Averan had never seen a sickyard, as the soldiers called them, where the battle-torn lay in the open air like this. Between the drying bandages and the gray canvas tents, and smoke smudging everything, the sickyard looked like a city formed from rags.
Most of the wounded were heavily bandaged. Few could yet rise or walk on their own, and their was no way to move them easily. The boats that had brought them downstream had all departed—returned north for another load.
Evacuating these people on foot was not something that could be done in hours. It was a labor that would take days.
They knew what would happen.
Wounded men and women cried out in terror and pain. Pleas of “Help me! Help!” and “Have mercy!” rose from dozens of throats, adding to the general din of people scurrying for shelter.
Some invalids climbed to their feet in heroic efforts, and staggered across the bridge. They shuffled slowly, blocking the exit for those who followed. Staves or canes might have helped speed many of them, but every stick along the riverbank had already been salvaged. Two men dressed in the bright red of the City Guard stood on the bridge, pleading with everyone. “Help the wounded. Grab someone and help him across! There’s plenty of time!”
But everyone knew that time was far too short.
Among the rows of tents, healers and townsfolk sought to save many of the injured. Wains from farmhouses lined the river roads. But the healers were taking only the children and the women, the vast minority of the wounded, leaving the men to die.
She saw one fellow nearby lying on a cot before his tent, curled into a fetal position, merely waiting.
She recalled Gaborn’s words last night. He’d tried to tell her that men did most of the dying in this world, that they wore themselves out. She hadn’t wanted to believe it. Now she saw the proof of it, and wondered how it would be.
As Binnesman rode up to the woodcarvers’ guildhall, Averan sat on her white mare and stared down at the men, and felt the most profound pity and sense of desolation.
I’m not like them anymore, she realized. Her horse could carry her away fast. She didn’t feel their terror, felt only pity.
Once, when Averan was small, Brand had picked up an old door that lay in a field below the graaks’ aerie back at Keep Haberd. Averan had seen a family of mice scurry about in a panic, blinded by the sunshine.
Three generations of mice lived there—a mother and five children, along with six little pink babes. Neither Averan nor Brand meant the mice any harm. Yet they watched them scurry in panic for a moment, before setting down the door.
That’s how Averan felt now, distanced from the turmoil, high and above it all. Yet the loud noises and confusion made Binnesman’s wylde jumpy. The green woman’s eyes darted this way and that, and she flinched at every nearby noise, as if she were a caged fox just captured from a field.
Binnesman had come to the guildhall to speak to the officials. He dismounted, saying, “Watch the horses while I speak to Guildmaster Wallachs.” Wallachs was more than just the guildmaster of the woodcarvers here in Feldonshire. He served as mayor of the city, and though he had no endowments, his people held him in as high estimation as if he were a lord.
Binnesman led his spooked wylde into the guildhall. Averan held the reins to the mounts, sat alone outside.
The guildhall of the woodcarvers dominated the center of Feldonshire. The massive building was an advertisement for the guild’s wares. It stood five stories high and was made of finely cut multicolored stone set in mortar. The high ceilings of the upper stories were supported by abutments, with flying buttresses made of black walnut, all elegantly chiseled to show woodland scenes from the Darkwald: wild bears and stags in the forest, geese winging majestically over the Donnestgree.
Every gable, every panel on every door, every lintel and every shutter was a minor miracle of precision and detail. The carvers had carried their motif of the woods throughout the building. Perfectly sculpted squirrels raced over pine boughs carved into the gables and support beams. The front doors were carved to look like a path leading into the woods, with a pair of grouse preening beside a rock not far ahead. A gallery near the top of the building boasted wooden statues of renowned carvers at work with chisels, hammers, and saws.
The guildsmen had taken great pains to care for the exterior. The dark wooden surfaces all gleamed, as if the craftsmen had applied a layer of shellac only days ago. With winter coming, Averan realized that this was likely true.
The building served as a monument to the beauty of wood in all its forms. Walnut trees bordered its front, and wrapped around the east lawn along the river. The leaves had gone a dark brown with the coming of winter.
Too bad the building is all coming down, she thought. I’d best admire it while I can.
She was staring up at the guildhall when someone said, “Here, girl, let me help you down from there.”
A man put his hands around her waist, and yanked. She turned to see a fellow with a grizzled face and a mouth full of rotting teeth. His hood was pulled up over his head.
“What?” she asked. She gripped her reins, but he had her off her horse so fast, she hardly had time to wonder what happened.
He set her on the ground near her mount, taking the reins in his hand as he did, and said urgently, “Here, now. These aren’t your horses. They’re worth a lot of money. What do you think you’re doing with them?”
She thought that maybe he knew the owner of the white mare, and had some fair argument. She was about to object when he slugged her. One moment she was standing there, and the next his fist came up in a quick jab, and Averan went reeling.
The world spun and went dark for a moment. Pain lanced through her head and jaw. Everything seemed to go cold.
She found herself lying on the cobblestones, while people shouted, “Thief! That man stole her horses.”
She could hear the fellow shouting, “Haw!” as he raced away. Hooves clattered over the stone.
Averan looked up to see where he’d gone, but a crowd was closing in on her. ” ‘Ere now, poor dear,” some old woman said, bending close to pull Averan to her feet. Averan could smell cooked vegetables on her woolen shawl.
Averan’s jaw stung, and she worked it experimentally, trying to see if it was broken. Her stomach churned, as if she would lose her breakfast. She’d slammed the back of her head on the cobblestones when she fell. Averan reached up and touched it, winced, and stared blankly at the blood on her fingers.
A moment ago she’d felt so smug and self-contained. Now she was no different from everyone around her.
Averan felt furious at the stranger who had stolen her horse. She felt furious at herself for letting him do it.
Almost without realizing it, she cast a spell.
She pictured Binnesman’s big Imperial stallion and focused on it. She saw it running down the road, its new master dragging it in tow.
The horse’s mind was frenzied. It could sense the fear of the people around it, could hear the distant thunder of the horde. It longed to escape, to reach the open plains of Indhopal.
It dreamed of sweet grass, and running through fields at night, nostrils flaring while its mane and tail floated out behind it. It remembered the mares of its herd, and the sweet taste of streams that flowed from the mountains.
The thrill of it all was marvelous, and utterly alien. Averan touched the horse’s consciousness, and immediately realized that she felt almost no kinship to this magnificent beast.
Averan called to it, and immediately the image slipped from her mind. She could not hold it. Binnesman’s charger would not respond to her summons. It wanted to get away from here.
She tried another tactic. She considered instead her attacker. She focused on his face. She could envision his grizzled beard, his rotting teeth, the warty mole just beneath his left eye.