He studied me. Then he nodded. Then he lay down.
I ran to the flaps of the tent, stuck my head out and saw two warrior guards on either side.
“We need clean up in here, if you don’t mind,” I said to the one on my left.
He nodded but didn’t move. Instead, he bellowed my order to a warrior standing post some ten feet away. That warrior nodded, turned and bellowed my order to someone else.
I didn’t hang around to watch the rest. I saw Packa running toward me with the big bath cloths Lahn and I used and I moved back into the tent.
* * * * *
Needless to say, everyone was a little surprised, and get this, sickened, by the medicine I explained was practiced freely in my land.
They did not sew flesh together, Bain informed me with curled lip, eyes filled with disgust.
Yes, this from a man who cut up a bunch of the enemy in what amounted to my freaking house. And, after, stood amongst the carnage bantering with his comrade.
Furthermore, they didn’t have a word for germs, because they didn’t know what germs were, so my explanation of why I would waste good zakah cleansing Zahnin’s wound fell on deaf ears.
Luckily, I was queen so they had no choice but to give into my commands and they did.
Though Bain and Zahnin did it obviously humoring me.
However, when I commanded a clearly squeamish Gaal (Jacanda told me she was a very gifted seamstress when I demanded she find the best one in the Daxshee) to sew together the edges of Zahnin’s wound, the healer, standing and observing, saw the wisdom of this.
“Very clever,” she muttered as Gaal, swallowing with nerves and aversion but still game, started to use the needle I’d further sterilized in a candle flame and thread that Jacanda had boiled in a pot over the fire and I’d soaked in zakah to sew Zahnin’s wound together.
Gaal looked like she was about to heave a couple of times (and I was right there with her, talk about gross) but she stuck with it mainly because I stayed close for moral support. Her eyes kept lifting to me, I nodded to encourage her and eventually she lost her distaste for it and did, from my extremely limited experience, what looked like a very good job.
For Zahnin’s part, he didn’t even wince but lay on my bed with pillows I’d shoved under his head, one arm bent, hand behind his head, chatting amiably through the whole thing to Bain who was standing at the head of the bed, arms crossed on his chest and one ankle crossed over the other in a casual warrior pose which didn’t fit with what had become a minor medical procedure in a primitive examination room.
Once closed, I cleansed the wound again with zakah when Gaal moved away, the healer gooped him up with some salve she promised aided healing (after I made her wash her hands with soap and rinse them in zakah) and then he sat up so she could press a long bandage down his front then roll a clean gauze tight around and around his torso, tying it expertly at the end.
The bodies, by the way, had been removed by young trainee warriors and Packa and Beetus, faces pale, had grabbed the sheet and pillows and pulled up the rugs to take them out as Jacanda went to work wiping down furniture and trunks.
Boy, I needed to go back to the market and buy my girls more gifts. They already went beyond the call of duty and got nothing for it except food, cham and minimal clothing. Wiping up blood went so beyond the call of duty, it wasn’t funny.
Ghost, by the way, was lying on her side at the foot of the bed, napping in a dead to the world fashion and I knew this because, even with all the people and activity around, she didn’t even twitch.
When I put pressure on Zahnin’s shoulder to press him back, he went without complaint but he looked at me when he was fully reclining.
“Can I have some zakah now?”
I studied him. He was not pale. He had never been faint. And his eyes held no pain. None at all. In fact, he looked totally normal.
Boy, they trained these boys to within an inch of their life.
Literally.
I sucked in a calming breath and answered, “Yes, my protector, you can have –”
I stopped speaking when the cham flaps slapped and I was turning toward them when I heard a soft, feminine intake of breath.
Sabine was standing inside my cham and Diandra and Claudine were entering the flaps at her back. And Sabine was staring at her husband and his bandage, her eyes wide, her face pale, her mouth soft. I watched those eyes drift up his chest to his face then I stared as they got bright with unshed tears.
They slid to me. “Circe?” she whispered.
“He’s fine, sweetheart, we’ve fixed him up,” I assured her.