Suelen (Tuyo Book 5) Read online

  “Please!” Suelen said. He knew these warriors were most unlikely to speak darau, but they must understand his tone. He spoke swiftly and urgently. “Those are medicaments and medical implements—I need these things!” He took a step toward the horses, but stopped dead as the Ugaro warrior with the silver armbands, Varoya inYoraro, seized his arm. The movement had been so quick that Suelen had not even had time to flinch.

  The Ugaro warrior’s grip was not brutal, but firm. He spoke to Suelen, his tone stern, but not angry—Suelen did not think he sounded angry. He did not dare try to pull away, and besides, he plainly had no chance of breaking the warrior’s grip. He said, striving now to keep his tone calm, “Please. These things are medicines.” Then, in taksu, stumbling a little, “Please, I ask to tend the wounded men.”

  The warrior met his eyes and spoke, very slowly and quietly, his words no more comprehensible than before. He let Suelen go, but held up a hand, forbidding movement. The gesture, at least, was clear. Suelen stood still, watching anxiously but not attempting to interfere as the other warriors took the saddlebags off his horse, setting them down in the snow.

  The warriors opened each in turn to consider the contents. Suelen knew exactly what they would find, but he couldn’t guess what they would think of any of the things he had brought. In the first set of saddlebags, Suelen had carefully packed bottles and packets of medicaments and remedies, many expensive, some irreplaceable without a trip to a first-class apothecary. Poppy, hemlock, cinquefoil, and mandragora—poppy was generally best for treating pain and making a man sleep, but not always. Cinnamon and myrrh, turmeric paste and yarrow, burdock and mallow. Everything Suelen could bring for the many serious wounds he expected to face.

  In the second set of saddlebags, larger than the first, everything that was heavier and needed in bulk: plenty of soap; as much bitumen and turpentine as could be practically carried; honey for wounds; vinegar for compresses.

  In the third, the envelopes that held curved needles and straight ones; reels of gut and – far more valuable – spools of expensive silk thread from the country of sand, south of the summer lands. Probes, clamps, scissors; cautery; bone drill and bone forceps and—blade tucked safely in its protective cover—his bonesaw. Also pouches of gold disks, and separate pouches of disks of chalcopyrite and iron. Though Lord Gaur had warned Suelen sternly against the sorts of magic that the Ugaro might call sorcery, Suelen had not left those behind. He didn’t, after all, have to use them.

  Besides all the rest, each tucked into its own pocket within their special leather case, Suelen’s prized set of surgical scalpels, made by a jeweler rather than a metalsmith because only jewelers did such fine work. Larger scalpels of steel; smaller scalpels of bronze for more precise work. Two had blades of obsidian, sharper than any metal, if far more fragile. Every surgeon added to his collection of surgical scalpels as he gained experience, rank, and coin enough to afford them. Three of Suelen’s scalpels had been awarded to him, not purchased. Two of those had gold inlay on the long, narrow handles. The third, a gift from the king himself, was inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

  He had thought of leaving those three scalpels behind, with his cousin. But setting his best surgical scalpels aside had seemed too much like an admission that this trip was dangerous—possibly unwise—perhaps foolish.

  Pride was the besetting sin of many highly ranked surgeons and physicians, particularly dedicats, and as a prelate of both disciplines, Suelen was perhaps more prone than many of his colleagues to that sin. He had brought every one of his hard-won scalpels.

  The Ugaro warrior lifted the case from the saddlebag, slipped the latch, and opened the case. He studied the surgical scalpels nested within, while Suelen wondered what would happen if he said, Please, I ask the lord of the inKera to judge this matter.

  Then the warrior closed the case, latching it carefully. He slid the case back into the saddlebag, closed the saddlebag and buckled the flap, slung that set of saddlebags over his shoulder, and walked into the forest, north, along the path of beaten snow. Another warrior took up the other two sets of saddlebags and followed. A third pulled himself into the gelding’s saddle, turned the horse south toward the river, and rode away, the way Suelen had come.

