Battle Magic

18

UNDER AND ON THE GNAM RUNGA PLAIN

BETWEEN THE TEMPLE OF THE TIGERS

AND THE TOWN OF MELONAM

Under Gnam Runga, Evvy lost track of time. It was hard to remember days without sunlight. Her companions did not help: One counted time in thousand-year chunks and the other didn’t talk. Except for brief stints running and necessity halts, Evvy stayed on Big Milk, even to sleep.

Luvo told her about the coming of the Realms of the Sun and how that slab of land had shoved the edge of what would be Gyongxe higher and higher to form the Drimbakangs, youngest of all the world’s mountains. She told him about Briar, Rosethorn, and the things they had seen as they had traveled east. That seemed to require many more explanations than Luvo’s stories. He found humans mystifying, particularly the human need to take things from other humans, and to put an end to other humans’ lives without the need to eat them. He was also curious about what Evvy had learned to do with stones. She managed to collect a few new stones from the walls and floor of the tunnel, teaching some to produce light or warmth if they had the capability for either.

The tunnel had plenty of strange pictures on the earthen walls, pictures given odd movement by the green fungus that was the sole source of light. Evvy examined the pictures every chance she got at first. She was eyeing one that seemed to be a spindle-legged horse with a bird’s head when she turned to find a creature just like it staring at her.

She screamed. So did the creature. It clattered into the dark on impossibly thin legs, followed by three others that would have been colts if it had been a horse. Big Milk, who was eating one of the heaps of grass that someone had left at intervals, looked at Evvy with a reproachful eye.

“Evumeimei, you must not scream at the deep runners because they are not what you are used to,” Luvo told her mildly. “This is their country after all.”

“Their country?” cried Evvy, clambering onto Big Milk’s back, where Luvo already waited. “It’s a tunnel underground!”

“Underground is where they and their kindred live, unless danger brings them to the surface.”

“The God-King and Dokyi never said anything about horse-birds!”

“Forgive me, Evumeimei, but from what you have told me about your friends, it seems to me they did not tell you the greatest part of the secrets of Gyongxe.”

Evvy sat cross-legged on Big Milk’s broad, solid back and propped her chin on her hands. “No, I suppose not. Please don’t feel insulted, Luvo, but even though you have the most splendid mountains I have ever seen, I will be glad when I leave here. Gyongxe is too strange for me.”

“Would you not become accustomed to things?”

Evvy started on a little braid in Big Milk’s fur. She had made quite a few of them so far out of the yak’s hair and brightly colored threads from her clothes. Luvo had said the giant yak did not mind. Evvy found it was good to focus on braiding in the green-lit gloom of the vast tunnel during those bad times when she might otherwise dwell on the smiling Jia Jui as she raised the rod over Evvy’s feet.

“No, Luvo,” Evvy said. She couldn’t tell him the cold winds would always remind her of the piled dead, or that the jeweled night sky would show her the picture of her cats’ limp bodies. “I’m sorry.” Something scampered by overhead. She bent close to Big Milk’s fur so she wouldn’t see what it was.

The army remained in camp for a day, to give the wounded a chance to rest. After a heated conference and some back-and-forthing of messengers, two companies of warriors took the Yanjingyi prisoners and wounded back to the village they had passed the day before. They could not spare soldiers to guard captives as well as their own wounded on the road. The companies returned well before sunset.

Briar heard all of this from his friends among the twins’ and Lango’s companies. He did not wake until twilight. When he joined them at their cook fire, they hooted at him.

“I overreached, that’s all,” he growled. “I got a little tired.”

“You had best make a decision,” Parahan said, handing him a full bowl.

Briar accepted the bowl and blinked at the big man. “Decision?”

“Fight or heal once the serious battles start. You can’t do both without half killing yourself. Most mages don’t even try,” Parahan said.

Briar frowned. He had always thought mages chose to be healers or war mages because they hadn’t the talent to do both. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might simply be conserving their strength. “But me and Rosethorn fought and then did healing on our way east, when bandits attacked our caravans,” he said. “And Rosethorn fought the pirates back home and then did healing after.”

“I used my medicines when we fought pirates,” Rosethorn corrected him. “I cleaned wounds and bandaged them. I didn’t put added strength into my medicines, not when I might need it for the thorns on the beach. Parahan’s right. We won’t be able to do much healing and fighting at the same time, not once we face real armies. We didn’t do anything like that on the way here.”

