POV: Yona
The tent smelled of blood already. Corwin had the critically wounded paladin laid out on the low cot with his outer armor cut off and his under-shirt cut open to the wound. The wound went deep through the side, between two ribs. Corwin was working it the way he had at the second estate and at the third. He had both hands on the wound and there was no spare motion in either of them.
The lamp by the cot was low. Yona had brought a second one when she came in. The light was even now over the wound and Corwin's hands. The shadows behind him were doubled.
Liora was at the flap with her back to the tent and her blade out.
The cub was on the spare cot in the corner. He had stayed there when Yona came in. His ears tracked the camp outside, and he had not moved since the second horn. Yona had seen him hold that posture at three of the estates now, when his lady was at her worst.
Yona crossed to the supply trunk and pulled out the roll of bandage that was thicker than the others. She set it on the table by Corwin's hand.
"They should not be here," she said.
Corwin kept his hands on the paladin's chest.
The flap opened. Brennan came in with two paladins beside him. Liora moved aside without taking her eyes off the camp and pointed to the second cot. He sat. The paladins went back out. Brennan held still.
Yona moved to the second cot. The slash ran from his elbow to the top of his shoulder along the outside of his arm. It had missed the artery. She cleaned it. The first cloth went dark before she reached the end of the cut. She set it aside and took a second. He did not move while she pressed cloth into the cut.
"Something changed today," Corwin said. "Tell me what it was." His hands had not slowed. He was working a needle through the paladin's chest now.
Yona stayed at the bandage.
"This paladin should not still be breathing." He pulled the stitch tight. "Neither should Seraphina. The drag alone should have killed her. This man has his chest open, and his heart is still going."
He set the needle in the basin and took up another. He spoke without looking at her.
"So what did you see?"
Yona finished Brennan's arm. She straightened and turned half toward the flap so Liora could hear without turning.
"On the road," Yona said. "When she was caught at the stirrup. There was light along her body. Faint gold. It got brighter where she struck the ground, dimmer between. Gone before the horse swung wide."
She set the second cloth aside.
"That is healing fire. The color and the placement match what she shows when she heals herself. The fire she puts on demons looks different on her. This has shown since the soulfire."
Liora kept her back to the tent.
"I did not say anything," Yona said.
"No," Corwin said. "You waited."
Liora spoke from the flap. Her voice was the voice she gave reports in.
"This is a bloodline-hunt," she said. "They came for her."
A beat.
"Then more will come," Corwin said.
Yona stood with the bloodied cloth in her hand. The cloth had gone cold against her fingers. She had not noticed.
Corwin set the needle down. He stayed bent over the paladin a moment longer. Then he straightened.
No one spoke.
"The fire heals her," Yona said. "It kills the demons."
Corwin did not answer.
Her fingers tightened around the cloth.
"And it called them."
"Yes," Corwin said.
Liora kept her hand on her blade. "Then what does that mean for the column?"
"It means the demons can find her even between estates."
Yona looked toward Corwin. Then back at the second cot. The bandage roll on the table was thinner than it had been at sundown.
"There is more," she said.
Corwin took up the needle again and waited.
"The paladins. Their powers run higher when she is on the line."
He did not look up.
"How long?" he said.
"I am not certain. The shield-light on the corporal was faint at the third estate. Bright tonight. The dark-stone armor on the other one, the light through it has been coming up since later. Captain Gavrel I have not been certain about until tonight."
"Gavrel."
"There is light over his command position. I thought it was a brazier."
Corwin set the needle down.
Liora spoke from the flap without turning. "I have been counting it."
Yona turned half toward her.
"Three of them on the line tonight," Liora said. "Running stronger than the others. The corporal. The Shard one. Gavrel."
"Stronger how?" Corwin said.
"Higher than the others when she is on the line. That is the part I do not have yet."
A beat.
"Each of them came up at a different estate," Liora said. "I have not put the rotation against my count. By first light I will."
"You think being near her brings it up."
"I think they were there. Whether her work is causing it or only exposing it, I do not have."
Corwin took up the needle.
"Then we have one thing to bring him at first light," he said. "The fire and the paladins. Both come back to her."
"Him," Yona said. "Not her."
"He tells her," Corwin said.
He set another stitch and closed the skin under his fingers. He picked up the needle and bent back over the paladin.
"And the dead," Yona said.
Corwin did not look up. "Demons at the western fire, away from the camp. If any of them was cursed, the corpse can start the turning. We saw that in the capital."
"Namir?"
"Eastern fire. His own will see him off."
Liora kept her watch.
Yona set the bloodied cloth in the basin and took up a clean one.
Outside, the horns had not sounded again.
POV: Liora
She held her post.
Inside the tent at her back, Corwin's hands were on the paladin who had been carried in. Brennan was at the second cot getting bandaged, Yona working steady. The cub had stayed.
In front of her, men moved with the slowness that came after combat. The unhurt were taking stock of the rest, or walking themselves to the medical table.
The dead Imperial Guard, Namir, was at the far edge of the camp now, wrapped in his cloak by two of Thalion's men. They were laying him out the way men were laid out who had a long ride ahead. One of them tried to fold the cloak over Namir's face. His hand stayed there. The other soldier finished it for him.
Liora had known his name in life. She would carry it now.
Brennan was on his feet. He had walked back from the medical area on his own and was at the perimeter now, slower than usual.
Three lighter cuts had been patched and were back at the line.
Captain Gavrel was at the western end where the line had broken. He was directing his men into the new perimeter. His paladins moved when he gave them the angle and held what they reset.
The wind moved through the camp once, and the bonfires bent.
Two new fires went up at the edges of the camp. The western was for the demons. Its flame ran black at the base before it caught true. The eastern was for Namir, and the men who had carried him stood at it without speaking.
