Horded - Kingdom Gone Book 2, page 10
Tal found his bucket under one of the overturned packs. He rummaged a bit more and then brought her a scrap of shirt that looked like it had already provided bandage material. It wasn’t as clean as she’d have liked, but the cloth would work, and she took it with a nod and turned her attention to his brother. His tunic would have to come off. One of the shallow gashes ran along his collarbone and down. At the very least, she’d have to open the garment to clean that particular wound.
She pulled her dagger from her skirt, but before she could make use of it, Tal surprised her by dumping a pile of cloth bags on the ground beside her. He was off again before she could acknowledge them, this time through the pocket edge, vanishing with his pail and leaving only the shimmery reflection of more trees in his wake. She turned back to her work and found Torg watching her.
“Tal’s getting water.” She didn’t know what else to say to him. They’d only been alone a few times, and one of those he’d been too busy kissing her to say much. He sat up now and shifted forward as if he’d read her mind. Maera leaned away and pointed at his shirt. “I need to clean your wounds.”
“Tir talus.”
“It’s Maera.”
“Maera, tir talus.”
“I don’t understand what that means. I don’t—”
He lifted one hand and placed it on her chest, just over her heart. The swishing in her head nearly drowned out his words. He said it twice. “You understand. You understand.”
Maera swallowed a lump of things she’d long since sworn off. She lifted his hand and set it back on his furs. “I understand that we need to get those scratches washed. I understand that your people over there are watching every move I make. I understand enough.”
Everything except him.
He relented, didn’t push it or touch her again and, with a grin that actually made him wince, he lifted his tunic over his head and wriggled free of it before laying back down.
Maera tried to focus on examining his damage. His arms and face had taken the brunt of the abuse. Aside from the collarbone cut and the original arrow wound, which had torn open again, his torso was mostly bruised. It looked painful, but not overly dangerous. The cuts on his arm were deeper, but the brutes in Ramstown had concentrated on his face.
His eyes needed cold water and his lips, his whole head really, would have to be washed before she could see how deep the wounds went.
Tal returned with a bucket of icy water. She set him to tearing the shirt into strips while she soaked one of the sacks and used it to dab water over Torg’s face. He laid back and his breathing steadied, relaxed so much that she thought he slept until one eye cracked to peek at her.
“Rest.” She commanded it, frowning at the cut below his right eye. She’d have liked to stitch that one. A healer should have tended to it, someone who knew what they were doing. The best Maera could hope for was to keep away an infection. If she could have found the right roots, she might have made the paste her father used when the plow horse had cut a fetlock. It did little to heal, but the gluey substance would keep the sides of the deeper gashes together while they mended. “Do you have anything sticky? Something we could make a paste with?”
Tal grunted and kept tearing. She took that to mean no, but when he’d finished the bag he wandered out of camp again. Maera continued with the water, wringing out a second bag after the first was too filthy to continue with. When the dried blood was gone, the bruises blossomed. She scowled at them and rested the cool cloth against the more swollen of Torg’s eyes.
He sighed, and this time she’d have wagered he really did drift off, comfortable enough, at last, to do so. She re-wet the rag and did the other eye, then folded it into a long roll and laid it across them both while she used a third to wash his arms and neck.
The necklace of bones rattled when she pushed it aside. His sea-green chest lifted and fell in a rhythm that matched the faint thrumming each time her fingers swept the cloth over his skin. Maera swabbed the shoulder wound, the puncture where the town had first skewered him. Then she worked on the cuts. All but one of one of them looked shallow enough not to warrant a needle.
The one that did had her worried, however. The sides gapped too far to press together again. If she wound a bandage round it, if he held perfectly still, even, the healing would be uneven. She chewed her lip and stared at it. When she touched him, the thrumming in her mind increased. She lifted her hand from his chest, felt it dim and then touched him again. It flared louder, stronger. She picked up her hand, soft, touched him again, louder.