“Do you have to choose?” Briar asked.

“Of course,” she replied. “Moreover, I’m sure General Sayrugo will prefer we use our abilities as battle mages. This army is short of them.”

“Not that you’re exactly battle mages,” Souda remarked.

Rosethorn chuckled. “We aren’t what the generals order when they call for battle mages at all. We can’t throw fire, we can’t make things explode, and we can’t send a hundred catapult stones flying through the air at once.”

“Hey!” Briar said, offended. “We can do better things than that!”

“Oh, he’s a man, all right,” Souda said, rolling her eyes. Riverdancer laughed once her translator relayed what the princess had said.

“We can,” Briar argued, grinning. “We can put acres of thorn vines down among the enemy in a flash. We can ask the grasses to tangle the soldiers’ feet and the feet of the horses. We can make their wood useless to them. You’ll see!”

“They will see,” Rosethorn agreed. “And I have a few other ideas. Most of the temple mages and shamans are healers, and they can use our medicines. We’ll help in the tents when we can, but when it comes time for armies, we are battle mages.” She got to her feet and wandered off into the darkness.

Briar returned to their tent to make sure his armor was in order and he had plenty of seed balls ready for the next day, then went over Rosethorn’s things as well. When he began to yawn, he went to use the privy for the last time.

On his way back to bed, Briar saw Rosethorn and Parahan talking in the shadows near one of the supply tents. They stood close together — very close. He squinted, trying to get a better look without going over to them. Something in their postures said they would not welcome an interruption. Then Parahan rested a hand on Rosethorn’s hip.

Briar turned away and briskly walked to his tent. He knew that Rosethorn sometimes slept with people other than Lark. He knew that Lark knew that Rosethorn sometimes slept with other people than her. Rosethorn had done so twice since they had left Winding Circle. Briar simply was never certain how he felt about it. This was the first time he actually knew one of those someones before anything happened.

Why am I surprised? he wondered as he pulled off his boots. They’ve been circling around each other since we met up near the border. And it’s Parahan. If I was damohi, I’d give Parahan the eye myself.

Am I worried she’ll decide to stay here? Because she won’t. She doesn’t love the plants here like the ones back home; she hates the emperor; Gyongxe doesn’t have near enough trees, and I don’t think she’d ever let go of Lark.

He was still trying to decide what his feelings were when he fell asleep.

By the time she left Parahan’s tent at dawn, Rosethorn felt more normal than she had in some time. Evvy’s loss remained an ache deep in her heart, but overall Rosethorn felt as if her body was her own once more, not a puppet that moved at the directions of the Treasures and the priests of the Sealed Eye. For the first time, with Parahan, she had not heard the faint whispers that had been in her mind since she took charge of the Treasures.

He’d been every bit the lover she had hoped, too, humorous and caring, attentive without smothering her. His queen, whoever he chose one day, would be a lucky woman. She sent a prayer up to Mila of the Fields and Grain that he would find someone who could appreciate him.

They had deliberately not spoken of the war all night. Now Rosethorn’s awareness of it returned as she greeted her friends in the camp. Everyone was up and preparing to move, packing the tents and loading supply animals and wagons. Briar must have gone to breakfast, she decided when she walked into their tent. His gear was ready. Only his armor and her own lay out. Her things, of course, had not been touched since she had put them in the tent last night.

She could hear the creaks and groans of thawing ice and snow in the mountains as the thin sunlight warmed everything. Somewhere closer a horse grumbled deep in his chest. She frowned. It seemed too far away to be one of their own horses. Had they sent out scouts, or were these enemy spies? She cursed the day she’d touched the Treasures. The lingering effects made her life so confusing. Namka of the Sealed Eye said they would wear off in time. The problem was that his idea of time seemed to be very relaxed by her standards.

She was struggling with her armor when Briar returned from breakfast. Seeing his knowing smirk and realizing he knew where she’d spent her night, she cocked an eyebrow, daring him to give her sauce about it. Only once had he questioned her right to choose sleeping partners as she wished. They’d had a nice talk about choices being between someone and that someone’s lover, and there had been no more discussion. She had only had to lightly slap the back of his head for foolishness once.

Apparently Briar remembered their talk, because all he said was, “Did you have breakfast?”

