“I am pleased to do so,” the master said. “Now tell us, what do we face?”
“We got two new loads of fighters yesterday,” the captain replied as he walked to the gate beside Ramasu. “A third from other arenas, the rest New Meat.”
Arram urged the mules forward. He kept his eyes on their shoulders as he heard the clank of chain and the scrape of metal on dirt as the gates were opened. A handful of gladiators were idling in the yard, moving slowly toward them, seemingly without plan.
A hard crack brought his head up. A guard on the gate had produced a whip: four feet of rigid stick tipped by several tapering feet of braided leather. He raised and snapped it at the gladiators. They halted, their eyes going from the mages and their wagon to the guard and back. One of them had new red stripes on his arm. After a long pause the group broke up and returned to training.
“We are perfectly able to defend ourselves, guardsmen,” Ramasu said, his voice at its most gentle. “There is no need for the hard whip.”
“The New Meat don’t know that, Master,” the whip wielder said. “They ain’t been broke in. Once they learn the stick, we can teach them rules and they’ll obey.”
“Yet if those stripes you just made get infected, you will have created more work for your healers, which means me,” Ramasu replied.
Goosebumps rippled along Arram’s arms. There was a touch of iron in the master’s voice.
“Should that happen, I shall feel it incumbent upon me to teach you the folly of using your hard whip when it is not absolutely necessary,” Ramasu continued. “That would be unfortunate, but not for me.” He walked on, the captain at his elbow. Arram noticed that the captain glanced at the whip-bearing soldier but said nothing to him.
Arram followed the two men and the guards to a long, one-story brick building with barred windows and shutters. It sported a wooden porch over the entry, which had a barred door. The regular healer waited there, a satchel by his feet.
“Ramasu, welcome, welcome!” he cried, embracing the mage.
Ramasu smiled and returned the embrace. Then he indicated Arram. “Healer Daleric, may I present my student, Arram Draper? Arram, Daleric and his assistants will rejoin us in time for the games.”
“And we will be the better for that wonderful time away,” Daleric said, nodding to Arram. “Before I go, let me offer you a taste of the best Maren red wine I’ve had in years. Your Arram can help the boys unload the cart. Captain, will you share a glass?”
The captain refused the offer of a drink and returned to his headquarters. “Let me supervise,” Ramasu insisted. “Arram is new. He has to learn to watch for nimble fingers. Then we can relax.”
“Very well,” Daleric said. “I shall assist.” The healer drew Ramasu into the infirmary.
Once the cart was unpacked the two healers retreated into Daleric’s small office, a box-like room set on one side of the infirmary. Inside the main room, Arram inspected the healer’s stillroom and its tidy shelves of supplies, each spot neatly labeled. He stowed their own medicines, ointments, and bandages, appreciating that Daleric kept the place clean and orderly. Only the magical creations and poisons were left unshelved. He suspected they went behind a door that had a number of magical locks on it. Most, if not all, of them he could undo, but it seemed polite to wait for the healer or Master Ramasu to take care of that.
He heard voices in the main room. He emerged in time to hear Daleric tell Ramasu, “And I am off.” He nodded to Arram. “The goddess’s good luck, youngster.” He bowed to the figure of Hekaja, whose small shrine occupied the western corner of the room. “Don’t let them trap you. They’re beasts, when all’s said and done.” He picked up a packed bag and walked out to the waiting wagon.
Ramasu closed the door behind the healer. “Daleric will talk about them as human beings by the time he returns from his holiday,” he said. “They wear him down over the course of a year, but he is dedicated to working with them, or he wouldn’t stay.” He walked over to the shrine, bowed to the figure of the goddess, and lit some orris incense with a touch of his finger.
Arram did the same, though he lit his incense from the master’s, not trusting his ability with a touch of fire. “How long has he—Daleric?—been here?”
