Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Blood in the Snow
Death Denied
Men burst from the trees on both sides of the path. Arrows came with them.
“Shields!” Seger roared.
The command was barely out before Dravic twisted his body around Adira and dragged her hard against his chest. An arrow struck the shield of the warrior beside them with a crack that sent a jolt through her.
Adira flinched, sounds crashing around her.
Horses screamed, men shouted, and steel rang against steel. The quiet world she had known all her life vanished beneath a terrifying rush of noise she could neither escape nor shut out.
She clapped her hands over her ears.
Dravic saw, but there was no time to spare it thought. He swung down from his horse, dragging Adira with him as another arrow flew past. His boots hit the ground, and he caught her around the waist before her feet could find their balance.
“Stay with me!”
She heard his every word and was grateful to hear it through the chaos.
A man rushed toward them.
Dravic shoved Adira behind him and drew his sword in the same motion. The attacker’s blade never reached him. Dravic drove his sword through the man’s chest, yanked it free and turned as another came at him.
Adira stumbled backward. She had seen the king fight before, but never had she heard him fight. The violent clash of blades made her recoil. She heard the grunt of a man struck in the stomach, a cry of pain somewhere behind her, the terrible scream of a wounded horse.
It was all too much. Sound had been a gift only moments ago. Now it terrified her.
“Adira!”
Her head snapped up and her eyes met Dravic’s.
For one brief instant, surprise flickered in them.
She caught the rise of a blade near his side. Her eyes widened in terror as she pointed frantically.
Dravic turned and caught the blow with his sword.
“Close around the king!” Seger shouted.
Warriors fought their way toward them, tightening the circle as attackers continued pouring from the trees.
Dravic caught Adira’s arm and pulled her behind him again. “Do not leave me.”
She didn’t need to hear the command to understand it. His grip and the look he gave her said enough. But she had heard it. And despite the chaos, despite the fear pounding through her, those four words lodged themselves firmly in her heart.
She had no intention of leaving him.
Dravic met the next attacker with a fury that sent the man staggering backward. He gave him no opportunity to recover. One powerful sweep of his sword knocked the man’s weapon aside and the next ended the fight.
Another attacker replaced him, then another and another.
There were too many.
Adira searched desperately around them. The king’s men were holding their ground, but the attackers had the advantage of the forest. They appeared between trees, struck and retreated, only for others to take their place.
Who were they?
They wore no colors she recognized, nothing that marked them as belonging to a clan or lord.
A cry drew her attention.
She saw Cadby pulled from his horse and was fighting two men at once. He drove his shoulder into one, sending him stumbling, then turned his sword on the other.
Adira lost sight of him when a horse reared between them. The animal’s scream pierced straight through her.
She barely squeezed her eyes shut when a hand seized her arm.
Adira gasped and opened her eyes. It wasn’t Dravic.
With a rough yank, he dragged her toward him. She fought immediately, twisting and striking at his hand, but he tightened his grip.
Dravic saw and he let out a roar of fury as he easily cut down three men in his path to get to her.
The attacker spotted him and quickly released Adira and fled into the fighting.
Dravic caught her against him. “I told you to stay with me.”
Adira stared at him. Even furious, even with men fighting and dying around them, fear for her filled his eyes.
She hastily responded, grabbing hold of his hand and moving closer to him.
His hand closed around hers. “I will not lose you.”
She stared, the words a precious gift, but hearing him say it, a true blessing.
“My king!”
Dravic turned at Seger’s shout.
Three men were coming at them. He pushed Adira behind him, returning to the battle.
The fighting seemed to go on forever, though Adira knew it could not have been long. Slowly, the king’s warriors gained the advantage. Fewer attackers emerged from the trees. Several fled when they saw their companions falling more quickly.
“Don’t let them escape!” Dravic ordered.
Some of his men broke away in pursuit, the rest continued fighting.
Adira’s breathing came fast. She could still hear everything, but the terrible confusion of sound had begun to separate. She could distinguish the ring of swords from men’s voices now. She could hear Dravic breathing heavily as he fought only a few feet away.
Then she heard something behind her, a rush of footsteps.
Adira turned.
A man barreled toward her. She saw his face only briefly before he slammed both hands into her.
The force sent her stumbling backward. Her boot got snagged on something beneath the snow. She fell back with force and pain exploded through the back of her head when it struck the trunk of a tree.
Stunned, her body sank, her bottom hitting the snow-covered ground.
Then Dravic was suddenly there. She did not see him cross the distance between them. One moment the attacker stood over her and the next… he was gone, Dravic standing there.
He dropped his blood-covered sword and crouched beside Adira, his hands going to her face. “Adira.”
She heard him, though his voice seemed farther away now.
Her eyes fluttered, trying to clear her vision.
“Look at me.”
She did, though his face was fuzzy.
Relief flashed across his face, but it disappeared quickly beneath concern. His fingers moved carefully over the back of her head.
Adira winced when he found the tender spot.
“No blood.”
She heard that too.
Dravic slipped his hand beneath her chin, turning her face one way and then the other as he studied her eyes.
“You stay right here,” he ordered as he helped her sit more securely against the broad tree trunk.
Dravic looked toward his men, then back at her, plainly torn between his responsibility to them and his refusal to leave her. The fighting was nearly over, but he still had a duty.
“Fiora!” Dravic roared.
The fairy sped through the fighting, ducking and darting her way to Dravic.
“Stay with her,” Dravic commanded.
