The Thrasey freemen started to follow. One of Brian’s men turned and shook his lance in threat. Another band of horsemen burst through the willows at the creekbed a kilometer away.
Hansen doubted that either side could be sure which party the newcomers supported. The Thrasey patrol began walking its mounts up the gentle slope toward their camp.
Hansen’s pony had settled to crop the long grass. It looked up without particular interest as its fellows rejoined.
The younger freemen were flushed and panting. Brian looked sallow. His left sleeve had been torn off, and he clutched his biceps with his right hand.
“Let’s see it,” Hansen directed, clucking his pony nearer to the wounded man.
“Bastards,” Brian muttered.
The clouds had thickened. It was beginning to snow sparse, tiny flakes. The temperature had dropped a degree or two since dawn.
Hansen pried the freeman’s fingers from around the deep, ragged tear. The wound was bleeding badly, but the square-headed quarrel hadn’t smashed bone or nicked an artery.
With only direct pressure on the arm, Brian would’ve bled out if an artery were severed. . . .
“Right,” said Hansen, squeezing Brian’s hand back over the damage. “Is there a—medic, whatever, back in camp?”
“Old Jepson, he sets bones sometimes,” one of the freemen said.
“Does he stitch wounds?” Hansen demanded, and the blank expressions he received were the expected answer.
The wounds warriors took on Northworld were usually fatal and certainly self-cauterized. There was little that even the finest medical facilities of, say, Annunciation could have done for injured warriors except perform limb-grafts. And it wasn’t the business of this society to worry about wounded freemen and slaves.
“Right. You—” Hansen pointed to the freeman on the strongest pony “—ride back for the camp as fast as you can, and stick your shirt in boiling water. Fast!”
“Huh?”
“It’ll be the bandage. Now ride, damn you!”
The freeman didn’t understand the purpose of the orders, but he heard the death threat in Hansen’s voice. He dug the jangling rowels of his spurs into his pony and began to canter back toward the camp.
“I’m all right,” Brian said. He kneed his mount into careful motion. “Bastards.”
“Sure,” agreed Hansen, walking his pony alongside. “One of you,” he snapped to the younger freemen, “make sure we’re headed straight back.”
If he could have trusted his own riding skills, he would have tried to support Brian . . . though the wounded man seemed to be doing pretty well.
Brian’s waxy complexion was the main concern. The wound wouldn’t be directly fatal, but shock might very well finish the job.
Brian urged his pony into a trot. His reins hung loosely in his left hand.
“Tooley’s there,” he said loudly, instinctively aware that if he let himself slip into shock and somnolence, he wouldn’t come back. “I saw his suit, red and white.”
“Naw,” objected one of his fellows. Hansen, his knuckles white on the reins, marveled at the way the other men could ride and talk. “He’s with Count Rolfe, ain’t he?”
“Frekka,” said Brian. “He quarreled with Rolfe this summer and went to Frekka. Holroyd and Finch, they hired on with Frekka too. And they’re up there.”
It was snowing harder, but they were back among the trees now and the needles caught some of the flakes. The trees blocked much of the wan sunlight as well. Hansen looked forward to boosting the light amplitude on his battlesuit’s display.
“Finch ain’t nothin’,” said another man. “An’ Holroyd ain’t much.”
“Tooley’s shit hot, though,” Brian rejoined. He must be in considerable pain, but he was looking better for the hard ride. “And there’s a lot of the buggers. I’d figured sixty, maybe eighty tops at Thrasey if the Lord’d been hiring his ass off.”
“There’s more ‘n that,” said one of his men. Despite their youth and indiscipline, these freemen had enough experience—and intelligence, Hansen was realizing—to make them good scouts.
“There’s a hundred ‘n twenty easy,” Brian agreed grimly.
The camp was in sight. Warriors were getting into their armor near each of the fires.
“Course,” Brian added, “the King ‘n Lord Taddeusz, they’ll clean ’em up anyhow.”
The freeman might have sounded more confident if it weren’t for the wound sapping his vitality.