“Five years. Most last two years or less, but Daleric has family in Thak City. Some of them are healers, some guards. Let’s see how you managed.” Ramasu only glanced over the shelves where Arram had placed supplies already. “I expected you to do this well,” he explained. “You could have entered the locked room yourself.”
“It didn’t seem polite to do so without permission,” Arram said.
“You can never fail with good manners,” Ramasu commented, pleased. “Go ahead. Without damage, open the room now.”
Arram touched a bit of the oil he carried in a vial in his belt purse to his eyelids. It allowed him to see magic without spending his own Gift. A couple of blinks showed him the spell letters on the locked door. They weren’t the signs of complex spells, but he undid them carefully, in case anything nasty was hidden under a mild sign.
He and Ramasu had just finished stowing the magical and poisonous supplies when Preet came flying in, crying out in alarm. Arram followed her into the main room and heard the unmistakable sound of a man screaming. It was drawing close.
“Master!” he called as Preet flew up to a perch on a roof beam. Looking around, he spotted a cupboard on the wall with the word “Linens” burned into the front. Beside it was a second cupboard labeled “Bandages.” Arram threw open the linen cupboard and grabbed one of the bundles. He shook it out to get an idea of the size of the cloth, quickly folded it double, and placed it on a table. While he was in the front room, he opened the door.
He grabbed a tray from a stack of them and returned to the bandages cupboard, placing four on it. That would be enough until they learned what was coming. Ramasu stood in front of the closed door to the stillroom, cleansing himself with his Gift. His medical kit was open beside him on the floor, also awash in his power.
Four dirty, muscled men hurried in with a screaming man on a rope stretcher. Arram had no problem guessing what was wrong: the heavier of the two main bones below the patient’s knee had snapped and was thrusting out of his flesh.
“Ol’ Daleric off to see the wife and kiddies?” a stretcher bearer shouted to Arram, panting. “Miggin here’s got the best of luck!”
Miggin, the screamer, took a breath and made several rude suggestions about what the man could do with his luck.
“Very inventive,” Ramasu said, waving the men forward to the edge of the waiting table. “Arram, I will do painlessness. You will raise our friend Miggin and set him down when these fellows move the stretcher. At a count of three?”
Arram fumbled for the right spell and chose the most basic. “One,” he said, walking up to the stretcher. “Two.” Arram cast the signs for an equal lift all around Miggin. “Three.” Palms up, he raised his hands, and the patient, as Ramasu let a wave of his Gift flow over Miggin. With the experience born of practice, the bearers slid the stretcher out from under the injured man. Miggin was now breathing rather than shrieking. He hardly noticed what was going on. Arram gently used his own spell to push Miggin forward until he was over the sheet-covered table, then carefully set him down.
“This one’s good,” the man who’d asked about Daleric told Ramasu. “We’ll keep him if you don’t want him.”
“That’s very kind, but there are masters who wish to keep him,” Ramasu said. “Tell me what happened to your friend.”
The men chuckled. “He’s not a friend,” replied one, a bearded Kyprish islander with a fearsome set of tattoos on his back and arms. “He’s fresh. Some funny man told New Meat here that if he went two falls with Anaconda he’d get respect. This is what happened in his first fall.”
“Now Anaconda’s sad because we took his toy,” another gladiator said. “You’ll see more New Meat today, Master Ramasu.”
“Then you had b
est go out and collect it, lads,” Ramasu told them. “Though I would appreciate it if you first told Anaconda that I am here. Any extra work he gives me will be paid for, by him, when I see him next.”
“Very good, Master Ramasu,” the tattooed gladiator replied. “It would be nice to have some New Meat left alive for the arena.”
The man who had first spoken to Arram shoved past him toward the door. “We’re glad you’re back, Master,” he told Ramasu. “Daleric’s all right, but he’s not you.” All four of them bowed, then trotted outside with their stretcher.
“We see them at their best in here,” Ramasu told Arram. “Now, tell me about Miggin’s injury.”
