Title: Poor defences
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: PG
Length: 1500 words
Content notes: Aftermath of a battle, various wounded people.
Author notes: Leaning hard towards Clef/Umi. Set in my medieval!au, while Emeraude is Queen and Cephiro is at war with, er, pretty much everyone.
Summary:
If he had not looked at the right moment to witness it happening, Clef would probably have believed Umi when, after the skirmish, she grinned about the tent full of the Queen's commanders and claimed she had taken no harm.

oOo

If he had not looked at the right moment to witness it happening, Clef would probably have believed Umi when, after the skirmish, she grinned about the tent full of the Queen's commanders and claimed she had taken no harm. He stayed close but silent as Emeraude heard them all report, and as the healers and anyone else who had the use of both hands and knew how to tie a bandage started to move through the group and usher out those with injuries. Both Umi's friends were among those being led away, Fuu having taken a fierce blow to the shoulder which had dented her armour severely, and Hikaru with blood flowing still from a wound on her forehead, though she still smiled below it.

But when Umi turned and left - the slightest faltering of her step unnoticed by their preoccupied friends - he followed her from the pavilion and stepped out beside her as she made her way back through the camp.

"Are you going to let me call a healer, or must I bandage you up myself?" he asked, quietly.

Umi shot a look at him, one hand reflexively reaching down to make sure the mail coat she wore still extended down over her thigh. She winced as soon as she had done it, knowing full well it was confirmation to him that she was injured. Still she insisted on smiling as though naught were wrong. "Did someone strike you upon the head like they did Hikaru? You seem to be talking of nonsense. Perhaps I should summon someone to attend to you-"

Clef grasped her arm just above the elbow, grip mostly hidden by the drape of their cloaks, and marched her grimly on. She made a pained hiss at the speed, but slowing would almost certainly leave them shouting at each other in the centre of the camp, and she must know it as well as he; she did not protest further. There were too many here injured and in need of their rest for any distracting dramatics to be welcomed.

He pulled her to his own tent, not the one the three girls shared, and pulled the doorflap down behind them. "I saw the cut land under your mail, as you turned Quicksilver," he hissed. "How did you lose your chausses? You had them on when I first saw you today, not mere hose and boots!!

For a moment longer, she stood and glared at him, then she wobbled and sat down abruptly as her leg ave way. Clef sighed, thanking his foresight to stop her by his cot - her fall was neither so hard nor so far as it might have been, and there was a screen to hide them momentarily from any who might come to find him.

Umi took a deep breath. "There was another woman in your colours who had already taken several blows to the legs, and had no mail to cover them - I insisted that she trade me for them, as she was fighting on foot, and at least I was mounted."

"Mounted, and therefore exposing your legs more readily to all the weapons of the enemy," Clef scolded, but the only strength to the words was the worry in them. "Will you not let me send for someone?"

"It isn't much," Umi told him, looking down at the trampled grass below them. "I do not want to take the healers from those who need them, just for a little cut."

Her voice was rough, and her hands were fists on her knees; Clef sighed. The cried of the injured reached them through the cloth of the tent, from every side; she was right that the healers were needed elsewhere. It had been a bad fight. He knew as well that there were many among the wider army who did not trust these strangers who had appeared from nowhere and won the Queen's trust.

He knelt down before Umi, his armour clinking as he reached the ground as he took her hands in his own, looking up into her wide-eyed startlement. "...If you will not allow learned assistance... will you at least accept my help? The smallest wound may yet fester. And it was no small blow I saw."

Her breath caught, hands tightening on his, and he knew what would be thought if this came to light. If it were only his reputation at stake, not hers, he would not have cared - but for hers he asked softly, voice pitched not to carry to any listeners outside.

"I lost you once. I do not wish to do so again, for anything I my prevent. ...Please, my lady. I give you my word I mean no dishonour."

She took a breath, and then another, and nodded. Strands of hair fell about her face as she looked away from him, and took her hands back to move her hauberk to the side, exposing the quilted hose she wore below.

There was a single slice through the fabric, stained dark red about the edges with the seeping blood, wisps of the layered woolen padding poking out from torn fabric. The cut was the length of Clef's palm, and he drew a breath, bit down on his curse.

"Are these tied on?" he asked, one hand hovering over her knee, all thought of propriety lost in the worry over how much blood could be soaking into that wool. "Or we can cut the hose here, but -"

"I can untie that leg," Umi told him, voice wavering.

Clef looked up to find her flushing badly, her gaze on his hands as he touched her. He bolted up, and away, turning to stare at the heavy cloth of the tent. "Good," he said, voice cracking. "Good. ...And you need not-" bare your whole leg, his brain finished, but he could not get the words from his mouth. Which was probably for the best.

There was a gentle rushing chinking sound of Umi's mail moving, and some rustling, and he held very still as she hissed in what sounded like pain.

"You may turn back," she said, after a moment.

"Are you certain?" Clef said, a little wildly. "Perhaps I should find a practitioner after all -"

"Clef," she said, and it was the sudden amusement in her voice as much as the use of his name which had him turning. One long stretch of blood-streaked skin was now bare, the left leg of her hose pushed down to her knee, her shirt spilling out over the top of it from under the mail that spilled down from her hips. The cut was slightly less long than he had feared, but jagged at one end, and blood still trickled down from it with a wet gleam. "You will not be much use to me over there," she told him, voice - for her - almost soft.

With a final shuddering breath, Clef made himself move. First to collect the spirits and strips of cloth which waited in the chest by his bed for this type of eventuality - though usually for use on himself, not another - and then to kneel back by Umi's feet.

Her skin was warm under his hands, as he cleaned away the wisps of wool and cloth which had been gummed to her leg with drying blood. She only flinched a little, even with his fumbling doctoring, and he had received treatment enough times he knew well which small bottle he should use to soak a piece of linen and wrap it with, bandage over the top to keep it in place.

"It should knit swiftly and well, with this," he muttered. "Though you will want to redo the bandaging often -"

"I know how to treat a cut," Umi said, her hand settling over his as he fiddled with the lumpy knot he had tied. "Thank you."

He looked at her, feeling far too serious. The cut, this cut, would heal... But the war was far from over. It was barely two months since she had sworn to the Queen's service, and they must have seen fighting most weeks since.

"Take better care of yourself, next time. And keep your armour on! That is all the thanks I require." They stared at each other in the quiet for a long moment, neither stirring - then there was a long whinnying of a horse being led by the tent flap, and Clef stood so fast that his vision darkened and it was a battle not to sway. "Should you avoid hurting yourself, you will also avoid my poor attempts at assistance, so really you must do better from now on. ...If you will excuse me, I will go see to my people, I am sure we will meet this evening when the Queen calls in her commanders."

Not looking back, he ducked out of the tent - his tent - and away into the cooling air to see what had become of his forces that day - and to find a set of replacement chausses that might fit Umi, before she could find some new fight still only half protected.