“Here.” Tal’s voice made her jump. He stood behind her and held out a leather bladder plugged with a wooden cork. “I traded our thistledown for it.”
She took the thing and smiled, though she could only guess at the contents. The stopper came out easily and a rich, woody smell erupted from the spout. She dipped a finger inside and pulled it out, coated in a pale, sticky fluid.
“Is it safe?”
“Of course.” He snorted and did the clicking thing again. She couldn’t quite work out how they made that sound, but it reminded her of the bones on Torg’s necklace.
“Good. Thank you.”
Whatever thistledown was, it had to be valuable if it had convinced the glaring hags to share medicine with them. She could see how they wanted her to fail in each glance and, despite his offense at the suggestion, she wouldn’t put it past any of the gobelin women to sabotage her healing efforts. She believed Tal, though. He obviously cared about his brother in his own, gobelin-y way. He wouldn’t let her do anything dangerous to Torg.
She tilted the bladder and squeezed a good-sized blob onto the worst wound, holding it together carefully and running the goop along the tear. It sealed the skin, dried quickly and made a protective scab. “Hand me one of those strips.”
With this goo and their bits of cloth, she could do some justice to Torg’s damage. She took the first from Tal’s hand and began to wrap and slather each of the scratches. He watched her for the first few, as if he needed to make sure she didn’t intend a sabotage of her own. Then he wandered out of the tent and began to straighten up the mess he’d made the night before.
By the time she’d done both Torg’s arms, the scent of meat and broth filled the afternoon, wafting from a half dozen pots manned by smaller groups of the women. The camp dogs slipped in and out of these huddles, snatching at scraps and dodging gobelin kicks. They looked a bit like weasels, all skin and bones, slinking low to the ground. Maera watched them while her patient slept.
Tal vanished and returned with two bowls of broth and a lump of bread. He gave her one and she set it aside in case Torg awoke hungry. Her own stomach didn’t feel like experimenting with gobelin fare yet and, though Tal frowned at her, he said nothing and ate his meal without comment. When he’d finished, he slipped away again. This time, he brought back a mug of water, and she put this beside the bowl for Torg as well. He’d need it sooner than she would.
But the day dragged on, and the trees beyond the fires darkened. Tal came and went, keeping an eye on her in between. He didn’t converse, and though she had a million things to ask him, her instincts told her to bite her tongue. She’d been an outcast for years now, but never in quite the way as she was now. She was alien, a freak amongst the Gentry, a thing to watch and suspect and to remove as quickly as possible. Even Tal acted like she might leap up at any moment and kill them all, though at least he attempted to hide it.
Maera sat by Torg’s side, not only for the comfort of their steady rhythm. She sat there because she was afraid to move. She changed the cloth across his eyes and applied a new one, dampening it with the cold, cleaner water from the mug. They should dump the bucket of bloody water. She should see if Tal would get a new one. Except he’d wandered out of camp again, and when her eyes grew tired of scanning the green bodies for him, she looked back to find his brother gazing up at her.
He’d pulled the damp rag away from his face. The swelling had gone down some. She could see more of his eyes, read more of the expression in them.
“You should put that back.” She took if from his hand without any resistance. “It’s helping the swelling.”
He only stared up at her. When she tried to replace the cloth, he shook his head.
“Are you hungry? Tal brought food and water.” She grabbed the mug and lifted it to show him. “Drink something.”
He didn’t fight that, only lifted his head and accepted the cup she held to his lips. The motion tore open his cuts there, and when he’d taken two more sips and finally shook his head to indicate he’d had enough, Maera retrieved the bladder of salve from her waistband and popped the cork. She rolled her finger inside the neck and then smoothed some of the stuff over his lower lip.
Torg flinched away. His brow lowered. “Stings.”
“Good.” She squinted at him. That was a good sign. Didn’t all healing hurt a little? “It must be working.”
