Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [158]
A dreadful, grieving, keening sound escaped him, not a groan of pain but a cry of rage and remorse.
“Lie still!” Leia said. “Chewbacca, lie still! The doctor is coming, you’ll be all right, what happened, oh, what happened?”
He cried out again, and Leia understood that he felt such despair that he wanted to die. He had adopted her family as his own, his Honor Family, and he had failed to protect the children.
“You can’t die!” He must live, she thought. He must. Only he can tell me who stole my children. “Come back! Come back to me!”
Her aides and the chamberlain hurried out of the forest, trampling the delicate high grass, exclaiming in outrage when the slender blades cut them. Leia’s children had wandered the meadow at liberty, neither leaving footprints nor receiving any harm. The grass parted before them like magic.
Magic, for my magic children, Leia thought. I thought I had protected them, I thought they could never come to any harm.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks.
The courtiers and advisers and guards gathered around her.
“Madam, madam,” said the chamberlain of Munto Codru. Out here in the wild sun and the wind, Mr. Iyon’s face was flushed and he looked uncomfortable.
“Did you bring the doctor?” Leia cried. “Get the doctor!”
“I sent for her, madam.”
Mr. Iyon tried to make her get up, tried to take over staunching the flow of blood from Chewbacca’s wound, but she pushed him away with a sharp word. Chewbacca’s pulse faltered. Leia feared he was failing.
You will not die, she thought. You must not die. I won’t let you die!
She drew on her inadequate knowledge to strengthen him. She bitterly regretted the responsibilities of statecraft that had prevented her from being properly trained in the ways of the Force.
Leia knew that if she allowed Chewbacca’s hot blood to gush past her hands, his life, too, would stream away.
The doctor ran across the field. Her wyrwulf loped behind her, carrying her equipment and supplies. The doctor’s wyrwulf reminded her that Mr. Iyon’s wyrwulf had been playing with her children.
It had disappeared as well.
Dr. Hyos knelt beside Leia. She observed Chewbacca’s wound and Leia’s first aid with a glance. “Ah,” she said briskly. “Good work.”
“Come away, now, Princess,” the chamberlain said.
“Not yet!” Dr. Hyos exclaimed. “I have only four hands, after all. The princess is quite all right where she is.”
The wyrwulf sat on its haunches between Leia and Dr. Hyos. Leia shuddered. The wyrwulf turned its massive head, slowly, gently, staring at her with great limpid liquid blue eyes. Its coat was thick and brown, with long coarse black guard hairs.
The doctor’s wyrwulf panted and slavered, its tongue lolling over its pitted fangs. Its face was grotesque. Its hot bitter breath made Leia flinch.
Dr. Hyos’s four hands, so languid at rest, moved quickly over the panniers strapped to the wyrwulf’s sides.
“Do you see what I am doing, my dear?” she said softly. “The bleeding is most important. Our princess has stopped it.”
The doctor spoke to the wyrwulf, explaining everything she did.
Dr. Hyos drew pressure bandages from one compartment as she chose the proper medicine from another. Always, she told the wyrwulf what she was doing. Her long gold fingers were deft and sure.
Leia allowed herself a moment of hope, even with her hands covered with Chewbacca’s hot blood. He had closed his eyes; he had stopped moving.
“As the bandage seals itself, my princess,” Dr. Hyos said, “move your hand from the wound.”
Leia obeyed. Dr. Hyos pressed the bandage to Chewbacca’s flank. The bandage pressed itself against Leia’s hand, clasped itself to Chewbacca, and wound its connectors through his fur. The wyrwulf watched, its tongue lolling.
Leia sat back on her heels. Her hands were sticky and her robes were smeared and she viewed everything in the clarity of horrified belief.
Dr. Hyos examined Chewbacca, frowning over the drying streaks of blood that had trickled from his nose and ears.
“Pressure bomb …” she said.
Leia remembered, as if from a distant dream, the