Fraul, 24

A woman came down the trail. Captain Raile peered at her from her hidden place, the woman’s skirts all muddied at the hem and jewels hanging from her belt. They seemed to be talismans of some sort, catching the sun with their carvings.

The woman’s pace slowed, feeling someone’s gaze on her. Erica stood and stepped out of the bushes, since the newcomer was clearly unarmed and the captain was armed to the teeth. The two women gazed at each other, smiling, recognizing.

“You’re a long way from home, Ezuran,” said the healer. Erica’s hands rested on the pommel of her sword, and the tip of it raised up behind her with the weight of her palms. She felt quite safe.

“What are you doing at the border?” she asked.

“Is that your business?”

“You’re coming up close to camp. I can turn you back if I please.”

“Could you?” The woman beamed, her eyes sparkling. Her smile faded a little, seeing the expert slouch with which the captain leaned against the tree. Even beneath layers of linen and leather, her shoulders were broad and her neck thick as a branch. “Yes, I believe you could.”

“So?” Captain Raile asked, losing her pleasant demeanor. “What are you doing here?”

“I smelled sickness.” The woman opened her hip pouch and Erica saw glittering vials. Her hands tightened on the sword as the woman went on, “I am a healer, and much in need of money. I thought there might be some I could help.”

Erica’s brow creased. “You’re Areidan,” she said.

“Only a bit. I have no horse, you see.”

“Oh.” The captain relaxed. “Then you’re welcome with us. Stay close behind me and don’t try anything.” Raile led the shorter woman toward camp, straight to Tere. She called, “Leonard?”

He came out of the healing tent, cleaning dried blood from his fingernails with a knife. He said without looking up, “What is it, Raile?”

His gaze found the new woman, as many gazes had. Her breasts hung low in the muslin shirt, and most of them hadn’t fucked for awhile. She felt their eyes on her and shifted with discomfort, keeping her chin up, her gaze darting to the bull-shaped woman before her. This woman would protect her, she hoped. She felt the honor radiating off Erica in waves.

She cast her gaze around the camp and finally saw Leonard looking at her. She stepped forward and offered her hand in an Ilcoceum’le handshake, palm-up, and Tere shook clumsily the Ezuran way. He squinted at her and then looked at Erica, putting the knife in his belt.

“She said she could heal,” said Erica.

“Ah,” said Tere. His lips pressed together, starting to turn her away. “I doubt you could heal what we have.”

“I have long been a healer in war, Captain,” she said, seeing the knot on his sword. “Let me see.”

“Have you eaten?” he asked, sighing. It was true he was overwhelmed, and he had been for awhile. She shook her head. His gaze went to Erica.

“Get her a plate? And find someone to cover guard duty,” he said. Then he opened his hand and followed the healer into the tent.

The woman’s eyes widened imperceptibly. This was what she had smelled, miles down the road–the metal air of blood and the bitterness of infection. She went straight to where the smell was strongest, a short man with a lance wound in his stomach. The look she gave to Tere convinced him that she was a healer; she knew immediately what he had known.

The man seemed unconscious. Her eyes went to the next one. Tere said, “What’s your name?”

“Isabella.”

“Leonard.”

Isabella said, “Tell me what you need.”

They fell into a little rhythm, holding pressure on bandages while the other found suture thread, gauze, poultices. Raile returned with two plates of food and set them near the entrance of the tent, and then went up to Leonard’s shoulder with a salute.

“Cap’n,” she murmured, her gaze flicking to the other woman. “Put me to work.”

“Follow Isabella,” he said, jerking his head. Erica was pleased. As she passed the healer woman she caught a scent unlike any of the people in camp. It was clean, bitter and crisp like juniper. The woman ducked her head and wouldn’t meet Erica’s gaze, hiding her sudden blush. This woman smelled like a man to her.

“Tell me…Captain?” she inquired, for Erica’s sword knot was out of her view.

“Raile,” she confirmed. “Captain Raile. Erica, if you please.”

“How long have you been the only woman here? If I am not assuming too much.” Isabella stood beside a cot and dug in her hip pouch, her eyes downcast.

Erica grinned with pride. “Long as I can remember.”

“And you have never had…problems?” The vial she emptied into the man’s mouth clicked against his teeth. Erica threw her head back and laughed.

“Problems, lady?” she asked. “I have had problems galore.”

