Yri cleaned the girl's wound and redressed it while Jabone watched. The wound looked the same and he said, "She said healing sleep but she's not healing. It's exactly the same."
"Shush Jabone," Jestia said in a whisper, entering the cabin. "She may be able to hear you. I don't know. Healing sleep doesn't heal the injuries it shuts the body down so that it doesn't die until it can be healed. We still need a healer. Her body has to be put back together properly before it can start to heal." Yri nodded at them both being a man of few words and departed. "So does Yri ever smile?" Jestia asked when he was gone.
"Not often," Jabone said with a scowl of his own.
Jestia knelt beside the bed, opened Kasiria's mouth, and forced some liquid from a small vial into it. "This should help. It's supposed to take the place of food, keep the body from eating its own organs."
When Jestia started to get up she was obviously having a little trouble. He rushed to her side and helped her, then looking down at her said, "I'm sorry Jestia."
"For what?"
"Saying what I did about your spell. After all it's the only thing keeping her alive." Jestia stuck the empty vial in her pants pocket looking at him expectantly and he said, "And sorry that I asked you to cast a spell which you obviously cast at great personal cost." She was still looking at him so he sighed and went on. "And sorry that I didn't listen when you told me not to attack, but to wait. You have every right to be mad at me and . . ."
"Oh Jabone, I couldn't be mad at you, not right now." She patted the side of his face playfully and said, "Now if you do it again, I'll kill you."
"Thanks Jestia." He motioned with his head toward Kasiria and Jestia nodded.
"I'll come back in a few hours and do it again." Then she left.
Jabone sat down in a chair by Kasiria's bed. After a few minutes there was a knock on the door jam—because there wasn't a door—and when he looked up young Tarius was standing there. "Is it all right to come in?" he asked in a whisper.
Jabone nodded and Tarius walked in. "I don't think you have to whisper, Tarius, I don't think we can wake her up."
Tarius walked in and sat on the end of Jabone's mothers' bed. "How you doing?" he asked.
Jabone nodded. "Tarius I'm sorry . . . "
"For what?" Tarius laughed. "There wasn't a one of us weren't so mad at those damn cackling Amalites we weren't ready to do the same thing or worse."
"A lot of men, good men, are dead because of my pride."
"And none of us would be alive if it wasn't for you, either. Don't forget that. The night before that in the woods you flat saved our asses."
"Jestia saved us with her bats."
"That alone wouldn't have worked and you know it."
"You my friend." Jabone shook his head. "What happened to you?"
Tarius laughed. He didn't have to ask what Jabone meant. "How many times did Tarius the Black beat me down and scream at me 'I will punish your aggression!' and I just thought she was just trying to keep me down so that I wouldn't ever be as great as her. And she told me, didn't she, that I wasn't as strong as everyone else and I needed to use my speed and see my size not as a liability, but use it as an asset. That just made me want to prove I was as strong and big as everyone else all the more. My younger sister was bigger than me and stronger and better at everything than I was, and I always felt like I had something to prove. And then . . . Well your madra and Dustan taught me something without even trying. They taught me how to tell stories, wonderful stories that everyone wants to listen to. I finally felt like I was really good at something, better at something than most were, and certainly better than Ufalla who can hardly tell a joke. That was the start of it, but that alone wouldn't have done it.
"Something amazing happened, Jabone. The earth gave way under my feet and I went in that swollen creek and I didn't just almost die as you all think. I died. As I was churning around in the muddy water with my airways full of water I thought, 'Gods and spiders it's cold in here.'"
He got a chuckle from Jabone so he smiled then got serious and continued his story. "And then I actually saw my sister throwing her cloak and her gambeson off and coming in after me. I saw you guys pull us out of the water and I saw her breathe into me and pound my chest. Then I thought, 'The Great Leader breathed her own breath into me to bring me into the world and now my sister's going to breathe her breath into me to bring me back.' I realized how special that made me." He laughed and shrugged. "And then I was back, and I thought about it a lot the next couple of days. I wasn't doing anything wrong, nothing rash, nothing bold. The earth just gave way. I couldn't catch myself and that was it. I almost died, my sister almost died saving me, and if a simple chance event can kill you how much more trying to do something you know you can't really do in the first place? I started to really hear everything your madra had been telling me all those years. My father . . . great stories are told of him and wonderful songs are sung as tribute to his deeds and yet he never did anything but stand in your mother's huge shadow taking up her slack, and everything about him is to be admired. Your madra always told me, sometimes so loudly my ears rang that, 'The war is not won by great feats it is won by living and killing the enemy one at a time,' and that drove me crazy. I just didn't get it, but now I do. It's like now I know just exactly what she meant, everything that she meant, everything she told me, everything my father did, it all makes sense now.
