Wolf's Blood (97 page)

He frowned. “I knew them as well as was necessary.”

“Well, then,” Isende said, reaching out and grabbing his free hand above the wrist. “I think it’s about time you got to know them a little better.”

He thought she would take him to the dining hall, where the Nexan community tended to gather even when meals were not being served, but she headed instead to the headquarters. They met remarkably few people along the pathway down, and those they did pass acted as if Isende were alone. These few also all seemed to be armed, and Tiniel thought with a certain amount of pride that he was apparently feared.

Isende led him up through the main portico and in through the front door. Once they were inside, Tiniel could hear more stirring. Isende led him toward what he vaguely recalled—he hadn’t had much business here—were a series of large rooms that had probably been used as offices or reception parlors back in the days when the Nexus Islands had been a flourishing crossroads for trade.

Now they had been converted into a series of infirmaries. The scent of alcohol stung Tiniel’s nostrils. This, strong as it was, could not cover the sweeter, sickly scent of infection and rot, of stale urine, and of bowels out of control.

Isende paused outside one of the open doors.

“Doctor Zebel. I’ve brought him. Is it all right to come in?”

“As I said,” came Zebel’s familiar voice, “but if he causes any trouble, I won’t answer for him.”

Tiniel had always thought of Zebel as a friend. Certainly, the doctor, along with a few of the guards, had been the only ones to show him and Isende any kindness during their first captivity. Zebel’s voice was without inflection now, and when the twins entered he deliberately turned his back.

Isende said, “This is where the worst of the wounded are. Do you remember Junco Tom” He sailed with his father and sister on the fishing boat, but since she was grounded, he begged to be assigned to fight ashore.”

Tiniel looked down at the young man on the bed. The man was obviously awake, but his eyes were shut. He moved his shoulder as if to put his hand on the outside of the blankets, but although the muscles twitched, no hand appeared.

“One of the u-Chivalum swords smashed Junco’s upper arm. Doc—he’s in the next room—tried his best, but there was no saving the limb. We had to amputate. It was very nasty.”

Isende moved on before Tiniel could fully adjust to that “we.” He knew her too well to suspect that she was giving herself airs. Had she been forced to be part of the medical staff? Was that a punishment for her being related to him?

Anger rose in his breast at the unfairness of it all. Isende should not be punished for his choices. Besides, if he had made a peace, the Nexans might now be thanking him for it.

He wanted to ask Isende, but she was moving over to another bed. On it lay a woman Tiniel vaguely recognized.

“This is Yornisaya.” Isende said. “You might remember her. She was one of those who went to Gak with you. She also worked in the kitchens. She’s also an apothecary, and we owe her a great deal for blending many of the medicines we had to treat the injured. When the u-Chivalum army emerged, she ran up to the hillside to help bring away the wounded.

“A solider did not approve and cut her across the head with the blunt edge of his sword. I suppose he thought he was being merciful. However, where the edge would have cut and might have glided off the bone, the solid impact of the metal knocked her out. There are bones cracked in her skull. We have done our best to relieve the internal pressure.”

As if cued, Yorinsaya turned her head to one side and Tiniel saw her scalp had been shaved and what looked like a triangular piece of bone cut away. The wound had been patched with something—maybe metal?—but was ugly nonetheless.

“We think she will live.” Isende said, reaching down and squeezing Yornisaya’s hand, “but we don’t know if she will ever see again.”

“See?” Tiniel said.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? The blow robbed her of her sight. As we do not know what was broken, we do not know how to fix it.”

Isende moved on to the next bed.

“Do you remember little Eteo?” she said, indicating a dark-skinned boy too old to be a child, but certainly not a man. “He was running messages between Skea and the various subcommanders. One of the Pelland archers saw him and shot at him. Eteo took an arrow to his back and one to his leg before he fell.”

Isende peeled back the blankets. Tiniel turned his gaze away. To his astonishment, he felt Isende’s hand grab his hair and pull his head around so he could not help but see.

“Look!” she said, and her voice sounded as harsh as Firekeeper’s did. “You did what you felt was right. You should see what happened.”