She tried to get him to eat, but he shook his head, opened his mouth to say something and started the blood on his lip flowing. Maera shushed and pressed him back into his furs. He kept looking at her and, before he could try to speak again, she flopped the sack-cloth across his eyes and ordered him back to sleep. Rest would be his best ally today, and it would give her a bit more time to get her head together.
She needed that time.
She needed distance as well, but the likelihood of that happening diminished by the second. She’d been placed firmly under Tal’s responsibility and Maera doubted he’d let her have a walk outside the pocket anytime soon. Which meant no space, no breathing room and no time to think at all before she’d have to face her immediate future.
Inside the pocket, eyes drifted to the pocket edges, the sound of activity drove her thoughts back toward worry. Men’s voices drifted from the trees as the other half of the gobelin horde rejoined them for the evening.
Maera’s heart raced at that. The old woman had said, until they had a chance to discuss it. Until. She spotted the tall leader across the camps. He waved and shouted orders, and within moments the huge bonfire roared to its full height. She might not be a gobelin, but she knew what the men’s return meant. She knew when they all drifted toward the leaping flames.
Until
had just arrived, and the discussion was about to begin.
Chapter Fifteen
Tal left the witch at his brother’s bedside. He’d spent the day listening. His brother’s breathing wafted in and out of sleep, though Torg only let his nurse know once that he awoke. Whatever games they played, they were the least of his trouble. He’d heard the whispers in the campsites. He’d heard the old bats speculate on the punishment the Sol buta would deal to all three of them.
Now, Olin brought the men back for the evening. The horde only meant to hunt this area another four or five days, and for the first time in his unlucky life, Tal didn’t know if he’d be returning home with his people or not. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home with Torg, but his brother insisted on the absurd attachment to this human. Even if Olin didn’t kill them both, the horde would not allow them to return over the mountains with a human in their camp. Unless the Sol buta embraced the match, they’d be left behind no matter what.
He watched and listened. When Olin summoned Dutat to fetch them, Tal met his brother’s friend half way. The younger warrior lifted one, black brow at Tal’s eagerness, but all he said was, “He’s ready.”
Tal grunted and followed. The horde’s attention, formerly fixed on the camp and his human companion, now shifted, tracking their march to the central fire. Vrau joined them before they’d reached it, attached as much to Dutat as Tal was to Torg—at least before his brother’s tir talus imposed upon that dynamic. He snarled at nothing and kept to the larger gobelins’ wake for a step or two.
It would change things, if she really was Torg’s mate.
He’d never been very fond of change. Still, if anyone deserved tir talus, it was Torg. If anyone was lucky enough to find that elusive star, his brother would be the one to stumble upon it. It had to be his faith in Torg that made him suspect its truth, not anything to do with actually trusting the human. He clicked and worked that through again. It had almost nothing at all to do with the witch, really.
It simply fit in with all Torg’s other blessings.
“Where is Torg?” Olin bellowed from beside the flames. They leapt taller than he stood, reached for him with hot fingers that never managed to take hold, despite the fact that they brushed at his tunic and tickled the leather cups covering his closest shoulder. The gobelin leader shrugged away the fire the way he might an insect. He scowled at Tal and grunted. “Still healing?”
“The woman tends him,” Tal answered from Dutat’s shadow. He saw enough of Olin’s face to know what he thought of the response.
“You tell us then, Talius Bonesplint.” Olin turned his back to them. He walked beside the fire, facing each warrior who ringed it, checking expressions and making note of the horde’s mind. “How is it that your brother tripped into this human’s clutches?”
And so it would fall on him to defend their actions. He faced the judgment of the horde alone, no matter if the punishment would affect them all. This way Tal would take the blame. History would pin the mess on his head. It might as well. He’d been the one to start it.
“I fell out of the pocket.” He began wrong. A few of them gasped aloud, but far more exchanged knowing looks, as if they’d expected he was the culprit all along. “There was only an old woman and I got away easily, but when I told Torg he insisted on going back.”
