“He’s alive. The arrow head passed through, but I think it nicked bone.” She blinked at him. “’Tis bad, a grave wound. We canna find aphysician.”
“Are there any to be had?” They had not thought of that, had they, while rushing headlong into battle.
“If there are, they will be busy elsewhere. The king was struck. Did ye see?”
Finlay nodded.
“I do no’ ken if he lives.”
“He leads yet the center company,” Finlay told her. He had seen that much during their own charge. “But I think we will lose this battle.”
“Och, aye. Curse all that sent us to it. Come, we maun do what we can for Da. Do ye ha’ any skill in those hands besides for harping?”
“Nay.” But she did. He remembered her treating his wounds when he returned from battle long, long ago. In the small roundhouse this was, the place where they dwelt. Her touch gentle and comforting. Healing in its love.
He did not say that either. He did not know if she was ready to hear all they had been to one another.
“Let us see wha’ may be done.”
Anders was not unconscious after all. He opened his eyes when Finlay hunkered down next to him and said weakly, “Harper.”
“Chief.”
“I am that glad to see ye alive.”
“And I, ye.”
After some discussion, they decided the best course was to break the shaft off the arrow, a process that proved painful to Anders in the extreme.
What followed proved even less pleasant, so much so that, at length, the chief did pass out, a relief to all involved.
Katrin scavenged from her clothing to bandage him. Not until that task was accomplished did she turn to Finlay.
“Your face—”
“Skinned by an arrow.”
“Let me see what I can do for it.”
They had discovered a muddy rivulet of water, one no doubt formed by the rain. She wetted a scrap of clothing and washed the blood from his face and beard, and aye, it was so like those days long past that he had to close his eyes again, absorbing the feel of it. Of her. If he opened his eyes, whom would he see? His Irish lass bent over him with her golden hair all hanging down or Katrin in her filthy armor, love and concern brimming in her eyes?
It scarce mattered. The love was the same.
Just the same.
“I canna bandage that,” she said. “I canna do much at all for ye, but ’tis clean as I can make it.”
He opened his eyes and found himself back on the muddy, broken plain. He took her hands in his.
She leaned forward and lightly dropped a kiss upon the wound. “Ye will ha’ a scar there.”
“Alas.”
“Nay matter, I do no’ mind. Ye may be ugly as a boar’s backside and I would no’ mind. No’ that ye are.” The smile in her eyes failed. “How do we get my da away out o’ this?”
Finlay did not know.
“Wha’ frightens me, Finlay, is that I ha’ already had my miracle. When I saw ye walking out o’ that battle to me—”
