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A man.
One she didn’t know. She hesitated. Even knowing he was dead didn’t keep her heart from lurching, considering who he might have been in his life and the potential danger he might have once presented. She took a deep breath and moved to check his pulse to verify he was gone. Her fingers slid across his wet skin—cool but still pliant—and he shivered with a faint groan.
“Oh shit.” Tarley scrambled back, her boots kicking up pebbles in the scree as she did. “You’re alive,” she whispered. She glanced around to see if this was a trap, but nothing indicated that was so. There wasn’t anyone else waiting to nab her, no sounds in the forest beyond, no movement to make her think she was in danger.
She looked back at the man, the normalcy of the woods around them calming her slightly. After another deep breath, she assessed the scene with her eyes like she’d been taught. The man wasn’t conscious, his body still partially submerged in the water greedily lapping at his legs. The tableau seemed more accident than set up. Besides, the stranger was barely alive, his body a painful testament to what appeared an ordeal. It seemed an extensive farce if it were a trap.
He might not be dead, but he wasn’t far from it. She stood, wiping her hands on her trousers, and noted his shallow breaths. His dark hair was matted against his pale face. Thick, even brows framed his closed eyes, with dark lashes resting on his pale cheeks. It was a handsome face—or had been—when considered objectively, but Tarley knew handsome didn’t mean safe. His soaked clothing was slightly strange, less homespun, and more tailored, which indicated the man was probably wealthy.
Tarley took a step away from him.
Wealthy men in Sevens, in the Whitling Woods, were uncommon.
But kingdom-appointed collectors were.
Tarley took another step away from him and swallowed, then another step. She couldn’t help him and didn’t know if her help would make a difference anyway, though her conscience argued she knew that wasn’t true, all too aware that she was turning away from helping someone because she was afraid.
“Yes, I’m afraid,” she whispered out loud to herself.Why would she save a collector?She spun on her toe, turning away from the stranger and the dead horse, certain she should walk away.
But after a few more steps—What if that were Mattias?the internal voice argued.
She stopped with a frustrated groan and turned back, her heart in her throat. Adrenaline made her shake as she hesitated, imagining him as her brother. “My brother wouldn’t be a collector!” she whisper-shouted at the prone man who couldn’t hear her.
But what if he isn’t, that annoying voice pointed out.
“It’s a risk,” she retorted and grasped her hands in front of her with nervous indecision. “If he is…” She knew that it would put her in danger. “But maybe he’ll die anyway,” she reasoned, “and then my conscience will be clear, because at least I tried.”
She sighed loudly; she couldn’t walk away.
Returning to the man, she crouched down to touch him once more. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
He made a faint sound and mumbled something, though Tarley couldn’t hear it, only seeing his lips move slightly.
“What is your name?” she asked, running her hand over his face and neck to check for a fever. His skin still felt cold to her touch, and he shivered—a bad sign.
He muttered again, and Tarley bent down, her ear near his mouth. “I’m here,” she said. “You’re not alone,” she added, in case he was on the verge of dying.
He muttered again, the faint brush of air from his exhalation and his cold lips a whisper against her skin. She shivered in response to the sensation, and leaned away from him, trying to ascertain what he’d said.
“Did you say? ‘Ollie’?” she asked, but he didn’t reply. “Is that your name?”
He was silent and shivered again.
“I need to get you dry, Ollie,” she said, deciding that was as good a name to call him as any. With practiced hands, she ran her fingers lightly along his pale face nicked with scrapes, cuts, and red tells of forming bruises, relieved she didn’t find any fractures. Next, she checked his head, moving her fingers through his hair to feel for lacerations and bumps. Though the silk of his wet hair was soft in contrast to the day-old growth on his cheeks, her hands came away clean. No blood. With an adept but light touch, she moved her hands down along his neck, over the sinew of his shoulders and arms, across his ribs—several broken, if his pained expression was any indication—down his flat stomach, over his pelvis, across his muscular legs and knees to the top of his very expensive boots that she wouldn’t remove, yet. She couldn’t be sure about a back injury, and aside from the ribs, all his bones seemed under the skin. She couldn’t feel any obvious breaks aside from the ribs. She had to wonder if his ribs had punctured any of his organs. Without removing his clothing, she wouldn’t be able to tell if there was internal bleeding, though he didn’t have any blood on his lips, which gave her hope it wasn’t so.
“Okay, Ollie? I’m going to help you.”
Suddenly, his eyes flickered open, revealing a shade not quite gray, or green, or blue, or brown, but some combination of all of them. Like standing in the woods on a summer day, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of color. Tarley started, then froze as if caught like prey in a predator’s gaze, only she didn’t feel unsafe. Rather, she felt something altogether unrecognizable, as if she were floating for a moment in the vast expanse of a warm, summer-night sky, bathed in the effervescence of stardust. Which was ridiculous.
Then his dark eyebrows shifted, and though clear he was in pain, but he looked… panicked. “No!” With a jerk, he tried to scramble backward, to get away from her, only to yell out, grasping his ribs before he collapsed. “Get away.” He grunted out the words between breaths and tried to yank at his wet shirt.
He was delirious, she decided. That meant grave danger. “You are hyperthermic, Ollie. I need to warm you up.”
He closed his eyes again, breathing heavily, and began to shiver uncontrollably, lost to the haze of unconsciousness as his head lolled to the side.
Tarley stood, knowing what needed to be done. Fishing would have to wait.
Tarley collapsed next to the sledge where Ollie was lying unconscious outside of her tent. Dragging him back to camp had taken everything out of her. After burning the horse’s body to keep the scavengers away, the fire had served a second and third purpose. First, by warming Ollie after she’d stripped him of his wet clothes and piled dry materials on top of him to insulate his body heat, and second, allowing her time to build the sledge to get him to safety. Now, having muscled both the large man and her gear back into camp, she was exhausted.
