| Chapter 11: Aftermath |
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The sheer carnage there smote her as she entered the great hall. The Grim had done severe damage to the floor, tearing chunks from it like lumps of flesh. Dead Coursers sprawled in pools of their own blood. A number of the Haruchai had been hurt as badly as Mistweave; one of them was dead. Riders lay here and there across the floor, scarlet-robed and contorted, frantic with death. But worse than anything else were the hacked and broken bodies of those who should never have been sent into battle: cooks and cleaners, herders and gatherers, the innocent servants of the Clave. Among the litter of their inadequate weapons, their cleavers, pitchforks, scythes, clubs, they were scattered like the wreckage which their masters had already wrought upon the villages of the Land.
Now Linden could not stanch her tears--and did not try. Through the blur, she spoke to Durris, sent him and several other Haruchai in search of splints, bindings, a sharp knife, hot water, and all the metheglin they could find to augment the company's scant vitrim and dwindling diamondraught. Then, using percipience instead of sight to direct her, she went looking for Mistweave. He was at work among the fallen of the Clave as if he were a physician--or could become one by simply refusing to let so much hurt and need lie untended. First he separated the dead from those who might yet be saved. Then he made the living as comfortable as possible, covered their wounds with bandages torn from the raiment of the dead. His aura reached out to her as though he, too, were weeping; and she seemed to hear his very thoughts: This one also I slew. Her I broke. Him I crippled. These I took from life in the name of service. |