He reached her, apparently oblivious to the sudden addition of several hundred horses, or the two elves positioned just behind her. “You look okay,” Venick said, breathless and hopeful. He gripped Eywen’s bridle to slow the animal, tipping his head back to peer at Ellina in the saddle. “Are you okay?”
“I am fine,” Dourin said dryly. “Thank you for asking.”
Venick’s eyes skipped to the elf. He did a double take. “Dourin?”
“Hello to you.”
“But…” Venick teetered back a step. At last, he seemed to take in the scene: Dourin astride his pure white horse named Grey, Traegar to his left, the plod and stamp of the herd behind them. Venick made a choked sound. “How?”
“How did I getbetterlooking after a sword to the gut? Well, it is a funny story—”
“How are you alive?” Venick appeared too stunned to temper his tone. His words sounded like an accusation. “We thought you were dead.”
“Is that why you refused to answer my letters? You did not want to entertain the missives of a ghost?”
Venick and Ellina exchanged a look. “We didn’t get your letters.”
“A likely excuse.”
“It’s true.” Venick slid his teeth sideways, and though he didn’t say it aloud, Ellina knew what they were both thinking: Harmon.
Harmon had lied about Dourin’s death…or someone had lied to her. Either way, she had proven her propensity for meddling when she told Ellina of Dourin’s supposed demise, but not Venick. And now this.
Had Harmon intercepted their messages? And if so, why?
Venick caught Ellina’s gaze again. His brows drew a hard line.It’s my fault,his face seemed to say.I should have suspected something was not right with her.
You could not have known,Ellina tried to convey back.You cannot always blame yourself.
“While I am sure you two are enjoying your private little conversation,” Dourin cut in, “the rest of us have had a busy day of saving lives, and would like to get out of these saddles.”
“Dourin.” Traegar closed his eyes, as if seeking patience on the back of his lids. “We have discussed this. It is not always about you.”
“No, Dourin’s right,” Venick said. When Ellina and Traeger frowned at him, he elaborated. “I mean, he’s right that we shouldn’t stay here. We should move inside.”
“So that the others may congratulate me,” Dourin asserted.
“In case the Dark Army returns,” Venick corrected.
“Semantics,” Dourin replied, kicking his horse into a trot towards the city.
???
“It is not broken,” Lin Lill insisted, frowning at Erol as he secured her foot with a wooden box-splint.
Ellina, Dourin, Traegar and Venick were all gathered in the city’s infirmary around the ranger’s cot, which was one in a long line of identical white medical beds. Upon their arrival, Venick had attempted to warn the others about what lay behind the infirmary doors, explaining in clipped tones how they had battled the Dark Army in the woods, the bloodshed that had ensued. Ellina understood Venick’s attempt to brace them, even if she believed it was unnecessary. None in their group were strangers to gore. They would not be shaken by what they saw.
She was wrong.
The smell hit her first. Blood and excrement. The tang of urine and sweat. Healers swept back and forth between rows of narrow beds, each occupied by a wounded soldier. Ellina saw a man with a hand missing, the severed tendons hanging freely. An elf whose leg had broken at a disturbing angle. A woman with a deep slice down the center of her face, her mouth split in two, nose spilling loosely to either side. It was not merely the horror of the injuries, but the scale of those who had been maimed. The number of wounded far outstripped the number of available cots, and so many patients were forced to sit along the walls, clutching bloodied rags or cradling broken limbs while they waited their turn.
Lin Lill lay propped against her pillows in a relatively secluded corner of the infirmary. Though the ranger’s injury was not life threatening—her foot had been crushed under a horse’s hoof—Lin was inconsolable, not only because she deemed the method of damage utterly embarrassing, but because Erol maintained that the bone was broken.
“We will need to wait for the swelling to go down to assess the severity of the break,” Erol said patiently as he finished splinting her foot.
“It is not broken,” Lin Lill repeated. “How could it be? I was wearing a metal boot.”
“You must keep it immobilized,” he continued, unfazed. “Six weeks, minimum. Maybe longer.”
