Yana caught Clodagh’s eye and urgently beckoned the healer over, indicating Giancarlo’s bundled figure on the ground by her feet.
Clodagh examined the colonel’s terrible burn wounds briefly, pursing her lips at the irremedial damage.
“I can do something to make him comfortable, no more,” she said, shaking her head. “Intergal may know something.” She started to work, pulling various unguents and potions, bandages and splints from her knapsack.
Yana would never have expected to be sorry for a man like Giancarlo, but she was. Hurting as badly as he was, he had not uttered a sound.
For herself, Yana was so glad to see Clodagh and the others from Kilcoole that she could have cried. She and Torkel had made it to the cave several hours before, and she had been unutterably relieved to see the shuttle crash survivors. However, once Torkel had reassured himself that his father was safe, he began ranting about Yana’s treachery and warning the shuttle crew to ignore anything she might say and to watch her. Considering the fact that Yana had obviously taken on most of the physical burden of dragging Giancarlo, as well as supporting Torkel, as they staggered into the cave, the shuttle crew didn’t pay much attention to his ravings. Still, the atmosphere had been extremely tense. Even the cave itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something. The calm before the storm? Yana wondered. A lull before the mountain blew again? It didn’t feel exactly like that, and she was too tired to analyze the feeling, but it definitely added to the tension.
Once Clodagh finished ministering to the unconscious Giancarlo, she rounded on Yana, clucking over the scabby sores crusting Yana’s left arm and over her appearance in general.
“When did you eat last, girl?” Clodagh demanded.
“I had a piece of ration bar just before we got here,” Yana said.
“You look like you could eat a whole moose by yourself and sleep for a month. You were skinny as a skeleton when you got to Kilcoole, but we fattened you up good. Now you look like a lame doe after a hard winter again.”
Yana jerked her arm away from Clodagh. “Don’t fuss over me. I’m all right. There are others who could really use your help, Clodagh.” She nodded beyond her to others wearing makeshift bandages. “The shuttle survivors have been here for three days, and they’ve had zip to look after themselves with. All they could do for Dr. Fiske was immobilize his arm and wash off his wounds.”
“Is that him over there Steve’s talkin’ to?” Clodagh asked. When Yana nodded Clodagh said wryly, “He looks better off than Torkel to me.”
Sinead joined the two women then, her face anxious. “Have you seen him?” she asked Yana. “I thought he’d be with you.”
“No, if you mean Scan,” Yana said with an odd smile. “But I’ll tell you both something. We didn’t find them”-and she gestured to the crash victims-“we were led to them.”
Hope bounced back into Sinead’s eyes. “Led to this place?”
Yana nodded. “What’s more, they swear they were led here, too. I can only think of one person not here at the moment who might have engineered this rescue, and I’ve been wondering, Sinead, how the hell he did it.” Her eyes were keen on the other woman’s face. “Dr. Fiske told Torkel he believes that there’s an underground network of rivers. That’s why there were so many subsidences when the mining charges weakened subterranean supports. If there’s a network, one river flowing into another, then someone who knew his way around could go from one end of the system to the other without ever being seen-couldn’t he?”
Sinead gave Yana a long look. “If there was such a network, that’s possible, I suppose. I don’t go underground much. 1 like horizons.” Then she reached to heave her pack off her back and began rummaging in it. “I’ve got spare clothes you can use. And some stuff Clodagh will want.”
“No one looked beyond this cavern?” Clodagh asked with quiet urgency.
Yana shook her head. “We’d enough to do without going exploring!”
“That’s as well,” Clodagh said with a satisfied snort, and asked Yana who was the worst of the injured. She cleansed, stitched, anointed, and listened as gradually the two separate incidents were reported in detail.