"Jabone, if I had not fallen in that creek, then I probably would have died on the end of a spear or on the edge of a sword in either one of those battles because I just would have been trying so hard to prove something instead of just staying alive and killing my enemies one at a time."
Jabone nodded.
"And Jabone, maybe something good will come of this too," Tarius said looking with meaning at Kasiria.
Jabone looked at Kasiria. "My brother, what good could come of this?"
"Well for one thing when she wakes up she'll be in the Kartik, where it's always warm, never dreary, and the food is always good."
Jabone smiled. That was the first time anyone had said "when she wakes up." He nodded his head silently and fought back his tears. "Tarius, Jestia says she might be able to hear, to think, and if she can I can't bear to think of her lying there having nothing to think on but the horror of battle. Could you tell her a story?"
"Girls like love stories, and I think we're all fed up with battle." Tarius seemed to think about it a minute then nodded, stood up, and as if he was telling the tale to a huge audience in a crowded tavern he launched into his tale. "I tell the tale of the great lovers Kasiria and Jabone. Now it was at this time that Jabone did decide to leave his parents' home and travel with his friends Ufalla, Jestia, and Tarius, not Tarius the Black mind you but a lesser-known, very good looking hero by that same name . . . "
* * *
Tarius the Black stood on the bow of the ship looking out at the sea before them and wishing there was a bit more wind for the sails. She took her eyeglass and looked out at the open water just because she liked to see what she could see.
"I see a whale, Jena, do you want to see?" She turned to her, handing her the eyeglass and pointed. "Over there."
Jena looked, then said with a smile, "Yes I see it." She took the eye glass away from her eye and looked at Tarius. "Just once you could at least pretend like I had snuck up on you."
"Oh but my great love I always know where you are."
She wrapped her arms around Jena and kissed the top of her head. "You saved our son, Jena."
"You saved our son, I just had a dream," Jena said. She pushed back from Tarius then. "Tarius, have you seen the trinket our son wears around his neck?"
"You mean the one he thinks is copper and which is really the finest gold? Aye I've seen it."
"And do you know where he got it?"
"As well as you do. You saw his cuff on her arm. They have made the exchange and the girl gave it to him."
"Tarius," Jena said with venom, "do you know what that thing is?"
"Of course I do. I was in the country of your birth, for four years. I worked for the king. I know what it is. The only thing that should be important to us is that it means that our son loves that girl," Tarius said simply.
"Do you know who that girl is. Tarius, whose child she is?"
"She is bound to our son, so she is our child," Tarius said.
"Dammit. Tarius! You know what I mean. Do you know who her father is?"
"Yes, I know," Tarius said with a hiss. "I had noticed she looked very familiar to me and when I saw the medallion with the king's seal around our son's neck I knew."
"Our son can not be with his daughter," Jena said emphatically.
"If I know our son he has already been with her many times," Tarius said with a smile.
"I won't allow it," Jena said angrily.
Tarius was a little taken aback. "Jena! I can't believe that you of all people would tell our son who he can and can not love."
"You forgave Persius, Tarius. I do not, I will not and . . . "
"The girl is not her father any more than our son is us. You know our son, Jena, you know him better than I do. Would he have fallen so completely in love with this girl if she wasn't something very special?"
"He doesn't know who she is, Tarius. She didn't tell him who she was. Why didn't she? He loves her, but how do we know that she loves him?"
"Because she is the Katabull, Jena. I don't know how one of Persius's children came to be the Katabull, but she is. And since she is the Katabull how could she help but to love our son for he is the most magnificent boy in the whole of the Katabull Nation . . . Come here." She drew Jena into her arms and looked down into her face. "The girl may not live, Jena. She probably won't live, and that being the case just let our son have this time with her. We don't need to tell him who her father is. If she lives and she wants to tell him then so be it. If she really loves him, don't you think it would be the last thing she'd want to tell him?"
Jena nodded.
Tarius laughed.
