From the North Downs: Chapter VI

Ketilve squirmed as Alf Grimble examined her arm. "Should be healed up within a few days." He patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. "Just take some of this healing draught and you'll be right as rain." 

He filled a vial with an opaque red liquid and handed it to her. "When you begin to feel pain take some of this. If you start to feel nausea then you come back to me." 

The girl accepted the vial with a murmur of thanks, gingerly carrying it in both hands as she exited the physician's home. Jesmond was waiting outside, holding a still wailing babe. The infant's older sister had ceased crying and now clung to the older woman's legs sullenly, though tears still seeped from brown eyes and down a dirt-stained face. 

"We have a room at the inn." Jesmond informed her daughter quickly, raising her voice to be heard over the unhappy shrieks. "We will all have to share, I'm afraid there wasn't more room with all the refugees from Annundir pouring into the town." 

"Lucky." Ketilve offered a shaky smile. "It's lucky so many escaped after the ambush." 

Jesmond nodded, hefting the infant onto one hip. "Aye. I intend to see if we can't find Harrold Crane." She glanced pityingly upon the babe in her arms. "He'll be wanting his children back." 

She didn't say aloud her fears that he, too, had fallen to the Orcs. Her own three were proof enough that she would gladly foster children who had lost their parents, but she would prefer if Harrold were alive and able to care for his own two daughters. 

Ketilve licked her lips, the lines around her blue eyes crinkling with the same worry her mother felt. "Would you show me to our room, first? I don't fancy hauling my medicine about all over the town."