Post by Seek on Aug 13, 2017 1:23:17 GMT 10
Series: Mountains and Rivers
Title: The Spoils of War
Rating: PG
Event: Cross Country Run
Words: 1599 words
Summary: Neal and Kel have a conversation, as the latter recovers from injuries sustained during a battle. Decidedly yucky porridge is involved.
Note: This takes place in a reversal AU where: A) Kel disguises herself as a boy to win her shield, and B) deals with the events of Alanna's day, e.g. the Tusaine War and Duke Roger's scheming. Alanna and co. have not yet been born. Also, the bit about the numbers of Queenscove knights etcetera was taken wholesale from First Test.
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Title: The Spoils of War
Rating: PG
Event: Cross Country Run
Words: 1599 words
Summary: Neal and Kel have a conversation, as the latter recovers from injuries sustained during a battle. Decidedly yucky porridge is involved.
Note: This takes place in a reversal AU where: A) Kel disguises herself as a boy to win her shield, and B) deals with the events of Alanna's day, e.g. the Tusaine War and Duke Roger's scheming. Alanna and co. have not yet been born. Also, the bit about the numbers of Queenscove knights etcetera was taken wholesale from First Test.
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Kel swam—slowly and painfully—back towards consciousness. Her shoulder hurt—a slow, bone-deep ache that seemed to radiate weakly down to her fingers. Other hurts made themselves known, and she took a catalogue of them: a throbbing in her head, deep behind her eyes, and another ache in her thigh.
She breathed, tried to accept the pain, to let it roll off her like water from a stone.
“Well,” spoke a familiar voice. “It’s about time you woke up.”
Startled, Kel jerked upright, clutching the blanket to—to what was definitely not the undertunic she’d had on beneath that armour.
Neal sat stiffly by her cot, looking pale and drawn, with dark circles about his hollow eyes. He set down the mud-splattered book he was reading; Kel could barely make out the gilt letters on the spine. The candle on a lap-desk burned with a deep emerald flame. “Now you can enlighten me: what the blazes were you thinking?”
Kel blinked, and remembered the Tusaine knight, with his mace. Oh. Oh. She croaked, “I’m not sure I was really thinking at all.”
“My dear lad,” Neal drawled. “I can tell.” He poured out cool, clean water from a pitcher and handed the mug over to her. “Drink up.”
She drank. It gave her time to think. Someone had pried her out of that armour and undertunic. Had it been Neal? Did he know?
“Did you…?” she trailed off. She wasn’t sure how one asked that question. Did you know I’m really a girl? Did you know that I’ve been deceiving everyone for my shield?
“Heal you?” Neal scoffed. “I had to piece together your shattered shoulder, and you had a fracture in that stubborn skull of yours. Next time, try dodging, would you?” His voice was dry, but she could read the gentle worry in those bright green eyes, and she swallowed, hard.
He gave her a light, awkward pat on her uninjured shoulder. “I’ll get you something to eat. You’ve been through at least two major healings.”
“Two?”
Neal shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with the issue. “I was running low,” he said at last. “And your injuries weren’t easy to deal with.”
That, at least, explained why she was ravenously hungry. “How long?” Kel wanted to know.
“Two days,” Neal said, quietly.
“The battle?”
He regarded her, and Kel wondered just what he was thinking. “Won, but barely. Earl Hamrath is still besieging Goldenlake, and Sir Kevan of Veldine met one of the Tusaine armies in the field and was defeated. Still, we stopped Duke Adric from lifting the siege, so I suppose that’s a victory somewhere.” He made a vague, flapping gesture with a hand.
He sounded bitter, though.
“What’s wrong?” Kel asked, her voice soft.
Neal pinched the bridge of his nose, and finally said, “So much death.” He smiled crookedly at her. “Sometimes, I ask myself what the point of putting everyone back together is, especially if we’re just going to throw them against Tusaine spears and shields all over again.”
He looked tired, Kel thought, and she said, sternly, “You haven’t been working yourself to the bone, have you?”
There was a quick flash of guilt in Neal’s eyes. “You’re asking me if I’ve been overworking?” he clutched at his heart, dramatically. “Maybe that blow to your skull did more damage than I thought.” He held out a hand. “Give.”
Kel sighed. “Should you be doing this?” she wanted to know, even as she let him take her hand.
“Probably not,” came the cheerful response. “But it’s not like this is particularly exhausting, magically-speaking…oh, huh.” Excruciatingly slowly, the deep emerald of his Gift bloomed to life where their fingers met. She felt his power as a gentle cool light; almost like rain, seeping into her, soothing away the aches of her various injuries.
“What?” Kel asked.
