Healers (8 page)

Kazy’s thoughts had been the bleakest black as it seemed she was about to be captured again. It felt like her heart had stopped beating, then the highwayman’s horse suddenly went wild, kicking, flailing, bucking, and neighing. Tarc kicked his horse ahead, between the men, saying, “Come on Kazy!”

Kazy kicked her own horse and it surged ahead. The men on the ground didn’t even reach out for her as she and Daussie rode past. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw the man who’d been thrown off the horse looked like he’d been injured. At least he must’ve had the wind knocked out of him; he lay there unmoving. The other two had risen to a knee while the two men who’d blocked the road behind them ran a few steps after them, but realized they couldn’t catch up when the Hyllises were on horseback.

The highwayman’s horse was cantering smartly down the road ahead of Tarc.

Kazy turned a little and asked Daussie, “What do you suppose happened to that horse?” She didn’t want to question their luck, but couldn’t understand what had suddenly driven the horse wild.

Daussie said, “I think a wasp stung it.”

Kazy certainly hadn’t seen a wasp, but supposed she might not have been paying close attention to such things, considering their predicament. She glanced back over a shoulder to see what the thieves were doing. One of them was jogging down the road behind them; Kazy supposed the man wanted to catch the runaway horse.

Before they caught up to the caravan, the highwayman’s horse slowed and turned off to the side. Eventually it stopped to begin placidly cropping some grass. Tarc rode up beside it and gently took its reins. He began leading it as he rode back onto the road and after the caravan once again.

Kazy looked back over her shoulder. She saw the thief who’d been running after them slow and stop, looking dejected. They passed through a few scattered trees, but still didn’t see the caravan ahead. Tarc slowed and looked over at Kazy and Daussie when they came up beside him. “Dauss, you feeling better yet?”

Daussie said, “Yeah, just tired now.”

“You up to moving over to this horse so old Blackie won’t be so overloaded?”

“Sure.” They paused for a few minutes while Daussie got down from behind Kazy and mounted the thieves’ light brown horse. They walked the horses to the next set of trees in order to rest them, then began trotting again to go through the next wooded area.

As they came out of the woods on the other side, they saw a couple of the caravan’s guards riding back towards them. Moments later, Jason and Wayne rode up to them. Jason looked pissed, saying, “Where the hell have you guys been? Arco got all wound up when he realized you weren’t with us. You think this is some kind of picnic? It’s dangerous out here!”

Despite the big guard’s condescendingly angry tone, to Kazy’s astonishment, Tarc answered calmly. “Sorry, one of our patients caught up to us and we were giving him a treatment back there. It took a while, so we got pretty far behind.”

“Pretty far behind! You damn right! There’re people out here who’d kill you just for those horses! I’d think you’d have learned after we got attacked by those raiders just out of Walterston.”

Tarc said nothing, not even tightening his shoulders or blushing, though Kazy felt angry to be so chastised. Instead, Tarc simply kept his horse moving forward, requiring Jason and Wayne to turn their horses and trot back up alongside.

Kazy saw Jason eyeing Daussie’s mount. “Where’d
that
horse come from?” he asked.

Daussie grinned at him, “Some men tried to rob us, just like you said they might. But while they had us waylaid, the leader’s horse bucked him off and we managed to ride past their roadblock.” She shrugged, “Tarc captured the horse so they wouldn’t be able to catch up to us.” She gave Jason an inquisitive look. “What do you think we should do with it?”

Jason stared at the horse, a little goggle eyed. He snorted, “You guys lead charmed lives! I suppose we should ask Arco and Norton what to do with the horse, but I doubt they’ll want to give it back to a pack of thieves.”

The Hyllises sold their new light brown horse to the wagon that was short a mule after the raiders’ attack. After stopping for a few hours each at a couple of small villages, the caravan pulled into another walled town late the next day.

Tarc started into town with the bay horse to buy food. Daum started a run on his still and Eva ran Daussie and Kazy ragged trying to make a quick meal to sell to the caravan.

When Tarc returned, the horse was burdened with a couple of large rounds of cheese in addition to sausage, flour, a sack of vegetables, and sugar. Eva lifted an eyebrow, “I’ll bet you think we should try making some pizza?”

Tarc grinned at her, “Yes I
do
!”

That night their first experimental pizzas consisted of thinly sliced bread, tomato sauce, sliced sausage and cheese, all melted together by a brief period in the oven. They were good, but Eva soon had them rolling out small rounds of dough to bake for another trial run the next day.

The next day’s lunch at the stall featured pizzas as well as their always successful roast pork and beans. The pizzas were a huge hit, both with the townsmen and the caravaners.

To her delight, Kazy heard two of the caravaners arguing about whether Eva’s pizzas were better than the ones from the tavern in Denton’s Crossing or not. Kazy figured, if it was questionable on the second set of pizzas Eva had ever made, there’d be no doubt once she’d had a little more practice.

