“Tell my wife—”
He got no farther. A spasm racked him, and a gout of blood gushed from his mouth. He went still.
Thank God. Thank God!
Rhian got to her feet shaking in every limb and fought down sickness by drawing in great gulps of air. She should be accustomed to the smell of blood. But not like this.
The name of his wife, so Rhian remembered, was Aisla. She tucked that away in her head for later. She would tell Aisla her husband’s last thoughts were of her.
Struggling to tuck her emotions away also, she moved to aid the other men nearby, homing in on the sounds of the moaning, the gasping, the desperate cries. She dressed the wounds of one man who then got to his feet and moved off under his own power. Another bore a grievous wound to the leg. From what Rhian could see, he might well lose it, and it was more than she could treat here. She called to two men who came with a litter, and she moved on.
Dead, dead, and dead. Fighting must have been fierce just here on the flank. MacBeith and MacLeod warriors lay together, sometimes entangled in their death throes. It did not matter what they wore, in the end. They all stared at her sightlessly.
She did not at realize at first how far she had moved off into the gloom. Above her, here, stretched the wall of the stronghold. Had these men tried to scale that wall? For MacLeod tartans lay thickly.
And someone just ahead cried out for mercy.
It could be one of her own who’d been battling these would-be invaders. She could not let him lie alone.
“Mercy! Och, please, God!”
She found him lying half beneath the body of another dead man, whom she rolled off him. A big fellow, from what she could see in the gloom. Fair-haired, sprawled on his back, and awash with blood.
Och, by heaven, this must be bad.
She crouched down as she had beside all the others and set her basket on the ground. She could not immediately tell if the blood was his own or that of the man who’d been lying atop him. There was too much of it.
“Where are ye hurt?”
“Lady?”
He reached for her, closing a powerful hand stained with blood on her wrist. Desperate eyes reached for hers also, and as he moved, a groan tore from his lips.
She did not know him, and aye, she knew at least by sight, if not name, nearly everyone of MacBeith blood. But she could see and feel his pain just as if it came to her through his fingers that touched her. The hold that she kept so fiercely upon her emotions threatened to crack. Her compassion rushed forth.
“Hush. ’Twill be all right,” she told him just as she had Brann. “Tell me where ye be hurt so I can help.”
“Merciful lady.” He gasped the words. “My right arm. I canna move it. The wound is deep.”
“Your right arm, ye say?”
“Here.” He let go of her in order to clutch at the arm just below the shoulder that gushed blood. By God, she thought, his arm might be half off, judging by all that blood. How was she to treat such a wound?
“Hush,” she repeated. “Lie still. I will tie it up.”
She began to work there in the poor light, tore away the soaking remnants of his clothing, and surveyed the wound beneath. The wound, as he said, was deep, the flesh torn in a gaping, ragged hole that exposed the tendons and bone beneath. Despite the horrific appearance of the injury, her hands steadied with the familiarity of the task.
She kept hoping she would recognize him. He might be one of the men come in from outlying MacBeith lands to join the fight against their neighbors. Or, far worse, he could be a stranger.
He had a broad, strong chest and a massive build that included brawny arms, one of which was now chewed to shreds. A wound such as this, he might not survive.
“Ye be lucky,” she told him as she rifled through her basket for enough bandaging to make a pad, and tied it on.
“Ye think so?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Aye, so. Had ye taken this selfsame wound in your chest, ye would likely be dead.”
“I might die, still.”