Fiora’s eyes widened when she saw Adira. “What happened?”
“She struck her head. Do not leave her.”
“Have no worries, I will stay with her.”
Though Fiora could be a pest, Dravic had come to realize she was a loyal pest.
He gave her a nod and turned to Adira once more. She managed to smile, faint as it was. So, it did little to ease the concern in his eyes, but he was king and duty called. He had to go. He rose, retrieved his sword and turned toward the aftermath of the battle.
Bodies littered the snow. Several of his warriors were injured, one sitting against a rock while another bound his arm. Seger was already moving among the men, assessing wounds and calling for those still able to help.
Dravic’s gaze swept them. “Who have we lost?”
Seger looked toward him.
Something in the Hunter’s face had Dravic moving before he answered.
Dravic saw the men gathered several yards away and knew before he reached them that something was terribly wrong. They parted at his approach, revealing Cadby stretched out on the snow, one of the Hunters kneeling beside him.
Blood covered the front of Cadby’s tunic and spread beneath him, staining the snow a deep red. His eyes were closed and his face had lost nearly all its color, while each breath seemed to require more effort than the one before it.
Dravic lowered himself beside him. “How bad?”
The Hunter looked at him and simply shook his head.
There was no need for words. Dravic had seen enough men die on battlefields to recognize when death had already laid claim to one of them.
His gaze settled on Cadby. The man had ridden out of Caerith with him without question, had followed him into Driochmor and fought beside him only moments ago.
Duty demanded it, but it was loyalty, not to a king, but to the kingdom his warriors fought, and bravely.
Now there was nothing Dravic could do but watch as the last of his warrior’s life slipped away.
Cadby’s chest rose faintly, held for a moment, then slowly fell.
It did not rise again.
A heavy anger settled inside Dravic. He had lost men before, more than he cared to remember, but familiarity never made death easier to accept. It only added another face to those he remembered.
Dravic started to rise when an unexpected chill swept through the clearing, sharp enough to make him pause. It was more than the bite of winter air. The cold seemed to move through him, leaving an unsettling sensation in its wake.
“My king… look.”
Dravic got to his feet and turned at the warrior’s hushed words.
A dark shape drifted from between the trees.
He kept his eyes on it as the men around him began to back away.
The ethereal form floated toward them, its shape shifting like smoke that somehow refused to scatter. A raised hood concealed its face completely, though pale strands of almost luminous blonde hair had escaped it and stirred around the figure despite the stillness of the air.
Dravic knew at once who moved toward him… the healer who defied death.
After searching throughout Scotara for her, sending Hunters from one end of his kingdom to the other, she had simply appeared in the middle of a forest in Driochmor.
The men surrounding Cadby moved further back as the spirit approached, some more quickly than others, their stunned expressions making it clear they had no more doubt than King Dravic as to who she was.
The healer shooed her hand at Dravic.
He hesitated for a moment, then he stepped back away from Cadby.
Only then did she move forward.
She stopped beside Cadby and hovered over him, the darkness surrounding her, folding and shifting as though it possessed a life of its own.
Dravic watched, waiting for her to do something. She did nothing that he could see.
Seconds passed.
His gaze went to Cadby. There was no movement from him, no sign that life had returned. Dravic looked back at the healer, wondering if even her extraordinary gift could do nothing once death had taken firm hold.
Cadby gasped.
The sudden breath startled several of the men.
Cadby dragged in another breath, then another. His eyes opened slowly, confusion filling them.
Dravic stared at him, scarcely able to comprehend what he had witnessed. He had watched the man’s final breath leave him and now he breathed again.
The healer who defied death certainly had proved her worth. She had restored his life.
Dravic’s attention snapped back to the spirit as she began to drift away from Cadby.
“Wait,” he said in a commanding tone.
The dark figure stopped.
Dravic stepped toward her and she hastily drifted away from him.
He stilled. “I have searched throughout Scotara for you.”
No response came from her.
He continued. “War is coming, if it already isn’t here. Warlord Tharne waits only for winter to release its hold on the Sea of Shadows before he brings his army of warriors to Scotara.”
The healer remained motionless, though the hood seemed angled toward him now.
Dravic wished he could see the face hidden within its depths. He could make out nothing beyond darkness, no hint of who she might be or where he might begin looking for her once she disappeared.
“I need your help when war comes. What you did here today could save countless lives.”
Not a sound came from her nor a gesture and he wondered if she was unable to speak.
“Tell me where I can find you.”
Still, he got nothing from her. He tempered the impatience that threatened to surface. He had spent too long searching for this woman to frighten her off now that she finally stood before him.
He tried again. “Help me protect Scotara.”
The healer began to fade.
“Nay. Wait.”
For the briefest moment, she lingered.
Dravic stepped closer. “Help me protect your home.”
He waited, hoping for some acknowledgment, some indication that she understood what he asked of her… to protect what belonged to her, to them all.
None came.
The dark form dissolved slowly, breaking apart like mist until only a few pale wisps remained between the trees before those, too, disappeared.
Dravic stood staring at the place where she had been. He had finally found the exceptional healer. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she had found him. That thought settled uneasily in his mind.
She had appeared when Cadby needed her.
How had she known?
Behind him came the unmistakable sound of Cadby drawing another deep breath, reminding Dravic that whatever questions remained unanswered, one thing was certain.
The exceptional healer was real, and her power was far greater than he had imagined.
Another sudden thought struck him.
Adira.
He turned sharply toward the tree where he had left her.