“Spicy eggs and rice with that puffy white flatbread,” she said. “I think my eyes are still watering from the chilies.” She shook her head. Her mouth was still burning a little. “It wakes me up better than tea, though. You could have joined us. Parahan and Souda asked where you were.”

Briar shrugged. “We had mushroom pancakes over at Riverdancer’s fire — very nice.” He saw her struggle with the side lacings of her cuirass. “Here, I’ll manage that, and you tie mine.” She lifted her arms so he could see better. As he tightened the woven silk cords he inhaled and murmured, “I smell sandalwood.”

She slapped his head lightly. “I smell impudence.”

Once she had tied Briar’s armor for him, she gave him one of the cloth bags she had prepared while he slept like a statue the day before. “I was able to bring some of our thorn plants to full seeding growth to stock us up again. I wasn’t exhausted as you were. Of course, I didn’t send my magical self halfway to Yanjing and try to fight a battle that way.”

“Complain, complain, complain,” Briar muttered as he tucked the bag into the sling he hung over his chest. She knew he had spare rocks and squares of cloth in it, as she did in hers. They could create more thorn balls in the saddle if all remained quiet this morning.

“No, caution, caution, caution,” she retorted. It was an old argument between them. “We aren’t invulnerable, and you won’t avenge Evvy if you’re dead as well.” She turned away. “I don’t want to tell Lark I lost you.” The absence of Evvy throbbed like the loss of a tooth. The loss of Briar would be so much worse. If anything happened to him that she could have prevented, she didn’t know how she would live with it. Jimut poked his head into the tent. “If the honored prebus will come out, I will pack you up,” he said cheerfully. “Their Highnesses want to ride soon, and we’re at the front today.”

Once they were packed up and riding, Rosethorn found herself near the very head of their group where Parahan and his guards rode. She had Riverdancer, her translator, Briar, and Jimut for company. Souda and the western chief called Glacier Cracks each took fifty volunteers and split off, Souda going east, Glacier Cracks riding west. They were scouting to see if they could find any stray Yanjingyi raiders. They had promised to catch up with their northbound comrades sometime during the afternoon.

Rosethorn heard Briar and Jimut sigh enviously as they watched Souda go. “Don’t be so eager to find battles,” she warned them, not wanting to mention the soft grumble she heard from very far in the north, near the ceaseless temple horns and gongs of Garmashing. “There will be enough for everyone eventually.”

“This is just march, march, maybe a squabble, healing, and then more marching,” Briar explained. “Why don’t they just settle down and fight?”

Parahan overheard. “Why should they, if they can tire us out first?”

Rosethorn, who had been through a few large battles, didn’t tell Briar she was just as happy to put off the next one. She knew he would think her spiritless. He was young.

They halted to water the animals and to eat a midday meal, albeit a cold one. Glacier Cracks and his people returned halfway through the afternoon. They had found an empty village and a fortified temple with its gates locked and armed warriors on its wall. They had not seen any sign of the enemy between the road and the Tom Sho River.

Rosethorn and Riverdancer, through her translator, struck up a conversation about healers’ spells. Rosethorn was getting some interesting ideas from the shaman. The conversation also distracted her from the nagging question: Where were Souda and her fifty riders? Had they found trouble east of the main road? Troops on their way to join whatever was making that noise so far ahead?

The afternoon dragged. The sun inched down with no sign of the eastern group. With the wind blowing from the north, the pesky leftover effects of the Treasures gave Rosethorn no sign of whether there was an army in the east or not.

She was better able to hide her fidgets than were Briar and Parahan. The men of Souda’s company who had not gone with her grew even testier with the passage of time. Leaving the column to ride back to the water barrels, Rosethorn saw that the healers were preparing for wounded, piling their supplies on the sides of their wagons so they could lay a few of the injured flat. Refilling her water flask, she noticed how very quiet everyone was, even the tribal warriors. The temple soldiers had prayer beads out and were softly chanting as they marched.

When she rejoined Riverdancer and her translator, she saw that several Kombanpur warriors were talking with Parahan. One of them waved his arms and shouted.

“They want to go search for the missing. Lord Parahan says they’re fools to ask.” Jimut translated the Banpuri for them. “He says if the lady and her people are taken, any searchers will be captured, too.”

