Mending
He froze. His shirt was gone, and so were the vines. That meant the healers had seen them—had cut them from his body. It meant he couldn’t hide.
He struggled to sit up, pausing when his back flared with pain. His head throbbed. “What—”
Given that they’d taken off his shirt in order to treat him for whatever had hit him in the back, it was impossible that the healers hadn’t seen those inexplicable bits of plant growth. Math was naked, so he could assume Zahraiik had treated his legs as well.
At least the man had thrown a sheet over his lower half in deference to modesty.
It was darker inside the tent than outside, suggesting it was still daylight. Shadows moved against the tent fabric as knights hurried around outside. He heard the muffled sounds of industry, of people working and talking and carrying things. So many more knights than they’d originally brought.
A captain must’ve called for help, if not with the fighting itself, then with the cleanup.
In a way, he’d gotten very, very lucky. Normally, there would’ve been no explaining this away, no justifying it.
At least this time, he had a ready-made excuse: the trees had done it.
If those vines hadn’t dug into his flesh in the same way they had for the other victims, didn’t look exactly alike, they still wouldn’t think Math was responsible.
His thoughts shied away from the attack itself, from the hallucinations.
He hadn’t … he hadn’t really controlled those plants, had he?
Math didn’t want to know. In any event, neither the plants nor the twisted visions explained how he’d been knocked unconscious. The vines hadn’t caused blunt-force injuries, and at no point had the trees been behind him. The only people behind him had been more knights …
Oh.
“Captain Rabu hit me?” Math asked.
“Like a damn rhino, sad to say,” Zahraiik informed him, chuckling.
“Fortunately, he didn’t hit you in the head.
Also, you had almost two dozen knights right there, so no permanent damage.
You’re lucky, Novitiate.” He pointed a scalpel at Math, pointing out the various places on his body where small bandages marked all the other incisions the medic had already made.
“The other four people who had those things crawl under their skin didn’t survive the experience. ”
Math didn’t hide his shudder. Four knights dead, just like that. It was … it was a stunning blow for the cenobium, already stretched so thin trying to cover the increasing rise in grimmock attacks.
“I’m done here,” Zahraiik told him. “You. Stay down for at least fifteen more minutes. When you can sit up on your own, and only if you can breathe easily, you may leave.”
“Yes, sir,” Math said.
“And stay out of trouble. How are we supposed to grab you for Mending if you get yourself killed?”
“Nobody’s grabbing me until I figure out how to manifest.”
Zahraiik nodded, gave him a sympathetic clap on the shoulder, and then left the tent to tend to someone else’s injuries.
Math waited, if not patiently, because the pain provided excellent motivation to not move.
When he managed to sit, he noticed a small table next to the cot, which held several dishes containing various medical supplies.
Another dish held a collection of small, slender plant vines, sprinkled with drops of blood. They looked tender, delicate, harmless.
Zahraiik, or one of the other healers, had left him clothes, which was good, because his own clothes, dumped into a sackcloth bag and thrown in a corner, were completely ruined.
More ruined than they should’ve been. Even his jazerant chain coat was ruined, the chain that normally lay safely tucked between two layers of padded linen now so corroded and worn that the links snapped from the force of their weight.
Someone had used third-circle Storm spells on his clothing until they were so rusted and worn they could be ripped off his body with ease.
Math knew exactly who.
“Damn it, Nuhzar,” he growled.
At least the bastard had left Math’s boots intact.
Small favors—it still meant that Math wasn’t going back into the field until he could replace the coat, which wouldn’t be a high priority for the Isofal smiths.
Commander Talu wouldn’t send him into the field without armor, and he wouldn’t be allowed to wear anything that would have him mistaken for a knight.
Nuhzar’s sabotage would prove nastily effective.
Math barely recognized his location when he stepped outside. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious, but it had to have been hours.
The logging camp was gone.
All the bodies and parts of bodies had been removed. The entire area’s soil had been turned under, hiding the blood and gore that had soaked the ground. To the south …
Math couldn’t help but feel offended, even if he understood the necessity.
The knights hadn’t cut down the entire forest, but they’d made a good stab at it—nearly a quarter mile from the camp was now nothing but felled trees, uprooted whole and lying on their sides.
The Idallik Knights had wanted to make certain they’d found all the lumberjacks—or whatever they’d become.
The knights’ deaths must have shaken the Order badly.
Math searched until he found a captain—Captain Rabu, in fact.
The captain was casually carrying a whole tree thrown over a shoulder to a stacking pile. Math had the fleeting thought that the cenobium really should bill Kegomar for all the free logging.
Rabu pointed at Math and barked out a noise. “I didn’t kill you! That’s good!”
“We’re in perfect agreement, Captain Rabu.” Math bowed. “Might I have a moment? I have a concern.”
“What?” The captain squinted at him. “Normally I’d tell you to go talk to one of my lieutenants, but since I almost killed you today—talk fast.” Rabu made a face at his hands as he began walking back to collect another tree. “My hands are covered in sap.”
Math didn’t feel his input was needed on that. “I was wondering if we killed—or maybe the right word is felled?—the three leaders?”
Math already knew they hadn’t, but … he wanted to be wrong.
Captain Rabu stopped walking. “What leaders? The Kaliri? Did you see any Kaliri, boy?”
Mathaiik raised his chin and squared his shoulders. “I saw three trees, Captain. In the back. Much larger than the others. Directing the fighting.”
Rabu kept staring, then he exhaled sharply through his nose, much like a bull.
“Kaven. I saw the sky melt, and a dancing elephant turned into a winged horse and flew away. Maybe don’t pay too much attention to what you ‘saw’ while you were under the effects of”—he waved a hand vaguely—“that purple stuff.”
Captain Rabu swung another tree onto his shoulder and turned around, so Math had to duck if he didn’t want to be clobbered a second time in one day by the Captain of Swords. “You probably saw Kaliri and were just too burned to realize it. Witches, I’d wager.”
“I didn’t—” A muscle in Math’s jaw twitched as he bit back the rest of the sentence. It was futile, a waste of breath, to argue with Captain Rabu. He’d already decided: anything odd they’d seen or experienced was a hallucination.
Captain Rabu either didn’t notice or didn’t care to notice Math’s faux pas. As far as he was concerned, their conversation was over: he returned to tree delivery.
Math couldn’t go over the man’s head and just barge in to see the commander, either.
He’d already jumped a rung he shouldn’t have.
The rigid structure of mission protocols demanded problems be reported up the chain of command.
He was expected to inform a lieutenant—specifically, Lieutenant Nuhzar—who would then decide whether to escalate the matter to Captain Rabu.
Rabu hadn’t made a fuss about it, but he would if he was the one being skipped.
Math knew this wasn’t the Kaliri, though. Isofal existed to repel the Kaliri, and there wasn’t a single knight of the Order who hadn’t had at least one run-in with Rokasmaa’s “friendly” neighbors.
They liked to use forbidden magics, it was true. They also liked to ambush. A trap like that corpse, overripe with hallucinogenic spores, could represent an escalation in Kaliri tactics, except …
Except it hadn’t triggered when Captain Rabu had moved it. Shouldn’t it have? Wouldn’t that have made sense?
No, the corpse hadn’t exploded until Captain Yihura’s people chopped down the first tree. Not an ambush, but a retaliation.
These weren’t Kaliri.
They were something much worse.