“Insisted?” Olin came a step toward him, enough so that Tal had to lean back to look at the man’s face. One of his teeth stuck out to the side at an angle, as if it had escaped the gobelin leader’s lips. It poked at Tal like a rogue blade. “Why?”
“Torg told me that he’d dreamed of a human woman. He said he only wanted to see the town.”
Dutat snorted and a wave of clicking passed around the circle. They didn’t believe him. Tal clenched his fists and tightened his jaw to avoid clicking back at them. Now wasn’t the time to defend himself. He just needed to get the story out, but he’d meant to tell them about the castle first. The march here had scattered his thoughts. He should have started there and, now, he tried to think of how to go back and begin properly.
“You took him back?” Olin grunted. “To spy on the humans?”
Tal shifted tactics. “First we collected thistledown. There is a pocket where—”
“But you took him to the town? To see this woman?”
“I didn’t even see her. The only one I talked to was an old hag.”
At first, Tal didn’t understand the silence. It fell like a cloud across the meeting. Not until Olin spoke, clearly and with each word like a punch, did he understand his error. “You talked to them?”
“Not first. No. She spoke to me.”
“Dung!” Dutat cursed and spat on the ground. “So it was Torg who wanted to see humans?”
“It was.” Tal kept his voice level, not an easy task with Dutat arching angrily over him.
“Stop.” Olin waved both Vrau and Dutat aside and called Tal forward to the fire. “Enough of this. Tell the whole story, and I will decide.”
“He promised just to look, and so I took him back.” He ignored Dutat’s snort, the chuckles from around the bonfire. “But when he saw the witch, Torg went crazy. He jumped out like he was possessed and grabbed her. That’s when they shot him, and I dragged him back into the pocket.”
More laughing. The idea of him dragging Torg anywhere amused them. He’d already lost their opinion, and nothing he could tell them would remedy this. He stood quietly and tried to decide whether they’d banish all three of them or just him alone. Would they kill Torg’s witch? He hoped they’d try, if only to see Torg’s reaction. That might prove his point.
“But how did he end up in a human jail?” Olin stamped his impatience. “Did you go back again?”
“No. We went to sleep. When I awoke, Torg had already gone.”
The growling in the shadows increased, but Olin only frowned and nodded. He walked his circuit again, and as he passed each man, their face straightened and grew quiet. By the time their leader faced Tal again, not a man whispered. No one clicked.
“You tell the truth,” Olin said. “Tal Bonesplint, tell me now why you think your brother abandoned you to return to a human habitation?”
“That’s not—” Tal bit his tongue. Olin’s hand had flown up so fast, he snapped his jaw shut on the protest.
“Tell me why you believe Torg vanished from your camp.”
“He thinks this woman is his tir talus.”
“Ah.” Olin grunted and nodded his head, an overly large motion meant to be seen by everyone. “Tir talus is Sol buta business. This is a matter for Gutra, then.”
Tal gaped at him. The gobelin leader grinned, shrugged and waved an arm in a wide arc, dismissing the meeting and allowing the warriors to go about their nightly business. The stamping of feet crunched in the shadows, laughter returned, and only Dutat continued to glare at Tal. Eventually, even he paired up with Vrau and moved away to watch from beside the fire. Olin watched him also, but the chieftain’s expression held more curiosity than anger.
Tal had been released from responsibility. The Sol buta would deal with the witch and his brother. Olin had officially washed his hands of the matter, or more accurately, he’d passed the problem on to Gutra. Tal could slip away without repercussions now, could return to camp and to his life without concern for himself.
Except, he had more to tell them.
He should have left it alone, should have known when to quit and just headed back to camp. Instead, he approached Olin, who had already turned his back on the whole matter, who had snagged a wineskin and now busied himself with draining it.
He’d never directly approached the leader before. In fact, Tal usually went out of his way to avoid contact with the man. Now, he stood behind the broad, scarred back and clicked his teeth softly to get his leader’s attention.