Tiniel did look then, and saw the long line of stitches going over Eteo’s back and down his leg.

“He sprained his ‘good’ leg when he fell,” Isende said, “and so it is going to be quite a while before he walks at all. By the time he can, muscles are going to have atrophied. It’s going to be a long time before he can run again, but he’s a brave boy, and I believe he will.”

She patted Eteo’s shoulder and pulled up the covers.

Humiliated by the memory of her tugging his hair, Tiniel did not try and turn away again, although the injuries he was forced to view sickened him. Isende seemed to know each and every person, and how they were injured. Gradually, it dawned on him that she had been working in the infirmary voluntarily.

Most of the patients either ignored him or pretended he wasn’t there. Some, though, stared at him with hatred so intense that Tiniel longed to flee.

I only did what I thought was right!
he longed to explain, but he didn’t think anyone here cared to listen.

When they left that first room, Tiniel learned that those patients—grim as their injuries had been—were the hopeful cases. The next room held those for whom the chance of recovery was slim—and who would have had no choice at all but that Doc, who like Grateful Peace had been temporarily protected against querinalo, was helping with their treatment.

Here were those who had taken injuries to the gut or lungs, those who had lost so much blood that their bodies had retreated into an unbreakable sleep.

Once again, Isende insisted on introducing each and every one, telling Tiniel who they were, what they had done, and how they had received their injuries.

Time and again, he heard the refrain, “an u-Chivalum solider,” “an u-Chivalum archer,” “an u-Chivalum spear,” and knew that he, rather than the man or woman who had actually wielded the weapon, was being blamed.

The final room was in some ways the worst, for none of the injured spared him by turning away their gaze, and all suffered without words, for they had no words—at least that humans could understand.

Here were the injured and dying yarimaimalom, the Wise Beasts of the southern woodlands in the New World, the Bound of the north. Administering their care was Harjeedian of Liglim, and serving as his translator was Plik. Harjeedian gave Tiniel a look so hard and so full of anger that Tiniel wondered if the aridisdu would curse him, but he only turned away and stalked from the room.

Tiniel thought he could not bear it if Plik, too, denied him, but when the maimalodalu looked at him, he saw only pity.

Isende was continuing her litany, telling Tiniel about this wolf, that fox, this wildcat. and Tiniel listened with increasing impatience.

Hadn’t she realized she’s made her point? She blamed him. Fine. She could just be that way. Those animals should have known that human weapons were too much for them:

Plik interrupted, placing a small hand gently on Isende’s arm.

“Save your throat. Isende. You’ve told him, and I fear he does not understand.”

Isende flinched at the gentle touch, and looked at her brother. “You don’t, do you?”

Tiniel straightened his shoulders. “In war, choices must be made. I made mine. Each of these made their own.”

Anger flared in Isende’s eyes, eyes that Tiniel had once thought so like his own.

“You are to be brought before the council,” she said. “But I have one more thing to show you.”

Tiniel looked at her. then sighed in what he thought was dignified resignation.

“Lead on.”

She did, taking him to the back of the large building and down a short flight of stairs. The room was lit with glow blocks, and cold wafted up so that Tiniel wondered that his sister in her light shift did not shiver.

“Ynamynet,” Isende said, as if explaining, “is proving to have a gift for cold. She used it here, so that we could have time to prepare a proper funeral.”

The cellar had been converted into a morgue, and the dead of the Nexus Islands were arrayed in neat lines upon the floor.

“I’m sure you remember my friend Rhul,” she said, choking up as she looked down at one of the closer bodies. “His wife is nearly paralyzed with grief over his death. His little children don’t yet know they are fatherless.”

Before Tiniel could say anything, Isende moved over to stand by a man of middle years, and began, “This was Ollaris. You may recall him as a cobbler. He died when an u-Chivalum spear took him in the stomach and ripped him through. He leaves …”

Tiniel did not want to hear any more. They were alone here, and he did not hesitate to raise his voice.

“Isende! I have had quite enough of this. People were injured. People died. Fine. I understand. I even understand that you blame me. I don’t know why. I did not plan the invasion. I did not close the gates to legal traffic.”

