The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [68]
“While you are here, let me check something else.” Her fingers touch his temples, and a faint warmth stirs within his head, then vanishes. She steps back, even before the burning sensation leaves his foot.
From a full two cubits away, the healer looks at him through dark-lashed eyes, shakes her head imperceptibly. “Sit over there. Let it dry.”
He moves to the stool she has indicated.
“Healer?” Another voice intrudes.
They both look up. A road guard stands by the tent, followed by two other prisoners carrying a stretcher.
The silver-haired man knows one of the stretcher-bearers—Redrick—because they share the same bunk wagon.
“Smashed leg,” announces the guard, his voice flat.
“Set him on the table. Gently.”
The nameless man watches as Redrick and the other prisoner ease the injured man onto the long, battered table. The guard watches, along with the two stretcher-bearers, while the healer examines the leg.
“I can splint this, but the master-healer at Borlen will have to handle the bones.”
“Darkness . . .” mutters the road guard.
“It’s your choice. Two bones are shattered. I can keep him from losing the leg, but it will be nearly half a year before he can get around without help, and he’ll never really be able to use the limb.”
“Fix him up as well as you can. I’ll ask the squad leader. You two—” the guard jabs with the hand not holding the truncheon”—come on and get back to work.” He glares at the nameless man. “How long before this one’s ready?”
“Not long. This time you sent someone before the whole foot was diseased.”
The guard purses his lips, then turns without speaking. Redrick and the other prisoner follow him.
“My leg?” asks the bearded prisoner, an older man with streaks of gray in his straggly beard and remaining hair.
“They’ll send you to Klerris. They don’t like to, but they will.” She rummages through a long trunk as she speaks, finally extracting an apparatus of canvas and wooden braces. “You, silver-head. Give me a hand here.”
“What?” mumbles the older man.
“We’re just splinting the leg temporarily. That’s so the ends of the bones don’t rip up your leg any more than it is when they throw you in the wagon.”
The nameless man stands up and takes the four steps that bring him beside the table. The pain in his bare foot has subsided to a dull throbbing.
“When I tell you . . .” The healer explains how she wants him to hold the injured man’s leg. “Do you understand?”
He nods.
She takes the apparatus in hand. The prisoner screams but does not move as the healer and the nameless man do what they must. The healer’s hands never falter.
The silver-haired man clamps his lips as he does his job, but his hands remain steady. He knows that he should do something besides what he has been told, but what that should be, he does not remember, if indeed it is an action that he should remember from the past he does not recall.
At the end, the man on the table lies half-comatose, sweating. As the healer sponges away his sweat, her eyes fall upon the nameless man. “You don’t belong here.”
“I don’t know where I belong. Do you?”
She looks away, then shakes her head. “Let’s check your foot.”
Her hands are deft. She places a thin cloth, sticky at the edges, over the sore, which is no longer yellow but merely white beginning to crust. Then she rummages in the trunk under the table.
“Oohhh . . .” comes a murmur from the table.
The healer straightens and touches the unfortunate’s forehead. “You’ll be all right.” In her other hand, she lifts what appear to be two strips of cloth. She turns to the silver-haired man.
“Wear one of these each day on the injured foot—today, over the pad. Tomorrow, wash the foot and take off the pad. Wear the clean sock. Wash the socks out as well as you can and wear a clean one each day until the foot heals. If it gets worse, come see me as soon as you can. Just tell the guards I told you to.” She holds up her hand. “You won’t work at all if it gets really diseased.”
He takes the socks and