Despite my effort to remain awake, I must have eventually drifted off to sleep while Captain Strykar carried me. I woke to find myself lying on my stomach on a soft mattress, fresh bandage wrapped around my waist and a full body full of aches. I groaned and pushed myself up and into a sitting position, scrubbing the sleep from my eyes and blinking the blurriness away so I could look around. I was lying on a small bed in the middle of a large open room with timber walls dimly lit by a few light orbs hung along the ceiling. A number of other beds were lined up either side of me. A few men were in the beds nearby, all of them asleep, and I recognised them to be members of the Lycan group I was travelling with.

In the bed next to me, on the opposite side of the other guards, lay Ethan. He was also asleep, but it did not seem restful as he was covered in sweat and twitching periodically and murmuring something I couldn’t make out. I saw his bare shoulder peeking out from the sheet he was covered with, a clean white bandage wrapped around his arm where the arrow had struck him. Between our beds sat a wooden stool with a small bowl of water and some clean rags. I shuffled until my legs swung over the bed, wincing at the twinge from my wound in my side protesting to the movement, and grabbed one of the rags. I dunked it in the water, squeezing the excess back into the bowl, before gently dabbing away the sweat on Ethan’s face with it.

The sound of a door opening behind me made me startle. I turned to see a woman in black pants and a loose grey top walking in carrying a bundle of towels. Her grey streaked hair was pinned up in a tight bun, her face creased with fine lines that showed she laughed and frowned a lot, and a small fire lantern dangling from a clip at her hip. Her eyebrows raised when she saw me sitting up. The woman set the towels down on the nearest bed and strode over to me, the hard soles of her shoes clacking against the floor.

“You’re awake,” she said, grabbing my face with both hands and turning it this way and that with an assessing look on her face. “Do you have any pain or discomfort? Any nausea or dizziness?”

She must be the doctor.

“No ma’am,” I responded. “There’s some pain in my side where the cut is, and my body rightly feels like I was thrown off a bridge, but I don’t feel anything out of the ordinary.”

The doctor didn’t say anything, but started checking the glands under my neck for swelling before moving to taking my pulse at my wrist. Satisfied, she lifted my shirt - a clean shirt that I didn’t recognise - and checked my bandages. After making sure the bandages were secure, she held one finger up in front of me and moved it slowly side to side. I obediently followed her finger with my eyes.

“You seem used to this sort of examination,” the doctor said when she dropped her hand away.

“Yes ma’am, my mother was a nurse.” I explained.

She smiled a little. “Ah that explains it.” She nodded her head towards a door at the other end of the room, not the same one she had entered through. “The other members of your group are camped nearby if you want to go see them. Just don’t do anything too strenuous, you have ten stitches in you and I’d rather not have to stitch you back up so soon.”

I thanked her, gingerly slipping my boots on that had been left at the foot of my bed and walking out the door she’d pointed out. I found myself standing on the cobbled street of what looked like a small village. A few people walking along the street stared when they saw me, but thankfully made no move to stop and talk to me. Dense trees surrounded the village on three sides, while the steep cliff face of a mountain rose up behind the building I’d just exited. Clouds covered the sky overhead and diffused the light of the sun into an ambiguous white-grey, so I wasn’t able to tell what time of day it was. I swiped the messy strands of hair that kept falling onto my face and looked around the village with uncertainty.

Which way am I supposed to go?

“Rowan! You’re awake!” Jayce’s voice called from my right.

I turned to see him trotting down the street towards me, a big grin on his face. I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Yeah, the doc just gave me the all clear to go on a walk. How’s the rest of the group?”

Jayce’s smile dropped from his face when he came to a stop in front of me. “We lost Jacob in the attack,” he began, shoving his hands into his pockets. “As you would have seen in there, Lucas, Chris and Archie survived and should recover soon. So should Ethan, but he’s developed a fever that the doc said should break today.”