“No, I mean…” Isabella took a long breath and shook her head. “Never mind. It is too personal a question, I see.”

Erica saw what this woman was getting at, and said slowly, “Ma’am, some of these men may have been murderers and thieves once, but no longer. You’re…well, pardon the assumption? You’re safe here.”

“Thank you,” Isabella said, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other.

Come evening, she made to leave. Crowe found her, his hands clasped before him, his icy eyes unreadable. He blocked her exit and she felt a flicker a fear. She searched for Erica’s form in the orange-lit dusk.

“I hear you are helping our healer,” said Crowe. “Have you had payment yet?”

“No, sir. Food was enough,” she said. She hadn’t been so well-fed for months.

“Have you one more day to stay with us?” He shifted, looking humble, his gaze over her shoulder.

“Of course, sir. My time is my own.”

Crowe deflated. “We may have need of your time. Captain Tere is a gifted healer, but his patients are many.”

“I have seen that.” Her eyes flicked to the fires around which the men had gathered, playing cards, eating the last of the food. Crowe’s gaze followed her, reading the tension in her shoulders. He said, “I’ll have Captain Raile put a second cot in her tent for a few days. Have you met her?”

“Oh, yes.” Isabella hid her pleasure, but Crowe saw it. He nearly rolled his eyes.

“Do not distract her,” he said. “I’ve had enough of my men being distracted.”

“Of course not, General.” She bowed, and Crowe nodded her toward the captains’ tents.

She picked her way through the crowd of people sitting, lifting her skirts above her ankles, feeling their gazes following her. She heard a hoarse voice bellow, “Matrif! Get your dirty eyes back on your gambling!”

“Yes, sir!” said Matrif, and his grin bled into his voice. “Just admiring a pretty woman, sir!” A ripple of wheezy laughter, and the men turned back to their fires.

Erica jogged up to Isabella and put a hand on her shoulder, and the woman jumped. The blonde woman’s dirty face beamed at her like a hound. “Don’t mind them, miss,” said Erica. “They haven’t seen a real woman before.”

Isabella smiled. “A real woman, Captain?”

“I ain’t one of those, ma’am, all due respect.”

“I notice they call you sir.”

“They’re used to it.” Erica jerked her thumb behind her. “This way. Already found a cot for you.” Isabella followed her, noticing the gentle curve of her lower back, but for all the world she swaggered like a man and spat like a man.

Erica parted the tent flap for her and she ducked inside. Sure enough, there was a cot and a little oil lamp, miniature for travel. The gray night had fallen. Erica sat down on her own cot and Isabella inspected her lodgings, seeing the branch that held up the center of the tent.

“Is it all right?” the captain asked. The healer woman nodded, beginning to unlatch her belted pouch.

“I feel well,” she said. “I admire you, Captain. They do not faze you.”

“Oh, they’re just boys.” Erica smiled at her. “We look out for each other, me and my company.”

“I see.” Isabella sat on the cot and Erica looked away from her, busying herself with the oil lamp. Isabella saw her doing so with one hand on her sword pommel and asked, “May I see that?”

Erica looked up as if surprised, and then abandoned the lamp and came to sit on the other cot, nudging the sword toward Isabella with her hip. The healer touched its hilt knot, canary yellow, and her eyes rose to the captain.

“It was my father’s,” Erica said. “He was a lieutenant here.”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

The other woman shrugged. “It was a long time ago.” She went back for the exit of the tent and hesitated. “You’ll be well here, lady? I aim to check on the company.”

“I will follow you.” Isabella didn’t admit that she was nervous, wrapping the belt of her pouch around her hand and letting it dangle by her side as she stood. She said, “In case any of them need my services.”

“Well and good,” said Erica. “I’m sure Leonard appreciates it.”

The healer shadowed her around the camp as she counted up her men, catching eyes with her lieutenant across the way. Matrif gave a long, low whistle that set Isabella’s neck afire, and Erica stooped for a stone and threw it at him.

“Captain!” he said indignantly. “You could kill someone that way.”

“Damn right!” she called, grinning. She turned back to Isabella and said, “Sorry. He’s a good man, I promise. Just lecherous as hell!” This last part she yelled, and Isabella heard his muffled reply. Erica gradually swung her steps back for the captains’ tents.

