Daughter of Fire by Carla Simpson Page B

and dying. She had seen the Norman guards as they rode into camp and wondered whom they guarded across the wide-open field. Then she realized that not all those fires were funeral pyres. There were shapes huddled before them, in groups of two, three, or more. And so, at dawn, as William rested peacefully from the tisane she had given him, she knew she must go to the battlefield and do what she could to ease the suffering of the Saxon prisoners.
    She rose from her bed of furs, taking the pouch of medicines with her. Then she opened her thoughts, reaching out to Tarek al Sharif where he stood guard at the entrance of the tent. Her thoughts closed around his like a shroud drawn over the senses so that he was unaware of her movement inside the tent. That left the guards who had been positioned outside. Vivian stepped to the east wall of the tent.
    The blue crystal once more hung about her neck. It glowed brightly as she closed her eyes and once more turned her thoughts inward. Concentrating on the power of the old ones, she imagined herself walking through the tent wall, continued to imagine herself moving unseen to a place apart from the camp.
    She felt the heavy fabric of the tent wall wrap about her, then the sudden sharp bite of the bitter cold wind. When she opened her eyes, she stood several paces away from the tent. There was no shout of alarm from inside the tent, nor did the guards appear to be aware that anything was amiss. Clutching the pouch of healing herbs and powders tightly under her arm, Vivian turned and fled the Norman encampment toward the battlefield.
    She followed the cart path, avoiding the guards in the same way she had eluded Tarek al Sharif, by merely controlling their thoughts so that they were not even aware of her presence.
    A few of the injured Saxon had been able to forage wood and built meager fires that smoldered, adding to the pall that hung over the encampment. Others lay with blank, pain-filled eyes, waiting for death.
    There were women--wives, lovers, camp followers, who had followed them to Hastings and risked much to care for them.
    “Water,” a feeble voice called out. “Do you have water?”
    Vivian quickly knelt by the man and let him drink from the skin she had brought with her.
    She bandaged his wound and then quickly moved on, for there were so many. And always there were the cries for water and food. Some, asked if she had seen a companion, brother, or son. She moved among them, drawing only an occasional glance from the Norman guards, for she no longer bothered to control their thoughts. They had no reason to think she was other than what she seemed, a Saxon woman who tended the dying.
    Moving from one meager fire to the next, she handed out powders and herbal remedies for pain, bleeding, and fevers. Whispers of gratitude followed her. And then she quickly moved on, her heart aching at what she saw. Images hovered at the edges of her vision. When she looked to see them more clearly they disappeared like the images she’d experienced the day before when they arrived in the valley where the battle had been fought.  They were the shadows of death. 
    Hopelessly outnumbered and armed with crudely made clubs, wood axes, and the simplest peasant tools, the Saxons under King Harold had fought in defensive lines so tightly packed together that as the dead fell among them under volleys of Norman arrows, they were pinned shoulder to shoulder beside the living.
    They had been relentlessly hacked to pieces. Those who survived had been positioned at the ends of the line. As the line fragmented, they had fled and regrouped. But the outcome was inevitable. With an army made up of untrained peasants, thanes, and house carls, Harold had been doomed before he ever set foot on the battlefield.
    She saw it all clearly, in the threads of gray smoke, bleak defeat, and blood, emerging in a pattern beneath the weaver’s hand at the loom just as she had seen it in her vision.
    A tapestry not yet woven,