I sighed heavily, sadness and guilt tugging at my heart at the mention of Jacob. I had seen him take an arrow to the neck in the attack. I hadn’t spoken to him much in the short period of time I’d known him, but when I had he had been kind, and the idea that I was the reason he had been killed was…unsettling. I’d known the Tarnished would likely be targeting me during the journey, but the reality of it was much harsher than I had realised. I fidgeted with a loose thread hanging from the leg of my pants.

I wish there was a way I could help the injured.

Jayce scratched his neck, eyes shifting either side of us in a suspicious manner that let me know he was checking for any prying ears nearby. Apparently satisfied there was none nearby, he leaned closer to me and lowered his voice.

“Do you think you could, uh, help the guys heal a bit faster?” he asked quietly.

I grimaced. “Well, in theory yes I could. But wouldn’t that be a bit risky?” I asked.

“Would what be risky?” a voice behind us said, causing both me and Jayce to jump almost out of our skins. I whipped around to see Captain Strykar leaning against the side of the hospital building with his arms folded in front of his chest.

Oops, busted. How does such a big guy move around without notice?

“Oh hey Captain,” Jayce said in a forced cheery voice. “We were just..”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Just contemplating how to speed up the healing of our injured men’s wounds? Despite me having told you to keep certain abilities quiet?” the Captain finished, a slight edge to his voice that made me want to wince.

Jayce stuttered for a second. “Uh, well… Yes sir, that’s correct.”

The Captain straightened up from the wall, walking over to stand with us before leaning down closer to me. “Well, could you do it?” he asked.

Jayce and I both blinked up at him. “Sir? You’re not against this?” Jayce asked.

“The longer we stay here, the larger the risk that the Tarnished will set another ambush for us further down the road. Or worse, they may gather a larger group and attack us here, putting the villagers in harm's way,” the Captain explained to us.

I fiddled with a loose strand of my hair. What he said made sense, but I couldn’t help but hesitate since it was very likely that more people would find out about my ability. This warred with the knowledge that the Lycan Guard were putting themselves at risk in order to protect me from the Tarnished, so this was probably not going to be the last time they got hurt on the way to the capital.

“Ok,” I said, my decision made. “I’ll help, but if possible I’d like to make it so only the Lycan guard knows about this”

Captain Strykar nodded. “That can be done,” he said before turning to Jayce. “You can speak to the doctor here and tell her we’ll be taking our men back to our camp.”

“Wait what?! Why me?” Jayce asked, eyes widening a little. The Captain levelled him with a glare, and he lowered his head down. “Yes sir.”

Looking back at me, the Captain raised an eyebrow. “So, what will you need?”

—----------------------------------------------------------------

I sat on a felled tree that had been repurposed into a seat at the Lycan Guard’s camp, stripping the petals from a calendula flower to add to the stone mortar I had sitting next to me. Captain Strykar had stayed with me as I located the ingredients I needed for the herbal paste I was making, stating he would act as my guard lest the Tarnished decide to attack. He now sat near me and watched with interest as I worked.

When I was satisfied with the amount of petals, I picked up the fresh stalks of yarrow and plucked the leaves from them to add them into the pile, then added the thick squishy leaves of aloe to the mortar. Then, I lifted the pestle and began grinding the herbs into a fine paste, holding the mortar still with my other hand. It took some time since I was making quite a large amount, but before long I had a gooey green mess in the bowl.

The Duke stood a little way off, arms folded and heavy frown plastered on his face. He had objected loudly when Jayce had returned with the injured guards, demanding that they be taken back to the hospital to be cared for by a qualified doctor. Captain Strykar had gone and had a hushed argument with him. While I hadn’t heard what was said, it ended with the Duke throwing his hands in the air and shaking his head while saying “fine!”. The other guards members hadn’t said anything, but instead watched on quietly with interested gazes.

“Have you ever done this sort of thing before?” the Captain asked me with a lowered voice.

I glanced up at him as I dug through the saddlebag resting at my foot, fishing out the pouch of medicinal herb seeds I’d stashed in there when we left Windscar.

