Chapter 22 #2
Growling behind Tal precluded a sharp pain at her shoulder.
She cried out and her knees buckled. The animal thrashed Tal around.
The orange wolf joined the fray and latched onto her ankle, pulling her in the other direction.
In a desperate attempt, she concentrated her fury on her shoulder where stinking fur brushed her cheek and teeth ground into bone.
She recalled the training sessions in the tunnel with Faron not so long ago and willed her magic to burst from her shoulder.
It pulled painfully at the fury within her chest. A short stream of flame exploded into the wolf’s face, blasting it backward.
Melted fur and flesh overpowered the mountain air as flames engulfed the unmoving body.
The orange wolf dragged Tal backward, spears of pain blinding her every time it tugged.
She swung her axe, but the beast dodged her attack.
A snarl from the cliff wall above had Tal throwing her axe in front of her face.
Black fur appeared by Tal’s head when a fierce roar drowned the wolf’s snarls, and Pepper stampeded into the fight.
The snarling wolf could only turn before being trampled by the mare’s hooves.
Pepper continued her battle cry as she stomped and kicked her would-be attacker until it was good and dead.
Jaws corrected their grip on her leg, and Tal cried out.
The orange wolf took Tal’s distraction to jump on top of her.
It lunged for her neck and latched onto her axe’s handle.
Her shoulder wanted to give out. Her fury pulsed weakly in her chest. She searched for her magic stores and screamed at the wolf as it snapped and snarled around her weapon.
A painful itch in her throat reminded Tal of the night so many weeks ago by the water with her friends cheering her on.
With her hands barely holding the wolf at bay against her axe, she took a deep breath and released her remaining hold on her fury as she exhaled.
The magic warmed Tal as it exited her body, and a stream of flame shot into the wolf’s mouth and down its throat.
Several moments passed before the animal realized, only too late, it had made a grave error.
It stumbled backwards, snapping at nothing, and then dropped dead onto the ground.
Tal lay bleeding, gasping for breath, and exhausted from the fight. Her chest hollow, her fury quieted. Pepper nuzzled her head. “Thanks for the help.” When the mare nudged her harder, Tal reached up a hand and rubbed her snout. “I’m okay.”
She groaned as she sat up, the sight of the shredded flesh along her leg enough to send a wave of nausea washing over her.
She would need an elixir if she wanted it to heal at all.
The wound would turn green before it ever healed properly on its own.
The injury to her shoulder appeared less gruesome, but by the amount of blood seeping through the bite marks, the wound must have been deeper.
Thanks to her earlier drink, Tal’s pain dulled slightly, but that also meant she would bleed more and couldn’t take any elixir to heal quickly. She cursed herself and the damn ale.
She wrapped her wounds slowly, using her axes to cut her favorite jacket. It was a waste of a perfectly good jacket, and Madge would call it a shoddy job, but it helped to stem the blood flow.
Getting on the horse proved a task in and of itself even when Pepper bent down to help her into the saddle.
Reluctantly, Tal went back through the woods to retrieve the satchel she had dropped at some point in her pursuit as well as the remaining herb for Madge.
She would have abandoned the bounty if she thought the old woman would still help her, but the healer was spiteful.
She would let Tal bleed out on her doorstep if she returned without those herbs.
By the time she turned Pepper homeward, she’d bled through her makeshift bandages and swayed in the saddle, too dizzy to stay upright.
Tal found the clear summer sky and asked the gods to give her a little help just this once.
She needed a miracle if she hoped to survive the amount of blood she would lose over the next few hours.
On the ride back, the aftermath of using her fury and her injuries proved to be too much.
She struggled to stay conscious fearing she would fall off the mare, and by their pace, the ride back would take a full day.
She used the strap from the satchel to secure herself to Pepper’s saddle, and soon lost track of reality as she gave into the darkness.
“Blazing hells! Tal! What happened?!”
Someone yelled at her, but the pounding in her head, the pain in her shoulder, arm, and leg, and the sheer exhaustion pulling at her body won her attention.
“Tal! Wake up! Can you hear me?!”
“Madge,” she groaned. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She needed water.
“You need an elixir. Where aren’t you hurt? Can I carry you?”
Tal let out a pained grunt, and the voice took it as an invitation because suddenly arms pulled her out of the saddle that she had somehow managed to stay seated in. She yelped at the fierce ache in her shoulder.
“Sorry, sorry! Hells, woman, what happened to you? If I had known when you left this morning that you would come back like this, I would have stopped you.”
“This morning?” Her head fell back, and she grimaced. She’d hoped that she would have slept off the time it took for the ale to leave her system. She still had half a day to wait before she could take an elixir to heal her wounds. She groaned again.
“I’m taking you into the palace. We’ll get you an elixir.”
His words and voice finally registered. Faron. Of course it was him. Here he stood, as if he had been waiting for her to come back. “No.” She shook her head. “I need Madge.” Even talking hurt. She wanted to go back to the dark oblivion, but the pain awakened her senses with each breath.
“Don’t be stubborn. You’ve been bleeding for what looks like hours.” When Tal shook her head again, the voice stopped then sighed. “Dammit, Tal. You and that godsdamned ale. I’ll flay Ed and Jens, so help me.”
Had she any energy, Tal would have felt remorse for her part in their coming punishment. Her head pounded within the fog that tried to pull her back into nothingness.
