Women ran out to meet her. Worry and fear added a sharp edge to their normally soft features. When they realized Ilyenna had nothing to tell them, they spread out, searching for their loved ones. She couldn’t bring herself to ask for their help with the injured Argons. Not yet. Some of them had lost husbands, sons, fathers. Others would have their own wounded to tend to.
“Bring the most severely injured to the clan house,” she called to the sleigh drivers. “The clan will have to take in everyone else for now.”
She draped a man’s arm over her shoulder and helped him hobble inside. Enrid held the door for her. Inside, broths were already simmering in pots. Ilyenna laid the man next to the warm fire and went back for another. Those in the most distress, she laid before the hearths in the kitchen and hall. Others filled her family’s rooms and the rest of the hall. In addition to the overflowing injured, clusters of people hunched over loved ones.
Ilyenna quickly saw how crowded the clan house was becoming and set the hale people to work passing out broths or blankets, gathering more firewood, or washing dirty bandages or clothing. Anything to keep people moving and useful. Even though the great hall was large enough to accommodate a clan feast, there wasn’t room to take a single step without stepping over or shuffling around someone. In passing, Ilyenna’s brother told her there were over five hundred Argons. She didn’t stop to count, but several hundred of those had to be injured.
So the scrubbing, stitching, and amputating began. Her ears rang from their screams. Some were simply beyond her skill to heal, like a man whose foot was nearly cut in half. He adamantly refused amputation. It was hard to tell with all the bleeding, but she tried to align it as best she could before she stitched it closed, added a few leeches to increase the blood flow, wrapped it, and ordered the man to stay off his foot for the better part of a year. She knew from the look in his eyes that he understood. If they did manage to save his foot, he’d never run again. He’d be lucky to hobble, if he lived at all.
After the most dire cases were finally under control, Bratton finally came to her. Without waiting for her to ask, he prostrated himself on the table. “I’ve a few cuts that won’t stop bleeding.”
Ilyenna eyed him as she washed the blood from her hands. “You should take some whiskey. Give it time to work before we start.”
He shook his head. “Can’t be drunk. At least not until Father wakes up and can take over again.”
She opened her mouth to say even a little would take off the bite, but Bratton seemed to know what she was thinking. He gave her the look that meant “Leave it alone.” Pursing her lips, she nodded. Then she ordered one of the Argon women to get him a cup of tea made from willow bark and other healing herbs. While he drank it, Ilyenna pulled away the bandage from his thigh. She hissed at what she saw—a gouge that cut clean through the muscle. She lined up her bone needle and threaded a strip of sheep intestine through the eye. Then she gave her brother a chunk of leather to bite down on. “You need someone to hold you?”
In answer, he lay back on the table. She poured whiskey on the wound and scrubbed it clean. Bratton arched his back, his whole body straining. His face turned red and the veins stood out on his face. Starting deep, she worked her stitches toward the surface. He cursed her through the leather. Eventually, he started screaming. When he tried to squirm away from her, Ilyenna nodded for some nearby men to hold him down.
He shoved one. “No!”
“Bratton!” she warned him.
The two gripped his arms and held him while she finished. When it was over, he buried the heels of his hands into his eyes to hide his tears. Ilyenna quietly set a mug of whiskey at his side. Without a word, he drained it.
Lifting a shaking arm to her forehead, she wiped the sweat from her brow. Great-aunt Enrid came over from the hearth and set a plate in front of her and a bowl of qatcha in front of Bratton. Ilyenna wasn’t really hungry, but she knew she needed to eat. She washed Bratton’s blood from her hands and sat down on a chair. Her legs, feet, and lower back ached from hunching over so many people.
With a crust of bread, she poked at a boiled potato topped with melting sheep cheese. Taking a bite, she suddenly realized she was famished. But one glance at the tight lines around Enrid’s face told Ilyenna they had another worry. It wasn’t hard to guess what. “How’s the food holding out?” she asked softly.
Enrid glanced around before edging closer. “Doubling our clan’s numbers in the dead of winter . . . I’m watering down the stew. If we’re careful, no one will starve.”
