Treasures of Fantasy - Margaret Weis [7]
Aylaen had a bruised face and swollen knuckles and a sprained wrist, but considering that she had fought her captors with the fury of a catamount, she was probably fortunate the soldiers hadn’t beaten her senseless.
Treia had done what she could to treat her sister’s injuries, which wasn’t much, for they wouldn’t let her back on the ship to fetch her healing salves and potions. And so, Aylaen and many of the other Torgun had contracted the terrible sickness.
The Legate’s soldiers had said it was an illness common among city dwellers, known as the “bloody flux.” The Legate had sent a man they termed a “physician” to help and, finding that Treia was a healer, this man had permitted her to treat her suffering people.
Having never before seen such an illness, Treia had not been able to do much for her patients except bathe their fevered bodies and close their eyes when they died. Those few, like Aylaen, who had survived had done it on their own. Others, like Treia and Skylan, had not been affected at all.
Once Treia had presided over the funerals of her dead, the bodies had been burned, along with all their clothing and anything they had touched.
Free of the grip of the sickness, Aylaen recovered rapidly, a fact she seemed to resent. She had watched the dead being consumed by flames with a look of envy. After that, she had gone into the tent and thrown herself down onto her blanket and stared into the darkness, tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks.
Treia had at last grown exasperated. “Garn is dead,” she had told her sister. “You must accept that and go on. You will make yourself ill again if you don’t.”
Aylaen had been so lost in her grief she had not even seemed to hear her.
This morning, Treia sat in the sand outside her tent, watching the soldiers shackle the Torgun prisoners together and dump them onto the sand while the carpenters made repairs to the ship. Out to sea, the strange-looking war galley rocked gently at anchor near the sandbar on which the Venjekar had run aground.
Treia was not shackled or bound in any way. No one considered her a threat, nor were they concerned that she might escape. The soldiers sometimes stared at her and sometimes they seemed to talk about her, laughing in a way that made her cheeks burn, but none had molested her or Aylaen. She might have worried about that if she had not been in such inner turmoil, wondering what had become of Raegar, wondering why he had abandoned her, wondering if he was dead.
She saw Skylan get into a fight with the soldiers and her mouth curled in a contemptuous smile to see him knocked to the ground. He had not even been sick, the others had told her. He should have died! He was the one responsible for their suffering. Some god must love him, Treia thought resentfully.
She sat watching the soldiers and their commander, Zahakis, walking across the sand and felt a flutter of alarm. They were coming toward her tent. Treia hoped that they were going off into the underbrush to hunt, as they had done in the past.
But their heads in their helms with the flaps that covered their cheeks were turned toward her, as were their steps. Treia crawled back into the tent and shook Aylaen by the shoulder.
“What is it?” Aylaen said, rolling over with a groan. “Why did you wake me?”
“The soldiers are coming for us,” said Treia, her voice tight.
Aylaen sat up. Her face was pale and thin from her illness. Her red hair, which she had cut short as a dedication to the goddess, had grown back in a cluster of curls that straggled over her forehead and down her neck. Her green eyes were sunken and smudged by dark circles. She was only seventeen, but illness and sorrow had aged her. Treia, in her late twenties, seemed the younger by comparison. Aylaen’s eyes had been clouded and dull before this. When Treia mentioned the soldiers, she was pleased to see a spark of fire in the green depths.
“I will die before I let those sons of whores touch me,” Aylaen said, clasping Treia’s hand tightly. “You and I—we’ll fight them.”
Aylaen tried to stand. Her weak