Osric learned faster than Harlon had.
That was the first relief Torren had felt since entering the valley. Osric did not like every answer, but he listened. He asked questions, repeated the measure, then repeated it again without being told. He had the careful hands of someone used to handling both old people and sacred things.
Torren showed him the bone measure. "This much into the steam water. Less for children. Not more because someone looks worse."
Osric frowned. "Worse breathing gets steam first."
"Yes."
"Drink only if they can swallow."
"Yes."
"If they cough while drinking, stop."
"Yes."
Mother Maera sat beside them with her blanket over her knees. "Good. You both can count. The valley may survive."
Osric sighed. "Mother."
"What?"
"You make everything harder."
"No. I make everything shorter."
Torren almost smiled, but the old woman turned her blind face toward him.
"You," she said. "Stop thinking about what I told you."
Torren looked up. "I wasn't."
"You were."
"I'm listening."
"You can do both badly. Steam first. Dreams later."
That was fair enough. Torren looked back at the bowl.
Cael and Maron stood nearby, watching. The Mist chief had taken off his cloak and hung it over one arm. His boots were wet to the knee from the outer paths. Maron stood closer to Osric, answering when the questions turned to herbs and storage. There was no arguing between them. Cael gave numbers. Maron gave locations. Osric judged what could be used. Mother Maera interrupted when all three missed something obvious.
It was the calmest sick camp Torren had seen so far.
That did not mean it was safe.
"How many with fever?" Torren asked.
Cael answered. "Twenty-one counted this morning."
"Bad breathing?"
"Six. Maybe seven. One hides it."
Maron added, "Three children fevered. One old woman coughing blood, but she was weak before this."
"Wounded?"
Cael's face changed. "From the raid? Nine still down. Four bad."
"They came back when?"
"Two days before you reached the Red Smiths."
So the men who had gone with Tarn had already returned. The valley had been sitting with the cost for days.
Torren rubbed his thumb against the edge of the bowl. "Wounds and coughs together are bad."
Cael gave him a flat look. "We noticed."
"Then why are they together?"
Maron answered, "Dry shelters. We ran out. The wounded needed warmth. The fevered needed watching. We put them where hands were."
Torren nodded. "That is an answer."
Cael looked slightly less annoyed.
Mother Maera lifted one thin hand. "Move what can be moved. Not everything. Do not start tearing the valley apart because the boy has seen other camps do it."
Torren looked at her. "I wasn't going to."
"You were close."
"I was thinking."
"That is usually how it starts."
Osric cut in before Torren could answer. "We can separate the worst breathing from the open wounds. Not all fever. But the worst breathing."
Maron nodded. "The lower root shelters are dry enough."
Cael said, "Mist men can move the wounded who are not coughing."
"Good," Torren said. "Do that first."
No one waited for him to say more. Cael turned and gave orders to two Mist men. Maron sent a woman from the Trees side to clear the lower shelters. The valley moved quickly, but not wildly. They had not lost order. They had lost time.
...
The great weirwood was not touched first.
Mother Maera made that clear before anyone asked.
"Not the heart tree," she said.
Torren looked at her. "I was not going to ask."
"Good. I am old, not calm."
Osric gave Torren an apologetic look. "There are smaller trees above the east roots. And old frost cracks on two lower roots here, if they have not dried."
"We use what is already bleeding first," Torren said. "Then smaller trees if needed."
Osric nodded. "That is how it should be."
"Then you do that part."
"You will not show it?"
"This is your tree."
Osric watched him for a second, then accepted it. "Good."
Mother Maera smiled faintly. "He can learn."
Torren ignored that.
The sap work stayed with Osric and Maron. Torren showed the measure again but did not approach the great trunk unless asked. Even standing near it made him feel watched. Maybe everyone felt that here. Maybe that was why the shelters bent around the roots as if the whole valley had spent generations learning where not to put its feet.
The first sap-water they used came from an old crack in one of the lower roots. Osric took only a little. He sealed the spot himself with clay and crushed leaf. He did it slowly, with hands that did not shake.
Torren was glad for that.
He did not want to stand in another dead Tree Speaker's place. He had done that once already.
...
The first patient was a Mist man named Cregan.
He had been part of the Strongsong raid. That much Cael said plainly. No one here pretended it had been something else. They had gone for stores, failed at the castle, and come back with wounded men and not enough of what they needed. Cregan had an arrow wound high in his shoulder. The shaft had been removed before he reached the valley, but the flesh around it was hot and angry. He also had the cough.
Torren did not like the look of him.
Brea would have hated it too, he thought. Edda would have started swearing.
Cregan lay propped in a root shelter, face damp, breath shallow. He was awake enough to be annoyed.
"Another one looking at me," he muttered.
Cael crouched near the entrance. "This one may be useful."
"Good. Tell him to be useful quietly."
Torren set down the clean bowl. "Your wound is bad."
Cregan opened one eye. "Thank you. I was unsure."
Torren looked at Osric. "Who handles wounds?"
Maron pointed to a woman beside the shelter. "Nara."
Nara was not young. She had clean hands and a small knife at her belt. "I handle wounds. You handle breath."
"That works."
