The Iron Dagger (The Bard’s Bargain #2)

ONE

Angharad

His hair shone silver in the moonlight, and the blood shone black.

Hara studied the man lying on the forest floor with her knees drawn up against her chest.

Her basket lay forgotten beside her, and Seraphine hesitantly sniffed at the man, her long white whiskers stiff.

Hara had been collecting winter mint by moonlight, enjoying the whispering breeze while Seraphine hunted field mice, her white paws flashing disembodied in the dark.

Then the crashing of heavy footfalls disturbed the peace of the night.

The steps had grown louder and louder, there was a thump, and then silence.

That was when Hara found the man.

He lay sprawled on his stomach, and wispy, wheezing breaths escaped his lips.

One of his boots was missing, and his bare foot looked mangled, as though it had been caught in a trap or a sharp set of teeth.

Hara glanced over her shoulder; the lights of her home winked through the trees, so it would not be a great burden to move him.

She considered leaving him here, wretched and helpless on the ground.

Something terrible had happened to him—whether by human or beast, his own doing or his innocence, she did not know—and she did not want to become involved.

Inviting him into her home would surely attract trouble.

But she could hardly call herself a healer if she left the injured untended on her doorstep, no matter how bothersome it might be.

With a sigh, she gained her feet and gathered up her basket, turning towards her cottage.

She went to her garden and took up her wheelbarrow, dumping out the kindling.

Up the rise she wheeled it, hoping the man was still alive.

It would be troublesome indeed to have a dead man to deal with.

Thankfully he was still wheezing softly when she wheeled the barrow beside him.

His mouth was slightly open, and he made no move when she prodded him on the shoulder.

Seraphine sat beside her, feline eyes clear and shining in the darkness.

Well, what are you waiting for?

“If only you were as strong as you are plump, my sweet,”

Hara said in a strained voice as she hoisted the man’s legs up.

With an almighty heave, she hooked her hands under his arms and settled him in the bowl of the wheelbarrow, his head lolling gracelessly.

Hara lifted the handles and made the slow descent to her cottage.

When she reached the door, she considered the difficulty of maneuvering the wheelbarrow through the narrow doorway, but to her relief it barely cleared the threshold and she was able to move the man into the center of the room.

She set him down, then took a moment to rest her hands on her hips and catch her breath.

She had some wiry strength in her, but she was not accustomed to carting full grown men the distance of a cornfield.

The meager light from the hearth cast the room in shadow, so she stoked the fire and lit a candle with the flames.

Now that she had some light, she could study him properly.

Small, silver loops glinted at his earlobes.

Royalty or close, she guessed.

His dark brows suggested his shock of pale hair was artificially colored.

Streaks of dried blood and vomit stained his hollow cheeks, leaking from lips that were parted and slightly swollen.

If it weren’t for the filth staining the corners, it would be a very pretty mouth, Hara thought.

He had a sort of androgynous handsomeness, his beauty ruined somewhat by the wretched state he was in.

She could see now that vomit soiled the front of his plum colored cape, staining the embroidery at the edges.

Hara glanced at her bed.

Devils take her before she would let this man soil her linens.

She put a full cauldron over the fire, then set about removing his clothing to assess his injuries.

His mangled foot was even more ghastly under the light.

It looked as though it had been caught in a bear trap and viciously yanked free.

Hara swallowed against her suddenly tender stomach.

In all the years she had worked as a healer she had never seen an injury this gruesome.

He did not stir as she removed his other boot, unbuckled a flat leather pouch from around his waist, and undid the buttons on his shirt and trousers.

Mottled purple bruises bloomed across his shoulder, and blood oozed thickly from a nasty gash over his knee.

What on earth had he gotten himself into?

Hara poured some hot water into a basin with soap and gently smoothed a rag over his brow and the filthy corners of his mouth.

She discovered a split lip beneath the dried blood; someone had landed a solid blow across his face.

As Hara worked down his neck and chest, the touch of his skin shocked her.

