Damon shook his head in dismay. “I’ll do what I can for you, lad, but I can’t promise anything. Are they all as bad as this, Ferrika?”
The woman shook her head. “Some are hardly hurt at all. And some, as you can see, are worse.” She gestured at one man whose cut-off boots revealed black, pulpy shreds of flesh hanging down.
There were fourteen men in all. Quickly, one after another, Damon examined the hurt men, hurriedly sorting out the least injured, those who showed only minor frostbite in toes, fingers, cheeks. Andrew was helping the stewards bring them hot drinks and hot soup. Damon ordered, “Don’t give them any wine or strong liquor until I know for certain what shape they are in.” Separating the less hurt men, he said to old Rhodri, the hall-steward, “Take these men to the lower hall, and get some of the women to help you. Wash their feet well with plenty of hot water and soap, and” — he turned to Ferrika — “you have extract of white thornleaf?”
“There is some in the still-room, Lord Damon; I will ask Lady Callista.”
“Soak their feet with poultices of that, then bandage them and put plenty of salve on them. Keep them warm, and give them as much hot soup and tea as they want, but no strong drink of any kind.”
Andrew interrupted. “And as soon as any of our people can get through, we must send word to their women that they are safe.”
Damon nodded, realizing that this was the first thing he should have remembered. “See to it, will you, brother? I must care for the hurt men.” As Rhodri and the other servants helped the less injured men to the lower hall, he turned back to the remaining men, those with seriously frozen feet and hands.
“What have you done for these, Ferrika?”
“Nothing yet, Lord Damon; I waited for your advice. I have seen nothing like this for years.”
Damon nodded, his face set. A hard freeze such as this, when he was a child near Corresanti, had left half the men in the town with missing fingers and toes, dropped off after severe freezing. Others had died of the raging infections or gangrene which followed. “What would you choose to do?”
Ferrika said hesitantly, “It is not the usual treatment here, but I would soak their feet in water just a little warmer than blood-heat but not hot. I have already forbidden the men to rub their feet, for fear of rubbing off the skin. The frost is deep in the flesh. They will be fortunate if they lose no more than skin.” A little encouraged that Damon did not protest, she added, “I would put hot-packs about their bodies to encourage circulation.”
Damon nodded. “Where did you learn this, Ferrika? I feared I would have to forbid you to use old folk remedies which do more harm than good. This is the treatment used at Nevarsin, and I had to struggle to have it used in Thendara, for the Guards.”
She said, “I was trained in the Amazon Guild-house in Arilinn, Lord Damon; they train midwives there for all the Domains, and they know a good deal about healing and caring for wounds.”
Dom Esteban frowned. He said, “Women’s rubbish! When I was a lad, we were told never to bring heat near a frozen limb, but to rub it with snow.”
“Aye,” broke in the man whose feet were pulpy and swollen, “I had Narron rub my feet wi’ snow. When my grandsire froze his feet in the reign of old Marius Hastur—”
“I know your grandfather,” Damon interrupted. “He walked with two canes till the end of his life, and it looks to me as if your friend tried to make sure you had the same good fortune, lad. Trust me, and I will do better for you than that.” He turned to Ferrika and said, “Try poultices, not hot water alone, but black thornleaf, very strong; it will draw the blood to the limbs and back to the heart. And give them some of it in tea too, to stimulate the circulation.” He turned back to the injured man, saying encouragingly, “This treatment is used in Nevarsin, where the weather is worse than here, and the monks claim they have saved men who would otherwise have been lamed for life.”
“Can’t you help, Lord Damon?” begged the man Raimon, and Damon, looking at the grayish-blue feet, shook his head. “I don’t know, truly, lad. I will do as much as I can, but this is the worst I have seen. It’s regrettable, butj—”
“Regrettable!” The man’s eyes blazed with pain and fury. “Is that all you can say about it, vai dom? Is that all it means to you? Do you know what it means to us, especially this year? There’s not a house in Adereis or Corresanti but lost a man or maybe two or three to the accursed catfolk, and last year’s harvest withered ungathered in the fields, so already there is hunger in these hills! And now more than a dozen ablebodied men to be laid up, certainly for months, maybe never to walk again, and you can’t say more than ‘It is regrettable.’” His thick dialect angrily mimicked Damon’s careful speech.
“It’s all very well for the likes of you, vai dom, you willna’ go hungry, what may happen or no! But what of my wife, and my little children? What of my brother’s wife and her babes, that I took in when my brother ran mad and slew himself in the Darkening-lands, and the cat-hags made play wi’ his soul? What of my old mother, and her brother who lost an eye and a leg on the field of Corresanti? All too few able-bodied men in the villages, so that even the little maids and the old wives work in the fields, all too few to handle crops and beasts or even to glean the nut-trees before the snow buries our food, and now a good half of the ablebodied men of two villages lying here with frozen feet and hands, maybe lame for life — regrettable!”
His voice struggled with his rage and pain, and Damon closed his eyes in dismay. It was all too easy to forget. Did war not end, then, when there was peace in the land? He could kill ordinary foes, or lead armed men against them, but against the greater foes — hunger, disease, bad weather, loss of ablebodied men — he was powerless.
“The weather is not mine to command, my friend. What would you have me do?”
“There was a time — so my grandsire told me — when the folk of the Comyn, the Tower-folk, sorceresses and warlocks, could use their starstones to heal wounds. Eduin” — he gestured to the Guardsman at Dom Esteban’s side — “saw you heal Caradoc so he didna’ bleed to death when his leg was cut to the bone by a catman sword. Can’t you do something for us too, vai dom?”
Without conscious thought, Damon’s fingers closed over the small leather bag strung-round his neck which held the matrix crystal he had been given at Arilinn, as a novice psi technician. Yes, he could do some of those things. But since he had been sent from the Tower — he felt his throat close in fear and revulsion. It was hard, dangerous, frightening, even to think of doing these things outside of the Tower, unprotected by the electromagnetic Veil which protected the matrix technicians from intruding thoughts and dangers…
Yet the alternative was death or crippling for these men, indescribable suffering, at the very least, hunger and famine in the villages.
He said, and knew his voice was trembling, “It has been so long, I do not know if I can still do anything. Uncle…?”
Dom Esteban shook his head. “Such skills I never had, Damon. My little time there was spent working relays and communications. I had thought most of those healing skills were lost in the Ages of Chaos.”
Damon shook his head. “No, some of them were taught at Arilinn even when I was there. But I can do nothing much alone.”