Page 32 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

B radana now knew how prey must feel when the hunter passed near. The tiny creature, its heart beating furiously while the shadow of the hawk moved over. The rabbit deep in its burrow awaiting the fox.

Alba was their burrow now, this dense patch of young brush all twisted up around them like defensive walls. Where her beloved hound lay and bled. Where Adair…

Och, to see him there giving barely a sign that he’d been pierced through by one of their hunters’ filthy arrows, making nary a sound, his gray-green eyes wide in the deep gloom and his skin milk-white. To see him suffering.

It fair convulsed her heart.

But aye, now they must keep still. Silent. For she could hear their pursuers moving through the forest behind them. Hear the crack and rattle of branches beneath the hooves of the ponies. The breath of their mounts. A distant murmur of voices that screamed danger.

Their own ponies stood quiet with their heads drooping, too tired to move. Bradana knelt with her hand on Wen’s side, keeping him still, and her gaze on the man she loved.

The man she loved.

She had brought him to this. She had, with her willful disobedience to her fate. With her heart’s choice of him. Now he knelt beside her and bled, and she—she had naught with which to heal or comfort him.

But the sounds of the searchers grew steadily more distant. At last, she heard a shout far away to the right. Mican’s voice calling.

Were they giving up the search? Was it a trick?

The young trees all around them might be a trap as well as a protection. Yet she remained still. Adair held her with his gaze, lifted a finger to his lips in a cautionary gesture.

She nodded. By some great miracle, they might have escaped notice. They would have to wait and find out.

Her thoughts stumbled wildly as she wondered how she might help these two she loved best in the world. If she lost either of them—

The tears came again and she wept them silently. Wen strained to look up at her and licked her hand.

All her fault, aye. What had she been thinking, supposing she could lead them through the wilds of Alba safely? Adair had trusted her. And now, Mican knew they were out here.

He would not stop looking. He wanted revenge, and without Kendrick here to assure a semblance of fairness, anything could happen if they fell into his hands, here on his ground.

She it was who had brought them to this. She who must save them.

Tears would not help. She choked them back and listened while the sounds of the hunters died away and the silence of Alba took hold all around them.

Only then did she touch Adair’s arm, pull him around so she could see the place where the arrow had pierced him.

For an instant, she went dizzy. Black and red dots danced before her eyes, and even though she knelt, she feared she would fall.

The shaft had broken off the span of a man’s hand from Adair’s shoulder. The iron head was still buried in his flesh—the same shoulder that had sustained the dire wound when they fled Kendrick’s lands.

Slick red blood matted his tunic and his hair, all down his back.

Oh, by the gods. By the holy moon—

Adair’s gaze caught hers and he clasped her hand. “Whisht, now. ’Tis nay so bad,” he breathed, a mere whisper.

“Nay so bad?” Her gaze must have betrayed her disbelief.

One side of his mouth quirked. “I am moving under my own power. Wen is not. We had best take care o’ him first.”

“But—”

“I can hear water, can ye not? There must be a stream nearby. We will need clear water to wash his wound.”

“But…” she said again, stupidly. That would mean her leaving the haven of the copse, for Adair could not go. She looked from his green-specked eyes to the hound stretched on the ground. “Aye.” Aye, she would have to call upon every speck of courage. For them.

“What d’ye have for bandaging?”

“Naught. We have used it all.” The silent tears came again. She could not stop them.

“We will ha’ to use the blanket.”

It was all they had. “’Tis filthy.”

“So is our clothing. Go now. Take the water flask.”

He was thinking clearly. Giving her calm directions. Even though he had a cold iron arrowhead in his back.

Och, she had seen the damage such a projectile could do. Kerr had once taken an arrow in the calf of his leg while out hunting. While in the hands of the healers after, his screams could be heard all over the settlement.

He had hobbled for weeks. But aye, he had survived.

She drew a breath. Scrambled up. “Stay wi’ him.” To which of her loves did she speak?

She had to battle her way out of the thorny thicket, which made her wonder how they had slipped in when they had. Had Alba truly opened the arms of the bushes and allowed them passage?

Mayhap she had not abandoned them yet.

She found a stream tumbling down the slope and dissecting the march of the trees, clear, clean water, and she filled the flask. She stole a precious moment to stand listening. Each shadow, each flicker, might be the hunters come back again. But she heard nothing, saw no one.

She stumbled twice on her way back to the copse.

Wen lay where she had left him, so still she feared he was dead. Adair calmly worked at tearing strips from their blanket, which he must have got down from her pony. Her harp, usually wrapped in the blanket when they traveled, stood placed carefully to one side.

“Here, let me do that.” She took the knife from him. How could he even move for pain?

The man she loved was strong. Patient. Wise. All that would make her love him more, were her heart not already so full of love for him it might burst.

She must be as strong as he.

“The arrowhead will not pull out,” he told her when all stood ready. “We will have to cut it out.”

Take the knife to Wen’s flesh? She could not.

“Let me.” Adair’s hand trembled when he held it out for her to pass the knife back. “Ye lie across him to keep him still. Hold a hand on his muzzle. If he yipes…”

Aye. How far might such a sound carry in the quiet?

She threw her body across her hound, her cheek against his. She murmured to him.

He did yipe, though Adair did the deed as swiftly as he could. Bradana flinched at the sound and beseeched Wen to be still, then waited—waited for sounds of the hunters’ return.

Those sounds did not follow.

“Here. Ye bandage him.” Adair rocked back on his heels, gray-white in the queer light of the copse. His eyes refused to meet Bradana’s now.

He knows he will have to endure the same , Bradana thought. And ’twill be my hand on the knife.

She could not. She must. She could not leave that ugly barb in his flesh.

No easy task, bandaging a hound’s haunch. Wen lay panting deeply with his pain, not otherwise moving. When Bradana finished, she used some of the water left from cleaning the wound to wash her hands before turning to look at Adair.

“Help me get my tunic off,” he requested, already fumbling at the task.

“We had best cut it.”

“I do not want to. I will have naught against the cold.”

He had naught. Because of her.

Savagely, she blinked away the tears that came again.

“Let me.”

Somehow she got the garment off him, at great cost in his pain. Tenderly she laid it aside. Eyed the wound.

Her head went light again.

Blood coursed down his freckled back. The wound was a jagged tear around the iron arrowhead and what was left of the shaft.

Adair swept his hair aside. “Ye saw how I did for Wen. Ye must free the barbs, cut away the flesh around them.”

She had not seen—she’d been holding the hound. Anyway, she could not .

She must.

“Aye. Gi’ me the knife.”

He passed it to her, their fingers brushing.

She rinsed the blade carefully with water. Saw her own fingers move like something in a dream.

Alba, help me.

It got no less dreamlike when she set blade to flesh. As if she watched some other woman from affair, she freed the barbs on the iron head, which she could see. Ignored the blood that flowed. Blood would cleanse the wound.

It took all her strength to withdraw the arrowhead.

Adair made not a sound. But when the ugly thing came free of his flesh, he sank down to lie limp upon the ground, which shattered the spell that held Bradana in its grip.

For one terrible moment she thought he was dead.

“Adair?”

“Clean the wound. Water.” His voice came in a croak.

She did, reaching hard for control. His back rose and fell with his breaths. She did a reasonably neat job of bandaging the wound, but she worried. The knife blade was dirty. The blanket filthy.

How might these two she adored survive?