  Suelen turned urgently to Varoya inYoraro, drawing breath to protest. But, meeting the Ugaro warrior’s steady regard, finding nothing approachable in that calm expression, he stopped. He had not felt this helpless for a long time. Perhaps he had only once in his life felt this helpless: during his vigil night, knowing that when he finally stood up beneath the Sun to give the dedicat’s oath, he could do nothing whatever to influence the outcome.

  Then the Ugaro warrior took his arm again, a light grip, but as firm and certain as before, and shoved him lightly. North. The way the other warriors had already gone, walking silently away into the quiet forest, away from the summer country. Suelen didn’t understand the actions of these Ugaro, but that, at least, was clear. After one more glance up toward the brilliant Sun above, Suelen turned and walked the way the man obviously wanted him to go.

  Suelen realized after some time that the party of Ugaro had divided. Varoya and the men who carried the saddlebags walked with Suelen, north. The others—three, four, there might have been more than that; even now he was not certain—had vanished; not merely momentarily out of sight among the trees, but gone. Those with him walked steadily, keeping silent, not speaking to each other nor to him. He had no idea whether they were his guides or his captors. Perhaps both.

  After some time, he realized he should perhaps be grateful that the Ugaro had not all vanished, leaving him on foot and alone in the icy forest. He could hardly get lost. The track remained very clear, and he might have been able to walk back to the river before nightfall. But he would not by any means have wanted to walk through this stark, wild country alone and on foot. Especially not at dusk or by moonlight.

  Clouds scrolled across the sky, crossing the face of the Sun, and the wind picked up, coming against Suelen’s face. The cold sharpened. Suelen tucked his gloved hands into the pockets of his coat, bowed his head against the wind, and kept doggedly on. He wondered if these Ugaro might be taking him to someone who spoke darau, or what other intention they might have. On foot, it would certainly take more than one day to reach the site of the battle—or that was Suelen’s understanding, pieced together from several reports.

  A little while after that, the sky now heavily overcast, it began to snow. A few silent, heavy flakes swirled down, and then more and more, until Suelen discovered that falling snow was not after all entirely silent. The soft rustle of snow falling through conifer branches was not exactly like anything he had ever heard before in his life. Not like rain. Not like wind. The sound was softer than even a gentle rain or a soft breeze. Fresh snow crunched underfoot, not like any kind of sand or soil. He hadn’t realized it would sound like that. The Ugaro walked on, not speaking, watchful and silent.

  Movement, sudden and fast, a bright flash of vivid color, and a new sound, a hissing. Suelen halted, trying to make sense of what approached them. The Ugaro with him had stopped as well. One said something, and his fellows laughed quietly, and a sort of wheelless cart spun through a short arc barely a dozen feet away and came to a halt. A sledge. Not drawn by Ugaro ponies, but by dogs. These were not much like any dogs of the summer country, not even the big dogs sometimes used to pull wagons and carts. These Ugaro dogs weren’t heavy-boned mastiffs nor long-legged hounds nor a rat-catcher’s small, rough-coated dogs. These animals were stocky, with sharp muzzles and small pricked ears; dense, fluffy coats and tails that curled tightly over their backs. Two of the dogs were white and two a light cream color barely darker than white, but the fifth was a surprising, rich gold-red.

  The man standing at the back of the sledge called a greeting, not loud but cheerful in tone. He drove a sharp-edged brake into the snow and came toward the other men. The dogs wiggled and danced, ears back and tails waving, clearly delighted to meet the Ug
aro who had been walking with him. The men, so unreadable when they spoke to one another or to Suelen, greeted the dogs with swift, confident caresses. Varoya inYoraro rubbed the muzzle of the white dog harnessed at the front, then said something quiet and authoritative that made the dog lie down in the snow, though still wagging its curled tail and panting happily.

  Suelen stood where he was, watching, apart from all this, but he could not be as afraid now. He supposed men might like dogs and treat them kindly, yet still stake down a man they considered an enemy and kill him slowly. That wasn’t actually impossible. Just difficult to imagine.