The healer woman breathed out when they reached their tent, and Erica sat on the first cot and watched her lay out vials for the morning. A hush fell over the camp. The sizzle of fires put out told Isabella that it was time to sleep, but she was too interested in this odd woman. Meekly, she stepped up to Erica’s cot and sat on the edge of it, smoothing the blankets with her hand and keeping her eyes down.

“Where did you come from?” Erica asked. “Your accent is like a man I know.”

“Is he from Ilcoceum, as well?” she asked. The captain nodded.

“He may need your services tomorrow,” she admitted. “He is a good man and suffers.”

“I look forward to treating him,” she said.

“You seem…practiced.”

“I am.” Isabella’s lips tweaked, lifting her eyes. “I have had many years in this vocation.”

“So–what, you wander the roads, healing here and there?”

“Something like that.”

Erica sat criss-cross and Isabella copied, facing each other. They stayed up talking long after, and Erica was reminded of her sister. It felt good to have a woman around again. She had forgotten what other women smelled like and when sunrise came she found herself laying awake, watching the rise and fall of Isabella’s chest beneath the blankets. Her eyes traced the curves of the woman’s breast, the sad lines around her mouth. Then guiltily she buried her face in her blanket and watched her own breathing in its rise and fall.

After a moment, she sat up, reaching down for the bindings she kept bundled around her sheath. Then she wrapped her breasts, as she did every morning, her gaze flicking to Isabella’s sleeping form. She frowned, and glanced back down at her own chest. She massaged them with her hands, since she usually pretended they weren’t there, and it felt good to get the blood flowing through them.

Then she turned herself on and had no time before drills. She huffed, finished her binding, hurried out to the chilled air and splashed her face with water. Then, like all of them, she went toward the meal tent for coffee.

The first patrol set out within the hour. At the clank of metal the healer’s eyes flew open, and she sat up and glanced around. Erica was gone, her blankets made. She stepped out of the tent, fixing her skirts, tying her pouch to her hips, and cast her gaze around. She saw the man who had whistled to her–Matrif, was his name?--and she stepped up to him to ask, “Where is your healer captain? The young one.”

“Cap’n Tere?” he asked. She nodded. He pointed her toward the healing tent and watched the bob of her hips as she walked off. She turned around and he cast his eyes away hurriedly, retying the leather thongs of his sheath. Isabella gave a humph and her hips swayed as she walked away. She was getting better at this. She was still terrified of them. But she saw how Erica bellowed at them, got down in the grit with them. She had always thought men a little savage. But somehow it was good to see a woman savage among them, like a brother.

A tall man, blue-eyed, grizzled face sharp and severe, saw her coming. In the same moment, she saw Leonard Tere near him–the tall man wandered languidly to Tere and bumped the healer captain with his elbow. They spoke low to each other, and the blue eyes flicked back to her. To whatever he had said, Tere nodded. Isabella swallowed–this man seemed dangerous.

He came up to her with whiskey on his breath. She stopped, sizing him up, glad that there were others around. But when he spoke, she heard softness in his voice.

“What was your name?” he asked. She gave it. He touched his brow and said, “Ire.”

Isabella was silent, waiting. He cracked his knuckles without looking at her, his gaze ranging to another tent, and finally he said with a hoarse voice, “What are they paying you for your services?”

“A few silvers, all told.” Her voice was stiff.

“I have that.” He relaxed, but she did not. The man jerked his head and she followed him. Her eyes met those of Tere, who nodded, and so with purpose she stepped up beside the grizzled blue-eyed man and asked, “What do you need from me?”

“It’s not me,” he said curtly, inviting no more questions. Her lips twisted but she followed him, winding between the men as they woke and poured steaming water over yesterday’s coffee. Their appetites never ceased; she always saw at least one person eating.

Raru paused before a tent, looked at her, and then ducked inside. She hesitated, wondering why they weren’t at the healing tent, wondering if he had led her to some trap. She could scream, certainly. She fingered the athame in her belt and followed him.

Her confusion abated. This tent smelled the sickest–it might as well have been its own healing tent. But the man on the cot was clean. His eyes were on the ceiling, not sleeping, staring desperately past its canvas as if there was some place out there without pain. Isabella stopped short at an uncomfortable prickle of empathy. She did not often feel pain for others–the ability, unchecked, would destroy her.

He did not seem to notice them. His lips were moving, and from the foreign words’ measured pace he seemed to be counting. Raru stuffed hands in his pockets and muttered, “Sir.”

