Out on the field, dark flapping forms hovered, waiting. Then one swept down to where a dead horse lay, already bloating, and thrust in his beak with a great raucous cry of joy. Another flapped down and another, and then dozens, hundreds . . . feasting, calling out joyously to one another. Romilly picked up a thought from somewhere, she could not tell whether from one of the Swordswomen beside her at the grave, or someone out of sight on the dark campground, the defeat of men is the joy of the carrion-bird, where men mourn the kyorebni make holiday . . . and dropped her shovel, sickened. She tried to pick it up, but suddenly doubled over, retching. She had not eaten since morning; nothing came up but a little green bile, but she stayed there, doubled over, sick and exhausted, too sickened even to weep.
Jandria came and led her silently inside the tent. Two Swordswomen were tending the wounds of three others, one woman with a clingfire burn on her hand which was still burning inward, another unconscious from a sword-cut across her head, and still another with a leg broken when her horse fell and rolled on her. One looked up, frowning, as Jandria led Romilly inside and pushed her down on a blanket.
“She is unwounded – she should be helping to bury our dead!”
Jandria said gruffly, “There is more than one kind of wound!” She held Romilly close, rocking her, stroking her hair, soothing her, but the girl was unaware of the touch, lost in a desperate solitude where she sought and sought for the dead. .. .
Romilly wandered in a dark dream, as if on a great grey plain, where she saw Clea before her, laughing, riding on one of the dead horses, and Prudence perched on her fist.. . but they were so far ahead, no matter how she raced, her feet were stuck as if she waded through thick syrup and she could not catch up with them, never, never….
Somewhere Romilly heard a voice, she felt she ought to know the voice but she did not, saying, She has never learned to shut it out. This time, perhaps, I can give her barriers, but there is really no remedy. She is a wild telepath and she has no protection.
Romilly only knew that someone . . . Carolin? Lady Maura? . . . touched her forehead lightly, and she was back in the tent of the Swordswomen again, and the great desolate grey plain of death was gone. She clung to Jandria, shuddering and weeping.
“Clea’s dead. And my horses, all my horses . . . and the birds …” she wept.
Jandria held and rocked her. “I know, dear. I know,” she whispered, “It’s all right, cry for them if you must, cry, we are all here with you.” and Romilly thought, in dull amazement, She is crying too.
And she did not know why that should seem strange to her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Romilly woke, on the morning after the battle, to a grey and dismal day of heavy rain. On the field nothing stirred except the omnipresent carrion-birds, undaunted by the downpour, feeding on the bodies of men and horses.
It makes no difference to her now, Romilly thought, but even so she was grateful that Clea lay in the earth, her body guarded from the fierce beaks of the quarreling kyorebni. Yet one way or another, her body would return to its native elements, food for the small crawling things in the earth, to feed grasses and trees. She had become part of the great and endless cycle of life, where those who fed on the earth became in turn food for the earth. Why, then, should I grieve? Romilly asked herself, but the answer came without thought.
Her death did not come in the full course of time, when she had lived out her days. She died in a quarrel between kings which was none of her making. And yet, troubled, she remembered how she had met with Lyondri Hastur. Lyondri’s cruelties were many, while Carolin at least seemed to feel that it was his duty to serve and protect those who lived in the lands he had been born to reign over.