Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

She loathed war and killing. At times, she did not know how to accept humankind’s readiness for evil. But she was already starting to admire Berek, and she had not yet met him. His spirit preserved his people when every other resource failed. And he was the reason-she was sure of this-that they had refrained from slaying her. She had invoked his name. They strove to prove themselves worthy of him.

Roughly she rubbed away her tears. Without hesitation, she followed the aisle and her raw nerves toward the nearest pavilion.

As she approached the heavy canvas, torn and filthy from too much use, her perceptions of distress accumulated. The naked human suffering ahead of her was worse than any she had faced before.

She had spent years preparing for such crises. Nothing in that tent was more severe than the mangled cost of car wrecks or bad falls; the outcome of drunken brawls and domestic abuse; the vicious ruin of gunshots. Berek’s people were not more severely damaged than Sahah had been, or others of the Ramen, or the Masters who had opposed the Demondim.

But there were so many of them-And they were being given such primitive care-During the last strides of her approach to the pavilion, she felt three of them die. More than a score of them lingered on the absolute edge of death, kept alive only by simple unbending steadfastness; by the strength of their desire not to fail their Lord. Before long, they would slip away, some stupefied by their wounds, others in pure agony. And this was only one tent: there were two more.

Never before had Linden faced bleeding need on this scale: not by several orders of magnitude. The grim frantic hours that she and Julius Berenford had spent in surgery after Covenant’s murder were paltry by comparison.

And her nerves were raw; too raw. She felt every severed limb and broken skull, every pierced abdomen and slashed joint, as if they had been incused on her own flesh. Nevertheless she did not falter. She would not. Confronted with such pain, she would allow nothing to prevent her from doing what she could.

Trust yourself.

As if she had forgotten her own mortality, she thrust the stiff fabric of the opening aside and strode into the tent.

She hardly noticed that no one entered behind her.

The tent was supported by four heavy poles, each more than twice her height. And the interior was illuminated by oil lamps, at least a score of them. Nevertheless she could scarcely descry the far wall. The whole place was full of smoke, a heavy brume so thick and pungent that her eyes watered instantly and she began to cough before she had taken two steps across the dirt floor.

God damn it, she might have shouted, are you trying to suffocate them? Almost at once, however, her senses came into focus, and she saw and smelled and felt that the rank fug arose from burning herbs. It was a febrifuge of some kind, intended to combat fever. In addition, it had a degree of virtue against infection. Beyond question, it hurt the lungs of the wounded. But most of them had grown accustomed to it, or were too weak to cough. And it kept some of them alive.

They lay on the iron ground in long rows, protected from the cold only by thin straw pallets padded with blankets. But the blankets had been fouled by months or seasons of blood and pus and sputum, urine and faeces: they were caked and crusted with disease. Still coughing, Linden discerned pneumonia and dysentery rampant around her, exacerbating the bitter throng of wounds and a host of other illnesses.

Then she understood that the true horror of this war was not that so many people were dying, but rather that so many still clung to life. Death would have been kinder-The men and women who served as Berek’s physicians had wrought miracles against impossible odds.

There were three of them in the tent, two men and a woman: three to care for twenty or thirty times that many wounded and dying. As one of them came toward her, she saw that he wore a thick grey robe nearly as vile as the blankets. A length of rope cinched his waist, and from it hung several pouches of herbs-his only medicines-as well as a short heavy sword and a crude saw which he obviously, too obviously, used for amputations. He trembled with fatigue as he approached, a heavy burden of sleep deprivation. Rheum dulled his gaze, and the weak flat sound of his cough told Linden as clearly as blood work that he had contracted pneumonia.

Nevertheless he did his best to accost her. “Begone,” he wheezed irritably. This is no place for you, stranger, madwoman. I will summon-”

Linden silenced him with a sharp gesture. Before he could protest, she drew flame blooming from her Staff.

She had spent ten years without percipience and Earthpower, restricted to the surface of life. During that time, she had lost much of her familiarity with the Land’s gifts. But in recent days, she had made repeated use of the Staff. Unaware of what would be required of her, she had nonetheless trained her nerves and sharpened her perceptions for this crisis, this multitude of pain. To that extent, at least, she was ready.

Carefully she sent out sheets of yellow fire, immaculate as sunshine, and wrapped them like a cocoon around the physician.

She knew exactly what he needed: she felt it in her own blood and bone. Swift as instinct, she found his tiredness, his illness, his unremitting exposure to infection, and she swept them away.

She barely heard the other two physicians yell in alarm. From their perspective, their comrade must have appeared to blaze like an auto da fe. And she paid no heed to the answering shouts from outside the tent. When warriors burst past the tent flaps behind her, she ignored them. Her concentration admitted no intrusion.

The physician’s heart had time to beat twice or thrice while she worked. Then she released him from fire. The emotional and spiritual toll of his labours she could not heal, but she left him physically whole: staggering with surprise, and exalted by relief and wellness.

At once, Linden turned away and dropped to her knees beside the nearest of the wounded.

This warrior was a woman, and Linden knew that she was not yet dying. She might linger for several days, excruciated by fever and infection. The sword-cut which had split her breastplate and opened her ribs was not necessarily fatal. With cleanliness and rest, it might heal on its own. But her left foot had been amputated above the ankle, and there her real danger lay. Her shin suppurated with infection and anguish. Slivers of bone protruded from the mass of pus and maggots where one of the physicians had attempted to save her life.

She was far from being the most needy warrior here. She was simply the nearest. For that reason, Linden had chosen her.

The other physicians still called for help. Linden heard quick steps at her back; swords drawn. No one here could comprehend what she was doing. They saw only fire and were afraid. She needed to show them what her actions meant before a blade bit into her back.

Hurrying, she closed her eyes; refined her attention; swathed the wounded woman in Earthpower. With flame, she burned away infection and maggots, cleansed poisons, excised and sealed necrotic tissues, knit together shards of bone. And she caused no pain: the bright efficacy of the Staff was as soothing as Glimmermere’s lacustrine roborant.

Near her, the physician yelled frantically, “ Halt! ” She felt him leap to intercept the stroke of a sword. “ Do not! ” His voice became a roar as he found his strength. “Heaven and Earth, are you blind ? She has mended me!”

There must have been whetted iron mere inches from her neck; but Linden allowed nothing to interrupt her as she assoiled the fallen woman’s injuries.