“This man is a captain, too?” she asked. Raru hesitated and shrugged. Fraul’s face cleared, looking at them, but Isabella knew with one look that he was somewhere else.

“I am not,” he said. He seemed cheerful. His eyes were vacant, his face flushed with fever. She pulled up short when she heard his accent.

“You are the one Erica–Captain Raile spoke of,” she said, putting it together.

“Ah,” he said. She brought a stool up to his cot and pulled the pouch around to her lap. Her eyes went to Raru with hesitation, and he asked, “What do you need?”

“A small table,” she said. “Please.”

Raru untied the flap and was gone. Isabella deliberated for a moment, regarding this man. He had unlaced the shirt at its collar and lay without a blanket, the air simmering around him. She said, “When did this start?”

His eyes wandered away from her. He started counting again, his pupils burning a hole in the canvas ceiling. No pain was evident on his face, except the slight chattering of his teeth. His hands were a different matter–their very veins stood out.

Isabella pressed her lips together as Raru reappeared with a little folding table. He set it out before her, put a coin on it, and hovered for a moment. Then he ducked away for his own company.

He raked one hand over his face as he stopped by a table. Seated there, Clay Thatcher frowned at him but passed him a little bottle.

“Little early,” he said. Raru shrugged.

“Need to get to patrol.” He handed Thatcher a coin. Then, when he was out of eyesight of the older man, he gulped a quarter of the bottle. He resurfaced feeling lighter, better, more alert.

When he was back from patrol and the rest of the men were breaking for their first meal, he passed Erica, passed Leonard, passed Matrif, and spoke to none of them. With single minded intensity he even ignored Crowe’s questioning look; he went straight to Fraul’s tent and Isabella jumped as he shouldered inside.

“Sorry,” he grunted. Then he stood there, flask in his pocket. His smell filled the tent and Fraul’s eyes opened with a gentle radiance. Isabella’s medicine had worked on him so far.

“Are you well?” Fraul asked.

“Fine, sir.” Raru went outside, grabbed a chair, pulled it up and straddled it backwards, his forearms resting on the back of it. He watched Isabella count her vials, lay out the correct ones on the table. She said, “Am I needed elsewhere, Captain Ire?”

“You’re needed here,” he said gruffly. Fraul said sharply, “Raru.” The younger man looked away scowling.

Isabella hid a smile. They were sweet, even if the first was three sheets to the wind and the second was too weak to sit up.

As she worked–stripping the clothes off him and unbuckling the braces, prodding his legs, testing the muscle–she said, “I have seen these injuries before.”

Fraul’s eyes opened with purpose for the first time. She felt his gaze burn into her. “Who?” he asked.

“One of the men I treated in Oreia.”

“You’ve been to Oreia?” Fraul asked, as Raru interrupted, “Did he walk?”

“Yes,” she said. “And yes. He did not listen to my advice. But he walked.”

Raru huffed and sat back, muttering something unintelligible. When her herbs kicked in for Fraul, she set to massaging his knees, since they were so swollen that the skin seemed to stretch. His face twisted and he breathed a sharp sip of air.

But her fingers were strong and certain and the veins in her hands puffed out–like Erica’s, she reflected. She asked him questions about the woman captain, mostly to keep his mind occupied.

“Erica–was–young, like the other springies,” he said, nose wrinkling under her hands. “I remember it well. My daughter is much like her–ooh.” He cast his eyes up and took a long breath. “Erica is presiding over them now,” he managed. “The children.”

“Who is your daughter?” Isabella asked.

“Natha—Nathalie.” Fraul let out a long breath and she felt him relax. “Damn,” he said. “Why did that work?”

“Who knows?” she asked. Raru shifted, looking sour. He watched Fraul’s face, then got up and left, sucking on the flask and wiping his mouth.

When he came back a few hours later, it was with food. Isabella had left to let Fraul rest. He said nothing, passing Fraul a plate, but he noticed the ease with which Fraul sat up and fed himself. Far from being pleased, Raru felt bitter and jealous, wondering how long Isabella had been here.

She proved a gifted healer, and Tere wouldn’t let her leave. She slept in Erica’s tent the next night as well, as patrol after patrol went out. Their prior injuries were many; Crowe allowed them to rest on the Ezuran side of the border.