The master had spoken the simple truth. All the rest of that day, Hwilli, Par, and Jantalaber worked in the herbroom, doing what they could for cases of frostbite, exhaustion, fluxes of the bowels, catarrh, and a good many other complaints. They heard tales of despair as well. A good many people had died during the long winter walk down from the smoking ruins of Lin Rej to Tanbalapalim. No one, however, wanted to talk about the death of Lin Rej itself.

“You have to shut that out of your mind,” one woman told Hwilli. “You have to shove it into a chamber, like, and lock the door over it.” Her hands shook as hard as her voice. “Don’t ask. Please, just don’t ask us to remember it.”

“I won’t, then,” Hwilli said. “Take this vial of herbwater with you. One sip at night will help you sleep.”

The woman looked up at her with tear-filled eyes, whispered a thanks, and walked off, clutching the glass vial in both hands as if she feared it would leap out of them.

Yet, a few words here, a mumbled oath there, a sentence framed in tears—a few precious scraps of information did come out during that long day, some of it to the good. Another group of Mountain Folk might well have escaped the slaughter. There was reason to hope that the Meradan had never found an escape tunnel that led from one quarter of the city to a bolthole some miles east. A few of the axemen had tried to reach that tunnel. Although Meradan had blocked the way, the soldiers had found that area of the city deserted; its inhabitants must have gone somewhere, and there were no corpses in sight.

“So we think they’d already escaped,” a woman said. “Before the Meradan got there.”

“Not just Meradan!” An axeman with a broken wrist put in. “The halls were crawling with a different kind of lice! The—” He stopped, glancing at Hwilli, then away. “Ah, what does it matter now? Worms and slimes from Hell, all of them.”

At the dinner hour, Rhodorix came to the herbroom. He stood in the doorway and watched with bleak eyes as Hwilli cleaned a festering cut on a young child’s cheek. A Meradani sword had grazed her face as she fled behind her mother. By then, only a few patients still waited to be seen, and they, as Jantalaber remarked, were the ones with the least pressing injuries.

“When you’ve stitched that cut, you may leave, Hwilli,” he said. “Par and I can finish up here. In the morning, though, I’ll need you back.”

“Of course, Master,” Hwilli said. “My thanks.”

“I’ve had one of the servants bring food to my chamber,” Rhodorix said. “The chamberlain’s having the Mountain Folk camp in the refectory for now.”

Gerontos had set the bowls of food, mostly bread and some dried beef simmered in wine, out on the table in the chamber. While they ate, Rhodorix told them about the horse guards’ ride north.