Crucible (33 page)

“Cap'n ain't the only one in need of tendin',” the man said, arms folded over his chest. “Just the worst off.”

Of course.
“In that case, before you begin bringing me more patients, I will need
clean
rags for bandaging, firewood and kindling, and two or three worthless knives that won't hold an edge.”

His features sharpened with distrust. “What're you plannin' on usin' them knives for?”

“Why, cauteries,” she said, trying her best to look
innocent. “I assume someone here will have something needing cauterizing.”

He stared at her, as if trying to ascertain whether or not she was telling the truth. “All right,” he finally said. “Stay here.”

As if I have any place to go. . . .

In relatively short order, she had her pile of clean rags, water boiling in her little pot over the fire, and three “knives” that were little better than vaguely pointed slabs of crude iron heating in the fire itself. And her “patients” were lining up—reluctantly—chivied into place by the sardonic fellow, who she now knew was called “Jak.”

This lot did not appear to have done any recent fighting. The wounds she saw were all at least a couple of weeks old, and to her surprise, had been adequately bandaged and treated with
something
that had kept them from infection. Or perhaps it was just sheer good luck and clean bandages that had kept infection at bay. She replaced the bandages with clean ones and added a thin smear of some of her salve. There was an infected tooth to knock out. There were stomach-aches from various causes, and broken fingers and toes. Wrenched ankles, knees, and wrists. Black eyes and broken noses. Ill-fitting boots had rubbed blisters that had broken and bled and threatened infection. She had to use her cauterizing implements several times. It was, unsurprisingly, like most of the standard litany of woes presented when she turned up at a village.

It was dusk when the last of them left her care, and she began putting away her supplies. The sound of a footfall made her look up to see Jak.

“Well, you're not bad for a half-Healer,” he said.

She shrugged. “How long do you intend to keep me here?”

“I wouldn't plan on leaving us,” he replied. “Cap'n's awake. I reckon he needs another dose of that stuff that knocked him out.”

“Not just yet,” she countered. “He needs to eat and drink something, and be taken to the latrine if you have such a thing, and the woods if you don't.
I
am not going to do any of those things for him.”

Jak grunted, and turned on his heel and left.

He returned about a candlemark later; she already had enough of the herbs measured out to give the Cap'n another dose, and followed him without a word to the man's tent. As they moved through the camp, it was becoming more and more evident that these men had what was obviously
military
discipline. Which was very curious. If this was a group of mercenaries, then why were they
here,
in Valdemar, and in hiding? If this was a group of bandits, where had they gotten this level of organization and discipline?

She made another batch of her brew and gave it to the Cap'n to choke down. While she waited for it to take effect, Jak and the Cap'n talked quite as if she were not there, about camp matters and doings with the men—hunting parties, fishing expeditions, and innocuous things. It was obvious they had been working together, in this relationship and with a great measure of trust between them, for quite some time. It was also obvious there were things they
weren't
talking about in front of her.

Robberies. Ambushes. How long do they think they can get away with this before the Guard comes to hear about it?

Then again . . .
we are on the Border. They might be raiding over the Border and retreating back here.

When the Cap'n slept again, Jak “escorted” her back to her tent. By this point it was dusk. Men were lighting a few torches, or cooking over their little fires. It appeared no one was going to bring
her
any food.
So it is a good thing that I have my own for now.
And that was when she elected to stop Jak before he left her, and pose a direct question. “As I told you, I am mostly an herb-Healer,” she pointed out. “My supplies won't last
forever, and I am not much use without them. What do you propose to do when they are gone?”

He looked at her with a touch of surprise, as if this had never occurred to him.
Probably it hadn't.
“Can't you just—go out in the woods and get more?”

“Most of what I use is carefully grown in special herb gardens,” she said, as light from a nearby torch illuminated his puzzled expression. “They don't grow wild. I have to go to specific people in specific towns to get these things. And those specific people know
every
herb-Healer around; they'll be suspicious if someone they don't know comes asking for those things, and they are likely to inform the Guard.”