“The good news,” Neal murmured, as his Gift winked out, “Is that you’re healing just fine—I gave you a bit of a boost there to help you along. The bad news is that I can’t seem to find any damage to your skull, so I’m afraid I have to inform you that it seems to be a natural trait, for which there is no cure presently available.”
“You’re being silly,” Kel informed him, but at that very moment, her stomach decided that it had suffered enough well-meaning healings and gave an extremely loud growl.
“Food,” Neal said, firmly. “You stay put. Healer’s orders.” He rose to his feet and crossed the floor of the tent in a few quick steps, ducked under the flap, and left.
Kel stared up at the canvas of her tent. She risked a quick peek—the shirt was hers, and whoever had dressed her had neatly done up her bindings as well.
She drew in a shaky breath. It didn’t matter, Kel told herself reasonably. If she’d been discovered, then, well…she’d still fought in a war. She knew more now than she had as a girl, freshly-returned from the Yamani Islands. There was no point in worrying about it right now.
And if, in fact, she hadn’t been discovered, then it told her something important: someone wanted her to succeed.
Neal returned, pushing past the tent flap, with a tray of steaming…
“Don’t give me that face,” Neal said, grinning wickedly. “It’s food, and your body need to rebuild its reserves after a healing, and you’ve had several.”
“I wasn’t,” Kel said, resignedly. By this point, she was going to make a very bad Yamani if she ever returned to the Islands.
“I saw it,” Neal practically carolled, as he laid the tray flat on the edge of her cot. “You cringed.”
It was goop. A grey-and-green, lumpy goop that probably should’ve been porridge but which only had the virtue of being steaming hot.
“Careful,” Neal said, as he handed her a spoon, hovering over her as she carefully brought the tray down to her lap and ate.
It was hot. That was the only good thing about the goop. And she was hungry. She tackled it, bite by unappetising bite.
“If it’s any consolation,” Neal offered, “We’re all eating that goop. The cooks have outdone themselves. I think we could kill the Tusaine army in one fell swoop, if we just fed them this.” He swept out his hands, in a dramatic gesture. “The spoils of war.”
Kel could just imagine her Yamani teachers telling her sternly that a warrior ate whatever they were fed, and certainly, she hadn’t expected luxuries out in the field, but her stomach threatened to rebel all the same. Did the goop have to be so thoroughly unedible? “If we could even force-feed it to them,” she pointed out, brutally pragmatic, “We’d already have won the war.”
“There goes my dreams of winning the war in a single, glorious stroke,” Neal sighed.
Not for the first time, Kel wondered if the Tusaine war was hardest on Neal. Almost all of them saw combat at some point; even the prince himself had fought among the ranks of the Tortallan knights. Except Neal; with the strength of his healing Gift, and especially since he’d healed Prince Roald of the Sweating Sickness, he’d been continuously kept off the combat lines and spent his time among the healers instead.
“Is it hard for you?” she asked, at last.
“I don’t know,” Neal drawled. “I certainly don’t enjoy the cold and the mud and the late hours...”
“Not getting to fight, I mean,” Kel said. “You’ve almost never had to draw your sword the whole time we’ve been here, apart from that night.” The night their camp had been ambushed by a Tusaine legion. The entire affair still made Kel uneasy; they’d sentries out, but the sentries had been systematically incapacitated while a mage-fog kept most of the Tortallan camp fast asleep. Something about it just seemed too convenient for her, but she wasn’t quite sure what.
Neal made a face. “Gods, remind me about it, why don’t you?” He sighed and shook his head. “I told you why I wanted to be a knight, didn’t I?”
“Your brothers,” Kel said.
“My brothers,” Neal said, with a crooked smile. “Thought that knighthood was the greatest service they could possibly give. On the Great Roll of Knights in the Hall of Crowns, twelve Queenscove knights are listed—only the Naxens have more. In The Scroll of Salute, King Jonathan the First wrote that four houses were the shield of Tortall: Legann, Naxen, ha Minch, and Queenscove.”
“But it isn’t the only service you can give,” Kel protested. “You’ve got brains. You studied at the Imperial University in Carthak. And you’re a really good healer—you saved the prince when he lay dying from the Sweating Sickness.”
“I know,” Neal said, studying the leather-bound book on the lap-desk. He ran a finger slowly along its spine. “I like books. I like arguments. And I like healing.” He looked over at her. “But what we’re doing is rather important too.” He smiled faintly. “Besides, someone has to keep you boneheaded louts from killing yourself. It may as well be me.”
It was not—quite—an answer. But Kel understood, all the same.
“Eat your goop,” Neal instructed her, with a broad smirk that showed just how much he was enjoying this reversal in their usual positions. “It’s good for you.”
Kel bit back her sigh and dug her wooden spoon into her bowl, promising herself that she was going to enjoy it when they got fresh vegetables again, and Neal had to eat them.