Chapter 3 #4
It took an inordinately long time for the snow to melt and the water to heat.
He tested it with a finger repeatedly, muttering to himself about trees.
Eventually he had said the word spruce so many times that it no longer had any meaning whatsoever.
Then he got impatient with waiting and took the pot off the fire.
He tried to coax the man to drink, dripping warm water against the dry lips. Most of it went over the Dervish’s thumb and down his arm, and even more went over his patient’s face, but some of it got inside. Probably.
The mule snorted at him.
“What? Do you want water, too?” Shit. She probably did. Water and food and probably to be rubbed down, although he had his doubts that the mule was going to allow him to do that last one.
The mule snorted again.
“Fine, fine. I get the hint, all right?” He filled the pot with more snow. “Err, good girl?”
The look in the mule’s eye indicated that she was not susceptible to flattery.
“You still can leave, you know,” he said.
“You’re not tied to anything. You can go wander around the road and find somebody else to belong to.
” (Normally he would never have considered abandoning an animal, but since he had apparently wound up with an injured human, he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage both.
Also it was a mule.) “There’s probably grass out there somewhere.
” It was early spring, he guessed, by the tiny buds on some of the trees—which might or might not have been willows—and there had been bits of green between patches of snow, even if the air was dry enough to make the inside of his nose ache.
Mules could eat things that would baffle a horse, couldn’t they?
Donkeys could, anyway, and a mule was clearly a cross between a donkey and a spawn of the pit masquerading as a horse.
The mule did not leave. Perhaps the fire was better than nothing, or perhaps she was simply waiting for him to give her food. The Dervish seriously doubted that it was loyalty to her master. He found something in the saddlebags that looked like grain and dumped a portion out on the ground.
She looked at it, then him, then back at it.
“I am not putting that shit on a plate for you. Eat it or don’t. I’ve got an injured man to deal with.”
The mule gave a vast sigh and lowered her head to the grain. The Dervish went to collect more snow.
He sponged the man’s scalp wound clean, waking a sluggish trickle of blood, but at least it wasn’t gushing. That was a good sign. Unless it meant he didn’t have enough blood to gush, in which case it was a bad sign.
See, this is why nobody ever put me in charge of the wounded.
The Dervish drank the rest of the hot water and sighed, leaning his forehead against his hands. Now what?
He himself would not start to feel the effects of hunger for a day or two.
The man would not be so fortunate. And I cannot go for help unless help is only a quarter mile away …
and I don’t dare go that far, for fear of misjudging the distance and ending up back in the sword with no one to draw it.
Then he’ll die anyway and I’ll have wasted my chance.
The Dervish grimaced. The enchantment had, in some ways, been very thorough.
He built up the fire and melted more snow and gave it to the mule, who made it clear that the gift did not improve her opinion of him.
For lack of anything better to do, he stripped off the man’s gloves. Several of his fingers were stained with ink. A scribe? That would make sense, given all the books. Or a scholar, perhaps.
He curled his fingers around the scholar’s wrist and found the pulse strong and steady under his thumb. There. Even I can’t miss that.
It had been a long time since he had actually fallen asleep, instead of simply going back into the sword. The weariness crept up on him and he dozed off, sitting up, with the man’s pulse beating against his hand.
He dreamed. Of course he dreamed. Inside the sword he dreamed in silver, and it had seemed that he had dreamed for a very long time since the last wielder. But the dreams of the sword were different from the dreams of a sleeping mind, and he could never remember them afterward.
The Dervish stood and a net dropped over him. He struggled and dropped flat. Chains snapped over his ankles and his wrists and he could not fight against the one who chained him.
He was on the great stone table with the markings and the manacles. Face down, this time. The voice of the wielder hissed, in his ear, “I will understand! I will!” Cold as despair along his spine, the touch of steel …
The Dervish screamed.
He jerked awake, his own shout ringing in his ears. Something silver had grabbed him, something with the metallic taste of the sword’s magic. He looked down, feeling his hand cramping, and realized that it was locked around the scholar’s wrist.
I was gripping too tight in my dream. The sword seized my muscles to keep me from harming my wielder.
The Dervish shoved the man’s hand away and jumped to his feet. He needed to move, to remember that he was not chained. Some part of him was still trapped under the net, still on the stone table, and it drove him to pacing, back and forth, like a dog on a …
… chain.
Damn you, he thought at the unconscious man. Damn you. I am bound here to you and I cannot leave. Damn you for the last chain. I should have let you die.