She nodded once. "Good."
That was easier than Torren expected.
Osric prepared the steam while Torren watched. The measure was right. Pine went in. Sap-water went in, small. No bitterleaf drink yet; Cregan's cough was too sharp, and he looked like swallowing would turn into choking.
Osric held up the cloth. "Here?"
"Farther back," Torren said. "He needs air."
Osric adjusted.
Cregan breathed in and immediately coughed. Nara held him upright by the good shoulder. The cough pulled at the wound, and Cregan cursed so loudly that Mother Maera, from outside, called, "If he is swearing, he is not dead."
Cregan rasped, "Tell her I heard that."
"She knows," Cael said.
The steam did not fix him. It loosened something. After the second coughing fit, Cregan's breath came a little deeper. His face still looked bad. The wound fever was still there. The sickness was still there. But the air moved better.
Osric heard it. "Less tight."
"Yes," Torren said. "But the wound is still a problem."
Nara said, "I know."
"I don't know how to fix that."
"I did not ask you."
Torren nodded. "Good."
Cael looked between them. "So he needs both."
Nara said, "He needed both yesterday."
Cael accepted that without arguing.
...
They made three stations before dark.
Not because Torren ordered it. Because Osric and Maron decided it would work, and Cael had enough people to carry it out. One station near the lower root shelters for the bad breathing. One near the watched line for fevered but still swallowing. One near the outer mist path for men who had come back from Strongsong and were not yet clearly sick or clean.
Torren helped where he could. Mostly he repeated the same warnings.
"Not stronger."
"Clean bowl."
"No drink if he coughs through water."
"Steam again when the bowl cools."
"Don't move that cloth between patients."
By the fifth time, Osric said, "I have it."
"Good."
Torren still watched him do it.
Osric noticed. "You do not trust me?"
"I trust people until they get scared."
"That is not trust."
"No."
Osric seemed to consider that, then gave a small tired nod. "Fair."
Mother Maera sat near the great root and listened to the work move around her. She did not interfere much. When someone brought a fevered child too close to the old woman's chair, she said, "Not there. I am old enough without borrowing fever." The child was moved. When a Mist runner tried to report to Cael from inside the sick line, she tapped her stick on the root and said, "Back up. I can smell your stupidity." He backed up.
Torren began to understand why the chiefs listened to her.
She was not gentle. She was just usually right.
...
Near evening, Maron brought Torren to a small fire where several children sat with a woman from the Trees family. Two had fever. One coughed. None had bad breathing yet.
"Small doses?" Maron asked.
"If they can swallow. Very small."
Osric repeated the measure correctly.
The woman asked, "Will this stop it getting worse?"
Torren hated that question. "Maybe."
She looked at him for a better answer.
He did not give one.
Maron said, "Maybe is what we have."
The woman looked down at the child in her lap. "Then give maybe."
That stayed with Torren more than he wanted.
They gave the children weak doses. One spat most of it out and cried. Another swallowed and made a face like Tal had. The third refused until Mother Maera called from across the roots, "Tell him it tastes better than dying."
The child yelled back, "No it doesn't."
Mother Maera laughed. "Good. His tongue works."
Even the woman holding him smiled for a moment.
...
After dark, Cregan slept.
That did not mean he would live. Nara said so before Torren could.
"Do not look relieved," she told Cael. "The wound is hot."
Cael looked at Torren.
Torren raised both hands slightly. "She knows more than I do about that."
Nara nodded, satisfied.
Osric stood beside the steam bowl, tired but steady. "The breath method holds for now."
"For now," Torren said.
Mother Maera, wrapped in blankets near the great root, clicked her tongue. "You all say 'for now' as if the gods offered better words and you refused them."
Torren sat on a low root, exhausted.
Cael and Maron came to stand near him. They did not loom. They simply stood where chiefs stood when a question had to be asked.
"Tarn sent you from Red Smiths," Cael said. "Did he say how bad they were?"
"Bad enough. Not broken."
"And Milk Snakes?"
"Worse than they admitted. Better when I left."
Maron looked toward the children's fire. "How long do you stay?"
Torren did not answer immediately.
He thought of the path behind him: Painted Dogs, Stone Crows, Burned Men, Black Ears, Moon Brothers, Howlers, Milk Snakes, Red Smiths, now this valley under mist and root. He was tired enough that the thought of another path made his bones ache.
But he also knew what happened when he left too soon.
"Until Osric can do it without asking," he said.
Osric, nearby, said, "I can do it now."
Torren looked at him. "Until he can do it while people are shouting."
Osric paused. "Tomorrow, then."
Mother Maera laughed softly. "Good. Stay tomorrow."
Torren looked at her. The prophecy still sat in the back of his head like a stone in a boot.
She seemed to know. Of course she did. Or pretended well enough that it did not matter.
"Sleep, pale boy," she said. "If the gods want to bother you, they can wait their turn."
For once, Torren did not argue.
Cregan's breathing had eased, but his wound fever remained. The children had taken weak doses, but no one knew what morning would show. The valley had order, herbs, chiefs who worked together, and a Tree Speaker old enough to make everyone move with three words. That was more than most camps had.
It still might not be enough.