“Good. I will bandage it again once we are finished here.”
Before she could, Farlan knocked at the door and peered in. He too eyed Leith, sitting up in the bed balanced against the bolsters. “I hoped for a wee word wi’ Leith.”
“Come in. I ha’ some others to see,” Rhian said, gathering up her basket. “I will leave him wi’ you.”
She went out. Leith stared after her while Farlan watched him closely. Then Farlan glanced around the chamber.
“I see ye ha’ landed yoursel’ in some comfort.”
“Only because they feared I was dyin’.”
“As did I. Ye look better.”
“My fever has broken, so it seems. I will tell ye, Farlan, I ha’ never felt so sapped o’ strength. I doubt much I could get up on my feet wi’out assistance.”
“And that is saying somewhat. Your strength has always been a matter o’ renown.”
“I may regain some strength, especially wi’ Mistress Rhian’s help. I do no’ ken whether I will e’er regain the use o’ this arm.”
“Aye, so.” That made Farlan look concerned.
“And wha’ good is a one-armed warrior, eh? Especially one lacking his right hand. Even Rory will no’ want me back again.”
“’Tis about Rory I wanted to speak.” Farlan came and sat on the edge of the bed. “D’ye ken he was wounded during the last attack, when he and the men tried to breach the gates?”
“Was he?”
“Aye. Took an arrow straight through the back. Everyone on the wall saw it.”
A feeling of sick dread crawled up from Leith’s belly to his chest. “Did he go down, then?”
“Nay. He was helped awa’. And they broke off the attack immediately after.”
Leith’s eyes met Farlan’s brown ones, and he saw there a reflection of his own fear. “D’ye ken what happened to him?”
“Nay. How could we? But ’tis a subject o’ considerable speculation.”
So Leith would imagine.
“Och,” he declared, denying his own dread, “Rory is much too tough to be brought down by a mere arrow in the back.”
“Unless it touched his heart.”
Leith’s own heart began to pound. It could not be. Rory, at only a score and seven years of age, was in his prime, a force in his own right. He’d waited his whole life to take the place of chief—not that he’d desired the loss of his father, whom he’d adored. But the three of them, Rory, Farlan, and Leith, had sat together for countless hours while Rory aired his plans for the day he would claim all of Glen Bronach for MacLeod.
Such a fire, burning so bright, could not be gone from the world.
“Nay,” Leith said, half whisper and half groan.
Farlan shrugged. “I ha’ to say, even though he has broken wi’ me,” he added more deliberately, “cast me off, I hate to think it.”
“’Tis difficult to imagine.”
“Aye. Yet naught has been heard of him since our men, the MacLeod men, took him awa’. He has no’ launched another attack to win ye back.”
“Perhaps he has but given up on me. Maybe he thinks me dead.”
Farlan shook his head. “Ye be his cousin, his own blood. Can ye see him giving up?”