"What?" Jena asked. She looked to where Tarius was pointing and saw Jestia and Ufalla standing against the bow kissing. It wasn't just a friendly kiss either because it didn't look like it was going to end any time soon.
"Hestia's going to crap herself," Tarius said.
* * *
Jestia had talked her into an empty cabin again. She was shoving her against the wall and had her hand down Ufalla's pants too fast for Ufalla to protest, and then Jestia was touching her and all thought of protesting flew out a porthole. Later they were sprawled all over each other on one of the top bunks, naked and just talking.
Ufalla was laughing. "What are you saying exactly Jestia?"
"That every time we do it I get more powerful, that's all."
"Let me get this straight. You think that every time we make love your power increases?" Ufalla laughed, shaking her head in disbelief.
"I'm serious," Jestia said. "Think about it. I couldn't cast invisible shield and now well I'll bet I could do it right now if I wanted, and that healing sleep spell? I never in a million years should have been able to do that one and it seems to be working. It knocked me all the way down but now, right now, I feel fine, and I can feel my power growing."
All hint of humor left Ufalla's face. "He never should have made you do that spell, it was too dangerous for you."
"Would you get your hairs out of a knot? It isn't that big a deal."
"It is to me," Ufalla said.
"Ufalla, don't be mad at Jabone. I didn't tell anyone the spell was dangerous for me, and he's got enough to worry about without you being mad at him. You don't know how he feels, but I do." She moved a stray straind of hair out of Ufalla's face and kissed her gently on the lips. "I know exactly what he's going through because I thought I was going to lose you, too. I was just as sure you were going to die as he must have been. You're his best friend, Ufalla, he needs you now." She smiled wickedly. "Well not right now."
"Jestia, if you really are getting more powerful every time we do it then you're going to explode."
"Do you want to help me rebuild my powers or not?"
"Well if I must, I must."
* * *
Tarius went looking for the witch and wasn't too surprised to look into one of the cabins and see clothes discarded all over the floor and two pairs of feet hanging off a top bunk.
"Are you finished?" Tarius asked, and heard the two girls mumbling to each other.
Jestia's head popped over the edge of the bed and she said with a non-apologetic smile, "Just," at which point her whole body jerked as the other girl obviously shoved her. Then they were both laughing.
"Are you well, Jestia?"
"Better than well at the moment," she answered.
Tarius laughed. "I meant are you well enough to cast a spell?"
"No," Tarius heard Ufalla whisper.
"Yes, I think so," Jestia said.
Then Ufalla's head poked over the edge of the bed and she was glaring at Tarius. "No she can't do a spell for you right now. You made her do a spell that almost killed her and she's just now starting to feel better." Then she seemed to remember who she was talking to and added, "Great Leader."
"I'm sorry, you're right of course," Tarius said. she was being selfish.
"No she's not." Jestia jumped down from the bed then, quite naked, and started to pick up her clothes. "I can do a spell. I feel fine." She started getting dressed and looked at Tarius. "She thinks she has to protect me all the time, but ask her who snatched her out of the mouth of death. Me."
"I saved you first," Ufalla said, climbing down just as naked and also started dressing.
Jestia smiled and moved to kiss Ufalla on the cheek. "That you did."
"So are you two," Tarius shrugged, "just having some fun, or is this serious?"
"She's going to marry me," Jestia said matter-of-factly.
"I am?" Ufalla asked, more than a little surprised.
"Yes," Jestia said, walking out of the cabin with Ufalla right behind her and Tarius following them, "and not one of those Katabull trinket-exchange things either, Ufalla. I want a full-blown ceremony with you promising to love me and only me with passion for the rest of your life." Ufalla looked back at Tarius, rolled her eyes, and Tarius just laughed.
"I will have the most gorgeous dress made in blues and greens because I look best in those and you will wear armor, not that raggedy nasty now bloody and holey stuff but the fancy, shiny stuff, and you won't be making that face that I know you're making right now, either."
They were on deck then and Jestia looked at the hardly-billowing sails. She turned to face Tarius. "Let me guess you'd like more wind in the sails."
Tarius nodded.
Jestia flipped her hand about and said, "Wind in sails," and they all had to catch themselves as the ship started moving faster with a lurch.
Tarius just stared dumbfounded. Where was the silly incantation she was so used to hearing before a spell was cast?
"She's a thought caster," Ufalla explained, guessing what Tarius was startled by.
