Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

Kerowyn strode into the center of their circle, and glared at all of them with impartial impatience. “What’s more, if any of you try, I’ll personally have you bound hand and foot and tied to a tree to prevent you from going anywhere! Dear gods, why am I being saddled with a wagonload of idiots? Where is your sense? Where is your loyalty?”

“Our loyalty is to our Oath, as it should be,” shouted Gentian, who had gone red in the face with anger as Kerowyn spoke. “Captain, I might remind you that it was a Healer who stuck to his Oath many years ago who kept you from becoming a cripple!”

“Healers don’t take sides,” Nala seconded, with a little less volume, but no less force, and a glare just as fierce as Kerowyn’s. “That’s the Oath, and a good thing, too!”

“Damn you, people, what about the rest of us?” Kerowyn shouted right back, her eyes so cold with rage that they sent chills down Keisha’s spine. “Just what are we going to do if you all get sick and die, and the barbarians decide to make a fight of it anyway? What are we supposed to do if they decide you aren’t trying hard enough to cure them, and figure to encourage you with a bit of creative torture? Or slit your throats, because you couldn’t help the ones already crippled?”

“What idiot would assume all of us would go into the camp?” Grenthan countered with derision. “Great Lord, since when have Healers ever abandoned a post they’d been assigned to?”

“The same idiot who heard you discussing just that would naturally make that assumption,” Kerowyn snarled right back.

“Whoa!” Keisha shouted, jumping to her feet, and bringing the entire shouting match to a halt. When they all turned to stare at her, she fought down the impulse to run out of the tent, swallowed, and sat down.

“We can’t go into the camp, Herald-Captain,” she said in a more normal tone of voice. “We’d already decided that. We don’t know these people or what they’ll do, we don’t know their language, customs or superstitions, and we have no way of predicting anything they might assume. All we do know is that they have legends of Healers, and as we are aware, legends are difficult things to live up to.”

“Not to mention that not even an idiot puts himself completely into the hands of people who already considered kidnapping and coercion,” Gentian said gruffly. “Cap’n Kero, some of us have been with you for a very long time, and the very last thing we’d do is leave you in the lurch. What we do agree on is that our Oath demands that we try to help these folk, and that the Oath comes first, even before our loyalties. And vow wouldn’t have it any other way. There’ve been plenty of your people who’ve been cared for by the Healers on the side opposite yours, and you know it.”

“The other thing we agree on is that this disease is enough of a danger to Valdemar that we don’t dare ignore it and hope it sticks to the barbarians,” Nala said stiffly. “Whether you like it or not, we can’t leave until we’ve found a treatment, and we can’t do that without treating the barbarians.”

“Even burning the camp and its occupants might not stop it,” Keisha put in, softly but shrewdly. “Since we don’t know how it spreads at all, some of the biting insects might well be carrying it now, and it will be only a matter of time before it spreads to us. We really do have to find a cure, or at least a palliative.”

Kerowyn looked very sour indeed, but conceded their points. “Just promise me that you won’t do anything until after you’ve consulted me,” she added, with a look that told Keisha that if they didn’t agree, she would follow through on the threat to truss them up like dinnertime fowls.

She got that promise - from everyone but Keisha, and Keisha could hardly believe it when she didn’t seem to notice the omission.

“I hope it spreads by fleas,” sighed Nala when Kerowyn had left. “Dear and gracious gods, I hope it spreads by fleas, the way Boil-Plague does. Fleas, we can do something about, but who can stop the air from flowing?”

Keisha got up for a moment and took a quick peek outside the tent. Then she returned, as the others watched her curiously. “I actually have an idea,” she said diffidently. “If you want to hear it.”

“Go right ahead,” Gentian urged. “At the moment, we’re dry.”

“If we could get the barbarians to send one of the sick people out, one of us could go into quarantine with the sick person. That way no one would be at risk except a single Healer.” She swallowed, then continued. “I figured I’m probably the best one to do that; you can’t send an apprentice, and you know that. You all say I have a really strong Gift, you all agree that I’m as good as any of you with herbs and medicines. I’m the obvious choice because I’m the easiest one to replace.”

That started another argument entirely, with all three of them coming up with whatever they could think of to deter her from any such idea. The strongest argument against her plan was that she didn’t have experience in using her Gift, especially not against something deadly. “Oh, I agree that you’ve done very well so far,” Gentian half-scolded, “but that was against tiny infections, colds, belly-aches! Not against a fatal illness, not against some thing no one has ever seen before!”

Keisha shrugged, pretending indifference. “Diseases work the same whether they’re mild or serious,” she pointed out. “A tiny infection and a rotting limb are the same. It’s just a matter of degree.”

“The idea does have merit, though,” Nala said, after keeping her own counsel while the others argued. “It would keep infection from spreading to the rest, and it would keep the Healer out of the hands of the barbarians. I’ d be willing to try treatment on that basis. We’ve survived plenty of plagues before this; what’s one more?”

“And just how are we going to get a volunteer barbarian?” Grenthan asked shrewdly.

“We could ask?” Keisha suggested timidly.

No one laughed at her, although she more than half expected them to.

“Well, the barbarians have obliged me by falling in with my second choice of tactics,” Kerowyn sighed, as Darian belatedly scrambled into his place in the council-circle, feeling much better for a good, long sleep. “Your Hawkbrother scouts reported that they were building up walls around their camp and fortifying them; I sent a deputation out to them to see what they’d do. They didn’t meet my people with arrows, but they also didn’t show so much as the tips of their noses.”

“Grand,” groaned Lord Breon. “We’ve frightened them, and now they aren’t going to move one way or the other.”

“Not without a visitation from their miraculous Ghost Cat, is my guess,” Kerowyn agreed, and ran her hand along the top of her hair. She cast a speculative eye at Firesong, who shook his head.

“Don’t evsn start on what you’re thinking,” he warned. “I wouldn’t create a Ghost Cat illusion for anyone under circumstances like this. Firstly, I don’t know how it’s expected to behave, and secondly, what if it is an Avatar? Are you willing to risk the anger of a god? I’m not! Not even one who’s working outside his own lands!”

“It was a thought,” she replied wistfully.

“A bad one,” he countered, leaving no room for further argument. “Why don’t you just set up a siege and hold them in place until they give up and surrender?”

“They do have to eat, so they are going to come out at some point, but a siege under these conditions is far from ideal,” she responded. “It certainly wasn’t what I had in mind. And only their gods know what they’re planning in there; it could be anything. Remember, only a third of our troops have seen combat. All of theirs have.”