A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [138]
“Here’s an odd thing. She knew our names, Rhodry. The old herbwoman, I mean. She asked if you were still alive.”
Rhodry flung his head up like a startled horse and swore.
“Oh, did she now? What does she look like?”
“I don’t know. I mean, she’s just this old woman, all white and wrinkled.”
Rhodry scrambled up, gesturing for him to follow.
“Let’s go find her, lad. I’ve got my reasons.”
Eventually, just as the falling night forced the exhausted men to their feet to tend to fires and suchlike, they found the herbwoman at the edge of the camp. By then the carts had come in, and she was using one of them as a table for her work while servants rushed around, fetching her water and handing her bandages and suchlike. As bloody as a warrior, she was bending over a prone man and binding his wounds by firelight. Yraen and Rhodry watched while she stitched up a couple of superficial cuts for one of Adry’s riders, then turned the prisoner back over to his guard.
“Old woman?” Rhodry said. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”
“I’ve not. Have you? I mean, what are you talking about? She looks old to me.”
“Does she now?” All at once Rhodry laughed. “Very well. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Rhodry! What by the hells are you talking about?”
“Naught, naught. Here, I thought for a while there that it might be someone I know, you see, but it’s not. Let’s go pay our respects anyway.”
Wearing only a singlet with her brigga, Dallandra was washing in a big kettle of warm water while a servant carried off her red and spattered shirt. To Yraen she looked even older with her flabby, wrinkled arms and prominent clavicle exposed, but Rhodry was staring at her as if he found her a marvel.
“Well met, Rhodry,” she said, glancing up. “I’m glad I didn’t find you under my needle and thread.”
“And so am I, good herbwoman. Have you ridden here from the Westlands to find me?”
“Not precisely.” She shot a warning glance in the servants’ direction. “I’ve too much work to do to talk now, but I’ll explain later.”
“One last question, if you would.” Rhodry made her a bow. “How fares Lord Comerr?”
“I had to take his left arm off at the shoulder. Maybe he’ll live, maybe not.” Dallandra looked doubtfully up at the hills. “The gods will do what they will, and there’s naught any of us can do about it.”
Yraen and Rhodry made a fire of their own, then ate stale flatbread and jerky out of their saddlebags, the noon provisions they’d never had time to eat before the battle. Yraen found himself gobbling shamelessly, even as he wondered how he could be hungry after the things he’d seen and done that day.
“Well, my friend,” Rhodry said. “You’ve made a splendid beginning, but don’t think you know everything you need to know about warfare.”
“I’d never be such a dolt. Don’t trouble your heart”
“Is it what you’d been expecting?”
“Not in the least.”
Yet he was snared by a strange dreamlike feeling, that indeed it was all familiar—too familiar. His very exhaustion opened a door in his mind to reveal something long buried, not a memory, nothing so clear, but a recognition, a sense of familiarity as he looked at the camp and his own bloodstained clothes, as he felt every muscle in his body aching from the battle behind them. Even the horror, the sheer disgust of it—somehow he should have known, somehow he’d always known that glory demanded this particular price. For a moment he felt like weeping so strongly that only Rhodry’s appraising