Tarius just nodded as if she understood perfectly what that meant, though she really had no idea.
"Tarius, you'll officiate at the ceremony of course."
"Of course?" Tarius looked at Ufalla who looked like she was being choked and smiled, "Oh girl, did you have any idea what you were in for?"
"Of course she did, she's known me all her life. She knows what I'm like and she still loves me, don't you, Ufalla?
"Yes," Ufalla said with a sigh. She looked at Tarius. "With all my heart and soul." Which was no doubt why she looked so distraught. She was trapped and she knew it.
"Now I don't want anything stuffy or formal, Tarius, just things about undying devotion and . . . "
"Jestia," Tarius said, "you do realize that your mother's going to have a screaming conniption fit over this union."
This just seemed to totally elate the already excited girl. "Oh! Do you really think so? What a marvelous extra."
"Jestia, I don't think you understand how upset your mother is going to be," Tarius said. Jestia was second in line for the Kartik throne. Her mother expected her to marry a man of noble birth and have heirs for the kingdom. If the girl wanted to keep her half-Jethrikian female lover that would be fine, but bound to her under Kartik law, no.
"I don't think you understand how much I don't care what she thinks," Jestia said. "My parent's didn't even write me a letter. They certainly didn't risk their necks to save me like you did for Jabone or Tarius and Ufalla's father did for them. I am going to be bound to her. Will you officiate?"
"Of course," Tarius said, thinking she was possibly the only one in the kingdom that could get away with it because Hestia wouldn't dare to incur her wrath. She watched as the two girls walked away Jestia basically planning out the whole of their lives together.
"We certainly aren't living in the castle because I hate it there and I'm not living in one of those mud huts you people dwell in either. I'm thinking we could get a home in Montero." Then she slapped Ufalla on the arm hard. "Maybe we'll buy our own spring . . . "
Ufalla looked over her shoulder at Tarius and mouthed the words, "help me."
Tarius laughed and went to find her son. He was in the first place she looked, which was where she expected to find him, sitting beside the girl. He looked up at her his face a mask of pain and she smiled at him. "My son I don't think going without food and fresh air and holding your face in such an unhappy mold is going to help her any."
He nodded, tried to smile, and failed. She sat down on her bed and just looked at him. She had told Jena she would get to him in time but it had all been boasting. She had never been sure, and the minute her foot had touched the shore of the territories and she'd smelled the Amalites she had known they were running out of time. How could she explain to him that when he was in so much pain she just wanted to laugh out loud because she had once again felt the rush of the battle and all those she cared for had been spared?
Well not all, Derek was gone.
"Why don't you go up and find your mother? She will get you something to eat and you'll feel better," she said, thinking that his mother's attention would do him more good than any food she might make him.
He nodded and stood up and she realized that he still didn't really know how to not do what she told him to. He's a man, but he's still a boy, my boy. He only went against my will once in the whole of his life, to go to the territories to fight my enemies, and now they are his and he is second guessing everything that he did because of the outcome.
"Jabone, in battle you make the decisions of your body more than your mind. Your instinct guides you."
"But Madra, did you ever lead any battle you didn't win?"
She sighed as the memory ran through her brain. "My son, at the last battle of the Great War I made a mistake that nearly got myself, your mother, your fadra, and the whole of the Marching Night killed. It did get your mother's father and Tweed and many others of our pack killed." He looked at her in disbelief. "You never have heard the story for your mother will not listen and she drags you away with her. I used a formation I had used before against the Amalites and they were desperate. When they saw where we were they knew that we were blocking their retreat and the whole body of them did turn to attack us, us alone. I called a retreat and Harris led it as I stayed behind to try to slow them down. It is only because of the good people who stood with me that day and would not follow my orders that I'm alive to tell the tale and only because Persius, the King of the Jethrik, ordered his troops to our rescue that my mistake didn't take us all from this earth. He stopped a blade meant for me that day."
Jabone sat back down. "How did you know? How did you come to save us?"
"Your mother had a dream." She told him the dream.
When she had finished he nodded and said, "I had a dream when we were in the garrison. I told it to Jestia and she said that it meant my mother's love would protect me even in the territories."
"And so it did," she said. "Now, go let your mother feed you. It does her heart good to think you still need her."
