The physician Harran wrung his hands (one was a woman’s) and paced his upstairs
room and took another look out the window, in the little garrett where he had
hidden his affliction-fortuitously hidden, considering what had befallen
everyone else in the barracks. But he had no practice now, no home, no
direction. Mriga gone. There was the little dog, which paced about after him
panting and whuffing in mimic concern.
He was (whatever his affliction) still a doctor. The pain he spied on worried at
him and gnawed his gut. “Oh, damn,” he muttered to himself, when a boy darted
from cover, limned red in the firelight, and flung a torch. Tried to fling it.
An arrow took him. The boy fell, writhing, skewered through the leg, right near
the great artery. “Damn.”
Herran slammed the shutter, shut his eyes and suddenly turned and ran down the
stairs, thundering down the hollow boards, into the smell of smoke and the glare
outside. He heard shouting, wiped his eyes. Heard the boy screaming above the
roar of the burning barricade, above the shouts of men in combat. Horses
screamed. He heard the thunder of hooves and dashed out to reach the boy as the
riders streaked past. “Lie still,” he yelled at the screaming, thrashing youth.
“Shut up!” He grabbed him about the arm and hauled it over his shoulders, heard
a frantic barking and another great shout as he stumbled to his feet, the
oncoming thunder of riders on the return, a solid wall of horsemen.
“Goddess-“
Strat met the shockwave of his own forces that had kept the way open: a moment