The sun’s edge had touched the distant peaks when Rosethorn saw Riverdancer look to the east. A hill stood between them and anything that might be going on, but when the shaman reined up, Rosethorn did as well. Within a moment everyone heard the drawn-out blast of a battle horn, not one of the Gyongxin horns.

“Jimut?” Briar asked.

“Enemies!” Jimut said, reaching for his crossbow. “Er — do you want me to use a sling?”

Rosethorn shook her head. If the enemy came over the hill, or even around it, their chances were too good that the balls would roll back to the Gyongxin troops. “Not this time, I think,” she said. “Too risky.”

Briar could see what she saw. “What, then?”

“Off the road on the left,” she told him. “We’re healers today.” She turned and waved her arm over her head to let the columns of Banpuri warriors know she wanted an opening in the road, a split in their numbers. Slowly, with perfect discipline, they opened a corridor for her.

To the east, soldiers galloped into sight along the shoulder of the hill. These were their people, clad in the earth-colored tunics of the western tribes or the armor of the Realms of the Sun and Gyongxe. Some of them barely clung to their saddles. Others were riding double.

“This way!” she cried, backing her horse down the opening between the soldiers at her back. The healers would come to her, as they had discussed in planning as they rode.

“This way!” yelled Briar. Riverdancer, her translator, and Jimut were shouting the same thing in their own languages. There was a ripple among the eastern edge of the column of soldiers: They beckoned the galloping soldiers to them. Behind their racing allies came the enemy, several hundred Yanjingyi swordsmen and archers.

Rosethorn grabbed one of their wounded as he came through the opening in their front ranks, dragging him across her saddle with a care for the arrow that jutted from his back. A soldier ran forward to seize the reins to the wounded man’s frantic horse. Briar grabbed the bridle of the next mount. The rider was able to stay upright; she had a sword cut that bled into her eye.

Healers ran forward to take Rosethorn’s wounded soldier from her saddle. “Carefully,” she cautioned them. “He’s got an arrow in his back.” They nodded and carried the soldier facedown to a wagon.

Rosethorn looked for Briar. He had turned his mount over to a soldier and kept his medicine packs. He began to examine those with lighter injuries as they came in, mostly cleaning sword cuts. Riverdancer’s translator stood beside him, a roll of bandages in her hand.

One by one everyone on the opening in their lines caught one of the wounded and guided them to the healers. Once they were relieved of their charges, they returned for more wounded, if any came, and to fight. The Yanjingyi archers were raining crossbow bolts into their ranks.

Rosethorn glanced at the returning warriors who rode to Parahan. One was a dusty Soudamini. She held a bloody sword, but showed no injuries herself. She spoke rapidly to her twin as the small army’s archers shot into the oncoming enemy troops.

Rosethorn turned at the sound of a cry and ran to help two wounded on one horse as they came through the opening in the lines. The air around her filled with the sergeants’ yells for archers to take aim, then shoot. After that she was too busy to keep track of what took place along the battle lines.

As a plant mage who had also studied healing, she had learned her fair share of basic surgery. Riverdancer came to help as she began to remove arrows from the flesh of the wounded. It was nervous work. To stay calm, Rosethorn focused only on her assistants. She had been known to cut while a temple was falling down around her. It was a useful skill to have that day. They had no sooner cared for Souda’s wounded when those hurt in the more recent fight with the Yanjingyi soldiers began to come in.

Finally Rosethorn stopped to catch her breath. She hadn’t realized that it was already dark. Someone shoved a large pottery mug of tea, heavily buttered and sweetened, into her hand. She gulped it thirstily.

“How are you managing?”

She looked up and blinked at Souda. “Well enough.” Her voice came out a croak. “How goes the fighting?”

Souda shrugged. “The enemy has retreated to the other side of this ridge. Parahan split his warriors. Half of the archers are up there.” She pointed to the top of the hill. “They have them pinned down, I think, but it’s too dark to tell…. What’s that?”

Over the hill a greenish light bloomed brightly enough to show the archers Souda had mentioned. Rosethorn finished the mug of tea, forcing herself to stay calm. That green light was mage work. None of the mages in their small army was capable of that kind of spell and neither she nor Briar did magic that cast a light.

“I’ll go look,” she heard Briar say. “If they have willow or oak or gingko on them, I’ll put a stop to that.”

“Briar!” she cried, but he’d taken a saddleless horse and ridden off around the side of the hill. The hill itself was too steep for a rider.

