“I’m just glad they’re on our side,” said Will.
“We could have won if we’d had all that fancy shit,” said Dave sourly.
Tiny broke in, “Technically, we did win.”
Dave agreed. “Damn right, we did! They’re just the clean-up crew.” The ever-energetic thief jumped up and pointed back the way they had come. “The shit’s back there, boys! Go dig us a latrine!”
Will grabbed the slender man’s shoulder, pulling him back into line. “Damn it, Dave! Don’t get me in trouble. It’s still my first day as a corporal.”
Dave grinned at him, then gave an overly pompous salute. “Yes sir, mister Corporal, sir!”
Sergeant Nash had already noticed Dave’s antics. “Corporal Cartwright! Put a leash on your idiot before I have to stop and build a stockade to put him in!”
***
They made it back to the camp outside of Branscombe in the afternoon of the second day. Will would have preferred to find a bed and vanish for a week, but of course the army didn’t work that way. There was always more work to do. The only allowance made for their exhaustion was allowing them to retire as soon as their tents were pitched, but Sergeant Nash made it plain that they would be expanding the camp in the morning to make room for the reinforcements that were a day behind them.
Will couldn’t just put his bedroll down and sleep, however. His curiosity was killing him. There was someone he wanted to see, so once his squad was settled, he left and headed for the medic tent.
He found several things had changed when he got there. A second, much larger pavilion had been set up in the open space in front of the usual medic tent. It was already filled with the most seriously wounded of Fulstrom’s returning soldiers. Men were stretched out everywhere, some on cots and others on the ground.
If she’s here, she’s probably busy as hell, thought Will. But why would she be here? She was only pretending. A figure moved by in his peripheral vision, and when he looked, he saw Isabel. She was clad in a loose, woolen robe that had probably been a clean gray earlier in the day. Now it was marked with numerous blood-stains.
I shouldn’t be here, he realized. He started to turn away when he heard her voice call out to him. “William!”
Turning back, he saw her face. She looked happy to see him. “Hello,” he said, feeling stupid for having nothing better to say.
“Were you hurt anywhere?” she asked immediately, her expression shifting to one of concern. Her gaze searched him from head to toe.
“Uh, no,” he answered. “I just came to see if I could help.”
She stared at him curiously. “Do you know how to clean wounds, or sew stitches?”
He nodded.
Isabel frowned. “When did you learn to do that?” Then she paused, her face blank for a moment. “Oh, your mother. I should have realized.”
Now it was his turn to be confused. “How’d you know about her?”
Something flickered across her features. Embarrassment? Then she replied, “You told me she was a midwife last time. When your big friend had to be stitched up.”
Will thought about it. No, I didn’t. He was certain she had lied, but he merely smiled. “Oh, sure.”
Isabel shifted the topic smoothly. “Well, if you want to help, you’ll need to take that off and wash up.” She waved a hand at his armor.
He did as she asked, and a quarter of an hour later he was back. Most of the wounded in the tent had moderate injuries. Most of those who had serious wounds had died during the retreat, and those with minor injuries had already been bandaged before they arrived.
Those left had wounds that were too much for field medicine but not bad enough to kill them. Will assisted in cleaning wounds and stitching up deep cuts, and when he wasn’t needed for that he boiled water, carried clean linens, and in one instance helped dilute a concentrated opium tincture down to something that could be given to those who were in pain.
Isabel walked up and touched his elbow. “When did you learn to use a scale?”
“Mom taught me,” he answered. A lie for a lie. “What would you like me to do now?”
The hours had flown past, and it was now well after midnight. Isabel wiped her brow with her sleeve, leaving a red streak across her forehead without realizing it. “There’s not much left to do now,” she told him. “Watch and wait. You should go rest.”
“What will you do?” he asked.
She smiled sadly. “I’ll wait. One of the soldiers probably won’t make it through the night. I’ll stay with him, so he isn’t alone.”
“Let me do it,” he offered.
“You can barely stand,” said Isabel. “You’ve probably been up since before dawn. Go get some sleep.”
“Speak for yourself,” he shot back. “I can nap while he sleeps. You need to be free. There are dozens here asking for you every few minutes.”
“Fine.”
Chapter 52
The man’s name turned out to be Tom Marcruse, a conscript from a farm outside of Branscombe. Isabel introduced them, and Will talked to the fellow briefly, but Tom kept drifting in and out of consciousness, partly because of the tincture of opium and partly because of his raging fever.
Will considered sleeping, but Tom kept groaning even as he slept. Tom’s face was red and covered with sweat. He was a young man, and Will couldn’t help but draw comparisons. That could just as easily have been me.
The soldier’s wound had been a relatively minor one. A bodkin point had pierced his upper arm, but during the march back the wound had turned septic. By the time they had gotten back to Branscombe it had been too late. Even removing the arm wouldn’t stop the infection in the soldier’s blood.
Will’s eyes drooped as he watched the man, and his thoughts drifted back to when he had seen a young boy suffering similarly. Joey Tanner hadn’t been as far along, but the result would have been the same. I don’t have any herbs for this poor fellow, though, thought Will.
But then, it hadn’t been the herbs that had cured Joey. They had merely been the start. It had been his magic replicating what the herbs did that had saved the child. Do I dare? Tom would die anyway if he did nothing.
He scooted closer, so that he was right beside the fevered soldier, and he began studying the injured arm, trying to get a sense of the illness that had started there. Just as with plants, he could feel a certain sense of wrongness, but he couldn’t simply push his turyn into the wound. That would only make the man worse. He needed a reference, something like the herbs he had used before.
Will examined the grasses growing around him, but none of them seemed right. A new idea came to him. What about me? He placed his hand beside the wounded man’s flesh, comparing what his magical sense saw in him and in the other man. After a while, he began to get a feeling that he could tell the healthy tissue from the sick, but it needed to be more direct.
Unwrapping the bandage on Tom’s arm, he looked at the putrefying flesh, then he took out his knife and made a cut in the meat of his own palm. The difference in his blood and the fevered man’s blood was apparent to his eyes. Squeezing his hand into a fist, he dripped some of his blood onto the wound, then covered it with his hands, letting his turyn seep into the diseased flesh.