Contender, page 8
It was impossible to know whether he was listening. It was impossible to know whether he would even understand. His eyes flew to my face for a split second, wide and searching, then his body convulsed again and he threw back his head with a heartrending cry.
I’m so sorry!
I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. Never in my life had I seen a single person sustain so much damage, while managing to stay alive. A thousand odds were stacked against him. The man was wrestling for his life at the celestial gates themselves, and yet, I could see the blues of his eyes.
“Scream,” I said quietly, forcing my voice to be calm, “scream all that you need—you deserve it. And then the bleeding will stop, and you and I will leave this place. Are we agreed?”
His eyes flew again to mine, bright with pain.
“I cannot,” he stammered, hands curling into fists in the wreckage, “I cannot breathe.”
He was shaking so hard, I could barely understand him. Wild, violent shaking that scared me more than a little. It shook him so hard, it chattered his teeth—or maybe that was just the cold.
I pulled up the cloak around him, darting my hand back to his leg.
“Breathe with me,” I commanded softly, staring into his eyes.
He looked as though I’d said something crazy, or was speaking a language he didn’t understand. A tremor shook through him, and he cried out again, unable to stop himself, but I leaned forward ever so slightly, placing myself squarely in his gaze. Our eyes met and I held him there without moving, exaggerating the slightest motion, drawing in slow, deep breaths.
At first, it seemed like a fool’s errand. The man had been torn apart by wolves, most of his blood had soaked into the earth beneath us; it was hardly any wonder he couldn’t catch his breath.
But there was something mesmerizing about the rhythm of it, the steadiness. His body still wracked beneath me, trembling without control, but his face was still and his eyes were holding steady. After a few seconds, I felt him breathing in unison. At the very least, he sincerely tried.
I felt myself smile, tears still dripping down my face. “You’re a miracle, you know that?”
He merely stared at me, ghostly skin and enormous eyes.
After a few more seconds, I looked down at my hands. The bleeding had stopped. Whether it had stopped in time was another question, but the damage had been at least momentarily blunted.
From the looks of things, it wasn’t a second too soon.
“I need to sleep,” he mumbled, the words running into each other.
A spark of panic flared in my stomach, but I kept my face calm. It was one of those bad signs one knew to look for—like a person who claimed to be freezing, but didn’t clasp their cloak.
“You can’t sleep, vennen. Not yet.” I glanced down at the wreck of skin beneath my fingers, wondering again how he was possibly alive. “We need to set your leg, first.”
He followed my gaze, before his eyes lifted again to mine.
Sweetheart.
When was the last time I’d said the word.
“This part will not be fun,” I continued, reaching for his belt. “But it will keep you awake. I need you to try to keep talking, all right, Erik? The moment we’re finished, I’ll let you sleep.”
He stared blankly, still trembling violently beneath me, then let out a sharp cry when I shifted my weight on his legs. The sound echoed in the trees, and for a split second, I was struck with the horrible notion the wolves might come back. There had only been two; surely the rest of their pack would start searching. The thought left as quickly as it had come, bolstered by the scent of singed fur hanging on the breeze. Let them come, I could be rather territorial myself.
“No—wait,” he murmured, realizing all at once what I was doing. My fingers unclasped his belt and pulled it gently from his waist. “Please, I...I cannot take it.”
His fingers rose weakly to mine, but could do nothing else.
I kissed them without thinking across the knuckles, bruised and bleeding, tears of desperate apology still sliding down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry, but it must be done. It will be quick.”
He shook his head a little, tearing at my heart. “Knock me out,” he pleaded.
“You would not wake again.”
“I don’t care—”
“Do not tempt me.”
There was a pause. Perhaps it was the fact that I’d dared to joke, or simply the impending terror of what was about to happen. But he steadied a little, his mind sharpening into focus. He glanced a second around the clearing—searching for something in the dark.
“A stick,” he said quietly.
I understood at once, and grabbed the first thing within reach—sliding it gently beneath his teeth, and not remembering until much later, it was probably coated in blood. He gripped it as best he could, bracing slightly and pulling in a faltering breath. Then he looked up at me and nodded.
I slipped the belt around his thigh, digging my fingers into the hard ground to do it, so as not to jostle his position. There was an awkward moment when I fumbled to thread it again through the clasp, squinting in the dark. Then in a single swift movement, I pulled it suddenly tight.
The scream that came then, was unlike any that had come before. It rose out of him like the breaking of a storm, thunder and waves crashing. His body arched off the ground, suspending in the most exquisite pain, before crashing back to earth, limp and spent and panting.
“It’s all done,” I murmured, unable to say it quickly enough. With my hands finally free, I brushed the tangled hair from his forehead, terrified again at the temperature of his skin. The stick went loose in his mouth, bitten halfway through. I removed it gently. “There’s nothing more. You can sleep now, darling. The gods will ask no more wonders of you tonight.”
Sweetheart... darling. When had I ever been so free? And yet, staring down at him on the blood-soaked ground, they tumbled from my lips like the most natural thing in the world.
