‘Wait,’ Bardas said; but he was talking to half a shadow.
‘Oh, and one last thing,’ said a voice from the darkness where the man and the smell of coriander had been. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Bardas replied; then his knees folded up and he hit the ground.
When he opened his eyes again the light was horribly bright, and there was a ring of heads peering down at him.
‘The heat, possibly,’ a Son of Heaven was saying. ‘They take time to get used to it. He comes from a cold, wet country.’
‘Or the residual effects of being buried alive,’ said someone else at the bottom edge of his vision. ‘In cases of severe concussion, it can be weeks before the symptoms manifest themselves. That would account for the hallucinations.’
‘So would heatstroke,’ replied the Son of Heaven. ‘In fact, hearing imaginary voices and talking to people who aren’t there is rather more indicative of heatstroke than cranial trauma, although I grant you, it’s common to both conditions.’
‘I think he’s awake,’ said another voice. ‘Sergeant Loredan, can you hear us?’
Bardas opened his mouth; his tongue and throat were stiff and dry, like leather that’s got wet and been allowed to dry without being oiled. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Are you real?’
The Son of Heaven seemed offended by the question; but the man who’d spoken to him smiled and said, ‘Yes, we’re real; real enough for your purposes, anyway. Can you remember what happened to you?’
‘I fell over,’ Bardas replied.
‘Cranial trauma,’ muttered the man with the buried-alive theory. ‘Notice the slight aphasia, the obvious memory loss. Typical.’
‘We know that,’ said the man who was talking to him, slowly and gently, as if to a dying man or an idiot. ‘You fell, and you bumped your head; nothing serious. But before that.’
Bardas thought for a moment. ‘I was talking to someone, ’ he said.
That seemed to please the man who was talking to him, because he smiled a little. ‘Aha,’ he said. ‘And can you remember who you were talking to?’
‘My superior officer,’ Bardas croaked. ‘He was telling me I might get a promotion.’
Wrong answer, apparently. ‘I meant after that,’ the man said. ‘After your interview with the adjutant, but before you fell over. Were you talking to anybody? ’
Bardas tried to shake his head but it didn’t want to move, so he spoke instead. ‘No,’ he replied.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. At least,’ he added, ‘as far as I can remember.’
‘He’s hiding something,’ muttered the Son of Heaven. ‘Evasiveness, slight paranoia. Obviously heatstroke.’
The man who’d been talking to him tried again. ‘We’re doctors,’ he said, ‘we’re here to help you. Are you sure you weren’t talking to anybody else?’
‘Positive,’ Bardas said; then, as the man’s face creased into a disappointed scowl, he added, ‘Of course, I imagined I was talking to someone, but I know it wasn’t real. Just a hallucination or something.’
The man looked more annoyed than ever. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘And how can you be so certain of that?’
‘Easy.’ Bardas’ head began to hurt a lot. ‘First he tried to make me believe he was someone I killed in the mines; then he wanted to make out he was a student of history from hundreds of years into the future. Also he knew too much about me; I must have imagined it.’
‘I see,’ said the cranial-trauma man. ‘And do you talk to imaginary people often?’
‘Yes,’ Bardas replied; and the doctors vanished. When he opened his eyes again, he was still in the same place, but alone; and now it was dark, and he could smell onions and rosemary and blood and sweet marjoram and urine. For a while everything was quiet as the grave; then he heard a man groaning a few yards away. Hospital, he thought.
His head was still splitting, though the pain was rather different now. He savoured it for a while, trying to place it by its texture and intensity (if cranial trauma was medical for a bash on the head, he was ready to plump for cranial trauma; he’d been bashed on the head many times, and this was pretty much what it felt like).
Bardas?
‘Shhh,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll wake people up.’
Sorry.
‘That’s all right. How are you, anyway?’
Can’t complain, Alexius replied. Bardas closed his eyes; he could see Alexius very clearly in the dark behind his eyelids. So what have you been doing to yourself?
‘I don’t know,’ Bardas admitted. ‘One moment I was walking down a corridor in the armoury building, now I’m here. It could be heatstroke, or cranial trauma.’
Cranial trauma?
‘Bash on the head. Not that I’ve been bashed on the head recently, but apparently it can take a while to show up. Anyway, here I am; that’s about all I know.’
What rotten luck, Alexius said sympathetically. I hope you feel better soon.
‘Thank you.’ The pain suddenly got worse, then better again. ‘Was there something you wanted, or did you just drop by for a chat? Only, I don’t want to sound unfriendly, but-’
Of course. I just wondered where you were, that’s all. When I heard about Ap’ Escatoy, I was worried; being buried alive and so forth, it sounds absolutely awful.
Bardas smiled. ‘I can’t remember much about it,’ he replied. ‘I went out like a light, and then they dug me out and I came to in a field hospital. How about you? What are you up to these days?’
Would you believe, I’m teaching again. It’s almost like the old days. But so long as I take things a bit steady, it doesn’t seem to be doing me any harm. And it’s good to be doing something useful, instead of just sitting about.
‘I’m pleased for you,’ Bardas replied. ‘So where are you doing this teaching?’
‘Delirious,’ said a man’s voice, unseen, quite loud. ‘A common enough effect in cranial-trauma cases. What would you suggest?’
Bardas opened his eyes. There was light, the soft flush just after sunrise, when the ground’s still cool. A tall man, a Son of Heaven, was standing over him. A little further away was a group of young men, listening attentively. ‘Rest,’ said one of them. ‘It’s about all you can do, isn’t it?’
‘Good answer,’ replied the Son of Heaven, ‘but I think we can do a little better than that. Anyone?’
One of the young men cleared his throat. ‘A sedative,’ he said diffidently. ‘Poppy juice, to keep the patient calm and let him sleep while he’s healing. And a willow-bark infusion for the pain.’
‘But not both together,’ the Son of Heaven chided. ‘Or else he might go so fast asleep that he’ll never wake up. Besides, if he’s asleep, he won’t need anything for the pain. Very good. Right, let’s move along.’
‘Doctor.’ One of the students had noticed that Bardas was awake, and nodded in his direction. The doctor looked back.
‘He’s awake,’ he said, ‘splendid. But we must keep this short for fear of overtiring him. Well now, how are we feeling today?’
‘Awful,’ Bardas croaked. ‘Where am I?’
But the doctor was leaning over him, pressing his skull with the balls of his thumbs. ‘Does that hurt?’ he asked. ‘And what about that?’
‘Ow,’ Bardas replied with feeling.
‘As I thought,’ the doctor said. ‘The skull’s too soft, and there are a number of dents and ridges that need to be taken out.’ He turned away and looked at one of the students. ‘The number-one planishing hammer,’ he said, ‘and the oval-head stake, if you please.’
Before Bardas could move or object, the doctor had forced his mouth open and shoved something into it; Bardas recognised it as one of the stakes that fitted in the slot on top of the armourer’s anvil, used to beat down on when shaping work from outside. Then the doctor took the hammer from the student – it had two flat faces, one square and one round – and started tapping the top of Bardas’ head with fast, even, pecking strokes.