His flesh burned with fever under her fingertips, and the wet cloth made him shiver as she gently cleaned around his cuts.

At last his wounds were clean, and she worked a lather through his silvery hair.

He stirred slightly when she poured clean water over his scalp, elegant brows furrowing.

To her surprise, he let out a hacking, thick cough that wracked his chest.

Pity welled up in her for this strange man.

Clearly he had been through a life-or-death ordeal, and was ill on top of it all.

Perhaps fate had led him to her.

Hara wheeled him to her bed and tossed away the coverlet.

She heaved his shoulders onto the feather tick and then swung his legs over haphazardly.

Again she stood over him, catching her breath.

She couldn’t just leave him there, naked as a babe.

Hara went to her chest of clothes and rifled through it.

Her late aunt’s ruffled nightie would do.

If he was sick on it, it would be no great loss.

She bunched up the gown and slipped it over his head, shimmying it with difficulty over his wide shoulders and tugging it down his waist.

With a soft grunt she laid him back against the pillows and tucked the blankets around him.

His shivering had lessened, but her work was not finished.

To a mortar and pestle she added honey, cloves, and some garlic.

Then she took out the box of gray powder she kept specially for festered wounds and added a pinch of it to the mix.

Pestle in hand, Hara began to mix and grind the ingredients together, murmuring a spell as she did so.

Her hands soon felt warm, her movements supple as she became lost in the comforting ritual.

Soon the poultice felt ready, and Hara opened her apothecary kit to take out some bandage strips.

Gently, she lifted the sheets away from his injured leg and tucked them aside.

Hara smeared the poultice on his wounds, working the mixture deep into the cuts as she continued to softly sing her spell.

Normally, if the wounds were fresh, she would simply clean them and knit the skin together with a spell.

But these looked as though they were hours old, and his fever worried her.

Infection complicated things.

Closing the wounds now would trap the infection within him.

If her suspicions were right and he had been bitten by an animal, she would have to take care to work the poultice into his cuts every night.

Her powder was designed to fight infection of all kinds, including mad-dog sickness.

This first application was essential: she needed to work the mixture into the open cuts so the medicine could enter his blood.

After she had wrapped the wounds in linen, Hara slipped her hand under his neck to lift his head.

Parting his lips carefully, she tipped a cup of willow-bark tea so that the hot liquid poured into his mouth.

He choked and gagged, spluttering the first mouthful, and then he began to swallow reflexively.

When the mug was drained, Hara laid him back down onto her pillow and felt his brow.

Sweat met her fingers, and his skin was still hot to the touch, but his breathing was a bit easier.

It was deep night now, well past midnight, but Hara barely noticed.

She was accustomed to keeping odd hours; nightmares often kept her wakeful, and work was a welcome distraction.

Hara cleaned up her materials and stowed away the basin.

She barred the door and banked the fire, leaving only the single flame of her candle as a light.

The thought crossed her mind that this strange man could wake and harm her in a fevered delirium.

She was loath to injure him after all her handiwork, but she had no qualms about hurting the stranger if he tried to overpower her.

After a brief hesitation, she tucked a kitchen knife into a shadowed space near the wall.

Hara took out some thick coverlets and laid them on the floor before the hearth.

With a brief glance over her shoulder, she undid the laces of her dress and slipped it from her shoulders.

Hara settled deeply into her makeshift bed while Seraphine crawled onto her stomach and began to knead, purring deeply.

The cat soon curled into a ball in the crook of Hara’s arm, and they both slept, their breaths layered with those of the stranger’s.

The man slept more or less continuously.

He stirred when Hara would bathe him with a rag, and he moaned when she changed the dressings around his foot and his knee, but this was the most activity he displayed.

Sometimes his eyelids would flutter, and he opened them once.

Glassy blue eyes fixed on her face, and his brows furrowed for a moment as he regarded her.

Then his eyes wilted closed and he drifted back to sleep.

Sometimes he was wracked with coughing, especially at night, and Hara would rise sleepily to make him a hot drink, more for her own peace than for his comfort.