Ilyenna pushed the plate away. “Let one of the others have it.”
Enrid planted both fists on her hips. “You need your strength as much as anybody.”
Ilyenna rubbed her forehead, trying to work out the knot inside her skull as she would a cramped muscle. It didn’t help, but she was so weary that closing her eyes for a moment brought some relief.
“You’re tired. You and Bratton get some rest,” Enrid said.
Ilyenna shook her head. “I’ll sleep tonight. The fevers are starting. We’re running out of leeches and garlic. I’ve bandages to change, and I need to make new ointments.”
Enrid gestured to the window. “It is night, Ilyenna. If you don’t go to bed, you’re going to do something foolish.”
To placate her, Ilyenna grabbed the plate and began to eat. Enrid threw up her hands in defeat and went back to the hearth.
Bratton’s breathing had slowed. “We haven’t enough men to guard the canyon,” he said. “But we need to send up some sentinels.”
Ilyenna nodded. “I’ll have Otrok and his friends go up.”
“Tell them to light a signal fire if they see any danger and then make a run for it.”
“I’ll send him now and see that someone in the village takes shifts watching for it.”
Tension drained from Bratton’s face. The whiskey was working. If he was drunk, she might get some answers. “I’ve heard bits and pieces of what happened.”
The muscles in Bratton’s jaw bulged. “We came across them just before Argonholm. Their men were fighting off Tyrans, trying to give the women and children a chance to escape. We drove them off. Would’ve moved on to the village, but it was already overrun—Tyrans picking off Argons one at a time. All we could do was gather those we could and run.”
Ilyenna stared at her hands, still imagining them stained with Bratton’s blood. She’d treated the injuries, but imagining how they’d been inflicted made it so much worse. “Why did the Tyrans attack?”
“No one knows.” Bratton scrubbed his face with his hands. When he spoke again, his voice sounded raw. “Some of the clanwomen escaped without coats on their backs or shoes on their feet, but not a one left without a weapon. Even the younger children had knives. Without their help, I don’t think we’d have made it.”
Ilyenna tried to imagine the women and children fighting for their lives. How many had died? Had Rone and his family been among them? She looked away from Bratton and cleared her throat, but her question seemed to lodge there.
Bratton seemed to know what she couldn’t ask. “I didn’t see Rone or any of his. They were attacked before dawn. Fell just after nightfall.”
Trying to hide the color rushing to her cheeks, she nodded quickly. “Our clanmen?” She scraped the last bite of her dinner off the wooden plate.
Bratton rubbed his eyes. “Thirty-eight dead or unaccounted for. Sixty-seven seriously injured. Not one came away without some kind of wound.”
Ilyenna swallowed several times. “Their names?”
Bratton shook his head as if to drive away an unwanted image. “Let the dead care for the dead, Ilyenna,” he said coldly. “For now, you need to concentrate on the living.”
3. Blood and Ashes
Blood seemed to follow Ilyenna everywhere. When she fell into dreams, she drowned in a river of it. Whenever she blinked, crimson light leaked through her closed eyelids. Even now, the predawn sky was stained the color of bloody water. No matter how many times she scrubbed her hands, she couldn’t rinse the hurt from her soul.
With tears stinging her eyes, she lay slumped against the window, blankets wrapped around her. She relished the cold against her aching head as she watched tiny frost flakes fall from the sky. For a moment, she thought they were really winter fairies dancing and spinning on the breeze—fairies who should have long ago given up winter and returned to their homes in the far north.
But that was ridiculous. Even if they were fairies, mere mortals could never see through their glamour. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. The Balance was seriously off when the seasons failed to shift and one clan turned on another. It had been two days since the Argons had arrived. She’d been unable to sleep that night. Sometime in the darkest hours, an idea had formed in her mind. A dangerous one. But after two days of people dying . . .
Bratton moaned and shifted in his bed. After extracting herself from her blankets, Ilyenna went to check on him. He still burned with fever. She leaned over the other bed. Her father was so unnaturally still, no matter how hard she had struggled to wake him, no matter how many medicines and treatments she had tried.