When the door squealed open, Sawny did not move his head. He did not have it in him.
The lad, Addison, however, had no such compunctions and appraised Sawny under the slanting light from the hall. Sawny watched the lad from under lowered lids.
Addison set his platter down, then turned to the guards loitering in the hallway. A wee bit of grumbling, then the sound of shuffling feet as they walked away.
Mayhap the guard was retrieving Kelso to inform the chieftain that his prisoner was not for long in this world.
As the lad set out his supper and placed the empty bowls on the tray, the heavy footfalls of the guard returned.
Addison stepped out, and Sawny waited for either the appearance of Kelso or for the door to slam shut and entomb him in darkness.
Neither of these things happened.
Instead, Addison returned with a torch in his slender hand. He crept toward Sawny warily, as if he were a rabid animal and not an injured man. What could the lad be afraid of? That Sawny would groan at him to death?
With a cautious hand, Addison reached for Sawny’s shift. Keeping his gaze fixed on the lad, Sawny remained motionless as Addison lifted the cloth to investigate the state of Sawny’s wound. The nearness of the torchlight made Sawny’s already fevered body hotter, his eyes burn, and his mind swirled.
Aye, the lad had nothing to fear from Sawny. He could barely remain upright. The fever was moving quickly.
Addison dropped the fabric and stared at Sawny’s face, his eyes oddly shadowed by the flickering torchlight. From under Sawny’s lowered lids, however, the moons under his eyes appeared significantly darker.
He looked about as hale as Sawny felt.
Then he touched Sawny’s forehead with the back of his hand, and snapped it away just as quickly.
“Am I dead yet?” Sawny managed to say.
“No’ yet. Mostly dead, I’d wager.”
If the lad was trying for levity, it was a wasted effort.
Muttering under his breath, Addison rose, pushed the bowl and cup closer to him, and exited.
Only then did the door shut.
With every bit of effort that Sawny could muster, he leaned forward and dragged his bowl and cup closer.
Eating did not appeal to him in the least, but if he were to fight off this fever, he needed all the sustenance he could get.
The parritch was sticky, but the ale was cool against his heated lips. Finishing his meal was the last thing he remembered before slipping into the darker netherworld.
Sawny slept fitfully and he did not know for how long. Days? A full sennight? Longer? Surely not a month . . .
At some point, he was certain that Kelso came down off his pedestal long enough to venture into his dungeons and lay his pinched, sneering gaze on Sawny’s broken body. To Sawny’s fevered view from under slitted eyelids that fought against opening, Kelso’s face was stark white and disgusted as he looked down, and he looked more like a rat under Sawny’s fogged gaze.
The man was little more than a haze to Sawny, who heard him speak briefly before passing out again.
“He does us no good dead. John wants to know what they know. Bring him back to health.”
The words were a jumbled mess in Sawny’s mind, especially as he presumed that he was already knocking on death’s door.
He spent the next several days in that bleary state. When he did wake, his vision was a blur and his entire body was on fire. His head ached so much that if he’d had the strength, he would have smashed it against the stones to hasten his painful demise.
Any thoughts of Adaira were impossible to behold – he could not retain a single thought in his head before passing out again.
Though he had cursed the cold stones upon his arrival in his cell, he now welcomed their cool embrace as a balm to his fever.
One evening in his fevered state, he saw the dim outline of Addison at his side, wiping something sticky off his body before pressing his hands against his wounded side. The lad shifted, then placed a cool rag on Sawny’s forehead.