Even if they were slightly lost on their audience.
He blinked up at me, like there was a chance he was dreaming, before a shudder tore through his body, and his eyes flew with sudden dread around the clearing.
“The wolves,” he panted, “they will come back. We cannot stay here.” He made a reflexive movement, like he was trying to push himself upwards. “I should not have been so loud—”
“Let them come,” I said clearly, never breaking my gaze.
He stared at me with a complete lack of comprehension, like he couldn’t imagine for the life of him what I meant. Then his eyes drifted a bit further, to the pair of bodies littered on the ground.
They lingered there a moment, before returning to mine. He swallowed. “...you?”
I squeezed his hand, nodded. “Sleep, Erik. There will be no more dangers tonight.”
Chapter 7
I had believed those hours to be the worst of my life.
That might have been premature.
The fever set in quickly, I should have seen it coming. Yet when I lifted the back of my hand to Erik’s cheek, it seemed a fresh blow. What more could the gods do to us? What other hellish machinations were they plotting gleefully up in the clouds? As the moon rose high, the fever rose with it. His skin, once cold as the river itself, was flushed and damp with sweat.
I needed to move him; I knew this, though I tried for a while to deny it. While I’d offered my assurances about the wolves, he was right about the pack’s imminent return, and though the power that poured from my hands would be more than enough to stop them, there was no telling if I’d be able to access said power, or how many might come flooding out of the trees.
If even one of them managed to slip past me...?
I needed to move him—it was that simple and plain. If for no other reason, than the heavy clouds of mist rolling off the river. He was cold enough, though the fever tearing through his body refused to admit it. A healthy man sleeping in such conditions, would risk much from the chill.
How?
That was the real question. I glanced helplessly around the clearing, as if some answer might present itself, before returning to his lifeless body, still sprawled in the center of all that blood. He was nearly a head taller than me, nothing but smooth lean muscle. My arm had been ripped by one of the wolves, and wasn’t that strong to begin with. I had been delicately crafted, like my mother.
Another slap to the irony gods.
He is burning, Liv. Figure it out.
With a shuddering breath, I unlocked my knees and forced myself to standing, taking a second to orient myself. The wolves were two heaps of shadow, piled just a stone’s throw away. I saw the frantic tracks where their legs had scrambled backwards. They were already starting to stink.
I could drag them to the river?
I considered the idea for a split second; wondering if I could manage it, wondering if it would help. The last thing the two of us wanted was a vengeful pack of wolves on our trail; but the forest was riddled with blood and they could easily follow the trail down to the shoreline. At any rate, the clearing had been touched with something different. A scent of power, not easily ignored.
Leave the wolves, it will be hard enough to move Erik.
Having made the decision, I knelt once more beside him, and with the utmost care, pulled the bloody cloak from beneath his chin. His fingers twitched reflexively, like he wanted to grab it back, but he was lost to his dreams and the clock was ticking. He had survived the attack, and that alone was a miracle. But infection set in fast, and the fever could be just as bad.
I moved with as much delicacy as I could, laying the cloak on the ground beside him, and shifting his body, inch by painful inch, onto the fabric rolls. There were a few times I paused, struck with the overwhelming terror I would jostle his leg too greatly and he’d bleed out on the spot. There were a few other times, he made a sudden sound, and my heart stilled in my chest.
It was worse when things were quiet, I realized. A fractured breath, a muffled whimper. My pulse was pounding like a drum, striking a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
When at last he was lying on top, I picked a direction at random and started walking slowly forward, holding onto the uppermost corners and pulling with all my might. It was relatively easy at first, when we were still on the slippery ground, before my own pain began to creep to attention. Things changed dramatically when we left the clearing behind and entered the cover of the woods.
This will never work, I thought dispiritedly, dragging him across the ground.
We couldn’t slide more than a few feet without some new obstacle cropping up in our way; the sudden rise of a slope that needed to be taken in inches, a tangle of tree roots that nearly sent him spilling into the underbrush and solicited another heartbreaking moan.
It wasn’t long before sweat was rolling down my back, and my arms were shaking. I heaved in a breath, looking back the way we’d come, only to see the very place through a break in the trees.
Really, it’s right there?
Our crawling momentum came to a stop, and I looked back at it—feeling, not for the first time since my arrest in the settlement, that I was some part of cosmic joke. While I wasn’t an inherently superstitious person, what other explanation could there be? I had angered the gods by the mere act of being what I was. Erik had angered them by helping me escape their divine justice.
These were the consequences.
A time-loop, in which I could trudge forward for what seemed like hours, only to see the place I’d left just a stone’s throw away. The life of the boy who saved mine, hinged upon nothing but my fledgling upper body strength. The gods were not helping, they were not even listening.
Then I’ll do this alone.
My teeth clenched together in fierce determination, as I bent my entire body forward and started trudging once more through the trees. From a distance, it must have looked like some kind of joke. I was angled almost parallel to the ground, forcing one foot in front of the other, drops of blood still flinging distractedly from my arm. The wolf’s claws had been sharp, but I scarcely could remember it happening. My thoughts were for the man behind me, drifting obliviously in the clouds.
