That cut through the noise. All froze and stared at me. Vess stared, too. I folded my arms; yes, I was only a slip of a girl, sixteen, with a long braid wrapped around my head. I’d watched my teacher cheat death and saved my share of lives. I meant to do more.
One of the surgeons, who hadn’t so much as looked up from his work, pulled an arrow free of a soldier’s thigh — the man screamed, writhing on the table, and a spurt of blood flew over the surgeon’s head. In the quiet, all heard him curse as he reached into the wound. He looked up at last.
Across the room, he answered me with a bitter twist in his voice. “Doctor Ceros at your service, miss. If you’re such a wondrous life-saver, come see to this.”
I could guess what it was as I trotted across the common room, weaving through patient-laden tables and more laid on the floor. When I reached Ceros’ side, he started to speak but I held up one hand. The patient’s kir patterns told me all.
The arrow had nicked his artery, in the thigh, and his meridian wavered. The wound was full of blood; Ceros’ fingers, pinching the nick shut, were buried in it.
“Think you can stitch through the spray?” he asked, snide.
I’d had a belly-full of such attitude, at home. On the tip of my finger, I wove a little patch charm. “Don’t move,” I told Ceros, and slipped my finger in next to his. The patient’s patterns glowed under my call, showing me just where to place the patch. “Done.”
Ceros snorted. I shrugged one shoulder and turned away. “The bar.” I told Vess, pointing. It was the only surface left to claim.
“I’ll be damned,” Ceros said, behind me. He’d let go of the artery, no doubt. “Luzan, assist our little miracle-worker. Who are you?”
“I am your surgeon. Kate.”
“Clear that table!” Ceros snapped his fingers, pointing at one in front of the open, full-length windows. The soldier on it lay too still, and looked too pale, to be alive.
“Bring Del,” I said.
Luzon, my new assistant, looked to be a scrawny boy with a shock of black hair, but he dragged the dead soldier off the table on his own. The infirmary’s bustle whirled back to life. Vess bulled his way through it, carrying Del by the shoulders. He and the second knight laid Del on the table, spear jutting up. Del still clutched it in both hands, chest heaving.
“Get his brigantine loose,” I said, putting my medicine bag on a stool and opening it. “And the mail. Luzon? I’ll need a —”
When I looked, the boy was sliding a piece of belt-leather into Del’s mouth, to bite. Luzon knew his business, then. I reached into my bag, looking for the wallet with my scalpel and curved needles. I had some catgut, and a spool of wool thread. Iron shears. A few cleansing charms, bound to little bone figures of Mother Love. Some boiled bandages.
“Tell Peren he has command,” Vess told the second knight, as I turned. “Watch those fucking drains.” The man saluted and went; the company of knights moved off, first checking the drain in the middle of the street before the tavern.
Vess eyed me up and down, taking in the bright little blades in my open wallet. “You won’t just magick his wound shut?”
I laid my wallet and a cleansing charm beside Del’s head. His brown eyes flicked to it, showing panicky whites. “I have only what kir my saint gave me, before I came here,” I said, taking my larger scalpel. “With it, I must save as many as I can, before the kir runs out and my mind tires such that I lose focus. Should I lose that, I’ll only cause more harm.”
My friend Ilya, lying pale and dead, flicked through my perfect memory. I nodded to the spear shaft. “You must let go, Del.”
Vess took it in both his hands. Del’s hands twitched, unwilling to obey. I put mine on his, worked my fingers between the wood and his skin. Called his pattern as I did it; he’d bled, but his dancing kir-whorls and pulsing meridians were still strong. The cruel, barbed spear-head was blackness invading his pattern. As Del’s hands loosened at last, I flipped aside his loosened brigantine and the mail underneath. Slicing through his thin gambeson, I found skin at last.
A cut, and Del’s hands slammed onto the edges of the table. I went deeper, widening the gash where the barbs would catch and rip. He bit into the belt leather, screaming through it. The spear had jammed through three coils of gut, stopping just shy of his back.
Vess, despite being such a bear of a man, had a fine touch. He and I eased the spear out, the barb catching only on Del’s mail along the way. Blood gushed, stinking and tainted by the contents of his gut. Vess swore as he threw the spear aside. I shoved Del’s layers up higher and reached into the wound — he screamed around the leather clenched in his teeth and convulsed — to stop the bleeding.
My memory brought me all the small vessels of the gut, from when I’d seen them on other patients. A little blood-stop charm was enough for such. Vess held his cousin down with both hands, talking to him in a tense mutter. I kept my focus on the wound.
The gash in Del’s belly was wide enough to clamp open. I gently shifted wounded coils of gut aside, seeing the flesh’s patterns rather than the blood and greenish slops. It overflowed, ran onto the table and floor. The smell would need hard scrubbing to get out, I knew.
Luzon had threaded the correct needle with catgut; I spared him a smile as I took it. “Bring water,” I told him.
One slice, deepest in, I could simply stitch. The second coil was worse off, having been nearly cut in half. Del sobbed, clutching the table, honestly trying not to thrash. Not entirely succeeding. Luzon poured water, when I asked him to, and much of the gore rinsed away. What I could see, at least; I knew that it was loose among his guts, now, and would kill him with fever. The cleansing charm would mend that, though.
For the topmost coil, the first to take the spear, I had to reach for my scalpel and cut away the shredded hand’s-width of tube. Stitched one trimmed end to the other carefully, as if it were a sleeve. My mother’s lessons, before I’d been apprenticed to the Elect, had proven their worth often enough.
“Must he suffer?” Vess asked, his voice strained. “If he’s to die…”
I looked up at the big man, then glanced to Del’s slack face. He skimmed the edge of consciousness, lost in the haze of pain. Luzon turned his head, to be sure he didn’t choke on his tongue. “He’s not dying,” I said, taking the last few stitches and knotting my catgut off. “I’m nearly finished.”
“You are?” Vess frowned at my work.
“Do you still think me just a fucking handmaid?”
His mouth opened, then shut again. I cut my thread free.
Metal rattled. Vess and I looked for it, in unison, but there was nothing that would rattle so. The tables were all wood, and — my memory flicked to it.
“The street drain.”
A second rattle, a bang, and the grate fell to one side. It was a small one, barely wide enough for the pig-headed Orc who sprang up. Those lightly wounded sitting just outside the full-length windows, and the orderlies bandaging them, tried to scramble to their feet. Shouts and screams drowned out the infirmary bustle. Orcs popped up from the drain.
The lead monster snarled, whirling his spear as a staff. Its shaft cracked off two orderlies, knocking them down. One soldier drew his sword in time to take the spearhead through his chest.
Vess roared in fury, yanking his sword from its sheath, and hurdled the window’s low sill. He sliced the first Orc’s head clean off and met the second with a crash. The monsters charged the wounded soldiers who dared try to face them while the orderlies and nurses fled deeper into the tavern. Spears cut the weak men down. Vess caught one by its haft in his free hand, cut the guilty arm clean off with one sweep of his sword. The rest turned on him, rather than chase the helpless goodfolk.