger men call “sir” murmured. “I’ve seen strong men faint and foul themselves after a spiral fracture such as you’ve got.” He raised his voice. “You, Cabell, have we got a flask hereabouts?”
“As the general wishes!” cried one of the lesser warriors in a voice that seemed to shake the top of Shahron’s head off. “Sir!”
“As you were, Cabell. Give me the flask, and take yourself off. Can’t you see the child needs quiet? No . . .” He held up a hand. “Quietly. At ease, man.” He flicked fingers at his forehead in response to the younger man’s stiff gesture, then opened a very old, dented silver bottle.
“I don’t know how morphine”—whatever that was— “will affect you, so I think you’d better have a gulp or two of this. Watch out; it’ll burn,” he warned as Shahron swallowed. The fire from the drink made her eyes water again and took her mind off the fire in her arm, worse now because of the way it had been handled. Once again, this nakharar among Witchmen prodded at her arm, muttered to himself, then wound cloth about a straight stick and bound her arm deftly to it.
“Another?” he asked, offering the flask, and smiled as she grasped for it with her right hand. “No, no more now, or you will be sick. Don’t worry if the world goes a little out of focus,” he told her. “Let it blur. God knows, child, you’re entitled.”
Tears trickled down Shahron’s cheeks. She was disgraced, doubly disgraced, to weep before even a noble enemy. Unless, of course, he wanted her as a wife. She could not imagine why he might want a girl with a broken arm, niece to a nakharar though she was: he must have wives at home. Perhaps as a wife for a younger son? Brides had been stolen before, had wept, but then become the mothers of strong sons.
“What’s wrong—God, Corbett, that’s a foolish question to ask!” Jay Corbett spat. “No, I’m not shouting at you, girl.”
“I have . . . something terrible, something evil is happening,” wept Shahron.
“That’s not blue-devils from the brandy. No fool, are you?” Corbett’s mouth tightened, and his eyes went hard, the way her uncle’s had when he looked over the smoking ruins of their village and knew that his younger brother, Shahron’s father, lay buried with half the tribe, under the scree and the rubble. “Here, I think that you had better have another shot after all.”
He held the flask up to her lips and let her drink her fill. The fire’s bite had subsided to a hearthfire now, and she smiled up at him treacherously. When she finished, he stoppered the little bottle, but not without shaking it to gauge its contents and a thirsty glance at it.
“Sorry, General,” he muttered. “Sun’s not over the yardarm for you yet; you’re on duty. Go to sleep, Shahron. You need that more than anything else.”
She was surprised that he had even bothered to learn her name. “Oh yes, I know your name. I know that you’re a refugee, that you lost most of your family when the mountain . . . blew up.” He grimaced and shook his head. “If it were up to me, I’d have you back in Broomtown so fast—I could name three fine fellows who would fight over a girl like you ...”
“No . . .” Her lips were thick. “No . . . dowry V' She produced the correct word with a kind of groggy triumph, but he shrugged.
“ The lady is a dowry in herself,’ ” he muttered in the Witchman’s tongue, then switched back into accented Ahrmehnee. “No, never mind what I just said, child. You wouldn’t understand. Try to sleep. Unfortunately, when you wake, things will probably be worse.”
Her captor enjoined her to courage? Surely, she must have lived her life properly or she would not face such a noble enemy. How proud her uncle would be to have such a one, and how glad ... if she had both her arms hale and the use of a knife, if she won free, how he would praise her if she could return bearing her enemy’s head. Or the head of that Ehrikah! Now, that was truly,a pleasant idea. She yawned, and felt the warmth of blankets tucked about her. Already, she knew enough of this Jay Corbett, this Witchman general, to know that even Ms kindnesses were well planned.
“Poor thing’s got a smile like a grubby-faced angel,” she heard him say as her eyes fluttered shut. The ache in her arm now seemed blessedly far away. And so, after a moment or two longer, did the rest of the world.
Shahron woke to a feeling of contentment. The ache in her broken arm still seemed very remote. She was warm and dry, as she had not been since the village was destroyed—or was that as much a dream as her present existence seemed to be? She had been out tending sheep with Rohzah, and she had fallen. . . .