They drew up and sat, silent. Listening. After a few moments, Ella nodded. She’d heard it, too. Something crashing through the underbrush. A deer? Or worse, a boar? Or if they were lucky, the lads.
Calum moved to intercept whatever was making the noise. Ella followed.
It was a lad.
“Gordy! Ye are safe,” Calum told him as he dismounted and approached the lad, who clung to a sapling’s low branch and stared as if he was seeing things.
“Ye found me.” He looked ready to collapse, or to burst in to tears, but he stayed upright and stoic.
“We did. Where are the rest of yer friends?”
“They went on, after a deer. I couldna keep up.” He pointed to blood on the torn leg of his trews. “I fell into brambles and got cut on a broken branch.”
“Let me take a look,” Ella said, dismounting and grabbing her water skin. She made the lad sit down, rinsed his wounds, and inspected his leg for any debris in the wounds and scratches. “’Tisna too bad, but we need to get ye back to Mhairi.” She ripped a length of cloth from his pants leg and bound it around and over the deepest wound. “That should stop the bleeding for now.” She handed him the water skin. “Drink, Gordy. Ye’ll feel better.”
“The rest of the lads are in a ravine,” he said after he satisfied his thirst. “They chased the doe down there. ’Twas too steep for me to climb down.”
“And they didna have enough sense to know they’d have to haul her back up if they got her?”
“We wounded her,” Kyle said. “’Twas our responsibility to dispatch her so she wouldna suffer.”
“Good lads,” Calum said, praising them for following a deer they’d injured rather than let it die slowly and in pain.
Ella shook her head, her gaze on Kyle as he returned her water skin to her, then she looked up at Calum. “What should we do?”
He didn’t want to leave Ella alone out here, but her expression told him she didn’t want the lad to wait much longer for the healer, either. “A ravine, ye said? How far is it?”
“I dinna ken. I’ve been limping along for a while.”
“Let’s find it, then I’ll take ye back to the others. One of them can take ye to Mhairi and the rest can help us with the other lads.”
He lifted Kyle onto his horse while Ella mounted hers, then he mounted behind the lad and followed the trail of broken brush and blood smears he had left. Before long, they got to the ravine.
“Georgie,” Ella called out.
“We’re down here,” he answered. “Ye found us! We kenned ye would.”
“Thank the saints,” she said and traded a relieved smile with Calum.
“Do ye need help getting out of there?” Calum dismounted and walked to the edge, but it was getting too dark to see much down the slope.
“Aye,” another lad answered. “We’ve got a deer.”
“And enough blood, I’ll wager, to attract every predator within miles,” Calum muttered. “Move away from it,” Calum told them, then turned to Ella and asked quietly, “Can this lad wait for Mhairi while we get these lads out of the hole they’re in?”
“I dinna think so. He’s lost some blood, Calum, and he’s exhausted. I’m worried for him.”
He huffed out a breath, torn between Kyle’s safety and Ella’s. But Ella’s frown told him Kyle’s need was more urgent. “I’ll take him back to the others. I want ye to stay here.”
“Very well.” She glanced down the ravine.
“Right here,” he repeated. “I dinna want ye going down there in the dark. If ye fall and hurt yerself, ye’ll no’ be able to help anyone else, and some of the other lads may need ye.”
She gave him a distracted nod but didn’t answer.
“Ella.”
She frowned. “I hear ye. Stay here.”
