Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

The young surgeon, who had faithfully called each day since their capture on her and the imprisoned Kuhmbuhluhners, failed to come for almost a week, and when he finally did arrive, he looked tired and drawn with care and worry. Behkah overheard him telling the other prisoners that half or more of the camp had suddenly come down with a violent, painful and debilitating flux of the bowels. The senior surgeon, he had gone on to say, feared an onset of the dreaded camp fever and was taking such precautions as he could—insisting that all potable water be briskly boiled, among other expedients, and recommending that the other ranks be afforded extra rations of beer until new sources of water could be found, especially since the discovery of a considerable quantity of large barrels of beer hidden away by some nameless New Kuhmbuhluhner farmer had swollen the beer supply appreciably.

When they came out onto the plain before the besieged city, Dr. Erica Arenstein breathed a sigh of utter relief. She had done a goodly amount of walking and hiking in this current body before the Skohshuns had captured her and a fairish amount since, curiously exploring the glen, under guard. So the march down from the glen to the siege camp, executed as it had been at the best steady pace the draft oxen could be prevailed upon to maintain, had been little exertion to her.

But to her entourage of Ganiks, who had seldom in their adult lives walked any farther than the nearest pony or horse, the march had constituted a form of slow torture. Only when kicks and blows, cuts of stockwhips and ungentle proddings with polearms failed to elicit a response of some sort was a fallen prisoner ever grudgingly tumbled onto the load of a wagon or a wain.

Nor was the simple fact of unaccustomed exercise the only or the worst problem undergone by the Ganik bullies. All of their boots had been taken in raids or after ambushes or battles, and consequently most were more or less ill fitting. Moreover, they were all horsemen’s boots, poorly suited for long-distance marching, nor had the primitive Ganiks ever used any sort of stocking or foot wrappings. Before the first day of the march was half done, their feet were become one excruciating mass of blisters, burst blisters and oozing sores. By the nightfall halt, even the strongest of the bullies were gasping, or crying out in pain at every limping pace, their lacerated feet squishing audibly in quantities of their own blood.

After she and the handful of Kuhmbuhluhn prisoners taken after the battle of the previous year had done the little of which they were capable for the suffering men—bathing their feet with a mixture of vinegar and water, then putting them to soak in such containers as were available filled with more water laced with more vinegar and some salt—Erica stalked across the camp to confront the officer commanding this column, with whom she had had some harsh words earlier in the day.

Supply and reinforcement trains were mostly commanded by a sergeant, an ensign, a lieutenant, perhaps larger or more important ones by as much as a captain, but Colonel Potter was a colonel and a regimental commander, as well as a blood relation of the earl. The soldier gossip was that his present assignment was a form of punishment for some misdeed or other. Erica could well believe that rumor, for from her first meeting with the pompous, bandy-legged little officer, she had found him possessed of all the charm and human warmth of a bull alligator combined with the patience of a rattlesnake with a toothache.

This dusk, she found him dining with the only other two officers in this column, a junior surgeon—his rank roughly the equivalent of a captain—from the glen reserves, and the boy ensign “commanding” the three hundred reserve pikemen being marched up to fill out the ranks.

An orderly at first halted Erica, but a snarled word and a wave of one of Potter’s greasy hands saw her passed to stop before his improvised dining table. There was a wicker-covered demijohn beside the colonel’s stool, and his ill-coordinated movements and slightly slurred speech told the woman what that demijohn likely contained.

“Well,” he smiled coldly, “gentlemen, we are honored with a visit from our female-sawbones prisoner, with her overbig mouth and her loose, flapping tongue.”

Then, to Erica, “What sort of outrageous demands and stipulations did you come to present me this time, woman? Chilled wine and rare roast beef, is it? Or perhaps feather beds for you and your unsavory crew for the night?” He laughed humorlessly, but Erica noticed that neither of the other two officers joined him—the teenaged ensign industriously applied all of his efforts and attention to his dish of boiled pork and potatoes, while the surgeon fiddled with his cup and looked embarrassed.

“No, colonel, the rations are adequate of quality and ample of quantity,” Erica answered quietly and seriously. “But I must inform you, I fear, that none of my men will be capable of marching for at least a week. So badly are their feet injured that they will certainly be too swollen in the morning for them to get into their boots.”

“Oh, really? How truly dreadful,” said Potter mockingly.

Realizing in advance that appeal to this sarcastic little man was pointless, Erica still felt that she must go on the record with her objections. She had told it all to Potter, alone, earlier in the past day, but now these other officers could bear witness.

“Yes, colonel, as I mentioned this midday, the boots of my men were fashioned for riding, not for extensive walking. Moreover, they are unaccustomed to marching, having spent most of their lives in a saddle. Besides, Brigadier Maklarin’s message said that we were to be ‘conveyed’ to him, as I recall.”

His narrow, pockmarked face twisted in anger, a feral gleam in his beady eyes, the colonel leaned across the table, heedless of the cup he overturned. “Can’t march, hey? Can’t get their poxy boots on, you say? Well, by God they can march without boots, barefoot, damn them! And any one of them not on his feet when I pass through in the morning will never need to worry about marching or anything else again, not in this life! D’you get my meaning, you insufferable sow? Conveyed, indeed! It’s more than enough that a wain had to be put to carrying your ratty gear and a tent. I’m damned if I’ll waste more wheeled transport on so scurvy a lot as yours!

“Now, get out of my sight and leave us to eat our dinner in peace. Female or no female, if you intrude on me again, come to me without my summons, I’ll have you stripped and well striped, woman!”

Much later, well after darkness had closed about the camp, the junior surgeon appeared with two other Skohshuns outside the tent into which Erica and all the rest were crowded. One of the Skohshuns bore a lantern, and by its dim and flaring light the young man cursorily examined the feet of the Ganiks. In his wake came the third Skohshun, bearing a wooden tub from which he scooped large handsful of some strong-smelling, greasy unguent with which he liberally coated the Ganiks’ feet. Then the surgeon took the lantern while the first man swathed each foot carefully in a square of clean linen cloth.

Beckoning Erica outside, the surgeon said, “Doctor, back in the glen, I never had the time to come and meet you, but I have heard much good of you, of the unsolicited medical work you did for our people, the new and most successful techniques you introduced. For this, if for no other reason, I deeply regret the shabby way in which Colonel Potter is misusing you and your followers. But, alas, nothing that I can say will in any way sway the man, now. When once we reach the siege camp, well, that will be another pot of beans.

“He ...” The Skohshun surgeon looked about before going on in a lower-pitched, conspiratorial voice. “Three large wagons and one wain were assigned to transport all you prisoners and your effects, as well as supplies for you for the trip, to include two tents of this size and a smaller one for you alone. I know this order for fact because my own orders followed on that same sheet, all signed by the brigadier’s adjutant.