Arram looked at the gladiator’s leg. “It’s a compound break of the main bone of the lower leg,” he said, using a spell on his eyes that showed him the bones. “We’ll have a bad time reseating it without snagging flesh on the bone.”
Ramasu twitched his fingers, murmuring a short spell. One of several small tables tucked under the window counters skidded across the floor to his side. “Here is where you learn about compound fractures, and about multiple fractures of bone that do not break through the skin,” he said quietly. “We are likely to see a great many of them. If you will look…”
After several tries, Arram got the knack of drawing all the torn flesh out of the way. Ramasu was working a cleansing over both ends of the bone when Preet landed on the head of their worktable, fluttering her wings. “Understood, Preet, but we cannot rush,” the master said absently.
Arram heard the approach of someone else howling in pain. His hands trembled for a moment before he forced himself to concentrate on his patient.
“Very good,” Ramasu told him. “Now.” Both ends of the bone shifted together. “Is the lower part of the bone seated against the upper part? Don’t use your vision—it isn’t accurate enough.”
Arram set a portion of his awareness in his Gift and wrapped it around the damaged bone. It was fitted back together as well as it could be. Ramasu had left no jags or tiny splinters to dig into muscle or flesh. “It’s very well seated, Master, except for what had to be removed.”
“Release the muscle first, then the skin to their former places,” Ramasu ordered. “Gently.”
Arram released the two spells he had worked to keep both parts of the injured man’s body clear of the damage. He could feel the veins, and the muscles, sigh in relief as they relaxed into their former beds. The skin was slower. “I think the skin is hurt some,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Either you forgot from your earlier work that the skin is the most easily damaged, or you haven’t held it off its natural form for so long before,” Ramasu replied. “This is normal. You’ve done well. I shall finish with this man. Prepare the next table and send our newest guest to sleep. The second level of his mind only, Arram. He must be unaware of his pain, not dead to it.”
Since he had eased pain before in Ramasu’s infirmary, Arram only smiled at the master’s mild joke. He had never put so much power into a painlessness spell that the patient could not feel anything for a day, though he knew a student who had. Carefully he drew his Gift away from the sleeping gladiator. He recovered it all just as three of the men from earlier and a fresh stretcher bearer came through the door. Arram rushed to seize a sheet and throw it over another waist-high table. By the time the gladiators reached it, he had the lifting spell ready to shift the injured man onto the table. This one had a dislocated shoulder.
“Worst pain in my life,” he whispered, his eyes bulging out. “Worst pain”—he was trying to control himself, but his voice was rising in volume—“in MY—”
Arram hurriedly sketched the symbols he needed to use in order to release a victim from pain, unlike Ramasu, who could do it with a softly whispered phrase. The man fell silent, though his lungs pumped his chest like a bellows. Arram drew a breath and descended into his Gift, where he could deepen the spell enough that his patient would not feel his pain for the time being. He glanced over his shoulder at Ramasu, who nodded.
Arram had dealt with two dislocations before, one hip and one shoulder. Using the man’s own sweat, he wrote the necessary signs for painlessness in the shoulder joint first, before he wrote the sign of the closing lock, and poured his Gift into it. There was the dreadful sound of gristle and muscle returning to their proper place; the shoulder resumed its normal shape. Carefully Arram ran his fingers over it to ensure that the joint was whole once more before he looked at the gladiators. They were dipping drinks of water for themselves from the bucket by the door.
“Dare I ask—the Anaconda again?” he said quietly, wiping his hands clean of sweat and dirt with a damp towel.
“Oh, no, if that’d been the Anaconda, his whole backbone would’ve been all twisty,” said the Kyprish gladiator. “No, this piece of offal thought one of the girls was there for double duty: fighting and”—he caught Ramasu’s eye and obviously changed the word he’d been about to use—“canoodling. Her never having made him an offer, nor any man, for that matter, she explained his error to him.”
