Their second full day on the trail had gone by without incident and Brie wanted to keep it that way. No arguments tonight, she reminded herself. No making a fool of herself like last night, when she’d allowed her imagination to get the best of her.
She managed to hold her tongue as she dismounted and offered a shoulder to assist Halldor off his horse. When his feet hit the ground, he leaned on her more heavily than she’d expected. More heavily than he had the last time they’d stopped.
“How do you fare?” she asked as she helped him to sit under the overhang of rock, protected at last from the unrelenting drizzle of rain.
He leaned his head back against the stone wall supporting him, eyes shut, and grunted his noncommittal response. It had been a long day of hard riding, and every mile of it showed in his weary demeanor. Dark smudges stained the skin under his eyes in a way she was sure they hadn’t just an hour or two earlier.
Brie hurried through the tasks at hand, expecting at any moment that he’d insist on helping.
He didn’t. A glance to where he sat confirmed that he hadn’t moved a single muscle.
That, more than anything, heightened her concern for his condition. A hand to his forehead told her all she needed to know. The fever was back with a vengeance.
“Editha promised three days before the Magic overtook you again, and it’s only been two. Something’s gone wrong.”
“Three at most,” Halldor muttered, his eyes still closed. “Promised nothing.”
Maybe there hadn’t been an explicit promise, but Brie counted on the Tinkler’s word. Three days, the woman had said. What else had she said? Something about redressing the wound.
“I need some light.”
Brie scrambled to gather whatever she could find that was dry enough. She piled the tinder together and gently coaxed a small flame.
“No fire,” Halldor reminded her. “We agreed. It’s not safe here.”
“A small fire,” she countered. “And though you might have made that assumption, I agreed to nothing.”
Not that it mattered to her now. She needed to have a look at his wound, and that wasn’t something she could do in the dark.
“Can’t draw attention. Not safe for you this close to Tordenet.”
“It’s not safe for either of us this close to the castle,” she responded, kneeling at his side to pull away the heavy fur and expose his arm. “But here we are and here we must make the best of it. By the Seven!”
The bandage had slipped down off the wound, lodging around his bicep. A foul black ooze trailed down his arm, bubbling out of the wound. Brie had never seen its like, not even in the most neglected of battle injuries.
“Well. Here’s our problem.”
The first thing Editha had asked for when she’d seen the wound was water. Brie grabbed the small pot from her provisions and hurried to the stream’s bank to scoop it full. Once she nestled it directly into the fire, it wouldn’t take long to heat.
“That needs cleaning,” she stated, as much for her own benefit as for his.
If only she’d thought to bring along a spare shift, but she hadn’t. A warrior traveled light for speed, with no need for changes of clothing.
Grasping the bottom of the shift she wore, she tore off a strip from the edge and dropped it into the now boiling water. Carefully, she fished it out and wrung as much water from it as she could before turning to wipe the sticky black ooze from Halldor’s arm.
Though he made no word of protest, his hissing gasp was sign enough of his suffering. She pulled the flask of honey ale from her pack and placed it to his lips.
“Drink.”
He did as she instructed and a renewed thread of fear curled around her heart. This meek compliance was not a good sign.
Remembering Editha’s warning about the jewels, Brie made sure to keep the stones wrapped tightly together in the linen as she reset the bandage and tied it around Halldor’s arm. To make sure it didn’t slip again, she knotted the second turn up and over his shoulder.
He seemed to relax almost immediately after she finished.
“There you go, O’Donar. Good as new.”
“Hall,” he murmured, his eyes fluttering open to focus on her. “I’d have you call me Hall. It’s the name given me by my friend and brother, Chase Noble. If yours is to be the last face I see in this world, I’d have it be the face of a friend.”
