Allegiance (River of Souls 3)

“Hmmm.” Jannik rubbed his mouth. “I should not have provoked you. Here, let us tend to your horse so you might hurry back and pester Ana and Maryshka at their work.”

Inside the barn, she found more clues of once-prosperous days. A dozen sizeable stalls lined one side, with a hayloft running above them. Opposite stood a wooden rack that she first took for a weapons rack, but then realized it was meant to hold farm tools. Once this barn must have housed at least a dozen cows or horses. Now, all but one stall stood empty.

With a snort, the barn’s solitary occupant, a dark brown horse, lurched forward to meet Jannik’s hand. Its muzzle was white, and it limped. Surely the village possessed more than one old horse and a few goats.

Uncertain, she asked, “Does it matter which stall?”

Jannik scratched the horse behind its ears, then fended off its attempts to lip at his shirt. “No. This old girl is friendly, and we’ve only two cows at the far end. I’ll throw down some hay for yours. You can stow your gear in the next stall.”

Working together, they soon had Ilse’s horse fed, watered, and rubbed down with some old sacking. The gear made a tidy stack in the far corner of the barn. The stall next to Duska’s had only a bare dirt floor, but Ilse didn’t much care. She had blankets for warmth, and after two weeks in the wilderness, she would be comfortable enough.

“Done,” Jannik said. “Now back to your friend, for you, and to the fields for me.”

They parted outside the barn. Jannik took a side path that circled around the village, while Ilse headed down the main route to the Rudny household. Many eyes watched her progress—she glimpsed a face in one window, caught a swirl of movement as several children vanished behind another, larger house, and heard the bleating of goats disturbed at their feeding.

She knocked. Someone—Maryshka, she thought—called out, but hurriedly, as if they were preoccupied. Ilse went in.

Bela lay on a rough pallet in front of a blazing fire. Her feet were bare, her boots now a shredded heap of leather. Ana Rudny bent over her, knife in hand as she cut away the rest of Bela’s trousers. Her daughter knelt on the hearth, just now lifting a pot of boiling water from the fire. Several baskets and stone jars stood on a nearby table, and next to them, a mortar and pestle. The air smelled of wood smoke and pungent herbs and the sickly stink of a wound gone putrid.

Maryshka glanced over her shoulder. “I’m glad you are here,” she said to Ilse. “We want you to talk to your friend while we work.”

Ilse knelt and wrapped her hands around Bela’s unscathed foot. “Oh, my friend.”

“It is not as awful as you would think,” Bela whispered.

Then Ana slid the bloody rags from beneath Bela’s legs, and Bela arched her back, flailing wildly. Ilse scrambled around and gripped Bela’s hands in hers. “Hold on to me,” she whispered. “Just as I did to you, that night I took sick and could not stop throwing up. You blamed that handful of water I drank from the stream. I said it was impossible, not from a stream running fresh and cold. We argued and argued until I threw up again, all over your shirt.” She continued to babble, dimly aware of Maryshka by the t

able, the scrape of a knife against stone, Ana’s murmured commentary to her daughter. “Do you remember?” she said. “How I cursed and wept from the cramps. How you told me to show a little fortitude. That’s when I cursed you instead of my guts.”

Bela wheezed with laughter. “I remember. I remember thinking you knew more curses than I did, and me the soldier.”

Then her eyes squeezed shut. She gave a gasp and went limp.

Quickly Ilse touched her fingers to Bela’s throat. A faint but steady pulse beat there.

“She sleeps,” Ana said. “Just as well.”

She gestured to Maryshka, who came at once to her side with rags, a bowl of weeds, and the boiling water. Ilse watched, open-eyed, as mother and daughter uncovered the flesh scraped raw by the gravel. A conversation followed, technical and brief. Maryshka fetched a mug from the table, filled with a bitter-smelling brew, which they forced down Bela’s throat. Bela struggled until Maryshka pinched the woman’s nose shut. Bela gave a spasm, swallowed, and swallowed again. Maryshka set the mug aside and studied her patient with narrowed eyes. A long interval later, Bela relaxed into an obviously deeper sleep.

“Good enough,” Ana commented.

“As good as we can hope,” Maryshka replied. “Do we cover the leg with a poultice until the skin grows back? Will it?”

Ana’s gaze flicked toward Ilse. “It might. Worth a try.”

Ilse gripped her hands tightly together. “Whatever you must do, whatever you can, please do it.”

Another whispered conference, spoken in a stronger dialect than before. Ilse took the hint and wandered outside into the morning sunlight. A few older women had gathered outside another of the larger houses, knitting and sewing as they talked. Idly she wondered how they had obtained the metal needles or the thread. Not far away came the murmuring of the river, the rhythmic thunk of hoes biting into the ground, the bleating of goats.

Her strength gave way without warning, and she flopped onto the ground.

“Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane strôm…”

She drew a long breath and pressed both hands against her eyes. No, no magic here. None. She had come to Duszranjo, land of her father and grandmother. Whatever she had claimed to Raul Kosenmark when she first came to work for him in Tiralien, magic was not a simple thing in this valley. Even Miro Karasek, once a hostage of his mother’s and father’s private war, could not neatly separate himself from his heritage.

For a long while, she crouched in the dirt, breathing in the scents of flowering herbs, the dankness of the nearby river, her own sour sweat from days upon days of struggling through the mountains. She heard a groaning within the Rudny house. A thin, high screech, as though someone had inhaled in sudden anguish. Panting and then a sobbing breath giving way to silence. She heard footsteps passing by. The men and women coming back from the fields.

A shadow dropped over her.