Darian took a deep breath, closed his eyes a moment (probably counting to ten, or invoking patience), and then opened them again. “You’re probably tired,” he said. “You must have ridden like a madwoman to get here as quickly as you did. Why don’t you get some sleep while I make sure someone gets a billet set up somewhere else for me? A bed’s a bed, and I don’t care where I sleep.”
Shandi heaved a great sigh and lay down again. “Thanks. Sorry to be so sharp - I am pretty tired - ”
She closed her eyes, and didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out; she did it so quickly that Keisha realized she must have gone without sleeping - except in the saddle - for her entire journey. Darian obviously realized it, too; he managed a little smile, and took Keisha by the elbow, leading her silently away through the rows of tents.
“You’re the only one of us that looks like she got any sleep last night,” he observed, when they were out of earshot.
“I probably am,” she replied, noting with concern the deep shadows under his eyes. “That was awfully good of you, to give up your bedroll to her.”
He waved the compliment aside. “It’s just a bedroll, the hertasi can move my things elsewhere, and they will as soon as I - Heyla!” He interrupted himself, as a hertasi poked its snout out of a larger tent. It waited expectantly while he hissed something at it, bobbed its head, and ran off.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “I’ve got myself a new bunk with Wintersky, and you one with the Healers - which I’d better take you to, so you can all get your heads together over this Summer Fever thing.”
“Thank you,” she replied, feeling more confident than she had since Shandi carried her off this morning. “Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems more important to me than the barbarians fighting with us.”
“And maybe you’re right,” was Darian’s thoughtful reply. “After all, there’s always the tactic of bottling them up in their camp and starving them into submission, but a line of fighters isn’t going to keep a plague inside their pickets. Listen, I hope you weren’t of fended by the way I treated your sister, but - well - ” He scratched his head, then shrugged. “I’m not impressed. She strikes me as used to getting her own way a lot, pretty immature, actually. Honestly, she hasn’t half the brains and good sense you have.”
“She’s probably so tired that half her brains aren’t working,” Keisha pointed out. “Besides, she’s not used to boys who treat her like - like - ”
“Like a brat who’s getting away with something she shouldn’t?” Darian offered, with a half smile. “Like a spoiled village princess who expects fellows to melt just because she looks at them with those sweet, brown doe-eyes? Oh, please!”
Keisha was so surprised by his answer that she simply stared at him for a moment. “Well - she is so very pretty - ”
“Not prettier than you,” Darian said bluntly. “And you have a great deal more than being pretty, if you’ll pardon my saying so. A Hawkbrother could turn a mud-doll into a beauty; we aren’t that impressed by prettiness alone.”
For all his bluntness, he started to blush as he said that, and looked quickly away as she continued to stare at him in further astonishment.
“Right, here’s the Healers’ tent,” he said quickly, waving at the large tent pitched at the end of the path they were on. “You go right on up. The hertasi will have told them you’re coming. I’ll find Wintersky’s billet and get a nap myself, before something else happens.”
Still blushing, he left her and made a sharp turn to the right, as she watched him hurry away with bemusement.
Then she shook herself into sense, and made straight for the Healers’ tent and business. Granted, it was entirely a new and rather delightful feeling to have a young man tell her she was pretty, and blush over her, but this was neither the time nor the place to get moonstruck.
When she got within earshot of the tent, she heard the debate already going on inside; she pushed open the flap, and was greeted immediately.
“Keisha!” Nala called with relief. “Good, we need all the minds on this that we can get! What do you know about this wasting disease?”
The Healers had arranged themselves in a rough circle in the middle of the large infirmary tent - which at the moment had no patients in it. Nala and her apprentices squeezed over on the bench they were using, and Keisha took her place beside them. She detailed everything that Darian had told her, and then added, “Tyrsell the king-stag is the one who had direct contact with the chieftain’s mind; would you like him to come give us everything he got?”
“That would be extremely helpful,” Gentian said thoughtfully, not at all disturbed by the notion of having the dyheli dump a basketload of mental images directly into his mind.
Keisha turned in time to see a hertasi coming into the tent with what must be her bedroll. In Tayledras, she asked it if Tyrsell could be invited to the tent, and why.
“Easily done, Healer,” it answered, with a bow of profoundest respect, and left the bedroll on the tent floor to answer her request personally.
“I believe that we must assume that this illness is both contagious and a grave danger to us,” Nala said, as Keisha turned her attention back to the group. “Remember the description, that it first went through the barbarians like a wildfire? Now we can expect them to have built up some immunity, but we have no such protection at this point.”
Grenthan mopped his brow and the back of his neck with a kerchief. “You surely know what the villagers and even Lord Breon would insist on, if we let it be known that we consider it very dangerous,” Grenthan said reluctantly. “They’d want us to surround the camp and burn them and it down to the ground.”
“That’s unacceptable!” Gentian snapped, rounding on his fellow Healer as if Grenthan were an enemy. “We cannot condone anything of the kind!”
“I don’t advocate that,” Grenthan protested, his hands up as if to ward off a blow. “I’m just telling you what Lord Breon would say!”
“But we have no cure, no treatment,” Nala pointed out. “We don’t even know what we’re facing. Where does the Oath put us? Are we to serve everyone, or the greatest good? Are we to try to save outsiders at the possible expense of unleashing a plague on thousands of our own, innocent people?”
“I don’t think that there is any doubt that we are to serve everyone, friend and enemy alike; the Oath is crystal clear on that point,” Gentian replied stiffly. “I can’t imagine how you could interpret it otherwise.”
“You can’t serve anyone if you’re all dead,” Keisha said slowly, and shook her head. “We don’t even know how this thing spreads. You could all be infected by now; for all we know, Eldan and the rest brought it back with them from their parley, and it’s only a matter of time before we all get it.”
Instantly, their faces all went blank; she waited while they searched within themselves for signs of infection of any kind. It didn’t take very long, they were so used to doing so, and the looks of relief told her that at least that fear was groundless.
“So it isn’t instantly contagious. Still - ” She let the sentence hang in the air, not needing to add, “it could have been.” She let the thought sink in, then continued. “I can’t see how we have the right to expose our own folk just so we can treat these strangers.”