“She shoulda knowed he’d never been in a camp where the lasses might be sisters of the game, too,” the new stretcher bearer said.
“He shoulda knowed to ask before layin’ a hand on her,” replied the tattooed gladiator. “He could ask any of us fellows.”
“Argue it outside,” Ramasu ordered. “It’s near to supper. I will send a messenger when this man is ready to return to camp.”
The men nodded and left.
“It wasn’t so long ago that more than a scant handful of women could defend themselves like warriors,” Ramasu mused as he covered their newest patient with a sheet for warmth. Arram had already noticed, and been grateful for, the coolness spells placed on the infirmary by generations of healers. “Only two hundred years it’s been since all women could be soldiers, sailors, enforcers of the law. It wasn’t only gladiators, Shang, and some of the Southern tribes as it is now.”
Arram smiled. He was always amused by the different view of time held by most of his masters. To them, two centuries was a short period, just a small part of the ages of history and magic that they knew. And he knew what Ramasu was thinking of. “The rise of the aspect of the Gentle Mother.”
“The Gentle Mother.” In Ramasu’s soft voice it sounded like a curse. “They took a goddess with a scythe in her hand, striding the rows of grain, and turned her to present the self of a housebound creature. I wonder when she will show her true face again.”
“Did they ever try to do that to the Graveyard Hag?” Arram asked. He couldn’t imagine the old lady with any other face than the one she currently bore.
Ramasu chuckled. “Oh, yes. It was amazing, the change of luck that struck any priest who attempted to make her into a kindly grandmother spinning by the fire. There is a book in the Faiths section of the library, The Hag Speaks. You may read it and write it up for me for the beginning of autumn term.”
Arram sighed. Why did a good conversation with a master always seem to end in more work for him? Still, he had to say, “Perhaps the Great Goddess prefers the face of the Gentle Mother, or she would have done something like that.”
“I prefer to think that the Three-Fold Mother has not noticed, time being so different in the Divine Realms.” Ramasu was placing jars of ointment and bandages on a counter. “I think that when she does discover what is being done in her name, she will let us know it.”
The doors flew open. Two men entered, one with a clumsy bandage on his chest, the other with one on his thigh. “Worm-eaten, scum-lollin’ country guard let one of his New Meats come in with a knife!” the man with the chest wound cried.
Ramasu pointed them each to a bench. He took the chest wound, a shallow diagonal slice, and Arram the thigh wound, which had just missed an important vein. “And where is this New Meat with the blade?” Ramasu asked as he and Arram wet cloths and washed the injuries with a cleansing balm.
“He won’t be coming here,” the gl
adiator with the chest wound said offhandedly. “The lads settled his account.”
Arram’s mouth suddenly went dry. He thought he knew what the man meant. He glanced at Ramasu, who gave a tiny shake of his head. Fingers trembling, Arram got back to the work of spelling the veins and arteries whole again, then turned to the muscles that had been sliced.
“Arm and torso work for you for two days,” Ramasu ordered Arram’s patient when he was released. “No full-strength blows, no running. Tell the cooks plenty of meat. And you, weapons repair for three days, then light sparring for the rest of the week,” he said, pointing to his patient. “If your mentor has questions, he may see me. Off with you—I hear others on their way.”
The afternoon continued in this manner: a broken jaw, cuts, lesser broken bones, head blows that resulted in two more sleeping gladiators in the infirmary. Things slowed down at last: Arram realized he hadn’t heard the thwack of wooden blade against wooden blade for a while. They released their last patient when he woke shortly before the evening meal. The other patients had returned to their quarters earlier.
Ramasu and Arram cleaned the infirmary, though Arram protested he could do so on his own.
“Things are less formal here,” Ramasu said gently. “Today was actually fairly calm. There will be a few days while the gladiators torment the New Meat, particularly those who are here only because they look strong or were troublesome to their former masters. They will not be killed if it can be helped. They are meant to die in the arena.”
Arram made the Sign against evil on his chest.