The Book of Terrus: The Wise and Powerful

Chapter 13 - A Bed of Stars

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Trosk was chaos. Never before had Lhara ever seen so much macabre. In the square, tongues of flame continued to lick at the foundations of The Giant's Shoe, hissing vilely wherever water was thrown on them. All that remained of the inn was a charred black skeleton. The buildings on either side had been badly scorched too, and even now women were climbing out onto the mossy roofs to stamp out any threatening embers.

Beyond town, the mountainside was a grim canvas of bloodied earth. That was where Lhara had spent the past hour, laboring alongside Quella and the others to drag the wounded onto the back of a ram-drawn cart. It was horrible work. After the deathly white Factionist whom Lhara had first found, they added seven more to the cart. All but two were people Lhara had known her entire life.

The Fourth Company had been thorough; any of their wounded had been carried away on horseback with their fellow soldiers. Only the army's dead remained. The Factionists likewise had done their best not to leave anyone behind during their escape. It seemed they had even taken some villagers with them; nobody could find Halna, Alred the shepherd or Bjorn the carpenter. Two Factionists were all that remained alive that Lhara could find. The pale man remained unconscious, not even flinching anymore, a change which worried Lhara. The other Factionist, a weathered clansman with a serious wound to the belly was far more responsive. His agonized groans could clearly be heard even at twenty paces across the smoky battlefield.

By far the worst parts of Lhara's task were the dead. Seeing her da's broken body bourn down out of The Teeth all those years ago had been hard, but Thrymm's death had been quick and clean. She still remembered the slight O of surprise frozen upon her da's blue-grey lips. This was different. These men had died violently, gruesomely, in pain. Never in all her years would Lhara forget finding Gerdiom cradling Cassel's bloodied head in his arms. It seemed that, in their final moments, the giant-hearted father of three had crawled to Borse's son and held him.

By the time Lhara and the other 'scavengers' got the wounded to Magda's cottage, there were already nearly half a dozen people inside. Uncle Torl was set up on the kitchen table, with Aunt Rhena, Eima and Alina all trying to hold him down while Magda set his broken leg. A slick red gleam of bone caught Lhara's eye past Rhena's shoulder, and her already twisting stomach lurched.

"Lhara!"

Magda's shout, shockingly loud and forceful for a small, stooped old woman commanded Lhara's instant attention. The Wise Woman, unable to spare a hand, jerked her head toward the bedroom door.

"Set the two worst on the bed, and make the others as comfortable as you can. Then I need you to crush yarrow root...your uncle is bleeding too much."

Hearing Torl growling and groaning his pain as he bit down on a wooden ladle was almost as bad as seeing his leg. Some of the villagers were able to help support their own weight a little as Lhara and Quella tried to carry them in off the cart. Others including the one Factionist were complete deadweight.

Leaving Quella to tie tourniquets and hold cloths to bleeding wounds, Lhara rushed around Magda's little kitchen pulling down bundles of herbs and a mortar and pestle. She only had half a handful of roots ground when Magda called for her again.

"My hands cannot sew," she said. One look at the old woman's gnarled, arthritic fingers more than proved that. Magda held out the needle and thread with bloodied fingers to Lhara. "Stitch as you would through leather, and finish with a square knot."

With no time nor option for squeamishness, Lhara took the needle with trembling hands. It took three tries for her to thread it, all the while keenly aware of her aunt and cousin's anxious eyes on her. Bending over her uncle's leg, Lhara began.