Trembling, Eithne started to unwrap his shoulder. Ivor moaned, but his eyes didn’t flutter at all. She saw now that there was a crease in his brow and sweat peppered all over his forehead. The bandage stuck to the wound, and Eithne tried her best to remove it without hurting him any more than she already had to.
A musty smell wafted from the wound as she exposed it to the air. Around its edges was a greenish-yellow tinge, and a thin film seemed to cover the whole area.
Eithne rocked back, shock and fear threatening to make her collapse here and now.
He’s already infected!
The attacker’s weapons must have been filthy, and their sleeping arrangements made it worse. Eithne could wash it out, but it would hurt a lot – and she had no guarantee that it would make any difference at this stage.
No, he needed a healer, someone trained in the art of wounds. He needed someone who knew how to draw out infection and which herbs worked best for fevers. He needed help, and help was miles from wherever they were now.
And no matter how fast she might ridge, Eithne knew with increasing dread that she was maybe already too late.
Chapter Ten
The MacRyvers
Ivor’s eyes opened, which in itself was a surprise. He’d spent the last who-knew-how-long in a strange, fevered dream, and he’d been almost sure that the next time he woke up, it would be in the afterlife.
Well, if this was the afterlife, it was awfully modest. He lay in a small wooden bed with pristine white sheets and a thin but comfortable pillow under his head. He turned to the side and saw his shoulder in a clean white bandage and felt under his chin. Someone had trimmed the tangles out of his beard and hair.
Ivor groaned. He sat up, but an overwhelming rush of dizziness sent him onto his back again.
“Dinnae try to get up,” an angel’s voice said, so soft that it brought the pillow to shame.
“Am I dead?” he asked gruffly, though the second the words passed his lips, he knew how foolish they were. Dead men didn’t have headaches like the one he was sporting now.
“Nay, thank God, though I’m half-struggling to believe it meself even now. Drink some water.”
She stood over him then, his bow-wielding angel – Eithne, looking clean and tidy and exhausted. Holding his head, she tipped water into his lips. He drank greedily; he hadn’t realized how parched he was. When he finally finished, he lay back down, relieved.
“What happened?” he asked. Eithne hesitated, and he added, “Come, lie down with me and tell me.”
Eithne’s expression cleared then, and she slipped off her shoes and climbed onto the bed with him. Ivor was surprised by how natural it felt when she buried her head in the crook of his shoulder, her arm wrapped around his waist. “I thought I’d lost ye,” she said, muffled in his skin.
“I remember getting shot,” he said, wincing at the ghost memory. “And stabbed as well, trying to keep them away from ye. And then ye—like an avenging angel, like a faerie queen, ye saved me life.”
Eithne chuckled a little tiredly. “I did me best. But when we made camp at last, yer wound must have gotten infected. I woke up the next day and found ye burning a hole in the ground. I took Aibreann and fled as quickly as I could to the nearest town. Naebody wanted to help me, so I rode to the next, and the next, fearful of what ye’d be like when I got back.”
“Where are we now?” he asked.
“In a house with two young lads who are taking care of their Mammy,” Eithne explained. “The youngest is just three and ten, but his older brother didnae want to help until his mither intervened. She took one look at me and said, “Can ye nae see that this is Siobhan MacDonnell’s older lass?”
Ivor’s eyes widened in surprise. “Siobhan…that was Lady Kinnear’s name, was it nae? Yer mammy?”
“Aye,” Eithne confirmed. “It turns out that the old woman, Mrs. MacRyver, used to care for me mam and her sisters when they were bairns, though of course nae me uncle. She was a close friend of me mither’s until me faither took her away to Kinnear.”
Ivor couldn’t believe it. Part of him was overjoyed, but there was something darker there too, something he was going desperately out of his way to ignore. “So ye’re telling me we’re on MacDonnell land?”
He turned his head and saw her smile, though there was something troubled behind her eyes as well. “Aye,” she replied. “The very borders, but aye. We’re but one day out from the castle town and me Laird Uncle.”
“And yer sister,” Ivor said.
“And Myrna,” she agreed. She hid her head again, and Ivor didn’t say anything when he felt her tears on his skin.
There was a long silence then, both of them lost in a whirlwind of their own thoughts. Ivor wondered if she was thinking of the same thing he was – that as soon as he’d seen her safely to the castle, it would all be over. She’d return to her sister, and he…
Well, I’ll go back to me life, I suppose. I just need to try to remember what that was.
