When Hwilli arrived, a line of patients had already formed out in the corridor. Jantalaber and two of the Mountain women were already at work, examining some of the worst frostbite cases in a blaze of dweomer light.

“Have you seen Par?” Jantalaber said.

“I’ve not,” Hwilli said. “I came straight from bed when I heard the gongs.”

“There’s some bread on a plate in the drying room. Take some before you start work.”

Hwilli fetched a chunk of bread and stood out of the way to eat it. She had met one of the Mountain women before, a healer named Vela, who came on occasion to the fortress to trade supplies of herbs and roots with Master Jantalaber. At the moment she was sitting on the high stool, translating for Jantalaber as he worked with patients who didn’t speak the language of the People.

Like all the Mountain Folk, Vela was short and stocky, but this morning her face looked gaunt, her eyes deep pools of shadow in the silver light glowing from the ceiling. She’d pinned her long gray hair up to the top of her head with bone pins in random clumps, and she wore a ragged dress over a pair of the leather leggings usually worn by the men of her people. When she acknowledged Hwilli with a wave, Hwilli saw that her hand and wrist had suffered burns along the back. She remembered her patient of the day before saying “don’t ask” and refrained from mentioning it.

Hwilli had just finished her bread when Paraberiel hurried in. All that day they worked with the injured and the terrified, until Hwilli wanted to weep more from the sheer horror of what had happened than exhaustion. More information crept out of frightened mouths, about walking through so much blood that the floors had turned slippery, or of hearing the screams of women being raped before their throats were cut, or the way the Meradan growled and slobbered with rage as they killed and killed and killed.

“They burnt through the main doors on the hillside,” one axeman told them. “And then they got in somehow through the walled gardens.”

“The worms who tended the place let them in,” a second axeman said. “How else do you think?”

“Worms?” Hwilli snapped. “Perhaps you’d rather this worm let someone else tend your wounds.”

The axeman yelped, as surprised as if a statue had spoken to him. Vela slewed around on her stool and barked an order in Dwarvish. After that, the men talked only to answer the healers’ questions about their injuries.

Once they’d done everything they could for every injury, Jantalaber invited the healers to come eat in his chambers. The other dwarven woman, Othanna, begged off, because she desperately needed sleep.