20. Chapter 20
The desperate plea for help struck Isla like a blow to the chest. She whirled, eyes seeking the owner of the guttural voice.
A man in his later years limped heavily into the town from the forest’s edge, trailing a significant amount of blood in his wake. His arm hung oddly, the limb too straight and shoulder too low. His tunic was soaked in a deep red.
Isla ran.
She reached him just as he dropped to his knees, wheezing breathlessly.
His face was ashen, and now that she was closer, Isla could see the tunic and flesh beneath torn open in three equally spaced slashes that stretched from the right side of his collar bone to his left shoulder.
A memory of the claw marks they’d spotted gouged impossibly deep into an ancient fir at the turnoff for Brackenford flashed through Isla’s mind and she swallowed.
Beside her, Vaelin had grown still, waves of tension rolling off of him, and she knew he was making the same connection she had.
Isla eased the man onto his back as he howled in pain. “What happened?” she demanded.
“We went hunting - five of us. We were attacked by some great wolf, black as night. Impossibly huge. My son!” He tried to lurch into a seated position, pointing at the trail opening with his good arm. Isla pressed a hand to his uninjured shoulder, gentle but firm.
“Easy,” she murmured, eyes roving over what she could see of the torn flesh beneath the blood and torn fabric. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“My son!” he said again, ignoring her, his eyes blown wide with adrenaline. “He’s still out there! He’s only 18 — it was his first hunt.”
“Where are the others? You said there were five of you?” Isla asked.
Sweat drenched the man’s forehead and neck, his pulse beating rapidly in his neck.
She needed to stabilize him, and fast. Vaguely, she was aware of Carin and Mara arriving with a makeshift stretcher, drawn out of the cottage by the man’s wails.
The man’s eyes snapped to Isla’s, “Dead,” he rasped.
“But my son, he was knocked unconscious. He could still be alive! I couldn’t carry him back — my arm,” his words ended in an abrupt groan as a wave of pain seemed to shoot through him.
Isla’s gut roiled at the man’s words. So many dead... from a single wolf?
“You said it was a wolf?” Vaelin’s voice came from above and behind her, as though he’d read her mind. She glanced to where he stood, tension still threaded through his body, knuckles white where he gripped the pommel of his sword.
“Aye, the biggest wolf I ever saw, with great red eyes,” the man panted, groaning. “It came out of nowhere.”
Isla watched as Vaelin flinched, and anxiety tightened her throat as she asked, “Shifters? This far from the border?”
Vaelin grunted a nonresponse, lifting his eyes to the trailhead.
“Please,” the man’s voice came out as a croak, and Isla turned her eyes back to her patient, eyes sympathetic. “My son-” he pleaded.
“I’ll find him,” Vaelin said, his voice thrumming with danger.
Isla’s gaze snapped back to him, her chest tightening in alarm. If the wolf had done this much damage to a group of five, how could he possibly expect to get in and out unscathed? He held her gaze, eyes stony with resolve as a beat passed between them. Her heart beat hard against her chest.
“I’ll find him,” he repeated quietly.
Before she could argue, he had turned on his heel and stalked toward the trail, his blade singing as he drew it from its scabbard.
Isla watched him disappear down the trailhead, swallowed by the trees.
Isla rolled her sleeves up. They had laid the patient one of the beds, the sheets already soaked through with red.
He had writhed in pain as they’d moved him, having finally slipped into unconsciousness a few minutes ago, likely from blood loss.
Now, only the sounds of his laboured breathing and tearing fabric filled the room as Isla cut away the remaining scraps of his blood-soaked tunic.
As gently as possible, she cleaned the blood away from the gaping wound using the basin of clean water and rag Carin had provided.
The blood leaked steadily from the gashes, but didn’t pulse.
He’d been lucky — the slashes hadn’t hit an artery.
Undoubtedly, countless nerves had been severed — a blessing in disguise, as the loss of feeling had likely saved him at least a small amount of pain.
She suspected it had been the combination of adrenaline and desperation to get his son to safety that had kept him conscious for so long.
“A portion of the collar bone broken, crushed it looks like,” Isla murmured as she peered at the white bone and thick, fibrous tendons clearly visible through the gaping wounds. “At least one torn tendon. He’ll be lucky to have full use of the arm again.”