They were bringing another wounded victim from the battlefield. This one had a gash down his chest. If she didn’t clean it and get it sewn, he would die of infection. She could treat these people, or she could go after her boy.

An open sword cut that bared ribs had to come first. Briar was sixteen and a man in the view of the world. She raised a prayer to Yanna Healtouch for the warrior before her and to the Green Man for Briar’s safety. Then she got to work.

Riverdancer sent her off much later; she didn’t know what time. No one had seen Briar. They promised to look for him if she would only rest. Rosethorn hesitated, but her hands were shaking; she needed food and a break. The tents were up, including one for the healers. She lay on a mattress there and told herself to wake in two hours, no matter how tired she might be.

Someone was shaking her awake. It was Jimut. Seeing the look on his face, she struggled to her feet. Then she followed him at a run. He took her straight to the healers’ tent.

Two assistants were caring for a warrior by lamplight. One of them cleaned his bruised face. The other was carefully trying to cut his leather breeches away from the gash in his thigh.

The warrior was Briar.

Jimut was talking to her, but his words could have been thunder for all she understood him. For a moment she thought she would go to pieces. Her bones felt loose and watery. Her father’s ghost shouted in her ear, “Don’t you come the pretty princess, Niva! Get your arm in there and ease that calf out or I’ll give you so many stripes you’ll sleep on your belly for a month! There’s a chamber pot because I won’t let you so much as go to the privy, so do as I bid!”

Thanks, Da, she thought as she stepped over to the cot. She felt for Briar’s pulse — strong — and his warmth — colder than she liked, but he was wounded. She glanced at his thigh. The healer cutting the leather breeches off was carefully pulling them away from the wound. It was deep and dirty.

Rosethorn peeled back one of Briar’s eyelids. They had given him something for pain already. His pupil was wide enough that she could barely see his gray-green iris. That was good. She would have to hurt him to clean the slash, and she preferred that he was not awake for that.

Hot water. She would need —

One of the assistants stood on the far side of the cot, a pot of hot water cushioned by wrappings in her hands and clean cloths over one arm. Briar’s clothes were cut away and dumped elsewhere. For a moment Rosethorn turned her back to the cot, closed her eyes, and prayed to Yanna Healtouch of the Water temple for healing, the Green Man to ward off the racing growth of infection, and Shurri Flamesword of the Fire temple for a steady hand. Then she turned back to the cot and began to clean the gaping slash. Blood followed. As soon as Rosethorn was done, Riverdancer swiftly placed a padded bandage on Briar’s thigh and pressed to control the bleeding. They waited for a few moments. The woman lifted the pad and they replaced it with a clean one. Rosethorn pressed this one, counting to herself for what seemed like forever. When she lifted it, there was blood, but less of it.

“Praise Yanna,” she whispered. In tiyon she added, “It appears no big veins were cut.” She switched for a clean pad and let someone else press. She went through her medicines for one to cleanse and one to hold the inside of the wound together.

This time, when they removed the pad, Rosethorn warned the others. “Hold him, please,” she said. “He’s going to jump.” When they had him by the hands, shoulders, and legs, Rosethorn said, not caring if Briar was awake or not, “This will hurt, my lad, but not as much as you will hurt when I talk with you in the morning.” She swiftly dribbled the cleansing potion in the open wound.

Briar arched against the cot and the hands that kept him on it, his eyelids flying open. He let out a screech. Riverdancer leaned over his head, a vial in her hand. She showed it to Rosethorn, who sniffed and recognized it as a potent sleep and pain medication favored by Gyongxin healers. She nodded.

Riverdancer let three drops fall into Briar’s open mouth. He swallowed, coughed, and relaxed back onto the cot. As his eyelids fluttered down, Rosethorn added a thin line of the medicine that would hold the inner muscle of his thigh together like a line of stitches. By the time she was done, Briar was snoring.

Rosethorn smiled grimly and turned back to her medicines. She would need a needle and gut to sew up Briar’s skin, and then a healing potion for that.

By the time she had finished, she felt dizzy. “Would someone bandage him?” she asked in tiyon.

Kind hands steered her away from the cot as Riverdancer took over. Someone pressed a cup not of tea but of broth into her hands. She sipped from it carefully. From time to time she wiped away tears that ran down her face on her sleeve.

