Fire - Kristin Cashore [143]
FIRE, HER GUARD, several other healers, the armourers and other staff persons - and, at a distance, the dappled grey horse - rode north on the tails of the First and Second.
They passed very near the city, near enough that they could see the river swollen almost as high as the bridges. Fire stretched as hard as she could for Hanna and Tess, but though she could just make out the black turrets of the palace rising above indistinguishable buildings, she could not reach them. They were out of her range.
Soon after, they approached the vast northern camps, startlingly close to the city. The sight was not cheering - the rise was desolate, crowded with musty and soaked tents, some sitting smack in the middle of newly formed streams. Mute, exhausted-looking soldiers from the Third and Fourth wandered among the tents. At the appearance of the First and Second, their faces lit up slowly, hesitantly, as if they didn’t dare to believe in the mirage of mounted reinforcements kicking up such a spray that they seemed to be emerging from a lake. Then there followed a sort of quiet and tired jubilation. Friends and strangers hugged each other. Some in the Third and Fourth wept involuntary, depleted tears.
Fire asked a soldier of the Third to take her to the army hospital. She got to work.
THE HEALING ROOMS of the northern front were situated at the south and back of the camp in hastily constructed wooden barracks with the stone plain of Marble Rise for a floor. Which meant that at the moment, the floor was slippery with seeping water, and in some places slick with blood.
She saw quickly that the work here would be no different and no more desperate than what she was used to. She uncovered her hair and moved down the rows of patients, stopping at those who were in need of more than her presence. Hope and lightness came to the rooms like a clean breeze, as it had in the camp with the arrival of reinforcements, except that here the change was her doing, and hers alone. How strange it was to understand that. How strange to have the power to cause others to feel something she herself did not feel; and then catch the hint of it in their collective minds, and begin to feel it herself.
Through an arrow loop in the wall she saw a familiar horse and rider tearing across the camp toward the healing rooms. Brigan pulled up at Nash’s feet and dropped from the saddle. The two brothers threw their arms around each other and embraced hard.
Shortly thereafter he stepped into the healing rooms and leaned in the doorway, looking across at her quietly. Brocker’s son with gentle grey eyes.
She abandoned all pretense of decorum and ran at him.
AFTER SOME TIME, a cheeky fellow in a cot nearby said aloud that he was inclined to disbelieve the rumour that the lady monster was marrying the king.
‘What tipped you off ?’ asked another fellow, one cot over.
Fire and Brigan didn’t let go of each other, but Fire laughed. ‘You’re thin,’ she said to him between kisses, ‘and your colour is off. You’re sick.’
‘It’s just a bit of dirt,’ he said, kissing tears away on both of her cheeks.
‘Don’t joke. I can feel that you’re sick.’
‘It’s only exhaustion,’ he said. ‘Oh, Fire, I’m glad you’re here, but I’m not sure you should be. This isn’t a fortress. They attack arbitrarily.’
‘Well, if there are to be attacks, then I need to be here. I can do too much good not to be.’
His arms around her tightened. ‘Tonight when you’re done with your work, will you come find me?’
I will.
A voice outside the healing rooms called for the commander. Brigan sighed. ‘Come straight into my office,’ he said dryly, ‘even if there’s a queue outside the door. We’ll never see each other if you wait until no one else is looking for me.’
As he left to answer the call, she heard him exclaiming in wonderment on the rise. ‘Rocks, Nash. Is that