She gave him willow tea and honey water mixed with coltsfoot in turns, hoping his fever would break soon.

During the day her routine was much the same, as if her guest was not lying helpless in her bed.

She went into her garden at dawn and caressed her winter herbs, greeting them.

Then she went to her chicken coop and collected eggs, cooing and praising her hens since it was much harder work to lay in the winter.

The earth crunched in frosty crackles underfoot and the wind was biting, but Hara did not mind.

It made the flames in her hearth more merry and her warm meals more comforting.

There was a thin layer of ice in her well in the mornings, but it was easily punched through.

What with the bathings, teas, and extra laundry, she constantly had her large pot filled, and had to make several trips to the well every day.

In finer weather, she usually had a few villagers come by the cottage each day looking for spells or medicines for their ailments.

But in the days after her invalid’s arrival, snows came and drifted against the cottage, softly falling in the night and steadily building throughout the day.

Thankfully, the pregnant women in the village were several months from birth.

She only had one little boy who trudged through the snow on the second day, knocking on her door to ask for a sore-throat syrup for his family.

She mixed the syrup for him while he warmed his hands by the fire, and he hardly glanced at the ill man in the bed.

With all the extra time, she began to take longer walks in the snowy woods.

The energy was different when it snowed, stillness hiding the chaos of the forest floor, and she wanted to experience it.

She collected some of the first snow in a jar to use the water for spellwork.

On the third day, Hara ensured that the man was sleeping soundly, and she set out.

Seraphine perched on her shoulder, knocking the hood of Hara’s cloak askew.

After an hour, Hara found one of her favorite sacred places and knelt in the snow.

The wind seemed to still and the winter woods grew muffled.

Healing was her chosen calling, which had taken years to develop.

The subtle spells, runes, and knowledge of herblore were skills she had to master through study.

But some abilities were not taught.

Idly, she tugged on a dead twig sticking from the snow.

She could transform it into iron, or lead, or gold if she wished.

Her gift of alchemy was a carefully kept secret, one which her mother and aunt had repeatedly warned her never to reveal.

It was not difficult to hide, as she had little cause to use it in her daily life.

But it was Sight that came most easily to her, as intuitive as an extra sense.

She used it as she would use her sense of smell or hearing; always open to the influence, but seldom concentrating on specifics.

Now she was curious.

She wished to know more about the man and his circumstances, and so she did something she rarely did—she felt for his memories.

It was easier to be close or even to touch the subject of her Seeing, but she had spent days caring for him.

His smell, the sound of his breaths, and his touch were all familiar to her now.

Hara closed her eyes and trained her breaths to become low and deep, as though she were floating on water.

The world became muffled, as though her ears had slipped under the surface, and her soul felt free to wander in the space where present and past blurred.

She preferred to enter this space leisurely, allowing influences to pass over and through her, giving what it would.

But this time she felt for the threads of his influence, catching hold.

His men were on both sides, the darkness broken now and then with a desperate cry.

Then their voices faded away one by one, and he became aware of something chasing him.

Suddenly he was cut down mid-stride.

Something caught hold of his foot, and it felt as though a demon’s jaws were clamped upon him.

His boot was torn away, and the beast savaged and mangled his ankle, tearing into sinews until he wrested himself away.

Seraphine meowed loudly, breaking the silence.

With a start, Hara opened her eyes, glancing down at the cat whose tail was twitching impatiently.

Pink and amber clouds streaked overhead as the winter sun began to set.

“Well,”

Hara murmured.

“Thank you for reminding me of your dinnertime.”

With a grunt, she hefted the cat’s considerable bulk over her shoulder. When Hara returned to her cottage, she removed her cloak and gloves, stepped out of her boots, and poured some goat’s milk into a dish for Seraphine. Gods forbid the creature skipped a meal.

“Who are you?”

Hara yelped and turned.

The stranger had awoken at last, and he was fixing her with a cold stare.