“Perhaps not sensible according to your needs and desires, Captain,” Snowfire said with absolute politeness. “But I’m certain it was sensible to those who worshiped those gods - always providing, of course, that the ones interpreting the gods’ will were honest. Case in point - Karse before Solaris.”
“Huh. Good point.” She sat down and looked all around the circle. “So, pull back and patience it is. Anybody have any objections?”
Clearly there were none that anyone thought worth mentioning, so Kerowyn declared the meeting at an end, and she and Snowfire left to meet with their respective troops and scouts and give them their new orders.
The debate in the Healers’ tent had gone on for most of the day, and showed no signs of stopping. Nightwind had joined them, as the only representative of the Hawkbrothers, and she had concurred with the consensus that something would have to be done about the Summer Fever and quickly, before it crossed to the allies.
“It’s summer now,” Keisha pointed out. “What if another outbreak starts among them? What do we do then?”
“We’d have to impose some sort of quarantine, I suppose,” began Grenthan.
“That could be difficult if we’re in the middle of armed conflict with them,” Nightwind said dryly. “Just how would we enforce it? Insist that only healthy people be allowed on the battlefield? Hold inspections for fever and sneezes before anyone can fight?”
Keisha choked back an involuntary laugh at the absurd image that conjured up; no one else seemed to find it funny, except perhaps Nightwind herself.
“I wonder - ” she started to say, then stopped.
“What?” asked Gentian, who had become the default leader at this point.
“Well, I just wonder why these northerners don’t have any real Healers of their own?” she continued, flushing, thinking that it was probably a stupid question. “I mean, the shaman seems to have done herb-Healing and that sort of thing, but no one uses the Gift. . . .”
Apparently no one else thought it was a stupid question, because a wary silence descended on the group. Finally Nala cleared her throat uneasily.
“In Karse, before Solaris, they used to test children for the Gift of Healing and sacrifice them if they were too old or too strong-willed to be indoctrinated into the priesthood,” she said slowly. “You don’t suppose that these barbarians do the same thing, do you?”
“In Karse they also sacrificed children with Mindspeech, on the grounds that it was a mark of demons,” Gentian reminded her. “But the use of Mindspeech didn’t frighten these people. And I have very clear images from Tyrsell’s gleanings that the shamans have never used the Healing Gift in the way we do. I suspect that Healing is a Gift they either don’t possess or don’t recognize.”
“If they thought it was an evil thing, they wouldn’t be looking for Healers,” Nightwind added. “No, I don’t think this is a case of doing away with children showing the Gift. Anyone with an untrained, unused Gift of Healing would just go off by himself to get away from the things he started to pick up from everyone else, and that’s hardly unusual behavior among these folk. From what I’ve gleaned, people split off from their clans all the time, either because of feuds, or jealous protection of a good hunting range, or basic dislike of others in the clan.”
One of the apprentices cleared his throat; this was a young man Keisha would have picked for a scholar, not a Healer. “It makes more sense in a society like theirs for people who don’t fit to go off on their own. They’ll never find a mate, and dissension weakens the group.”
A scholar’s reasoning if ever I heard it, but he’s right.
“Still - wouldn’t at least a few of them learn what the
Gift meant?” Nala asked. “I’ve known plenty of self-trained Healers.”
“But those self-trained Healers knew not only that there was such a thing in the first place, but what it meant and what signs to recognize it by,” Nightwind replied. “Not only that, but think of what their lives are like, particularly now! With that much pain and illness all around them, children with the Gift might well shut themselves down completely just out of instinctive self-defense. They’d probably do so long before any other real signs manifested. It’s happened that way before, and if you don’t know that the bad feelings you are getting are coming from other people or that they mean that you can actually help those other people, you’d welcome anything that made them go away.”
“There are times when I’d welcome it now,” Nala put in wryly.
At that point, Darian arrived, with a message that made all of their debate moot, at least for a few days. “May I interrupt you?” he asked, poking his head inside the tent, and bringing with him a breath of cooler air.
“Be my guest,” Gentian responded. “You aren’t interrupting anything that hasn’t been talked to death by now. We’re arguing in circles.”
“The barbarians have shut themselves up in their camp, and the war council has agreed to pull back and let them settle for a couple of days anyway.” He joined the circle, squeezing in next to Keisha, who obligingly moved over for him. “The thought is that maybe we were a bit too good at giving them a scare, and that they may need some time to stew things over and figure out that we don’t want to wipe them out. Well, some of us don’t. Anyway, no one is going to do anything for the next day or two, or even three. Thought you’d want to know.”
“That gives us some breathing room,” Gentian said with obvious relief, then looked around the circle. “Go think about these things, and we’ll talk them over tomorrow. Maybe a little sleep will give us a new direction.”
Keisha already had a direction in mind, but she was going to need Darian’s help to make her plan work. She waited while the others went their separate ways, then said, before Darian could leave, “I’d like to get your opinion on something. May I borrow a little of your time?”
“Of course!” he agreed, eagerly enough to give her a little thrill of pleasure. “Let’s collect some dinner, and we can talk while we eat.”
At that point she realized that the chava and vegetables that had been passed around the Healers’ conference had worn off a very long time ago, and she was only too happy to follow his lead.
He seemed to want real privacy as much as she did, for he found a place near the brook that supplied water for the camp, practically on top of a set of fist- and head-sized water-rounded rocks that broke up the flow, where the babbling waters effectively masked low-voiced speech. “I have an odd feeling that our minds are running along the same lines,” he said, managing to get his dinner eaten while avoiding talking with his mouth full. “So, what did you have in mind?”
She stared at the water for a moment, phrasing her plan in her mind. “I think we ought to try and catch a barbarian,” she replied. “First of all, we need to be able to talk to them in their own language. We can’t do anything by just going through Tyrsell, not really. Maybe they’ve experienced Mindspeech before, but talking to them in their own language would make them feel more comfortable.”
“You are either reading my mind, or we’re reasoning along exactly the same lines!” he exclaimed, with muted surprise. “And you are absolutely right, that’s precisely what we need to do. I had it in mind that we weren’t going to really learn what’s going on in their camp unless our watchers knew their tongue. But you have something more in mind than that, don’t you?”