Max nodded, and threw the First Spear an awkward salute with the hand holding the hammer. It came dangerously close to braining Tavi in the temple, and he ducked aside from it, threatening Max’s balance.
The First Spear muttered a chuckling oath beneath his breath and stalked off.
“Think he figured out your clever plan?” Max asked brightly.
“Shut up, Max.” Tavi sighed, and the pair started limping for the medicos. “Is he going to talk? If someone starts asking questions, it isn’t going to take them long to find out that I’ve got no crafting of my own. And I only know of one person in the whole bloody Realm like that. It will blow my cover.”
Max grimaced. “Some spy you are. Maybe next time when I tell you the plan is crazy…”
“What? If you hadn’t wasted time whining about it, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
“You wanna walk to the medico without me?” Max growled. “Is that it, Scipio?”
“If it will save me hearing more of your complaining, I might!” Tavi said.
Max snorted. “I ought to dump you in one of your latrines and leave you there.” But despite his words, the big northerner bore Tavi toward the medical wagons, careful not to jostle his friend’s leg.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” Tavi said, when Max got him to the wagon. “Until we know what he’s doing.”
“Right,” Max said. He left Tavi in the hands of the healers, then pulled his centurion’s baton from his belt and jogged off to pull his soldiers into proper marching order.
Foss appeared from one of the other wagons. The bearish old healer hopped up into the bed of the wagon Tavi sat in and briefly examined his leg. “Hungh. Accident, huh?”
“Yes,” Tavi said.
“Should have just bribed the First Spear to let you drive a wagon, kid. Don’t have to be a real good bribe for something like that.”
Tavi frowned. “How much? Once I get paid…”
“Cash only,” Foss said, his voice firm.
“Oh. In that case, I told you,” Tavi said. “It was an accident.”
Foss snorted and poked at Tavi’s leg.
It felt like a blade sinking into his skin, and he clamped his teeth together on a hiss of pain. “And I spent all my money at the Pavilion.”
“Ah,” Foss said, nodding. “Got to learn to balance your vices, sir. Lay off a little on the wenching, save something for avoiding work.” He dragged a long, slender tub from the back of the wagon, and filled it from a couple of heavy water jugs. Then he helped Tavi remove his boot, an agonizing process that made Tavi promise himself that he would take off the boot before he broke his own leg, the next time.
Foss hadn’t begun the healing yet when the Legion’s drums rolled, putting the column on notice that it was almost time to move. A moment later, a clarion sounded from the head of the column, and the wagons and infantry began to move. At first, they moved quite slowly, until the men and horses reached the causeway, then they picked up speed. A double-quick march stepped up to a steady jog, and from there they increased the pace to a mile-eating lope that was not quite a full sprint. The horses, similarly, worked their way up to a canter, and the wagon jounced and jittered along behind them.
Tavi felt every bump in the road in his wounded leg. Each one sent a flash of pain through him that felt like some small and fiendishly determined creature taking a bite out of his leg. That went on for what felt like half a lifetime, until Foss finally seemed satisfied that the pace had steadied enough to allow him to work and slipped Tavi s wounded leg into the tub.
The watercrafting that healed the bone was quick, transforming the pain to a sudden, intense, somehow benevolent heat. When that faded a moment later, it took most of the pain with it, and Tavi collapsed wearily onto his back.
“Easy there, sir,” Foss rumbled. “Here. Get some bread into you at least, before you sleep.” He passed Tavi a rough, rounded loaf, and Tavi’s suddenly empty belly growled. Tavi devoured the loaf, a small wedge of cheese, and guzzled down almost a full skin of weak wine before Foss nodded, and said, “That’s good enough. Have you back on your feet in no time.”
Tavi devoutly hoped not. He flopped back down, threw an arm across his eyes, and vanished into sleep.
He became dimly aware of alarmed shouts and blaring horns sounding a halt. The wagon slowed to a stop. Tavi opened his eyes to a sullen, overcast sky that flickered with flashes of reddish light and rumbled with threatening thunder. Tavi sat up, and asked Foss, “What’s going on?”
The veteran healer stood up in the back of the wagon as it came to a halt, peering ahead. A drum rattled in a series of fast and slow beats, and Foss exhaled a curse. “Casualties.”
“We’re fighting already?” Tavi asked. He shook his head, hoping to slosh some of the sleep from it.
“Make a path!” called a woman’s voice, louder than humanly possible, and Lady Antillus’s large white horse thundered down the road, forcing legionares to scamper out of its path and other horses to dance nervously in place. She went by within a few feet of Tavi, her harness and coin purse jingling.
“Come on,” Foss growled. “Nothing wrong with your arms, sir.”
He motioned Tavi to help him, and the two of them wrangled a pair of full-body tubs from the wagon and to the ground. It hurt his leg abominably, sore muscles clenching into burning knots, but Tavi ground his teeth and did his best to ignore it. He and Foss dragged the tubs to the side of the causeway as Lady Antillus hauled her steed to a sliding halt and leapt down from the horse’s back with an odd melding of poise and athleticism.
“Water,” Foss grunted. Tavi pulled himself back into the wagon and began wrangling the heavy jugs to the end of the wagon. Wind rose to a thunderous roar, and Commander Fantus and Crassus shot down the road not ten feet above the ground, each man bearing an unmoving form over one shoulder. Lady Antillus, Foss, and four other healers met them, taking the wounded men from the Knights Aeris. They stripped the injured of armor with practiced efficiency and got both men into the tub.
Tavi observed from the bed of the wagon and kept his mouth shut. The men’s injuries were… odd. Both were smeared with blood, and both thrashed wildly, letting out breathless cries of pain. Long strips of the skin on their legs were simply gone, in bands perhaps an inch wide, as though they’d been lashed with red-hot chains.
Once they were in the tubs, Lady Antillus stepped forward and seized one of the wounded Knight’s head. He struggled for a moment more, then eased slowly down into the tub, panting but not screaming, his eyes glazed. She did the same for the second man, then gestured to the healers and settled down to examine the men and confer.
More thundering hoofbeats approached, though this time they were well to the side of the road, away from the danger of spooking a nervous horse or trampling an unlucky legionare. Captain Cyril and the First Spear drew up to the healers. The captain dismounted, followed by Valiar Marcus, and looked around until he spotted Knight Tribune Fantus. “Tribune? Report.”
Fantus grimaced at the two young men in the tub, then saluted Cyril. “We were attacked, sir.”
“Attacked?” Cyril demanded. “By who?”
“By what,” Fantus corrected. “Something up at the edge of that cloud cover. Whatever it was, I didn’t get a good look at it.” He gestured to Crassus. “He did.”
Crassus just stared at the two wounded men, his face entirely bloodless, his expression nauseated. Tavi felt a spike of sympathy for the young man, despite his enmity for Maximus. Crassus had seen his first blood spilled, and he looked too young to be dealing with such a thing, even to Tavi.
“Sir Crassus,” Cyril said, his voice purposefully pitched loudly enough to shock the young Knight from his motionless stare.
“Sir?” Crassus said. He saluted a beat late, as if just then remembering protocol.