Isla stood as Carin moved to take her place, supplies for stitching the wounds in hand. She wiped the blood from her hands with a rag, moving back into the main room of the cottage.
The cottage door slammed open and Vaelin stepped over the threshold, a young man in his arms. Everything was red. Isla’s eyes widened as they scanned the boy and Vaelin, her heartbeat hammering in her ears as she took in the red that drenched the fae’s tunic and leather jerkin.
“Not mine,” he grunted, his eyes meeting Isla’s. The wave of relief she felt surprised her, but she ignored it, moving to the boy’s side as Vaelin set him down on the kitchen table. Blood dripped onto the wooden floorboards.
“Where is he injured?” Isla asked, eyes scanning the boy.
“Where is he not?” Vaelin replied.
Isla met his eyes again, noticing the weight there.
The sympathy. She tore her eyes from his as she turned to watch Mara inspect the boy for wounds.
He looked like he had fallen into a large basin of red paint, every inch of his clothing dark.
Mara tore open the shredded tunic, cursing.
Isla’s throat threatened to close as she took in the state of the boy’s abdomen.
If his father’s wounds had been deep, his were catastrophic.
Twin claw strikes carved open his chest and lower belly, blood flowing freely from each.
His left arm hung twisted at an angle that was all wrong, the opposite leg swollen to twice its normal size beneath the knee.
Bruising covered every inch of the boy’s brown skin where Mara wiped away the blood.
On his side, where there should have be flesh and muscle, a hole gaped, flashes of a white rib bone visible beneath the blood.
Isla’s eyes snagged suddenly on the boy’s lower abdomen, where the muscles around his rib cage sucked inward with each breath.
Reflexively, she lurched for the closest piece of fabric, applying immediate pressure to the wound as her own pulse hammered in her throat.
She watched the older woman feel for the boy’s thready pulse, two fingers pressed gently to his neck.
She sighed, gingerly pushing the boy’s damp, tangled hair out of his face and sat back on her heels, face carved with grief.
Isla felt herself shaking her head before the other healer had even looked up at her.
Her eyes traced the lines of his face — not quite as soft as they had likely been in childhood, but not yet carved as sharply as they’d be within the next few years, when he grew into a man.
She saw Cael in the curve of his jaw, the light dusting of stubble that had likely just begun to grow.
Her stomach clenched so hard it hurt, and she gritted her teeth.
“We need to stabilize him,” Isla insisted, her voice steady despite her terror.
Mara looked at her with a heavy sympathy. “There’s nothing to be done, I’m afraid.”
Isla flinched as the memory of Vera’s keening cries crashed through her mind, images of Neve’s dead, unseeing eyes rising, unbidden. She curled her shaking hands into fists. “No,” she growled.
Mara looked at her the way a parent would regard a child with an impossible dream. “I’m sorry dear, he’s beyond our help.”
“We - I have to try,” Isla argued, her voice raw as she pleaded with the aged healer, begging her to understand. She could not lose another child. Mara met her eyes, her expression heavy with understanding. She knew the weight of these losses. Isla loosed a breath as the woman nodded, silently.
“What do you need?” Vaelin’s low, steady voice drifted over Isla’s shoulder as he stepped out of the shadows, still drenched in the boy’s blood.
Her breath hitched for a moment, and then she swallowed, nodding shortly.
She felt a cool calm descend over her as she settled into the role she lived and breathed, jaw set in determination.
“I need you to get that fire hotter and heat that poker — I’ll need to cauterize.
” She paused just long enough to see him nod curtly, a controlled burst of wind already fanning the flames of the fire that warmed the cottage, before turning her attention to Mara.
“I need clean, boiling water. As much fabric for packing as you can afford.” She called over her shoulder, “Carin, as soon as you’re done with those stitches, I need you here. ”
Still applying pressure, she scanned the remainder of the boy’s wounds more closely, her brain cataloguing each with clinical precision.
The sucking chest wound was the greatest danger — they would need to disinfect it, pack it, and pray the swipe hadn’t punctured a lung.
The bleeding from the other abdominal wounds was egregious, but not life-threatening, as long as they staunched it quickly.
Her eyes flashed over his twisted arm — painful, and in need of resetting and splinting, but not the priority.
Vaguely, she was aware of Carin appearing by her side, a shaking hand covering her mouth, “Gods,” she whispered, her voice strained.