Eva continued worrying about their healer business. Once again no one even asked about it. Kazy had seen more people smirking when they looked at the sign. Eva worried that, because people looked very skeptically on the part of their sign that talked about healing, it put them off enough they were less likely to check out the food or the moonshine.

Kazy heard Daum quietly talking to Eva. He said, “Don’t worry so much about it. We’re making enough money on the food to support ourselves. Any healing, or sweets or moonshine sales are gravy. The two golds that guy from Denton’s Crossing paid you were like a
really
fine dessert!” He lifted an eyebrow, and I’ll bet the next time we go through Denton’s, you’ll have more customers.”

Eva shook her head, “I don’t know. There must be some better way to let people know what we can do. I see people come through the line for lunch who have diseases we can treat and I just want to…”

Daum grinned at her, “Slip some medicine into their food?”

She shrugged, “You know I won’t treat them without their permission. Besides, most of them are people with problems only Tarc or Daussie can treat.”

Kazy felt mystified.
Problems only Tarc or Daussie can treat? How could they possibly treat conditions their mother, the experienced healer and their teacher, can’t treat?

***

Back on the road again, Tarc was riding the Hyllises’ bay horse. He’d ridden it to the back of the caravan and then back up to the front. Though he wouldn’t admit it, he hoped to encounter Lizeth when she rode back to report in. She liked riding point for the caravan and so she frequently had that assignment. She preferred riding the far-point, but today she was riding near-point, dropping back every so often to report what the far-point guard had seen.

Tarc rode for a while beside Sam who was leading the guard wagon’s mules, but, bored, had ridden a few hundred yards out front. To the right side he saw a large, shallow valley with a big lump in the middle of it. Curious, he studied it, wondering what it could be. As his eyes traced back and forth he realized there was some kind of regular pattern in the valley.

As if the landscape was laid out rectangularly.

He realized that even the big lump in the middle of the valley had some kind of regular rectangular pattern to it.
It’s a city! A city of the ancients! The rectangular pattern must be the residual shape of their buildings and streets!

Tarc wheeled the bay and rode back to Henry Roper’s wagon. “Mr. Roper!”

Roper smiled up at him, “You noticed the old city, eh?”

“Yes! It’s… it’s enormous!”

Roper nodded, “Yes, the things they could do back then were astonishing.”

The caravan moved far enough that Tarc was able to turn and look out at the remnants of the city. “What’s that enormous lump in the middle? Did they build the city around some kind of mountain? It looks like they’ve built some of their homes right up on the top of the hill!”

Roper laughed, “You’re not going to believe this, but the ground out there was flat when they built the city. That lump’s the remains of a group of huge buildings where much of their business was done.”

“That can’t be! The lump’s way too tall! As tall as if you stacked 20 to 30 houses, one on top of another!”

Roper grinned, “When they built them, they were a lot taller than that. A hundred houses high or more. It’s just that they’ve collapsed and lost much of their original height.”

Tarc turned to stare out into the valley, then back at Roper with wide eyes. “You’re not saying this just to see how gullible I am?”

Roper shook his head, “No, the things they could do back then are almost impossible to believe.”

Tarc looked back out over the city, “Like what?” he asked wonderingly, but then before Roper could answer said, “Wait! A city that big should have had a
huge
wall. Why can’t I see any remnants of it?”

“Cities didn’t have walls back then.”

Tarc turned back to Roper, a frown on his face. “Really? How did they defend themselves?”

“Well, two things. First, large groups of cities and the people around them banded together to form something they called a ‘nation.’ That nation then was their defensive unit to fight against other nations. They didn’t have to defend themselves against raiders from the countryside because the countryside was part of the same nation. Second, they had weapons so terrible no wall could possibly protect them.”

“What?! How can that possibly be?” Tarc asked, an astonished look on his face. “Surely if they built those huge buildings, they could build a wall the height of four or five houses. If they built it out of rock and it was as wide as a couple of houses…” He ran down as he saw Roper shaking his head at him in amusement.

Roper said, “The first things to make walls obsolete were cannons powerful enough to break down any wall, no matter how thick or how high. But later they built airplanes, big flying machines that could fly right over the wall like a bird would.”

Tarc turned his eyes back to the ancient city, looking again for the wall he felt sure must be there. Not seeing it, he tried to imagine a flying machine that could cross walls. A wrinkle creased his brow and he turned back to Roper, “What’s a cannon?”

Roper laughed again, “I thought guns and cannons were the about the only things you kids learned about the ancients nowadays!”

Tarc frowned, “I think I’ve heard about ‘guns.’ That’s something like a tiny crossbow you could carry in one hand… or something like that, right?”

Roper snorted, “Something like, yeah. But not very much like. What they actually used was a metal tube that was closed on one end. You’d put a powder, called gunpowder, in it down to the closed end. Then you’d put a little metal dart called a ‘bullet’ into the tube, right down on top of the powder. This powder, when you set it on fire, would burn so fast it would push the metal dart out the end of the tube faster than you can shoot an arrow.”

