The pain, the blood loss, the wet, and the miles-long run through rough country had left him more weary than he could ever remember being. He was soaked down to his smallclothes, and moving had been the only thing keeping him warm. No help for it. Even if he could find dry kindling in this mess, lighting a fire on a hilltop would be beyond foolish. He'd simply suffer through the storm. Once the rain stopped, he'd don his dry clothes.
Lewan turned away from the tree and opened his left palm to allow the blue-silver light from the starstone to give him a better view of his surroundings. The lightning strike that had killed the tree had also started a fire, and most of the brush around the tree was stunted and no more than a few seasons old. To get out of the rain, he'd have to go back into the forest.
It didn't take him long to find a suitable spot-an old pine that had fallen under its own weight in ages past. It hadn't made it all the way to the ground but lodged in a tight grove of aspens, and the aspens had continued to grow, unperturbed by the old cousin who had fallen into their midst. Through season after season the dead pine gathered more and more deadfall, leaves, mud, and the dwellings of various forest creatures. It formed a sort of roof. Once Lewan had cleared out several years' worth of dead leaves and pine needles, he had a nice hollowed-out spot that, while not exactly dry, was at least not sodden. There he settled in to wait.
Down the hillside several dozen yards into the forest, he could no longer see the lightning-blasted tree, but he knew his master would come. If he didn't find Lewan right away, he'd look around, even call out if he'd managed to fend off pursuit. Right now, Lewan needed rest.
He dampened the light of the starstone, huddled into his cloak, and lay down. Exhaustion claimed him, and he was asleep in moments.
Cold woke him. With his body no longer on the move, the chill had settled into his sodden clothes. His body was shivering, his teeth chattering.
Lewan sat up and gasped at the sudden pain that flashed along his arm. He could no longer feel his right hand, and the arm throbbed. Whether it was from the cold or from infection trying to settle in, he'd have to do something about it soon.
He grabbed the starstone with his left hand and rubbed it between thumb and fingers, stirring the light back to life. He peeled the remains of his right sleeve back with his left hand and teeth. He gasped and winced as bits of thread and cloth pulled out of the wound. A wet, puffy scab ran down most of the length of his arm. He suspected it looked worse than it really was. Once he cleaned it and applied a salve-he prayed it was still in the pack he'd retrieved from the assassins' camp-it would likely hurt for a tenday, then be nothing more than a bothersome itch for the rest of the month.
As he sat worrying over his arm, Lewan heard something moving through the brush not far up the hill. Even over the roar of the downpour he could hear it. He squeezed his left hand into a fist, shutting out most of the starstone's light. He held his breath, listened, and peered into the dark. Even after his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see nothing beyond his meager shelter. The forest was a patch of utter blackness.
There it was again-something making its way through the brush and mud. It wouldn't be an animal. The beasts were smart enough to find shelter and stay there until the storm was over.
Lewan considered calling out. More than likely, it was Berun come at last. Not finding Lewan at the lightning-blasted tree, he would've started searching. But if it wasn't Berun…
It was either his master, Lewan knew, or one of the assassins, and they could not have known where Lewan was going unless Berun told them. Except for maybe Sauk and his tiger. Lewan knew that of the band, only those two would stand any chance of tracking him. So… either Berun or Sauk.
Lewan stuffed the starstone into his shirt pocket and reached for the knife at his belt. He drew it-a wicked, ugly thing that he'd taken off one of Sauk's men back in the camp. Lewan had carried a knife for years-as a tool. This blade was a weapon crafted for one purpose: murder. It felt heavy in his hand.
Whatever was moving on the hill was getting closer. Had the sun been up, Lewan could have seen whatever it was.
A voice came out of the roaring rain. "Lewan?"
Lewan let out his breath. It was Berun's voice.
"Here, master!" he called out as he made his way out of the shelter. He stood and removed the starstone from his pocket. As it warmed next to his hand, the light grew, catching and sparking in the droplets of rain so that Berun seemed to emerge from a thin curtain of crystal. His master had his hood down, and his long hair lay heavy and dripping over his face and down his shoulders. He held his unstrung bow in one hand.
"Lewan!" Relief flooded Berun's face, but it lasted only a moment. He looked worried as his eyes took in the sight before him. "I've been scouring the hill. When I didn't find you… you're hurt!"
"Just a scratch." Lewan managed a grin over his chattering teeth. "I took a bad fall trying to get up the hill."
The concern didn't leave Berun's gaze. "Why the knife?"
"Until you called out, I thought you might have been one of them."
"I took care of them."
Lewan remembered everything Sauk had told him on their walk yesterday, of Kheil the assassin, one of the most feared murderers in the East. "Took care of them?" he asked.
"They'll live," said Berun. "Though if Sauk ever catches up to us, we might not. He's never been one to forgive a slight."
"So it's all true, then? You do know him."
Berun looked at him, and in the meager light of the starstone, the shadows under his brows seemed very deep. Lewan swallowed and held his master's stare.
"We'll speak of this later," said Berun. "Let's get you cleaned up and warm."
They returned to Lewan's makeshift shelter. Berun cleared out more leaves and deadfall to make room for them both, then hung both their starstones from the branches overhead. By their light he had a look at the cut along the inside of Lewan's arm. He cleaned off the worst of the dirt and half-dried blood with his fingers, then dabbed at the wound with a clean cloth that he'd soaked in the rain.
"More of a deep scrape than a cut," he said. "Still, it bled quite a bit. A branch, you said?"
"I slipped in the mud and came down on a log."
"Fortunate it wasn't worse."
Lewan winced and sucked in a sharp breath. He was still freezing, and his arm was almost numb, but his master's ministrations were working feeling back into the skin, and with the sharp tingling came pain. Fresh blood seeped out of the wound.
"Let me salve and bandage this," said Berun, "then we'll get you into warm clothes. We'll rest 'til first light, then we need to move. I bought us some time, but we need to be leagues from here by midday."
"Where is Perch?"
"He led the tiger away."
"Is he…?" Lewan couldn't bring himself to finish.
"He's alive," said Berun. "He's frightened and cold, but he's alive. That much I know. Beyond that…"
"Master," said Lewan, "what… what did you do? To them. To Sauk and his band."
Berun turned to rummage through the largest of their packs. He found the small wad of clean linen they used for bandages and a polished wood vial of salve. He opened the vial and began to smear a thick, pungent paste into the wound.
"They're alive," he said. "I used an old trick Chereth taught me. Used the wild against them." "The wild?"