it. Its dull yellow color was wrong for a kank. The inner edge was razor-sharp. He could have lost an arm, a leg, or his head.
“Your shoulder’s bleeding, Pavek. May I tend it for you?”
Akashia knelt beside him, and noticing the gash for the first time, he began to shiver. She placed her hand on his brow. The shivering ceased. He didn’t flinch when she peeled his shirt away from the wound, though he’d been to the infirmary often enough to know he was going to hurt worse before he felt better.
But the druid’s touch was pleasantly warm. It soothed his nerves before numbing them. Maybe Oelus was right. Maybe there was something in the nature of the power King Hamanu granted his templars that caused pain. Or, just as likely, the infirmary butchers simply didn’t care.
Curiosity got the better of him, as it often did. He observed Akashia’s every move until the gash was a tidy scab some two handspans in length. Words for thanks were hard to find in his mind, awkward on his tongue; he grunted a few about appreciation and respect.
“I owe you that and more,” Akashia assured him as she got to her feet. “I think I have misjudged you, Just-Plain Pavek. Without hesitation or thought of reward, you risked your life to save Ruari’s, after you twice swore to kill him. There is more to you than a yellow robe. You might be a man, after all.”
A hand came between them, long-fingered and lithe. It grabbed the staff and retreated.
“He’s a templar, Kashi. The worst kind of templar. He pretends to be what he’s not. Wash your hands after you touch him.”
Chapter Eight
The huge blood-orange disk of the sun had climbed its own height above the eastern horizon when Pavek stretched himself awake, more refreshed than a battered man had any right to be after a half-night’s sleep. No trace of the Tyr-storm remained—except for the crusted mud and the dark angular silhouettes of kes’trekels rising through the dawn, scouting the storm-wreck for scavenge.
Ruari sat beside a small fire. His right leg was thrust straight in front of him. The knee was swollen to the size of a cabra melon and was the color of yesterday’s storm. The pot he tended exuded the alluring aromas of journey-bread softening and heating in spiced tea. Pavek’s stomach woke up with a yowl, but the way things stood between himself and Ruari, breakfast would have to wait until the youth finished.
Nearby, Yohan cinched the cargo harness around the soldier-kank while the insect masticated a heap of forage. The adobe walls of the roofless hut had been reduced to muddy mounds, pocked with the deep tracks of panicked wildlife. Here and there, shards of pottery grew out of the mud: the trampled remnants of a good many of their water jugs.
There’d be more room for him on the cargo platform, less water.
Overall, it was a bad trade.
Two of the riding kanks were foraging nearby. He looked around for the third kank, and found it collapsed in the hardening mud, with Akashia crouched over its head. He wandered over for a closer look.
“It’s no use,” she said sadly. She’d heard someone coming, but hadn’t raised her head to see who it was. “They’re scarcely conscious of their own life. They shed whatever healing energy I can impart to them.”
“It must be very frustrating to try so hard with such little result.”
Weariness turning to wariness when Akashia craned her neck toward him.
“Just curious. Didn’t mean to disturb you.”
She sighed, tucked storm-tangled hair behind her ears, and faced him with the hint of a smile on her lips. “Are you sure you’re not Just-Curious Pavek instead of Just-Plain Pavek?”
Embarrassed for reasons he couldn’t decipher, he shook his head and retreated. Her almost-smile broadened into a grin, then faded. Ruari’s shadow—long, lean, and reinforced by his longer, leaner staff—fell between them.
“It’s no use,” Akashia repeated. “I cannot heal it, and it begins to suffer. Help me?”
There was no mistaking the question in her voice, or the need. Pavek thought he understood. Templar healers could kill without hesitation either on the battlefield or, afterward, among the wounded. A druid, whose powers did not flow from a sorcerer-king, might feel differently. Ruari seemed to have a sufficiently cruel temperament to enjoy what others might call mercy.
But Ruari laid down his staff. He sat opposite Akashia, carefully arranging his knee with his hands as he did. The joint was functional, but obviously sore and delicate.