Getting her in a saddle was even more painful the second time. When he climbed up behind her and pulled her into him, Tal inwardly cursed her body for curling into his embrace.
Faron took off at a gallop, apologizing the whole way every time she grunted through the pain.
She wanted to let her anger surface. She wanted to call him a liar, and a bastard, and so many other things, but she was too damn tired to do any of that.
Instead, she remembered what she felt those weeks that he came to the tunnels, and his hold around her middle offered a small comfort.
Once again, they arrived at Madge’s in the middle of the night. This time, Faron didn’t bother waiting outside. He brought the horse to the back, pulled Tal down, and kicked the door in with her in his arms. If she wasn’t trying to stay mad at him, she might have made some suggestive comment.
“Madge!” Faron yelled as he gently deposited Tal on the front table. “Madge, down here! Quick!”
“There’s no need to tell me where you are, you dewberry. There’s only two rooms in this whole house.” The elderly woman walked down the stairs and scowled at her intruders.
“She’s hurt, and she’s had ale. An elixir won’t work.” He stumbled over his own words, his tone frantic.
Tal eyed the noble—king—and thought he might be overreacting. His hands ran through his hair, gripped his neck, then returned to his dark waves. His eyes roamed over her body, his movements growing more agitated by the second. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“You and your cursed elixirs. You barge into my house at all hours of the night, worked up like the woman’s dying, and you insult me by suggesting you would prefer elixirs?
” the healer chastised. “Go and secure your horse before I tell you both to go rot in the river.” She shooed Faron out the door and turned to Tal.
“Now you know why I don’t get my herbs myself. ” She tsked.
“You could have warned me there was a wolf’s den on that mountain,” Tal griped from the table.
Madge lit a candle by the cupboard, then turned back to where Tal lay. “Would you have listened? You’re as stubborn as that boy out there. Ain’t no way anything I say would give you pause. Did you get the herbs at least?”
“In the satchel,” Tal said through clenched teeth. Talking through the pain felt nearly impossible but so did doing much of anything.
The old woman rummaged through the satchel at Tal’s side.
She pulled out a bloodied axe and fixed a stern eye on Tal, then deposited it on the chair by Tal’s leg.
“I’ll bet you went alone, didn’t you?” When Tal didn’t answer, she shook her head.
“You’ve got a fearsome man out there who cares about you, and you are too stubborn to let him help you. ”
Tal sighed. She didn’t come here to be lectured, but she also didn’t have the energy to argue. “He’s the king, you know.”
“Aye, and what of it?”
She turned her head to the woman. “You knew?”
Madge put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “You didn’t?” She tsked again. “Girl, how do you not know who your own king is?”
“Seriously, Madge? The guy never shows his face at the docks; nobody from the palace does. How would I know who he is?”
“That man has been coming to the docks every night for the last two years. Don’t tell me he doesn’t show his face.”
“Really? To do what? Laugh at the poor?”
“To feed them, girl. Have you not seen the baskets he brings every night? Has since the first night.”
“And what is this I hear about you not charging anyone?” She tried to sit up, but Madge pushed her back down. “I can barely afford your prices!”
“I charge what can be afforded. If you didn’t waste your money on the drink, you’d be rolling in gold.”
“Is she going to be alright?” Faron asked from the doorway.
Madge waved a fern at him menacingly. “You bring her here in this state, give me all of ten breaths to wake up, and start making all these demands. King or no, I’ll kick you both out on the street.”
Faron’s face softened. He walked to Tal’s side and saw the axe on the chair. His lips twitched. When he searched Tal’s face, she turned away from him. “What happened?” he asked gently.
Tal swallowed. “Wolves.”
“Wolves? Plural?” He sounded impressed and concerned at the same time.
“They attacked Pepper while she grazed.”
“And let me guess,” Madge said from her cupboard. She was hard at work with rags, herbs, salves, and a mortar and pestle. “You thought you could save the animal against a bunch of born predators.” Tal could see the woman shaking her head. “When will you learn that you’re not invincible?”
“You hired me for a job. How was I supposed to get back without a horse?”
Madge came over to the table and started cleaning Tal’s wounds with a rag dipped in some yellow and green paste in her pestle.
“Sure, use that as your excuse. Damned fool is what you are.” Madge chastised Tal more while she worked.
She complained about the state of Tal’s wounds, how much blood she’d lost, everything she could think of.
Tal began to think that the woman did it to distract her from the pain.
She tensed each time Madge dabbed at her ravaged skin, and the woman set off on another rant.
She tried her best not to make a sound, but occasionally a grunt or whimper slipped past her lips.
When Faron grabbed her hand and squeezed, she squeezed back.
She turned to see his face, finding the expression unreadable.
“Don’t blame them.”
Faron’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“They tried to stop me, and I nearly ran them down.”
“You don’t need to lie for them. Ed has a soft spot for you. It compromises him.” Tal tried to interject, but Faron continued, “It’ll gut him when he hears what happened to you. He and Jens have been gone for hours looking for you.”
She turned her head to the ceiling, swallowing down the emotion that clawed at her throat. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Faron squeezed her hand with both of his.
Tal stared at the shadows flickering along the wooden slat ceiling while Madge tended to her wounds, and Faron drew circles on the back of her hand.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. It wasn’t time for apologies, and Tal was in no condition to accept them.