The wind shifted and carried the smoke away from the camp.
She watched.
The paladins were resetting. She kept her count.
Eighteen of them had come under Gavrel at the noon pledge. Now seventeen of those eighteen were on the line, the one inside the tent under Corwin's hands the only one off it.
Of the seventeen, three had run stronger than the others tonight.
Renn was on the eastern line. The light at his shield was steady. He walked the line dry-mouthed and watching the dark. The two paladins next to him had stopped looking at the shield after the first time he came down their stretch.
The Shard one. Anton. He was at the western edge, where the break had been worst. The face of his armor caught the moonlight at angles the others' armor did not. He had kept the line where it had broken.
And Captain Gavrel.
She had taken him for standing in front of a brazier. Through the forming-up of the line and the breaking of the second wave, the light over his head had stayed steady. Now she stood at her post and the light was still there over his command position, and there was no brazier behind him. There never had been. The light came from him.
She had not known she knew it until she looked.
Three of them. The other fourteen on the line were ordinary paladins.
She thought of where each one had first come up. Different estates, different parts of the work. She had not put the rotation against her count yet.
By first light she would have it. She had told Corwin she would.
She marked them in her count and held what she did not yet have.
The line held.
Across the camp, Seraphina had crossed back toward her own tent. She had walked the long way around, past the medical tent and past the basin where Yona was working. She had not stopped at either. Liora had watched her go and sit down outside her flap, never turning toward any of them.
The cub had crossed the camp to her.
POV: Seraphina
Seraphina had walked back to her tent on her own legs. Corwin had been at the medical tent when she went past. She had not stopped to speak. Yona had been at the basin and Liora at her post. None of them had stopped her.
The line of bodies at the southern edge of the camp had waited under their cloaks. She had not counted them. She knew what the count would be.
The two fires had been lit before she reached the flap.
The campfires were low. She stayed outside the flap.
Suri pressed against her boot.
Across the camp, at the western end, Thalion stood at the cookfire that had been set up for the perimeter watch, where he could see the line. She knew he was there without looking. The hum had held through the worst of the combat and was still holding now, dim across the camp.
Seraphina put her hand against her ribs.
The cold place at her sternum sat higher than it had at dawn. The fire-scars were holding where they had stopped after the storm, but the healing she had done for the paladin had moved them, and the combat had moved them further. Her hands sat heavier than they should at the end of her arms.
She let the hand drop.
Namir's body was at the eastern fire now. She had heard the name spoken in the camp. She had not yet said it herself.
Seraphina sat down on the bedroll outside her tent flap.
The thought she had set aside in the combat came back.
She had thought it once already, at the edge of the eastern fight, with blood on her blade and a body she had not reached on the ground. The road was clean. The wards held. No anchor in the ground.
They had come anyway.
Or they had come for her.
The thought sat in her. She kept the question to herself. There was no one to ask.
She put her hand on Suri's head. He stayed where he was.
Corwin found her at her flap.
He had come from the medical tent. The paladin's chest was closed. Yona was at the basin.
He crouched beside her without asking. He took her wrist and pressed his thumb to the pulse point. He turned her hand over and looked at the inside of her forearm where the scar-line ran.
"The healing on the road moved them," he said.
"And the combat after."
"How far?"
"To here." She put her thumb at her sternum.
"Higher than this morning."
"Yes."
He let her wrist go.
"You are not to push them," he said. "No heals you do not have to do. Not in the next three days."
"All right."
"And we need Lucien. He set them back at the second estate. He will do it again. The sooner the better."
She stayed quiet.
"Seraphina."
"I heard you."
He looked at her a moment longer. Then he stood.
"Yona will bring water and salt. Drink it."
He went back the way he had come.
She watched him go.
The hum across the camp shifted.
She did not have to look up.
Thalion stopped on the other side of the bedroll.
"You are sitting up," he said.
"I am."
He stayed standing.
"The scars."
"Corwin checked them."
"How bad?"
"Bad enough that he wants Lucien."
She kept her hand on Suri's head. Suri did not get up.
After a breath, lower: "I came to finish something."
She knew which something. She had heard him in the tent.
"It can wait," he said.
Behind her ribs the hum tightened, then settled.
She looked up.
He was looking at her the way he looked at the line before he gave an order. Not measuring her. Holding still while he waited for what came next.
Then his eyes moved. Her left cheek, just under the bone.
"You have it on your face," he said.
She did not move to wipe it.
He lifted his hand. The backs of his fingers found her cheek. Warm. He turned his hand and brushed the spatter from her skin with his thumb. Slow.
Her breath went shallow.
She did not push his hand away.
His hand stayed there. His thumb traced once where the spatter had been, light. His eyes were on hers, soft.
The hum pulled tight under her ribs.
When he lowered his hand, the air against her cheek was cold.
She let it come.
"The wall," she said.
He took it without flinching. "Yes."
"The man behind it died because I was too slow getting around it."
"Yes."
"You raised it to keep my side whole. I know that."
"I did."
"Next time you want to support me, do it. Do not put earth between me and a man I am going to reach."
He did not look away.
"I will not do it again."
She held his eyes a moment longer.
"All right."
He stayed standing.
After a breath he spoke again, lower.
"I should not have made the choice for you. The men on my side of the line are mine to spend. The man you were going to reach was yours. I took that from you."
She looked down at Suri's head under her hand. He had not moved through any of it.
"Thank you," she said.
"What I came to say first," he said. "It will keep until the camp is ours again."
He stood there a moment more. Then he turned back toward the western fire.
She watched him go.
The hum across the camp held.
Why here, she thought.
Why this ground.
She had not spoken Namir's name.