Tarc looked dubious. “So you’ve got your tube, and first you pour powder into it, then you stick your metal dart into it, then you point it where you want the dart to go and then somehow you light the powder?”

“Yeah, there’s a little hole in the closed end so that when you held a flame up to the hole it caught the gunpowder on fire.”

Tarc shook his head, “But… my dad could shoot three or four arrows in the time it would take to do all those steps!”

Roper laughed again, “So he could. Most people can’t, because it takes a good deal of training to become a decent archer. Apparently,
any
fool could kill people with a gun.
And,
what I’ve described to you is the very
simplest
form of gun. Realth, the next big town we stop at, is huge. It has a ‘Museum of the Ancients.’ If you want to go with me, we can look at some guns they
claim
could shoot so quickly they could fire several darts in the time it takes your heart to beat once!”

Tarc raised an eyebrow, “That’s hard to believe of a device like you described.”

“Come with me, we’ll look at it. They were like a lot of the ancients’ devices, filled with small precise parts that worked together in amazing ways.”

***

They stopped that afternoon in a small town at the edge of the ancient city. The town specialized in selling materials scavenged from the city, steel being one of the most important commodities. Many caravans went out of their way to stop in scavenger towns like this, buying goods to be sold further on in their travels.

Norton announced they would only stay overnight and ‘til noon the next day. Most of the caravaners quickly dispersed, trying to find bargains amongst the scavengers of the old city. The Hyllises really didn’t have room to transport goods nor expertise in that kind of trade, so they set up to make the evening meal. Tarc did go in to try to purchase supplies for what seemed to be the ever increasing appetite of Eva’s kitchen. Essentially, they never missed an opportunity to look for fresh meats, vegetables, and fruits.

When Tarc returned with a load of lettuce, chicken, eggs, cucumbers, and cooking oil, he found Eva, Daussie, and a small crowd gathered around a crying child. Daum and Kazy appeared to be cooking the evening meal. Once Tarc had unloaded the old black horse, he went over to see what the fuss was about.

Even with all the people crowded around, it only took a glimpse over someone’s shoulder to reveal the problem. The child’s forearm had an ugly bend near the wrist. Tarc had read that was a particularly common fracture in children, but he hadn’t seen one before. The broken bones he’d seen Eva deal with so far had not really been treatable. A smashed heel and a crack in the shoulder, neither of which needed to be put back in place. For those patients, all Eva did was provide poppy for the pain. This kid’s deformity needed to be straightened for the arm to have a chance to work right.

Tarc worked his way around to where Daussie stood. He wedged himself close enough to quietly ask her, “Why did they bring the kid to us? We don’t even have a sign up this time!”

Daussie whispered in return. “Apparently, Jesse Carter was trying to buy some glass when the shop owner’s kid fell down. The family was really distraught because they don’t have a healer anyone trusts around here. Jesse showed the father her finger, you know, the one Mom sutured after the arrow cut it off. Praised Mom to high heaven. She’s still going on about it. It’s kind of embarrassing to listen to. After Jesse’s sales pitch the guy decided to bring his kid here. Mom’s been feeding the kid poppy a little bit at a time, trying to get the pain down to a bearable level.”

Tarc eyed the kid’s bent arm. He could imagine poppy relieving the pain enough to get the kid to stop crying, but how in the world would they relieve the pain of trying to straighten the bone?! Eva called him, “Tarc, come look at little Jimmy’s arm.”

Eva’s call got people to step back enough for Tarc to work his way in next to the child. Knowing what his mother wanted, he sent his ghost into the child’s arm while she pointed out the obvious deformity and blathered on about how the blood flow to the child’s fingers was good.

Eva gave the child a little more of the poppy paste even though the boy had stopped crying. She patted the mother on the shoulder and said, “It’ll probably take quite a bit more poppy before he’ll be ready for us to put the bone back in place. But we want to do it a little bit at a time. I’m sure you know too much poppy can be very bad?”

The child’s mother, holding her boy in her lap, nodded, her eyes big and fearful. A crooked arm could cripple her son for life.

Eva said, “We’re going to go to prepare splints for his arm. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on him.”

As they walked away, Daussie joined them. Tarc said, “You
can’t
give him enough poppy to overcome the pain of putting that bone back in place!”

Eva smiled sadly, “You’re certainly right about that.”

“How’re we going to do it then!?”

Eva shrugged unhappily, “It’s going to hurt like hell.”

“What?!” Daussie exploded, “You can’t be serious! Putting a bone back must be
horribly
painful.”

Eva frowned at her, “So are a
lot
of other things.” She raised an eyebrow, “Childbirth for one. Would you leave him crippled for want of a little pain? I’m sure his parents won’t want us to do that. Nor will he, once he’s grown and realizes all the things he won’t be able to do with that arm.”

Daussie said, “What did they do in the old days? Surely they didn’t just use poppy?”

“No, they had a lot of other medications and precise ways to measure them so they didn’t just have to give a little and wait to see what happened. They even had medications they could inject around the nerves to make them stop working temporarily.”