  The Ugaro warriors who had carried the saddlebags went to the sledge and laid these down at the front, on top of various bundles already there. Varoya turned and beckoned, a gesture identical to the one Lau used, so Suelen came forward to join him. The dogs jumped to their feet, barking in sharp, high-pitched voices, not in suspicious warning as mastiffs or stock dogs would have barked, but excited and obviously friendly. Varoya spoke to them and they dropped down, but, as Suelen moved toward the sledge, directed by the warrior’s gestures, the red dog came to its feet suddenly and darted forward to jump up, its tail waving with enthusiasm as it tried to lick his face. Varoya moved to push the dog away, but Suelen only turned his hip to make the dog slide back to all fours, then bent and petted it while it wiggled and tried to nibble his gloves.

  “A beautiful animal,” he said to Varoya, who looked at him, expression unreadable, then gestured to the dog, ordering it down again. The red dog obeyed, though whining with disappointment. Suelen moved, cautiously, to sit on the sledge, as that seemed to be what was intended. He checked the saddlebags, but they seemed secure where they were, so he tried to settle himself as comfortably as possible, wrapping himself in his coat.

  The sledge was a long, fairly narrow vehicle, sleek, narrower at the front than at the rear. A man stood at the back, gripping bars built into the sledge for the purpose. The whole thing was a little like the small, high-wheeled racing chariots used in races in the south, but smaller, narrower, and of course with runners rather than wheels. Also, with no means that Suelen could see by which a man might guide the dogs. The harness had no reins as would be used for chariot horses.

  Then Varoya inYoraro stepped up on the back of the sledge, called out in a clear voice, and the dogs leaped up and hurled themselves forward. Suelen grabbed the right-hand bar, but after that first fast lunge, the dogs steadied into a smooth gait, not at all insecure for a man sitting on the sledge. Cold air whipped past—they were moving faster than Suelen had expected—faster than a trotting horse. The packed snow of the trail hissed below the runners, and the new snow swirled down, and they were heading north at a swift pace toward the scene of the battle that had left so many men wounded too badly to travel. Suelen faced north, into the wide white forest. The cold wind against his face brought tears to his eyes, but he did not want to miss any part of this strange journey.

  Varoya directed the dogs simply with whistles, Suelen discovered, and sometimes shouts. The lead dog answered the commands, and the other dogs followed that one. After some time, they slowed from a lope to a trot, but the dogs seemed perfectly ready to trot for the rest of the day, and possibly all night. The Ugaro warrior must weigh much more than Suelen, but obviously their combined weight was not too great a burden for the dogs. Suelen wondered how much weight dogs like these could pull, and for how long, and why the Ugaro used dogs for this work rather than horses. Ponies. Their ponies were smaller than horses, but surely faster than dogs. Though the dogs certainly seemed fast enough when one sat only a few inches above the snow and watched the trees rush past.

  The trail, so obvious at first, disappeared surprisingly fast beneath a layer of fresh snow, so that on his own, Suelen would have had no idea which way to go—except broadly north. And north covered a great deal of land, now, as the hills rose and dipped and rose again on every side. He could see that he had more than one reason to be grateful he had stumbled upon the Ugaro warriors. Now he had the fraught first meeting over and here he was, going north, just as he had wished, if not in the anticipated manner.

  The dogs had no difficulty with the snow. The fresh snow was not that deep, and apparently below that layer, the snow had packed hard enough that the dogs did not break through. Maybe that was why the Ugaro used dogs for this kind of work; maybe dogs managed better in snow. Suelen thought it had become colder, but the dogs did not seem to feel that either. Nor, when he glanced up at the Ugaro warrior standing behind him, did Varoya inYoraro. The silver of the warrior’s armbands gleamed dully in the daylight. Snowflakes caught in his black hair, clinging briefly before melting. He did not look down at his Lau passenger.

  They traveled for what seemed a long time. For all that journey, Varoya never spoke to Suelen, though he occasionally called out to the dogs. For a time, he ran beside the sledge, one hand on the smooth bar at the rear, keeping the dogs from breaking into too fast a pace with occasional shouts. Later, he stepped up on the rear of the sledge and whistled to the dogs, which surged into a faster pace again. He was breathing smoothly and deeply, but so far as Suelen could tell, the warrior was not particularly tired even then.