Isende gasped and Tiniel thought she might hit him, and wondered what he would do if she did. Surely no one could blame him for defending himself, and he had really put up with quite enough.

Isende held her hand, though, standing trembling for what seemed like an eternity. When she finally brought herself to speak, her voice was level and hard.

“You let in an army. Without the u-Chivalum army, our forces might have held. Haven’t you heard me tell you how many of the injuries were due to the u-Chivalum?”

“I heard,” Tiniel said impatiently, “but haven’t you heard me? I didn’t start this war. I simply took what I thought was the right side. No matter what I did, people would have died. People would have been hurt. I didn’t cause it. If anyone did, it was Derian Carter and his crazy insistence that a handful of refugees could hold something as valuable as the gates.”

Isende didn’t rise to this attack on her lover. Instead she looked Tiniel eye to eye and hissed, “People! After all I’ve said, after all I’ve shown you, you can still simply say ‘people’? People didn’t die here. Fathers and mothers died. Husbands and wives. Brothers and sisters. Son and daughters. Cousins. Nieces. Nephews. Beloved friends, some of whom had known each other for years, who had suffered exile, war, and privation and were closer than you and I ever were.”

“Closer!” Tiniel was stung. “You knew my heart!”

“I had an occasional glimpse of your soul,” Isende said. “I knew you were troubled, but I never imagined how far into fantasy you had gone.”

She pointed to the man at her feet and continued as if Tiniel had not said a word.

“Ollaris leaves behind his wife and three children, all of whom were born on the Nexus Islands and for whom it is the only home they know. Because of this, when their eldest child, a girl, asked to remain rather than go to sanctuary in the New World, they permitted her to do so. Laria worked as a runner, and was coming in with a message when her father was carried in on a stretcher. She stayed with her father, held him while he coughed up blood and cried for his parents—the grandparents she had never known. He died in her arms, and then do you know what she did?”

Mesmerized by Isende’s passion, Tiniel asked, “What?”

“Laria took off the shirt soaked with his blood, put on one somewhat more clean. Then she went out and ran more messages. During the day, she seems fine, but at night she screams, begging for her daddy to sing her to sleep. The doctors don’t know how to treat a wounded mind. She may never recover.”

Tiniel looked around the morgue. In the clear, pale light of the glow blocks, the faces were looking more and more familiar. He’d eaten beside that woman. She was always knitting something. Socks, usually. She’d say you couldn’t have enough socks, and then laugh.

That man had sung loud songs while mucking out the stalls or pigsties. He’d dug the smelly stuff into raised garden beds and talked endlessly about his plans for importing worms and making covers for some beds so he could grow some hardy greens come winter.

That boy over there … he’d been good at ball games, and very proud of how quickly he learned to use a bow. Judging from the hole gaping on the side of his neck, he hadn’t been good enough.

Tiniel began to shake.

“Get me out of here!” he said, turning to Isende, barely keeping from shouting his demand. “They’re looking at me.”

“No,” she said sadly. “They’ll never look at anyone again. You’re finally looking at them.”

TINIEL WAS EXECUTED later that day, up on the gateway hillside, in front of witnesses from each of the seven formerly allied nations, Elise and Doc, Grateful Peace, Citrine, Edlin, and any of those Nexans who cared to attend.

Before Skea took the axe to Tiniel’s neck, Derian read a prepared statement explaining why the execution was occurring. He, Urgana, Ynamynet, Harjeedian, and a drifting cast of others had composed it the night before, well aware that this execution was one of the first public acts of the new government of the Nexus Islands.

“We do not do this for vengeance,” he said, and his voice, hard and cold, didn’t even sound like his own. “Vengeance will not bring back the dead. We do not do this for punishment, because punishment is intended to correct, and the only correction that can happen after death is in the hands of others than those who breathe the air of this world.

“We do not do this because a law was broken, because it cannot be fairly said that those of us here on the Nexus Islands had any laws. We sentence this man, Tiniel, born of Gak in the New World, to death because he broke something far more vital than mere law. He broke trust.