Then without looking as he walked off into the House, Master Rababull said, "Take him away!"
Behind Master Rababull, Prut called briskly for several of his men to come and pick up Habrunt.
Si'Wren, unharmed, waited until Master Rababull had finally departed, and hastened to follow the bearers of Habrunt. She avoided the scornful jeers of the other slaves, who were still too fearful to do anything to her. When she arrived at the bungalow where they had taken him, Si'Wren mourned at the sight of Habrunt lying unconscious on his stomach upon the very same blood-stained litter which she had been given for a sleeping rack during her convalescence.
Habrunt's entire body was in ruins, covered in a maze of criss-crossed wounds and caked with blood both dried and oozing. If he did not die first before the night was out, he would still almost certainly be crippled for life from wounds like that, if only by the very number of them. The underlying muscle, and not the skin only, had been slashed innumerable times by the cruel bite of the bull whip.
"Come!" said old L'acoci, her wizened eyes beckoning to Si'Wren urgently. "We have only a little borage tea, such as this one treated you with before. It can work it's own miracles, but in his case, I fear—"
Ominously, she did not finish her sentence.
Si'Wren was determined to do her utmost to try to help old L'acoci, and set immediately to work as she began to gently bathe Habrunt's wounds with the simple herb tea, which was all she had since being banished from the spice tent. She began dipping it up into successive pads of old rag-weave pasted with lard, and layering it onto Habrunt's ravaged skin and flesh before finally wrapping him up in dandelion leaves and covering it over with a bandage of coarse burr lap.
* * *
Later that same day, a messenger came riding his horse at a full gallop through the front gates and sending stray chickens and goats scattering madly for their lives in all directions as he lurched his snorting horse to a stop directly before the front steps of the House.
He flew from his saddle before the foam-flecked charger had fully stopped and pounded up the steps two and three at a time at a dead run.