Page 163 of Swordheart
“The demon was just smart enough to open doors. Or the sow was, anyway.” The paladin flipped his cloak back to reveal his arm in a sling. “We got her, finally, but she gave as good as she got. Don’t suppose you’re a healer, priest?”
“Lawyer,” said Zale apologetically. “Advocate divine, technically, but I mostly deal with property cases. Halla?”
Halla grimaced. “I can take a look,” she said, “but most of the medicine I’ve done was on goats, and that was a decade ago.”
The paladins laughed. The injured one worked his arm out of the sling and laid it across the table.
Halla looked at it, eyes going wide, and then up at him. “How are you not screaming right now?”
“It’s only pain, Mistress Halla,” said the paladin. “The Dreaming God kept me from worse.”
“He could have done a better job,” she said tartly, bending over the wound. The pig had stepped on his arm, it looked like, gouging the flesh and grinding mud and grime into the injury. The bone wasn’t broken, but it had already swollen and the red taint of infection was starting up around the edges.
Still, from having treated goats a decade ago, she knew this kind of wound. It did not require any great skill so much as patience. She called for hot water and clean cloths and sat down to clean it out. The paladins called for another round of ale.
“You’re good at that,” said her patient, watching her.
“You move less than a goat,” she said absently, picking a bit of gravel out with tweezers.
All three paladins roared with laughter at that one. Halla grabbed the man’s arm to keep him from moving—here I am, acting like Sarkis again.The paladin’s upper arm was as thick aroundas her neck and she had absolutely no chance of holding him down by force, but he submitted meekly.
It took nearly an hour, and her patient was more than a little drunk by the time she finished. He caught her hand as she stood. “Thank you, Mistress Halla,” he said.
“It was nothing,” she said.
Her patient tapped her wrist with his finger. She looked down and saw him studying the red scabs where Alver’s ropes had abraded the skin.
“I think perhaps you have some troubles of your own,” he said, glancing from her to Zale. Halla said nothing. Zale inclined their head, a gesture that agreed without giving away a single word of information.
He kissed the back of her hand. The number of men who could get away with kissing a woman’s hand, in Halla’s experience, were exactly zero, but now she had to change the number. Apparently if you were six feet tall and chiseled and capable of killing demons, you had the presence to pull it off.
Unaccountably, she blushed. Dammit, the paladins were pretty, and yet… and yet…
You’re reading far too much into it. And even if you weren’t… All she wanted was a grim, scarred man with silver lines cut through his skin.
“Leave off, Jorge,” said the female paladin, elbowing her cohort. “You’re in no shape for it and she’s in no mood.”
“Can’t blame a knight for trying,” said Jorge. “Well then, I’ll show my appreciation some other way. Innkeeper! Put these gentlefolk’s bill on the Dreaming God’s tab, will you?”
The innkeeper grunted.
“That was well done,” said Zale, as they walked away from the inn.
“He probably wouldn’t have lost the arm, but you never want to risk it with infection,” said Halla.
“Not quite what I meant. It never hurts to have the Dreaming God’s folk on your side. They’re dumb as posts and single-minded to the point of suicide about demons, but if you want someone with a very large sword to stand between you and the enemy, they truly have no equal.” They paused, then added, a bit dryly, “Relentlessly good-looking, too. It’s almost annoying.”
“I didn’t do it forthat,” said Halla.
Zale smiled. “I know.”
CHAPTER 53
The morning came and Sarkis wrote a letter to Halla. It was short and to the point, because he had far too much to say.
“I am alive,” he wrote, and then stared at the paper, his thoughts clattering in his head like bones.
What do I say? I’m sorry? You deserve better?
