The Book of Terrus: The Wise and Powerful

Chapter 25 - Blood and Water

OoOoO

Lhara could not see the battlefield, but she could hear it. Every scream, every ring of steel on bronze, every desperate howl; it was almost more than she could bear.

She had watched the first moments when the armies of the king and the sea folk met, crashing together like two argali rams locking horns at full charge. Vinie and Xolani had led the assault down toward Utunma, or so Lhara was told at such a distance. All fought on foot, and quickly the two forces blurred together into a seething mass of red and gold, light and dark, Factionists and Loyalists. Even if Lhara had been able to make out any further details of the battle, she wouldn't have wanted to.

The wounded poured into her hastily thrown-together infirmary, set a short ways back through the trees. It was all Lhara could do to keep on top of the chaos. She was not alone though, and that was just about the only thing keeping her from losing her mind.

Kiiss, the skirt of her dress tucked up out of the way around her hips, met the injured as they either stumbled or were dragged away from the fighting. Some she brought for aid immediately, where they were laid out in the backs of wagons for Lhara to tend to. Others who could stand to wait were sat down around the edge of the tiny clearing with fistfuls of moss to press to wherever was bleeding. The stench of blood was everywhere. It didn't take long before Lhara's borrowed pants, shirt and vest were flecked with it.

Oesu was also there, and whatever strangeness Lhara felt about ordering one of Moaan's regents to and fro evaporated fairly quickly as the wounded piled up before them. Oesu steadied fractures, fetched water from the spring and tore strips of linen for bandages. Anything that Lhara asked of her she did with quick efficiency. That still however left the hardest work to Lhara.

Tending Trosk's wounded with Magda paled in comparison to the destruction being churned out by this battle. It made Lhara realize very quickly that what had happened at Trosk was really more of a skirmish than true warfare. Within fifteen minutes she had already stitched so many gashes, some of them terribly deep and dangerous, that there was simply no time for tidy sewing. Her needle flew as fast as Lhara dared to go without risking carelessness, reuniting torn muscle, flesh and skin as Magda had shown her.

Broken bones were much harder to contend with, and took valuable time. Using a knife, Kiiss cut lengths of long, rope-like plants from the surrounding trees, which she called vines. These Lhara found stretchy yet durable enough to bind splints around limbs once they had been set. Lhara hoped against reason that she was doing more good than harm for these people, but she just didn't know. Her meager experience was being put to the test in most dramatic fashion, and more often than not she, Kiiss and Oesu had to piece the sea folk back together with little more than compassion and ingenuity.

When a young man was carried into the clearing weeping in anguish with his left leg nearly severed beneath the knee, Lhara's heart sank. He couldn't have been older than Tarun or Jath. If Tarun were out there right now, in a similar state or worse...

There was no time for worries like that right now though. Leaving Oesu to finish binding a re-located shoulder, Lhara found no available carts for the latest arrival.

"Help me lay this out!" She shouted to several of the least badly hurt, set leaning against trees nearby. Together they rushed to unfurl a canvas cloth from the back of one of the wagons on the jungle floor. "Kiiss, I need the dowel!"

"Here!" Kiiss was quick to produce a short rod of wood. The second the man's dangling leg was stretched out before him on the canvas Lhara pounced. Looping one of his companion's colorful cloth belts above the knee, she stuffed the dowel through and twisted it tight. She had seen a similar thing done with her Uncle Torl's badly broken leg. The man yowled, bucking against the restraining arms of his friends as the belt cinched. Right away though, the bleeding lessened.