Page 51 of The Summer Pass

He came back to himself when the pain in his left arm suddenly spiked, white-hot and screaming. He might have made a noise; he couldn’t tell. Had he made a noise? You must never make a noise.

There was an arrow in his arm, the shaft sticking out. He tried to move his other hand to pull it out, but his hand was stuck somehow, up over his head. He twisted, gasping, as if he could pull himself away from the pain, leave that part of him behind.

“ … out of arrows … ” someone on the riverbank was saying.

More voices. Laughter. Running footsteps, thumping on boards.

“ … got them!”

On the other side of the room, someone shouted in alarm. Lamplight swam and glimmered on a figure jumping down from a balcony, long legs swinging over the rail, sword in his free hand. He hit the nearest bowman in the chest with the heel of his boot as he came over, knocked him backward into the man behind him, who grabbed at the man beside him as he fell, and the three of them went down together while the warrior angel with his pale gold hair glowing in the firelight landed on the boards of the deck, strode forward, and cut down another of the archers with a single slice of his divine sword.

He had two swords now, one in each hand, and four of the bowmen were rushing at him, their own blades drawn. Blood sprayed up in a red arc. Someone was shouting: “Stop, stop! Don’t you know … ”

Yes. Don’t you know he’s a servant of the Almighty, come to take your wicked lives? Lill could have told them. If only he could stay awake long enough … He wanted to watch the angel fight.

He opened his eyes, and the angel was wading through the stream toward him. Getting wet, nearly up to his armpits in the water. Why would he do that?

Lill knew that he should be scared. He was Accursed, had done the forbidden rites, must never let the divine eyes perceive him. This was his doom coming for him in the form of a beautiful man, reaching up from the water to claim him. He wasn’t even a little scared.

“Why didn’t you fly?” Lill whispered as Vanu put his arms around him.

At least that’s what Vanu thought he said. His words came out so slurred that it was hard to tell. His lips were blue, his eyes big and unfocussed. But he was looking at Vanu steadily and seemed to expect an answer.

“Forgot how,” said Vanu.

He lifted Lill up gently from the waist, and Lill made a little gasping moan as the weight came off his arms. Vanu looked back to signal the guard who’d followed him out onto the gallery. The man unhooked the chain from its mooring, and it fell down with a clatter and splash. Lill sagged forward and fell over Vanu’s shoulder, bound hands dropping heavily into the water. Vanu adjusted his grip so he was cradling Lill. He waded back across the current toward the edge of the stream, paying out the slack chain as he went.

He’d killed three of the men on the gallery. The other three had recognized him and surrendered. After seeing them lined up to shoot at Lill, he’d have liked to kill them too. Maybe they’d guessed that, because they were keeping very quiet and staying as far away from him as they could.

Lill was fighting to stay awake, but Vanu was pretty sure he didn’t know where he was or who was carrying him. He was like a very sleepy drunk.

They needed a fire and warm blankets. And a surgeon to get the arrow out of Lill’s arm, and …

Vanu took the stairs up from the lower gallery two at a time. The helpful guard followed him back through the dungeon until Vanu stopped at a place where a number of wooden staves leaned up against a wall.

“Help me move these,” said Vanu to the guard, kicking a couple of them out of the way.

The guard scrambled to help, looking confused.

“I don’t know where that leads, my lord,” he said, looking at the small, low door that emerged.

“I do,” said Vanu.

He shoved the door open and bent to duck through.

“Go back to your post,” he instructed the guard. “Say you don’t know where I went.”

“I will, my lord!”

“Thank you for your help,” Vanu added.

It was hard to manoeuvre through the small door with Lill in his arms, and Vanu ended up on his knees on the stone floor on the other side. He could hear the guard piling the sticks back in place. Once he had pushed the door closed, there would be no light at all here, so he took a moment to look down at Lill before he did that.

“You still with me?” he whispered.

Lill’s eyelids fluttered, and he peered up at Vanu and murmured something. He was bleeding from the arrow in his arm and from a long cut across his ribs, and his white skin was bruised and scraped in many other places. He was wearing nothing but a soggy pair of black trousers.

Vanu’s own clothes were water-logged from wading in the underground stream. If he’d had the sense to take off his shirt, at least he’d have a dry garment to wrap around Lill, but he hadn’t. He pushed the door fully closed behind him, settled Lill across his lap, and stripped off his wet shirt. Gathering Lill up against his relative warmth, he moved carefully forward into the dark.