Chapter Seventeen #3
Lara took another swig of wine and
gave him one. Then she poured some wine over the open wound,
flinching along with Talon as she did so.
“I am sorry for this,” she
said as she pulled the blade from the fire. Swiping the sweat from
her brow, she pressed the glowing red tip to the hole in his
thigh.
“Bloody hell.” His entire
body went rigid, then limp.
He’d passed out again, which was just
as well as Lara had to repeat the process several times until the
blood only seeped from the charred hole. Her eyes stung from the
smoke, and she choked on the stench of burning flesh as she placed
several squares of linen over the wound and wrapped two strips
tight around his thigh, pulled the blanket up over his legs, then
sat back and gathered her courage for what she had to do
next.
She propped the saddle up against his
shoulders, called Wolf over, and had him lie down over Talon’s
legs.
“Stay.”
Wolf laid his head on his front paws,
watching intently as Lara poured wine over the wound in Talon’s
side, then grabbed the shaft of the arrow and heaved. His body
stiffened and jerked as she pulled the arrow out, but he never
regained consciousness. Lara checked the shaft and arrowhead for
any missing pieces and, not finding any, drank another swallow of
wine and poured more over the hole in his side. She cauterized the
wound with the blue-hot knife blade, his twitches and moans as
comforting and concerning as the dark blood still seeping from the
wound.
Rolling him back and forth, she
managed to wrap strips of linen around his waist to keep the pads
of linen she’d pressed to his wound in place and maintain pressure,
breaking into a sweat with the effort. Both wounds were on his
right side, so she kept him lying on his left. He’d bled too hard
for too long: he couldn’t afford to lose much more.
His skin was cold and clammy as Lara
laid the horse blanket over him. She propped the Black’s saddle up
against his back and had Wolf lie next to his chest and belly, then
she banked the fire and approached the horses. Fulrad’s bay
wouldn’t let her near him, but the other three let her strip them
of their gear, leaving their bridles and reins on them. She laid
their saddle blankets over Talon and took stock, talking to the
horses and Wolf and Talon. She’d known too many people returned
from the hinterlands of death who’d spoken of hearing their loved
ones’ voices through the veil of consciousness. Voices they’d
fought to stay connected with.
“We have a rope, a pair of
leather gloves, three flints, another full skin of wine, five short
swords, two longswords, and a bow and almost full quiver of arrows,
along with three more saddles.” She looked up the mountain’s side.
“We’re halfway between Oloron and the Hollow, but if Lothair lives,
he’s between us and Oloron, and we can’t chance running into him,
even with you to fight him off, Wolf.” She took a swig of wine from
the half-empty skin. “We’ll go to the Hollow. Hole up there, where
I can tend to Talon in safety and peace.” She sized up Talon, who
weighed twice what she did and was in no condition to ride. The
Black lowered his head to sniff and blow in Talon’s hair, his reins
dangling. Lara sat up straight. “If I could find two poles long and
sturdy enough, I could use the rope and reins and make a litter to
pull him up the mountain.” She grinned at the horses. “Sound like a
plan to you?”
The yips and snarls of wild animals
from the woods told Lara the men’s bodies had been found. It would
be chancing attack by a predator if she went into the woods now.
She’d wait until daylight to search for poles. In the meantime, she
removed the reins from the Black and the other three horses, packed
her meager supplies into the Black’s saddlebags, and set the
saddles several feet from Talon’s back as a wind break.
She took a good draught of wine and
dribbled a little onto Talon’s lips, breathing a sigh of relief as
he swallowed.
“Lie down, Wolf,” she
said, patting the ground in front of Talon, who instinctively
sought the dog’s heat.
Then she climbed under the blankets
and curled herself around Talon’s back, her nose burrowed into the
nape of his neck.
She woke to a sky as gray as Talon’s
eyes staring listlessly into nothing, and she quickly laid her
fingers on his neck, her heart stopping until she felt his pulse
beneath her fingers, thin and weak, but there. She placed a hand on
his brow and swore. “Damn you, Lothair.” A fever had taken hold of
Talon during the night, and she had nothing to treat it with here.
She had to get him to the Hollow.
She used the dead man’s longsword to
cut her poles, and had the leather strips lashed between them by
early morn. Then she saddled the Black and hid the other saddles in
the woods. She took a drink of wine, its warmth spreading through
her limbs, and dosed Talon with as much, or as little, as he would
swallow. Then she pulled him by one blanket onto the litter,
covered him with the other, tied him down with what was left of the
reins, and rigged the litter to the Black’s saddle with the
rope.
“Well then,” she said to
the horses jostling for position in their new herd. “We’ve got the
better part of four leagues to go.” She gazed down at Talon, His
face was ashen but for his fever-flushed cheeks. “And the sooner we
get there, the better.” She gave the meadow one last look, making
sure there was nothing left to tell of their presence.
“Let’s hope if Wolf didn’t
kill Lothair outright, he at least bloodied him something fierce,
causing him to run home to lick his wounds. And that his snake of a
master will sit and wait to see what’s become of us rather than
come looking.”