“Huh.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “And you're telling me this, why?”

“Because I am rather fond of being alive. I'm no use to you without my supplies, but if I don't tell you that it would be dangerous for people who
aren't
Healers to go asking for my herbs, and someone gets caught, you'll blame me for not telling you.” She tried to say this with a meek face, rather than with her usual challenging and sarcastic manner, although it was definitely a trial to do so.

He examined her in silence for a very long time, then finally grunted. “Give me a list. I'll do the worrying about how to get them.”

So he'll buy or steal from someone where there is no Guard. Which means going across the Border.
She nodded and crawled back into her tent. She was glad she had opted for the version of Summer Greens that featured trews tucked into boots, a light linen shirt, and a long tunic, rather than the robes most Healers who lived and worked in one place wore. Clambering in and out of a tent that barely came to her waist in robes would have been awkward. She'd already lit her tiny lamp, and by its light wrote out the list while gnawing on a hard biscuit of traveler's bread and sipping water to wash the dry stuff down. All the while she was thinking. There
would
be
help coming; Healer Vixen could not simply go missing without a search. She just needed to figure out a way to lead that help here.
And warn them before they get here . . .

• • •

“I would like all the rags you have, please, clean or otherwise, so I can make more bandages,” she told Jak in the morning when he came to get her to give the Cap'n his dose. She also handed him the list. He took it, but he sneered.

“You're gettin' mighty demandin' for a prisoner,” he said scornfully.

The vexation she was feeling very nearly overwhelmed her, and she reminded herself yet again that this masquerade was something she did not dare break.
For all I know, he's trying to goad me into losing my temper to prove that I am, in fact, Vixen.
She dropped her gaze so he would not see the contempt and fury in her eyes and quietly said, “I cannot bandage wounds without bandages. I cannot treat injuries or sickness without herbs. I am doing the best that I can, but you would not demand that one of these men charge the enemy with no weapons and his hands in chains, so you should not demand that I work without tools.”

Jak's only answer was to take her elbow roughly and pull her along to the Cap'n's tent. There she checked the casts she had put on his broken bones and found them satisfactory, then brewed him another dose. As she waited for the potion to cool enough that he could drink it, she heard it: the distinctive buzzing
cheet
song of the butcherbird. Carefully, she let her mind open so she could find it. From the flitting thoughts in its head, she could tell that it was a male, and she was in his territory. That was excellent; it meant she should have no problem finding him again.

She gave the Cap'n his dose, and Jak all but dragged her back to “her” tent. There was another line of men
waiting to be treated by the time she got there, more of the same as yesterday. Evidently, since she hadn't killed the first lot, more were willing to take their chances on her skills. Jak did not hang about this time, and she listened closely to them as she worked. She learned that she had been put “off-limits” and that the Cap'n had ordered that anyone who touched her would lose both hands. So at least she was unlikely to be raped in her sleep, even if they did seem inclined to make her do without meals. She made no complaint, even though her stomach was growling from lack of a breakfast by the time the last one limped away.

She was washing her hands when Jak showed up, accompanied by another bandit loaded down with rags. The latter dumped the pile beside her and stomped off; Jak thrust a pointed stick with a skinned, gutted rabbit impaled on it at her. She took it before he changed his mind, and he turned and stalked away without a word.

Well, it appears they aren't going to let me starve after all.
She removed the legs, wrapped them carefully in a clean cloth, and turned the stick into an impromptu spit while she sorted through the rags. When the rabbit was done, she put a pot of water back on the coals and began boiling the rags while she ate. Boiling didn't do anything about the stains and the dirt, but at least it turned them into
sterile
stains and dirt. The roll of twine in her supplies gave her a wash-line to dry the rags on. All this to reinforce the impression that she had resigned herself to her captivity and was getting on with what the bandits
wanted
her to do.

