Page 19 of The Sorcerer's Alpha

CHAPTER8

Marut drove his knife into the ground and tethered the horses there, head to head with their bodies forming a V to serve as a windbreak. They bent to graze at the short brown grass still visible beneath the thin layer of snow. He draped blankets over both of them to warm them and provide additional cover. In that small shelter, he knelt to examine Sycamore’s shoulder.

The blanket he had pressed to the wound until the bleeding slowed lay in a soaked and crumpled ball on the ground. The arrow had passed through, which spared him from having to painstakingly dig out the head. He cut away Sycamore’s clothes to get a better look, his coat and quilted tunic, his wool undershirt. The wound still leaked sluggish blood, but Marut was confident by now that the artery in the shoulder was intact. He had seen a man bleed out like that in minutes.

Sycamore seemed dazed with pain and barely reacted as Marut ran cautious fingers over his shoulder joint to determine how bad the damage was. The joint itself seemed to be intact, but the exit wound on his back showed fragments of bone, and Marut suspected the shoulder blade was shattered. An injury of that magnitude needed an expert surgeon, and although Marut was a decent field medic, the most he could manage here was to keep the wound clean and pray it healed without infection. Sycamore would never use his arm again.

“This will hurt,” he told Sycamore, turning to his saddlebags to remove the smaller bag that held his medical supplies. Sycamore didn’t reply, but he held himself rigid and motionless as Marut used tweezers to pick out the visible flecks of bone, letting out a few soft noises of agony as Marut probed more deeply. Marut had to stop when his bare hands went numb, but he was reluctant to do too much digging around in the wound anyway. The wizard would live or he wouldn’t; there was no need to subject him to more pain than necessary.

He bandaged both wounds, then used his smaller knife to slice the ruined blanket into strips and bound the wizard’s arm to his body to prevent any inadvertent movements. There was nothing else he could do.

The wizard stirred as Marut wrapped a spare blanket around him. He set his good hand in his lap, and Marut saw that it had been pressed bare to the ground, leaving a melted print in the snow.

“We’re south of the Koramandi,” Sycamore said. “The Khentii Steppe.”

“The grasslands,” Marut said slowly. He pulled on his gloves and his cloak, and wrapped a blanket around his own shoulders for good measure. “The Skopoy wizard sent us here?”

“No. I did.” Sycamore lifted his hand toward his shoulder, then lowered it again before he made contact. “My shoulder is very bad, isn’t it?”

Marut didn’t want to answer that. “You can send us back?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know how I did it. I’ve never done anything like it before.” Sycamore looked at Marut, his lips pale with cold and pain. “We’re weeks from Banuri. Far to the south, far to the east.”

Marut sat there for a moment, absorbing this information. In the badlands, even as their situation grew increasingly desperate, he’d had the hope of reaching the outpost and safety. There was no hope of that now. No one could save them. They were utterly alone.

Sycamore was watching him. “All is lost, I take it.”

Marut looked around at this empty world they’d been brought to: the flat snowy plains, the low, heavy sky. Rolling hills on the horizon broke up the otherwise featureless landscape. People lived here, he knew, but he couldn’t imagine how.

He had a long list of concerns. The horses’ winter coats were grown for Chedi’s winters, and might not be warm enough for the harsher climate here. His and Sycamore’s clothing and bedding weren’t warm enough. They were running low on food, and would need even more now as their bodies burned extra energy to stay warm. Snow would do well enough for water, but he would be happier knowing there was a spring or lake nearby. He didn’t know where to find fuel. Sycamore’s injury would make it difficult or impossible for him to ride. On top of all of that, the Koramandi would be impassible until spring.

The most immediate problem was Sycamore’s shoulder. Marut wasn’t even certain he could mount; getting himoffthe horse had been bad enough. Marut could leave him here and ride to find help, but he had no way of knowing if there were any nomad camps nearby, and there was a good chance he would simply ride out into the grassland until he was so hopelessly lost he would never find his way back to Sycamore.

“Sycamore,” he said, and waited until the man raised his head again. He seemed to be dozing off, which was a bad sign. “Can you do anything about your shoulder?”

Sycamore blinked at him, eyelids drooping. “Do? Do what?”

“With your magic,” Marut said, fighting down his impatience. He was afraid now, at last, with no one pursuing them. Human adversaries were mortal and needed rest and water and food, but the snow and the great barren earth didn’t slow or sleep. He and Sycamore could be erased from this landscape as easily as smearing wet ink with the smudge of a thumb.

“With magic,” Sycamore repeated. His chin dipped toward his chest. Marut reached over to grip his knee, ready to shake him into awareness, but then Sycamore said, “I have no talent for healing.”

So be it. Marut could do nothing more but pray.

“I’ll set up the tent,” he said. “Don’t fall asleep.”

“No,” Sycamore said, his head already lowering again.

Marut pitched the tent as quickly as he could. Despite his gloves, his fingers were cold and stiff and didn’t want to cooperate. He scraped away as much snow as he could to make a bare patch of ground and laid out Sycamore’s bedding there. Sycamore wouldn’t be warm enough, but Marut couldn’t help that without a fire.

Sycamore had slumped where he sat, but he responded when Marut touched his good shoulder and let Marut help him to his feet. He could walk on his own, albeit slowly, at least the few feet to the tent, and he knelt again at the entrance, then looked up at Marut with a baffled expression on his face. “How do I crawl inside?”

“I’ll have to help you,” Marut said, and awkwardly half-dragged Sycamore into the tent. He was as careful as he could be, but Sycamore was still gray-lipped and tense by the time Marut got him seated on the pallet, his saddle pad layered beneath two blankets. Then Marut had to lower him onto his back, which went well until the final moments when his ruined shoulder came to rest against the blankets. “I’m sorry,” Marut said, dismayed by the broken noise Sycamore made.

“There’s no helping it,” the wizard said. His eyes were closed. “I think I may sleep for a while.”

Marut covered him with every remaining blanket they had as well as his own saddle pad, then crawled back out of the tent to tend to the horses. They had finished all the grass they could reach, and Bunny was pawing restlessly at the ground. Marut tied their blankets on with the same ropes he had used to tether them and set them loose to wander. Bunny wouldn’t stray far, and Rhododendron would stay with him.

He gathered the saddlebags and brought everything inside the tent. The light was fading outside, and he would be foolish to go wandering around the steppe as night fell, no matter how badly they needed food and fuel. The wizard’s eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell.