Dragon Blood (Hurog #2)(6)

"No, sir. My oldest boy, Fennel, saw them coming in time to warn us. I sent Rowan to you, and we waited. After a bit I tracked Fennel's trail to where he'd seen the bandits. And I found them three dead, sir. And I found what killed 'em, too. You'll never guess."

As we'd spoken, Atwater's wife had come out of the house with a little sprite of a girl about six.

"It was a girl," the child caroled in satisfied tones. "A girl killed them bandits all by herself."

Atwater's left eyebrow buried itself in his hairline. His wife shrugged.

"My aunt could have killed them," I said. "Why are you so surprised a woman took care of them?"

Atwater shook his head. "Maybe Stala could at that. But I'd be surprised if a man in this woman's condition could have walked from where we stand to my home, let alone killed three healthy men with naught but a puny knife. Would you come look at her?"

Bemused, I nodded at Oreg. "Stay out here and keep the babes out from under Pansy's feet, please?"

Tosten gave his reins to Oreg, too.

Atwater's house was dark and close, insulated for winter with dried grasses and straw. I had to duck my head to avoid rubbing the ceiling.

The fire in the hearth was more for light than warmth - that would change as winter approached. One of Atwater's older daughters sat on a nearby bench sewing, a bucket of water by her feet should a spark fly out and touch either fur or straw. She nodded at me, but turned shyly back to her work. I didn't know how she could sew in the dim light. Even with the fire so near, I could barely tell there was a person buried in the furs in front of the hearth.

But I could smell the distinctive odor of rotting flesh. I knelt beside the furs and touched the skin on the back of the unconscious woman's neck, feeling the dry heat.

"She hasn't moved since I found her, my lord," said Atwater. "Her weapon's on the table. After seeing the bodies, I thought I'd better get it out of her reach."

I got up and looked at the knife on the table. Not a hunting knife - the blade was too short, not even a full finger-length. A skinning knife, I thought, but not a common one at all. The metal was worked like the finest sword, the pattern of its folding visible even in the darkness of the house.

Tosten whistled softly. "She took out three mercenaries with that knife?"

"They underestimated her," I said, setting the knife back on the table. Stala said that men tended not to take her seriously because she was a woman, and that gave her an advantage that more than made up for the difference in size and strength. "Tosten, would you go hold the horses and send Oreg in to look at her wounds?" I'd done some field surgery, but the smell of flesh-rot told me we'd need more than that here - and Oreg, among other things, was an experienced healer.

Tosten nodded and turned on his heel without comment.

When Oreg appeared in his stead, the atmosphere in the house changed. No one in the house acted like they were afraid of Oreg, but they set him at a distance due the Wizard of Hurog.

Oreg's dark hair made him stick out among the fair-haired Shavigmen, but his purple-blue eyes, duplicates of Tosten's, proclaimed him a Hurog born and bred. In the past few years, unbound by the spells that had held him, he'd begun to look more like a man and less a boy, but he, like Tosten was slight of build. He didn't look like someone to be afraid of. Still less did he look like a man who had arisen from the dead.

I'd told everyone that Oreg had been ensorcelled and that by killing him I'd broken the spell. They seemed to accept it and Oreg - but they gave him space when they could.

Oreg held up his hand as he approached the hearth, and light reflected from his curved palm and lit the little house as if the roof had come off and allowed the sun into all the dark corners. He tossed the ball of light up and it hovered above him while he pulled the furs off of the woman to get a better look at her.

In Oreg's light, her cheeks were flushed with fever and her eyes were sunken. But then, even at her best she had never been beautiful - not by conventional standards.

"Tisala," I said, stunned.

Oreg stopped his examination to peer with momentary interest at her face. "So it is," he agreed mildly. "Good thing they took her knife away from her."

"Do you know her, my lord?" asked Atwater as if it surprised him not at all. He'd gone from thinking I was as brutal and irrational as my father to expecting miracles ever since that night last winter when I found his son.

"Yes, I know her," I said. It didn't seem enough, so I added, "I fought with her at my back." And there wasn't a higher compliment any Shavigman could give.

Atwater nodded, content that his lord was still odd, worldly, and all-knowing.

The last time I'd seen Tisala, her curly dark hair had been shorter than my own, but now it hung in lank tangles down to her shoulders, making her skin all the more white.

Oreg's hands were gentle, but when they touched her left hand, her whole body stiffened and she moaned.

"She's been tortured," he said matter-of-factly.

I nodded. It was hard to miss: both hands, left worse than right, both feet. No telling what other damage had been done: She wore an old pair of trousers, patched and baggy, and a shirt whose arms were too short over the rest.

"They hadn't had her long," he said at last. "She'll live, if the fever and the putrefaction don't kill her. But we ought to take her to the keep, where my medicines are."