Without hesitation, Tristan had already begun the grisly task of dismembering the large war horse. Randall needed no further direction, and soon, two more soldiers had joined them in their efforts.
“Hold!” Nicholas fell back onto his knees in the warm lake they’d created, swiping at the blood dripping into his eyes. He dropped his sword and reached for one half of the portioned torso. “Take hold, men, and go with care. Now!”
The grisly part was raised with a powerful heave and rolled away, revealing the crater beneath, as well as Handaar’s crushed leg. The chausses and skin covering it had split upon the horse’s fall, busting the flesh and leaving thick splinters of bone protruding, Handaar’s torn boot twisted backward in the mangled stirrup. None of the men witnessing the display spoke.
Nick crawled to the old man’s head. “My lord,” he called loudly. “Handaar!” He grasped the man’s face and turned it toward him. “Handaar, can you hear me?”
Nick’s heart leaped as a nearly inaudible groan escaped the man’s bloodied lips.
Behind him, Tristan roared, “A pallet! And water—quickly!”
Nick jerked at his tunic, pulling it then his undershirt over his head as his brother and his men dispersed, leaving him alone with Handaar. Nick’s body was wracked with tremors as the cold night air sluiced over his sweat-slicked back. Nick ripped at the undershirt, tearing wide strips.
“Handaar,” he called as he worked. “Open your eyes, Handaar. Look at me!”
He pulled a slender dagger from his boot and leaned over the old lord’s body, cutting away the bloody tunic. Handaar’s pale chest was scored with slash marks, but the shoulder wound was most dire, still spurting blood when the fabric was peeled away. Nick eased the shoulder up, nearly giddy at the groan it elicited from the man, and wrapped several lengths of his torn shirt about the wound.
“Yea, cry out,” Nick urged, breathless, working frantically. “Let me hear that you yet live.” He tied the lengths in stiff knots and then lowered him back to the ground. “Handaar?”
“Nick.” The word was barely a whisper, but Nick’s straining ears heard it clearly.
“Handaar, open your eyes, friend.” He drew his face near to the old man’s, willing him to speak again.Please…
“Nick,” Handaar wheezed, his eyelids cracking open. He was so still. “Knew you’d…come.”
“Of course, my lord. Of course I came. Stay with me, now.”
“Dying.”
“Nay!” Nick fought to squelch the foreign wave of hysteria that wanted to send him screaming from Obny’s nightmarish bailey. “Nay, you’ll not—I’ll take you to Hartmoore, to my mother. Lady Genevieve will care for you there. We all will.”
Handaar’s eyes closed. “Obny…gone. Fiona?”
Nick’s sob caught in his throat and he swallowed convulsively. The old lord knew his town, his home, was no more, and he was calling out for his long-dead wife. Nick prayed that she would not answer him.
Randall and Tristan reappeared, pulling a low, wheeled cart behind them.
“It’s all we could find, Nick,” Tristan said, dropping the long wooden poles of the crude conveyance.
Nick let his eyes flick to the cart. “I’ll have to straighten his other leg before we move him.”
“Do not.” The strength of Handaar’s voice startled Nick.
“We must get you to the cart, my lord. ’Twill be quick, I vow it.”
Handaar’s eyes opened slowly, rolled for an instant, and then seemed to pierce Nick’s very soul with their intensity. The old man whispered something so low, Nick was forced to lean his ear directly over the man’s lips.
“Say again, Handaar.”
“Back broken.” A wheeze. “Leave me.”
Nick rose, swiftly shaking his head. He moved to Handaar’s twisted leg, ignoring that the lord had closed his eyes and turned his head away. The limb was broken in several places, the myriad of angles making it difficult to ascertain the joints from the fractures.
Nick wrapped one hand around a boot-clad ankle and placed his other high up on Handaar’s thigh.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” he murmured, and then, taking a bracing breath, he straightened the leg with a swift, dragging motion. Nick’s stomach knotted and cramped at the cracking and ripping sounds coming from Handaar’s limb.
Handaar neither flinched nor cried out.