He got up, walked over to her and kissed her on the top of her head. "I do still need her, I need you all, obviously." He stood up and headed for the door. He stopped half way through it and turned to face her. "Kasiria always wanted to hear a story where Persius wasn't the villain and Tarius wouldn't tell it because he said it was your story alone to tell. Jestia says that Kasiria might be able to hear us. Madra would you tell her your story?"
"I will if you will go and eat," she said. He nodded and left.
She got up and moved to the chair her son had been sitting in and looked down at the girl. "You do look so familiar." She took a deep breath. She felt somewhat silly to be telling a story to this unconscious, barely-alive, spell-bound girl, but she had promised so she began, "I tell the tale of the redemption of your father Persius, King of all the Jethrik. Now it was in this time that Persius had lived many years under the curse of Tarius the Black, that would be me, and he had neither slept in peace nor enjoyed life.—But I'm guessing you were born during that time so he must have enjoyed something, any way . . . ."
* * *
Eric sat on the rail of the ship looking out over the sea. They'd made her drink some concoction when she'd boarded which she was sure was meant to poison her at the time. It was horrid and she had tried to quit drinking it several times but the Kartik who'd given it to her had just kept forcing the cup back to her lips and shouting some Kartik word at her that she assumed meant drink. When she had asked young Tarius about it he had said it was the Kartik's famous sea sickness and hangover tonic. Having never been at sea before she had no idea what sea sickness was, but as the boat had left port and her excitement had been replaced by a rolling in her stomach she figured it out. Then just as she had been sure she was about to throw up, her stomach had quieted and she'd been able to just enjoy the fantastic new adventure of being at sea in a Kartik ship in the company of the Marching Night and Tarius the Black herself no less.
Katabulls and witches and the greatest fighting force the world has ever known, and me, she thought.
She rather felt she didn't fit in at all and most of them didn't speak Jethrikian either. But here she was foreign, and a fighter, and a woman, and though she couldn't understand what they were saying she didn't think they were taunting her.
Thomas was dead and she doubted any of them cared, but he had been her dear friend. Oh she knew that if he had known she was a woman he would have hated her at least as much as he had hated Kasiria. At least at first. In the end Thomas had been growing to respect Kasiria, even trust her judgment, and he had told her on more than one occasion that he envied the way she was able to keep her Kartik unit out-performing all the others. That was why he had wanted Eric to go with them to see what Kasiria might be doing differently. But how could she explain that the only real difference was something he'd never be able to copy because the big secret was mutual respect? Well that and the fact that they were all bedding each other.
Thomas had been growing up, becoming a better man, and now he was never going to get a chance to be the best man he could be. None of them were going to be. She'd been with the unit all through the academy. There was no one in her unit she hadn't felt close to, that she hadn't connected with. She had been very angry with Kasiria after the bandits had attacked them. To Kasiria three men, three tormentors, were dead and she could have cared less, but to Eric three friends were dead. Jona, Henry and Kosian. Now they were all dead. She and Kasiria were the only ones left, and the only reason she was alive was because she had formed a different attachment to Kasiria's unit. They knew what she was and except for Kasiria—who had reason to dislike her—the others had embraced her, respected her not for what she appeared to be, but for what she was. And so she had been with them instead of her own unit in both battles and they were superior fighters and so the others were all dead and she was alive.
She hadn't seen him come up until he was standing right in front of her and didn't know she was crying until he was handing her a handkerchief. She wiped her face and blew her nose then looked at him.
"Are you all right?" he asked. Which was always a stupid question to ask when someone was crying.
"I'm fine. They're all dead and I've got a few stitches in my arm and my leg but I'm fine.
Hell, I'm better than fine. If I could have picked a fantasy and had it come true it would have been this, to be part of the Marching Night, and I am aren't I?"
"That is what the Great Leader has said," Tarius answered. "And as you might have guessed what she says goes."
"But why? Why did she welcome me into her pack? I'm nothing special."
He laughed at her and punched her in the arm—luckily not the one with the stitches. "Eric, you fought shoulder to shoulder with us and who knows if any of us would be alive if you hadn't been there. That is the code of the Marching Night. You protect your fellows because they protect you and if they're not there then you may fall to the sword blow they would have stopped. I'm sure Tarius and Jena and Arvon consider that you have helped to save their cub." Tarius grinned broadly, "Bards will tell great stories of you. In fact I will tell one right now."
And so he did. She knew he was just trying to cheer her up but that was all right because it worked.