“Not to this scale,” I replied. “I’ve used this on small cuts me and Mason got when we were younger, but mum and Da always made us limit how much we used it to prevent anyone from getting suspicious about how quickly we’d recover from injuries.”

He hummed, watching as I brought out an echinacea seed and sat it on the exposed soil between us at the base of the log. I channelled magic into it, having the echinacea sprout and grow until it began blooming its cone-shaped purple flowers, while at the same time tweaking it to increase the medicinal properties it possessed. Once it had grown enough, I pulled the plant out and stripped it of its leaves and flowers, setting them into a separate pot I had prepared.

“I thought a plant grown with magic wouldn’t last longer than a day, does that mean the effects of what you’re making will disappear tomorrow?” the Captain asked. I saw his eyebrows were pinched together a little, perhaps with a look of doubt.

“No, it won’t. From what I understand, once this is absorbed by a human body the magic time frame no longer applies. My mother had a theory that this was due to all humans having at least a small amount of magic in them, which is enough to maintain the properties of the herbs, although she hasn’t been able to prove that so far,” I explained.

Captain Strykar lapsed into silence again. Whether I had assuaged his doubts or he was just simply going to wait to see whether I was right, I couldn’t tell. With the metal pot now full of the echinacea parts, I filled the pot with water from the water skin the Captain handed me, before covering it and setting it over the already prepared fire. When the water had been boiling for a few minutes, I carefully lifted the pot out of the fire, placing it aside to ready enough carved timber cups to pass out to all of the Lycan guard in the camp.

When the tea was poured, I stood and stretched my cramped legs, giving the Captain a nod to let him know it was ready. He moved to stand in front of all the guards, clearing his throat to gain their attention.

“Alright, listen up everyone. Rowan here is going to pass out a tea for everyone to drink. She’s also going to put an herbal paste on anyone with a wound. What you see here and what you experience from it, you are not to speak of to anyone, ever. Understood?

All the guards called an ‘aye sir’. The Duke just deepened his scowl, but remained silent. Captain Strykar picked one of the cups of tea and downed it in one gulp, grimacing a little at the taste. He then approached me, sitting back on the log I’d moved to and shifting the collar of his shirt to reveal a long thin cut along his collar bone to the base of his neck where one of the Tarnished had grazed him with a sword. It had been his idea to take the treatment first, as a way to show the other guards this would not lead to any harm to them.

I picked up a glob of the herbal paste out of the mortar with one finger, gently spreading it over the entire cut on the Captain’s skin. His dark beard, having grown quite bushy while we travelled, now almost blended with the hair on his chest that poked out from under his shirt.

Focus woman.

I exhaled, carefully placing my hand over the paste-smeared wound and sending magic into the particles of herbs. The paste glowed a light shade of green, letting me know it was activating, before fading away to show the cut on the Captain’s collarbone once more. As I watched, the cut slowly began to close, shrinking in on itself fast enough that I could see it, although it would still take a few hours before it was gone. The Captain dropped his shirt back into place, turning to face the group of stunned guards. Even the Duke’s face had stopped scowling to drop into an expression of shock.

Someone, I couldn’t see who, said softly “Did she just…”

“Who’s up next?” the Captain asked.

The Lycan guard burst into a flurry of movement and murmured expressions of disbelief as they quickly formed a line to take a cup of tea and sit in front of me and show me their wounds.

“Er, Miss Rowan?” Liam called while looking into his cup of tea. “If that goop you’re putting on us fixes our injuries, what do we need the tea for?”

“Oh, that’s to help with your immunity, flush out any infections that may have entered your body from the injury, and help your body keep up with a more rapid healing rate.” I explained to him, sighing internally that some of the guard had gone back to calling me ‘miss’. “It’s possible that you’d end up suffering from the strain of accelerating the healing, so I’ve made the tea as a countermeasure to that.”

Apparently satisfied, Liam gulped the tea down quickly and joined the line to have his injuries seen to.