East

"She is already helping me with my younger ones," Suvdin said. "Ghoajin returns at night. If you do, will you come to see me?"

Carrying plague germs? I wasn't certain how half the camp didn't have the Black Death, if someone was going between the two points. "Sure," I said, not really concerned if I meant it or not. I had no intention of leaving Batu's side.

Too distracted by what lay before me, I left Suvdin without a farewell and headed toward the tent.

Its scent - of death and decay - reached me before I was close enough to dismount. I covered my lower face with one of the rags in the supplies and stopped outside the tent when I was close enough.

I had no medical training or sense. At all. I may have taken a first aid class at some point, but I didn't think applying a tourniquet or CPR was going to fix the plague. There was general medical knowledge I possessed that was possibly rare here: the need to wash my hands, how a virus or bacterial infection was transmitted, how to help regulate a fever …

I hoped … prayed … it was enough to make a difference. Leaving the horses, I opened the tent and almost threw up. The scent of refuse, vomit and sickness was strong. Ghoajin had tried to clean up, but she was too frail for the amount of maintenance an operation like this required.

There were three men within, each on a pallet with a bucket or two beside him where he could throw up or use the restroom. From the looks of it, one of them had given up or the bucket was full, because the area beside his bed was soaked with what looked like blood and food he'd vomited.

A fire burned in the center of the tent, and there were four tables and a bed present. I swallowed hard as I looked at two of the men, who appeared to be in advanced stages of illness.

"What do you do, Goddess?" Batu asked from the third pallet.

In twenty-four hours, he had gone from the strongest man I knew to someone who looked quite sickly. His face was flushed, his gaze unfocused and fevered, and he struggled to sit.

"Lie still," I told him and hurried to his side. I dropped to my knees.

Where he had once been the epitome of intimidating, I was able to keep him on his back with one hand pressed to his chest.

The change in him, the sight of his weakness, threw my thoughts into a tailspin.

Not Batu. I couldn't be here only to lose someone again. While true I barely knew him, he had voluntarily and without a second thought risked his life for mine on more than one occasion. Whatever I thought of his ear-collecting warrior duties, I also knew his lack of hesitation to place himself between me and danger spoke volumes about the kind of person he was.