When Briar awoke, he felt as if someone had used his head for a drum. Worse, Daja had taken one of her white-hot irons from the forge fire and shoved it into his thigh. He demanded that she remove it or suffer the consequences, or rather, he tried to demand it. The words left his mouth as mush. He went back to sleep.

Evvy turned over, screaming as Musheng held up Asa and brandished a knife. She opened her eyes, stared at the low earth ceiling above her, and screamed again.

Five little silver snakes with skulls for heads vanished into the ceiling of the tunnel.

“Evumeimei,” Luvo said calmly in her ear, “they are only baby cave snakes.”

“They’re dead!” Evvy cried, sitting up on Big Milk’s back. “They’re all bones!”

“Nonsense. They are made of metal and earth. They cannot be dead. Big Milk says you bawl more than her young ones.”

Evvy glared at her small traveling companion. “I’m sorry, Luvo,” she told him. “I’m sorry, Big Milk,” she added, stretching out so she could scratch the giant yak on the poll. “I was dreaming again. Are we going up?” She squinted at the tunnel ahead of them. Even in the scant light of the glowing mold, she was certain. The tunnel was sloping upward for the first time in their journey.

“It is my hope that you will do better under an open sky,” Luvo said. All around them the earth began to groan. “I believe you will dream less.”

General Sayrugo’s camp was on alert. The enemy’s scouts had been seen to the north and to the west. She ordered triple sentries and prayed she would unite with Captain Lango and the twins from the Realms of the Sun the next day. All the signs pointed to a big fight before she even reached Garmashing.

Suddenly she heard an uproar. Cursing, she grabbed her sword and raced to the source of the noise. On the southern line of defense, her guards stood and pointed at something. With a roar of command she sent the onlookers back to their posts and squinted into the growing twilight. At least the other sentries had kept their positions, she told herself.

Then she blinked, and blinked again. The plain was tearing itself in two a hundred yards away from their picket line. The ground was trembling under her feet. She turned to yell for her shamans, only to feel the quivering stop. She stared at the hole that had opened in the — up until now — solid, reliable earth.

The biggest yak she had ever seen in her life plodded out of the hole and began to graze on the grass near it.

Then, as Sayrugo and her sentries gawped like farmers in Garmashing for the first time, someone slid off the yak. The someone removed some bags, or packs, slinging one off his or her shoulders. Then the someone scratched the yak on the forehead. Sayrugo knew there was another word for a yak’s forehead, but she was a city woman; she didn’t know these things. She did, however, know all the words for the pieces of a crossbow. She held out her hand, groping for one in the empty air.

A huge voice boomed in the air. “Do not attack us, defenders of Gyongxe.” It was deep and musical. It could not belong to the person who walked toward them, hands — holding bags — in the air. “We are allies to you and foes to the invader from Yanjing!”

The huge yak turned and ambled south on the plain. Sayrugo wished she could do the same.

The second time Briar woke, someone was ordering him to drink. He obeyed, then tried to spit the nasty sweetness of spirits laced with opium from his mouth.

“Drink it, or I’ll use you for sword practice next time,” Parahan told him. The big man sat on a camp stool beside his cot, bracing Briar with one arm as he held the cup in his free hand. “You were supposed to be healing people — what were you doing on the battlefield?”

Briar drank the rest of the cup’s contents. “I went to see … what the green light was,” he mumbled. “It was our people. Gyongxe. ’N then I stayed to work on the wounded. ’N someone whacked me with a sword.”

His brain wasn’t so muzzy that he couldn’t remember that. He had been checking a fallen temple warrior by the light of one of Evvy’s glow stones. Suddenly, nearby, a Yanjingyi warrior had lurched to his feet.

“You!” he’d cried in tiyon. He was hardly more than Briar’s own age. “You’re one of their demon mages!” He had stumbled forward, raising his sword as he fell. Briar had felt something hot in his leg. He’d looked at the Yanjingyi boy to find that he had fallen because he was dead. He had been dying of a big wound in his chest when he attacked Briar. Only crazy luck, Lakik’s luck, had made him chop Briar’s leg instead of something more important.

For a wound that wasn’t vital, it had made Briar scream anyway. People from his own side had found him. When they lifted him to bring him back to camp, the pain had been so bad that he had fainted like some temple archive lily.

He was trying to tell Parahan all this when the potion hit and he slept.