A race, I thought dully. The wolves were closer, but Rueddi would certainly be back. Desmond had no intention of leaving me to gods or wolves either one, not when his high commander wanted to bury me himself. Forever. My thoughts began to wander as I hung there slowly freezing in the moonlight. Who had told MacEachern that seven years of silence would destroy me?
I had believed for so long that I was dead, that no amount of pretending to breathe and eat and sleep would ever be able to revive my heart. But my betrayer had been wrong and I had been wrong. Life in all its oddity kept nipping at my heels like a playful pup, daring me to give it up when I had loved it so dearly. Just when I was convinced that poor humanity was alone in the universe and that it mattered not a splinter what happened to me, a being that was not a god, but was beyond all human capacities, had spoken to me with love. And just when death had declared itself inevitable, a woman who had no reason to care for me, who had unfailingly asserted her scorn and dislike, had given me a chance to live. Lara had called me a helpless cripple who could not lace his boots. But she had seen me lace up the armor, and she had chosen the mode of my binding and the branch and the tree. Intriguing possibility stirred me to movement.
I decided early on that my surmise must be wrong. The pine branch from which I was suspended was a hand’s breadth in diameter, and the chances of breaking it were depressingly slim. It would be easier to uproot the blasted tree, I thought, as I hung limp and exhausted after the fruitless effort of pulling downward on it. Uproot ... I considered the trees I’d seen on my journey, scarcely grasping the rocky soil with their gnarled roots. My prison tree jutted out from the steep embankment almost horizontally. I slid my feet to my right and pulled on the branch again, this time from the slightly different angle. Moved another handspan to the right and pulled again. Again and again until my arms were covered with blood from my wrists, and my shoulders refused to move again. Then I started the other way. Move the feet; pull. Again; pull.
It was no use. My small reserve of strength gave out. I was too cold. My feet were dead stumps, and I couldn’t move them anymore. I stumbled and hung from my raw wrists, unable to get my lost feet under me again. All I could do was hang there like meat on a hook and pretend I heard a cracking somewhere above me ... until I slumped completely into the dirt and first the branch, and then the tree, fell on top of me.
Quiet rustlings and feral moans drifted from behind the boulder stacks. I sprawled facedown on the cold ground, the tree trunk a deadweight on the backs of my thighs. Perhaps I should have felt lucky the tree hadn’t landed on my head, but that didn’t occur to me as I tried to worm my way out from under it. The branches scraped and stung, leaving an occasional warm rivulet of blood trickling across my skin. The bindings about my ankles became hopelessly tangled in the branches, and my wrists were soon stretched awkwardly to one side of my head, so raw I could not bear to pull on them again. It seemed so ridiculous.
I laid my head on the cold ground to try for more leverage, and not two handspans from my nose I saw a soft orange glow—one of the coals from the fire, a good-sized chunk only half-burned. The coal distracted me from my futile writhings. Softly I blew, over and over, praying the coal to take fire to frighten away the encroaching predators and so that something of me would be warm. Hands and feet, legs and arms were long dead. Soon my face and lips were frozen so that I could not even tell if I was pursing my lips to blow on the reluctant coal. At the end I had to rest, to lay down my head and forget the padding steps in the deepest shadows.
“Come on,” I mumbled thickly as my eyelids closed and froze shut. “Get on with it.”
“No, damn you, don’t go to sleep. Gods of night, what a mess. Was anyone ever so inept as a Senai?” She had come back.
Chapter 18
“Are you going to sit up and drink this or am I going to have to pour it over your head?”
Steam tickled my nose. Meadowsweet and wintergreen. Pungent and soothing. The best remedy in the world for general aches and pains, of which I had an abundance. The blazing bonfire that seared my face so pleasantly was quickly bringing my frozen parts back to uncomfortable life. I would really rather sleep. Lara had interrupted me just as I drifted off, cutting me loose from the tree, dragging me across the ground, and throwing my cloak on top of me while she built up the fire.
I was lying on my side an arm’s reach from the flames, shivering under my cloak, the tin cup just in front of my nose. I didn’t look up, afraid I might provoke Lara into leaving again while still in possession of that steaming container of salvation. But as usual I couldn’t resist a word.
“I thought you weren’t going to cook for me.” My teeth were thawed enough to chatter unmercifully, blunting the careful precision of my wit.
“I decided I would rather cook than dress you. Found your precious herbs in your pocket. If you drink it, then maybe you can take care of yourself.”
Slowly I eased myself to sitting and held out both shaking hands to let her slip the cup between them.
She held back for a moment. “It’s very hot.”
“It doesn’t matter. The sense ... the feeling ... doesn’t work right.”
I clenched my palms about the cup and got it carefully to my mouth, letting the hot liquid begin to quiet my violent shivering and settle into the bruised places.
“I never thought you would uproot the whole tree. The branch was rotten. One good jerk should have broken it.” She sat herself away from the fire where I couldn’t see her face, wrapping her arms about her knees. My skin shrank around my aching bones when I saw the dead wolf just beyond her, an arrow protruding from its side.
“I wanted a big fire.”
She laughed then, a quiet laugh that flowed softly about us like the lowest arpeggio on a fine harp. “Have you no blood in your veins? I don’t understand you at all.”
“I do murder in my dreams,” I said.
She shook her head. “You weep in your dreams. You scream without making a sound.” She stood up, threw a branch onto the bonfire, and wandered away for a bit. When she came back, she tossed my bloodstained shirt and gloves onto the ground in front of me. “We need to move.”
“You think they’ll come back?”
“Desmond will bring the legion. I had to kill Rueddi.”
“Vanir’s fires. Lara ...” There was nothing to be said, of course. No comfort possible for one whose hopes were shattered so irrevocably. Not from me, certainly. And she’d want no thanks from me either. “Do we need to warn the Elhim?”
“When we get to the kai’s lair, I’ll light a watchfire on the peak. Narim will see it and understand. We should have three days’ head start. The clan knows the Elhim sanctuary is in the Carag Huim, but not exactly where. I left Desmond afoot, and it will take him at least that long to get back, gather the legion, and find Cor Talaith. Meanwhile, we’ll have his horses.”
The kai’s lair. Keldar’s lair. In all the minutiae of the past weeks, our great enterprise had grown indistinct. “Are we ready?”
I donned my bloody clothing as quickly as I could, while Lara brought the horses from the far end of the grotto. She didn’t answer my question until she wrapped the reins of Rueddi’s horse about my gloved hands. Then she looked me full in the eye, her own clear blue ones bleak and hopeless. “I don’t believe it matters in the least.”
We rode back to the hut, taking a slightly longer, but less steep, route than we had walked, and collapsed on our blankets just before dawn, knowing we could not proceed without rest. I woke first, sometime near midday, and Lara jumped up soon after, diving right into our preparations as if I might be thinking of leaving her behind. We worked for an hour, saying little except to agree on what we needed to keep with us: a bit of food, our armor, a flask of brandy, the fireproofing supplies, Lara’s weapons.