The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [134]
Salamander insisted, the chirurgeon swore at him, and Gerran reluctantly agreed. Taking off his padding and shirt set the shoulder throbbing, even with Salamander to help him. Raddyn looked, poked, and grunted. He turned around, surveyed the various objects on the wagon bed, and picked up a pottery stoup.
“This might sting a bit, but I’ve got to get some of the old blood off.” He slopped some of the liquid in the stoup onto the wound. “It’s mead.”
Fire exploded in Gerran’s shoulder, or so it seemed to him. For a moment he could barely breathe.
“I don’t like the way it’s swelling,” Raddyn said. “Sleep on your stomach tonight. Huh, maybe I should have stitched it after all.”
“A bit late now!” Salamander snapped. “Perhaps you should take a bit more care with uncommon wounds like this?”
“Listen, you, I’ve got dying men here to tend.” Raddyn set filthy hands on his hips. “I don’t have the patience to listen to insults from the likes of you.”
Salamander started to speak, then merely shrugged. The chirurgeon turned on his heel and stalked off among the wagons.
“Let’s go,” Gerran said. “I’ll put on the shirt once we’re away from here.”
Sharak followed them meekly as they walked off. Since he himself would have been running off into the dark to escape, Gerran began to think of the lad as contemptible, but he reminded himself that the Horsekin saw such things differently. Besides, considering that Sharak was injured, exhausted, and no doubt hungry, his lack of the will to escape made sense.
At a decent distance from the chirurgeon’s wagon, they stopped, and Gerran knelt to let Salamander get the shirt on over his head. Getting his left arm into the sleeve took an effort of will.
“I have my doubts about that chirurgeon,” Salamander said, “deep and serious doubts.”
“Why?” Gerran stood up with the shirt on at last.
“You know, that’s a good question. He certainly seemed to do a decent job on your prisoner here.” Salamander nodded in Sharak’s direction. “It’s because of Neb’s low opinion of him, I suppose.”
“Neb? How would a scribe know the difference twixt one chirurgeon or another?”
Salamander hesitated, then shrugged. “Another good question. Let’s get back to your tent. I’m hungry enough to eat a wolf, pelt and all.”
Gerran led his prisoner—he refused to think of him as a slave— back to the campfire Clae had built near his tent. Nicedd sat cross-legged at some distance from the fire. A red-haired woman in a gray dress dappled rust-brown with dried blood sat nearby, nursing a baby, while a young daughter watched with hopeless eyes. An older lass, red-haired like her mother, knelt behind her and stared at the ground. The number of Gerran’s dependents had just grown considerably, he realized, thanks to Salamander, who, he supposed, was a dependent of his as well, at least for the duration of this campaign.
“Clae?” Gerran said. “Have the woman and her children been fed?”
“Not yet, my lord,” Clae said. “But I got rations for them and the prisoner, too.”
The woman looked up at him, then away. She must have been pretty once, Gerran realized, with her long red hair and green eyes, but now gray streaked the hair, she was missing half her teeth, her face was so thin that her bones looked sharp under her skin, and her despair hung around her like some foul perfume.
“My thanks, my lord,” she whispered. “For your protection.”
“You’re welcome.” Gerran made this banal remark only because he could think of nothing else.
“We’ll ride back to his wife soon,” Salamander said, “and she’ll have a place for you and your children.” He glanced at Gerran. “Her name’s Canna.”
“Ah. Well and good, then.” Gerran pointed at Sharak. “Does looking at him trouble you?”
“It doesn’t,” Canna said. “No more than aught else.”
Still, with gestures Gerran made Sharak sit farther away. The Horsekin took a place next to Nicedd, who patted his silver dagger in a meaningful way and glared