“No. I got that. I don’t understand why you usually talk to your Companion, to your Rath. Why don’t you just Mindspeak, as I do with my Enara?”
He looked at her as he leaned into Rath, crossing his elbows on the saddle-bow. “I’m almost totally head-blind. I can hear Rath, and she can read me, but I can’t send worth a damn. If I buckle down and really focus, I can just about get a whisper out. It’s just easier to do it this way.”
Her expression appeared no more than half-believing. “What’s your Talent?”
:Drinking?: Interjected Rath.:Wenching?:
Gonwyn ignored the Companion. “I don’t really have one. I was already a Guards officer, nearly twenty-one when I was Chosen. The masters said I was too old to learn Mindspeech, which is why almost everyone who is Chosen is a child.” Alberich hadn’t been the first adult chosen, though clearly the oldest. He wasn’t comfortable with this topic or its memories and wanted to change the subject. “What’s your Talent, then?”
“Oh, me?” she replied. She looked around and found a stick as long as her forearm, and as thick as her finger. She snapped it, green wood splintering along the ends of the break. She held the stick between her hands and stared at it in intense concentration. Gonwyn was just convinced she was having him on when a thin wisp of smoke emerged, and the splintered ends burst into flame.
Gonwyn thought she looked a little relieved.
“You’re a Firestarter,” he said.
“I’m not very good. I can just about manage this stick, and it doesn’t always work.”
“Well, I’d bet it beats my flint, steel, and profanity when I can’t get my tinder to light.”
She smiled then, showing dimples.
:Uh oh.:
The girl had turned back to her saddlebags and had pulled out a bedroll when she abruptly laughed. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Enara tells me I am in the presence of a notorious womanizer and flirt. She is worried you’re going to seduce me.”
Gonwyn turned his head and gave Rath a long stare. Rath contrived to look innocent, a dead giveaway.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Seducing me.”
Gonwyn gave her a disgusted look.
“All right, all right” she said taking her bedroll, and heading toward their campsite. “How about now? Are you seducing me now?” She smiled again. “If you were, I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Gonwyn managed to convey his response in a single snort that encompassed Rath, Enara, and Danilla.
“I mean, at your age, you probably would want to give it a good running start.”
Gonwyn took his blanket out of his rather thin field pack and followed. “Did you have to?” he asked Rath as he passed.
:You do have a certain reputation.:
He gathered such small wood as he could find as he crossed to where the stream burbled down underneath a widespread oak. She had already dug a narrow, deep hole in the dirt and had started the side vent to let in air. The fire would burn hot and small within its deep pit, cook well, and throw out little light. Her campcraft seemed good enough, even if it looked more like a final exam than a field rig.
She still smiled in good humor but kept her attention on her work. He moved to one side and gutted the rabbits, using the skins to lay the carcasses on while he jointed them. He dug a second pit for the offal and trash, deep enough for scavengers to be put off the scent, at least until what they left began to rot.
Their camp preparations went quickly, both moving with an efficiency driven by the quickly fading light. He took a small leather bucket from his bags and soaked it in the creek water to thoroughly wet it, then set it on a small tripod to boil. He began cutting small pieces of meat from the rabbit and dropping them in the water.
She made a face at his filthy hands, then frowned as a drop of blood fell from between his fingers and onto the rabbit pelt.
“Damn,” he said, seeing the blood. He reached up under his surcoat and adjusted the rag he had stuffed under the hauberk to try to contain the bleeding.
“You’re hurt,” she said. Not a question.
“Took an ax in the fight this morning. It split the mail.”
She crossed to where he knelt to work and knelt in front of him. She pulled back the surcoat and pulled the dirty rag out of the cut in the chain where Gonwyn had pressed it back in. Blood streaked the chainmail links and stained the linen undertunic.
Her expression told him what she thought of his efforts. “No, no no” she said. “This just won’t do. That wound may need to be stitched.”
Gonwyn felt his stomach drop. “Stitched? Don’t I need a Healer for that?”
She glanced around. “Do you see any Healers? My dad raised cattle, and I’ve stitched lots of bulls after they’d gored each other.”
Gonwyn did not find this reassuring. Nonetheless, he slid out of the dirty remains of his White surcoat, then winced as he moved his arm back to unlace the hauberk. She moved to help him.
“Oh, that’s interesting. The footloops here allow the laces to be drawn with one hand and tied off. One person can do it one handed, and while the metal doesn’t overlap, it does let you loosen it to let in some air if you have to.”
She took the weight of the hauberk as he slid out of it, then felt the heavy weight drop onto his blanket. The armor was already dirty and would need a good scouring in the sand barrel, but more grime wouldn’t do it any favors.
Gonwyn was surprised and more than a little concerned at the amount of blood that soaked his undertunic. The wound had not seemed that bad.
She looked at the blood on his side, then at his face, which he kept carefully expressionless.
“I need to see it.”
He started to unlace the tunic, then gave it up as his arm wouldn’t reach.
“I’ll need your help.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t get any ideas.”
They both laughed at the joke, however thin.
She helped him out the tunic when he couldn’t raise his arm above his shoulder. Now that they’d stopped moving, the shoulder was stiffening quickly, and the movements threatened to cause the pain he’d banked away to break through.
“Gods, Gonwyn,” she said, as the undertunic came away.
His entire right shoulder was a single massive black bruise, where the chain had taken the force and spread it across the links. Broken links had scored the skin when they had been driven through the undertunic. The ax wound itself was about two inches long and looked deep enough to have cut into muscle. A large, black, crusted scab covered the entire wound and oozed blood. He moved his left hand to press on the skin, and she smacked it away. He did not tell her that while he’d been hurt before, he’d badly underestimated this one.
“Bastard knew what he was about. Got me longwise instead of chopping down, just where the mail splices together. He cut right through.”
“Those hands are filthy. Keep them away from the wound.”
She moved to the stream and, with that innate facility that women have, produced a cake of soap. She washed her hands thoroughly and returned to him with her healing kit.
She carefully cleaned the wound, while Gonwyn pretended this was all routine. He did swear when she doused it with the astringent wine, but just the once. The sun was nearly down before she finished probing the wound, extracting a small sliver of metal that had entered, stitched it . . . bigger stitches than the Healers used, as cattle call for different threads . . . and dressed it in linen. She set his undertunic to soak in the stream for a time and hung it to dry, as he had no other. For his part, he tested the arm and made several practice swings with his sword. It hurt like blazes, but he thought he could still fight if it came to it.
“Don’t do that. You’ll pick them free.”