The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [191]
‘I won’t. I saw lots worse, you know, when the raiders took our village.’
‘Well and good, then. He’s got to hold still.’
Her patient had fainted again, a blessing. Dallandra took her sharpest scalpel between her teeth and a threaded needle in her right hand and set to work. The joint lay mostly exposed by cuts from a falcata. She dug into it with the fingers of her left hand and found the pink tendons among the white cartilage. Tarro woke, screaming. He arched his back in agony, but Ranadario and the lass held on and hauled him down again. Dallandra leaned onto his chest with her left elbow to pin him further. He kept screaming and tossing his head from side to side, but the three of them could keep him motionless enough for her to work.
First she stitched the major blood vessels shut above the joint, then tossed the needle aside. She spit the scalpel into her hand, steadied it, and cut the tendons. With her fingers she separated the cartilage and cut again, disjointing his arm from his body much as she would have disjointed a leg of mutton, but she took care to leave a flap of skin all round. Blood oozed from tiny veins rather than gushed. Tarro fainted with one last scream.
Ranadario grabbed the remains of the limb and tossed it onto the heap of other dead flesh on the wagon bed, whilst Dalla held a thick linen pad to the wound with her left hand and pressed hard. With the right she grabbed a waterskin of herbal brew, then removed the pad and washed the joint and the flap of skin. A small hand gave her a fresh needle, threaded with a single linen strand. The sister seemed as composed as if she’d been a chirurgeon. She was in shock, more likely, but Dalla had no time to worry about her at the moment.
‘Please don’t die,’ the lass whispered to her brother. ‘Please, Tarro, don’t die.’
‘He won’t,’ Dallandra said. ‘The bleeding’s nowhere near as bad as I feared it would be.’ Probably, she thought, because he’s already bled half to death.
But only half—once she’d stitched the wound, puckering the skin around his new stump like the end of a sausage, Dalla laid her hand on his face, cold and pale, but not deathly cold and bloodless, though his eyelids did have a bluish tint. If nothing more happened to the wound, if it stayed free of infection, he probably would live. She washed it all down again, then bound it with clean linen.
The menservants trotted forward. Dallandra turned to the lass. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Penna, my lady. My thanks for helping him.’ She ran off, following her brother as the servants carried him away.
Ranadario grabbed a waiting bucket of water and sluiced down the blood-soaked tailgate. Dallandra moved away from the gore flecked run-off and looked around. Head down, Salamander was striding along the lines of wounded men. She could guess whom he was searching for.
‘Ebañy!’ Dallandra called out. ‘Rocca’s not been brought in.’
‘You’re sure?’ He raised his head to look her way. ‘Of course you are. I’ll go look in the fortress.’
‘Not now, you howling dolt! It’s too dangerous.’
Salamander ran off, heading for the battlefield.
‘Shall I go after him?’ Ranadario said.
‘No.’ Dallandra shrugged. ‘He won’t listen, and the wounded need you more.’
Salamander had been trying to scry for Rocca, only to have the smoke and the vast etheric disturbance of the battle defeat him. The etheric doubles of the men who had just died drifted helplessly across the field. Their spilled blood gave off life-stuff in waves of mist. The burning, too, filled the air around it with swirling vortices of astral energy. Finally Salamander gave it up. He could stand waiting no longer and went physically to the battlefield, where he crept around the battle’s edge from the north.
Around him the fighting flared sporadically, just as a fire appears dead only to burst into flame when a servant stirs the ashes. Here and there Horsekin warriors made a stand, only to be cut down by Deverry men in twos and threes. An arrow whistled close by him—far too close, and Salamander began yelling out Prince Dar’s name in Elvish to make sure