How long before people worried and sent out the Guard? She guessed about a week. Anything less than that could merely mean that someone had gotten unexpectedly hurt or sick, so she had stayed past when she expected to leave Graythorn. Anything more, and she'd have sent word of her delay.
I've been here a day and a half. And I need to make my moves slowly and carefully.

Just as she thought that, Jak came stalking by, as if he had expected her to be doing something other than hanging hot rags over her jury-rigged washing line. He glared at her, and stalked back the way he had come.

Very carefully.

When she was sure he had gone, she coaxed the butcherbird to her and convinced him it was safe to take bits of rabbit from her hand. By the time the raw meat was gone, the bird would likely have done anything she asked.

• • •

On the second day, there were fewer men to be treated. The Cap'n waved away her pain potion. “I'll have it to sleep,” he told her, “But there are too many things that need my attention.” He—or someone helping him—had cleaned him up somewhat since yesterday. Like all his men, he was bearded, but under that beard were rugged features seamed with a great many scars. Jak, by contrast, carried almost no marks. But the Cap'n was a big, burly man, probably accustomed to leading charges, and Jak was lean and saturnine, the sort who favored light armor and agile footwork. Men like that tended to be in one of two states: victorious and alive, or defeated and dead.

She decided it was time to speak up for herself a little. “I would like permission to leave the camp and go into the forest,” she said, quietly. “There are plants I want to hunt for.”

Jak's features immediately settled into a mask of suspicion. “I thought you said all your leaves and messes had to be bought!” he accused.

“And so they must,” she replied, looking at the Cap'n, not him. “I did not say I was going to look for medicines. I wish to look for plants to eat. If I continue to eat only meat as you seem to do, I will be ill.”

The Cap'n grinned. “Go ahead,” he said, and as Jak began to object, he waved his uninjured hand. “Where the hell is she going to go? She doesn't even know where
she is. The more leaf-messes she eats, the less you'll have to feed her yourself. If you're worried, set a guard on her.”

“I'm not wasting a man on guarding her!” Jak spluttered.

“Then don't.” The Cap'n shrugged with his good shoulder, and turned back toward her. “Get your leaves, as long as you've finished with the men.”

Jak glowered all the way back to her tent. She waited until he had left, and only then did she take a shawl and look for a way out of the camp.

Or to be more accurate, she
pretended
to be looking for a way out of the camp. She couldn't let anyone know that thanks to the butcherbird, she knew the exact boundaries of the camp and approximately how many men it held. She picked her way through deserted campsites; the men were evidently occupied elsewhere, for which she was grateful. No need to guess
what
they were doing; the sounds of metal on metal and Jak yelling somewhere in the distance told her the Cap'n was drilling his men. Still, Jak might have someone keeping a covert eye on her, so she made her way obliquely, not directly, to the unoccupied forest, and once past the last of the shelters, began her search.

She really was looking for plants to eat. And other things, in case her primary plan didn't work—although none of her other options at the moment were good.

The first thing she found was a spot in deep shade with plenty of ferns, and the young fiddleheads were excellent eating. She snapped them off at their bases and laid them in her shawl, keeping her eyes out for other things to eat. She hadn't been lying to the Captain; a diet of nothing but meat was extremely unhealthy. She suspected they were being fed a grain of some sort—probably oats, since they had horses—out of a common store, plus whatever else they could steal. And she suspected it was Jak's hostility that was depriving her of that. Now that the Cap'n had
been made aware of that, the situation might change, but she'd much rather have greens in the first place.

A little farther along, she found wood sorrel and plantain. She took the young leaves of the latter and culled out some of the entire plants of the sorrel. The roots would be delicious. By the time she had found all three of these, she had not gotten very deep into the forest . . . and she had also spotted several poisonous mushrooms, aconite and hellebore. She paid no particular attention to them and certainly did not gather any, but she marked their locations in her mind. Just in case.