What if he dies?
For the first time, I forced myself to think about the question. I certainly didn’t want to; I’d gone through a great deal of mental aerobics just to avoid that very line. And yet, I’d been raised in too pragmatic a society not to consider it. Men and women died all the time, where I was from. By sickness, or by injury, or by any of a number of other ways my people had invented to kill each other. A wolf attack wasn’t that far outside the realm of possibility. One needed to be practical about these things. And yet, every time I thought about it, the thought slipped away from me; like a fish that refused to be drawn upon the line.
He cannot die, I decided. I will simply have to save him.
That was when I saw it—the tiny cave nestled in the trees.
At first, I thought I was imagining it. The forest that fringed the valley had been thick with trees, but relatively free of boulders. Those few rocks that had tumbled down the mountains, had been scattered, and broken, and were no use to us at all. And yet, here it stood—as casually as if had been waiting there forever. A random outcropping of rocks, tucked in a pocket of the trees.
Perhaps something already lives there.
The idea constricted my chest, forcing my heart to beat faster. Wolves made their dens under the open sky, but there were still plenty of other possibilities it might be. A wildcat—gods forbid, a bear. Perhaps even something as small as a badger. Any one of these things would have been more than enough to make me pause, yet when Erik moaned again behind me, I felt myself walking forward—gripping onto the cloak and dragging it forward with all my might.
He slid along the ground behind me, ferns whipping at his face, as I heaved the cloak up the damp ravine and towards the shaded boulders. It had been almost impossible to see them in the dim light; if it hadn’t been for a break in the canopy, coating the rocks in silver moonlight, I would have been unable to differentiate them from the trees.
After what seemed like a small eternity, we drew close enough that I was able to get a better look. Not at cave at all, I realized. Just a small indentation in the rocks. Wide enough for a single body, perhaps two, with a shelf of rock that on a windless night, would manage to keep off the rain.
I paused a moment upon seeing it, then hurried forward to examine it for myself.
This is perfect!
Not far enough from the clearing for my liking, but what did it really matter? Wolves could travel an entire mountain range in a single night, spanning distances and tracking scents that would be impossible for anyone that walked on two legs. I was never going to outpace them; the most I could do was prioritize Erik, and hope that if they found us, that elusive power would find me again.
“Do you see?” I panted, dragging the cloak upwards. “Our luck is changing.”
There was no response, not that I expected one. Since losing consciousness about two hours before, he had yet to even stir, let alone open his eyes. The most he did was grimace ever so slightly, as I adjusted my grip on the corners of his cloak, and began hauling it up the slope.
The rocks were slightly larger up close than they’d looked from a distance, but the space inside was even smaller. There was no room for the both of us, scarcely enough for one. With as much care as I could manage, I dragged the cloak inside and began the careful process of sliding Erik’s body onto the ground. In a perfect world, I would simply leave him. But despite the obvious damage to the fabric, the night was still bitingly cold, and stained though it was, the cover would be better than nothing. I wrung out the wet bits when I was finished, and laid it gently across him, placing another hand to his forehead when I was done. An involuntary gasp burst from my lips.
He is burning!
I had made some tentative plans as I lumbered through the forest. I would find a place, and make a fire when I got there. I would dig up some roots, boil a kind of broth. He would open his eyes eventually, and I would assess his wounds; we would determine the next few steps together.
But it quickly became clear, this was all for naught. There was no time to gather wood, let alone prepare food over a fire. If I didn’t get the fever under control, it would kill him.
Not that I had the slightest idea what to do.
Yes, you do. Think, Liv. What brings down a fever?
For the second time, my grandmother’s voice echoed in my ears. I could practically see her standing in the kitchen, looking at me inquisitively across the table, a tray of herbs in front of her, and a chopping knife balanced in her hand. My mind raced back, scrambling to remember.
Yarrow.
Even if I hadn’t been raised by a midwife, it would have been a sound guess. The bright blooms were used for all sorts of things, from fevers to infections to an upset stomach. Karmen had kept a plant or two growing in the garden to use for clients. She brewed it sometimes for tea.
My head spun around, as I searched blindly in the forest. It was a common enough flower; we had passed multiple clusters since entering the valley. Not that I had the first idea where to start looking. Not that I could possibly fathom leaving Erik alone.
I glanced over my shoulder, to where he slept motionless in the cave.
What if something finds him?
For a split second, I almost laughed. Hadn’t he worried the same thing about me? Hadn’t I teased him for that exact deliberation? It felt the same as leaving a child alone in the forest. Anything might happen. Anything might come. Yet if I didn’t bring down that fever...?
The second I thought the word again, my path was clear.
After sending up a silent prayer to whatever gods were still listening, I gave the woods a single, haphazard scan, before striking out in a straight line away from the little cave. I had enough self-awareness not to flatter myself by implying some sense of direction. It would be a straight line, or nothing. Forget the gods, I would slap myself if I merely lost him, and he died before I got back.