  The snow stopped falling for a while, then began again, more thickly than before. The overcast sky and the snow made it difficult to distinguish by eye the moment at which the Sun stepped below the edge of the world. The daylight only faded, and then faded further, until Suelen could hardly see any trees farther than an arm’s length away. He knew sunset had come only through the direct awareness of the Sun’s position that any dedicat gained when—if—his oath was accepted.

  The temperature, cold as it had already been, dropped further. Suelen tucked himself into the smallest ball possible, but could not stop shivering. Varoya halted the dogs, going to the front of the sledge and bringing a coat out from beneath the saddlebags. Suelen expected him to put this on himself, but he threw it over Suelen instead and went back to run at the rear of the sledge. The unexpected kindness made Suelen feel far better about his decision to enter the winter lands. He would have liked his cousin to see that. You see? he would have said. The Ugaro may be fierce, but they are not complete savages. Piranes would not have been convinced. But he would have had to admit that, so far, Suelen’s mission did not look nearly as hazardous as he had predicted.

  Very soon after that, the light faded so completely that Suelen became entirely blind. The overcast skies hid the Moon, though she must have come into the sky. The dogs obviously had better vision at night than a man, or at least a Lau. Suelen had not realized that. The Ugaro definitely had better night vision than a Lau. That, he had known, though nothing could have prepared him for the physical reality of traveling by sledge through a night that seemed to him utterly dark. He could hear nothing but the hiss of the runners against the snow and the wind rushing past his face, the sound of the dogs running ahead of him and, if he listened as carefully as he could, sometimes the breathing of the Ugaro warrior behind and above him. After a little while, Suelen tucked himself beneath the coat, closed his eyes, and dozed. Perhaps he actually slept. If so, the sharp yipping of the dogs woke him—no, these were other dogs, more distant, not the five tireless animals that had drawn Suelen all this distance into the winter country. He sat up, blinking, the cold air striking against his face almost painfully as he folded back the coat. Firelight flickered, not far ahead—many fires; dozens of fires. Revealed by the light of those fires, the dark bulk of many huts—no, tents, but much bigger than any tents Suelen had ever seen before. Dogs were clamoring, running out to greet the newcomers, but the five harnessed to the sledge only slowed, swinging out wide around the Ugaro camp.

  Then Varoya guided the dogs to a halt at last, and suddenly other men were there, calling out. Many Ugaro, men—and boys, Suelen saw—and at least one he thought might be a woman, though that person was wearing a light coat and he looked away at once, so he was not certain.

  Someone was unharnessing the
dogs, and a lot of people were talking, rapidly and incomprehensibly, and then Varoya said something, his deep voice curt, and everyone else fell silent, and suddenly everyone was looking at Suelen. He sat very still, not certain he could stand up if he tried. He had completely forgotten every word of taksu he had memorized. He could not have said Please, I did not mean to offend, if his life had depended on it. He certainly hoped it did not. Varoya had so far shown him nothing but kindness. In the face of all these Ugaro and all this half-visible strangeness, he clung to that.

  Varoya came close, offering Suelen a hand. That was very clear. Suelen did not dare let the warrior take his hand; a surgeon never risked his hands. He offered his forearm instead. He did not know how to explain that, but Varoya paused and then gripped his arm instead of his hand, lifting him to his feet. Suelen needed that help. He was very stiff after sitting so long in such deep cold. He was shivering—he could not help it. He moved, uncertain, to pick up at least the first pair of saddlebags, the ones containing, among other things, his surgical scalpels, but Varoya stopped him, gesturing to another man, who gathered up the bags instead. That was much less alarming this time. Varoya slung the heaviest set of saddlebags over his own shoulder and gestured for Suelen to come.

  The tents of the Ugaro camp were more widely spaced than Suelen had realized, spread out among the big conifers of the forest. Some of the tents were much larger than others; he saw that. Many glowed with light. Voices rose and fell, the rhythms of the language different from darau, but the tones familiar: teasing, quarreling, laughing. Somewhere not far away, a woman wept, and another woman comforted her. Suelen hoped that the woman he heard had not lost anyone she loved to any recent injury, but it seemed very possible she had. He said to Varoya, walking beside him, “This is the inKera camp, is it not?” Then, carefully, in memorized taksu, “Please, the wounded men?”