From Ashes and Snow

The Paladin Camp.

 Chapter Four: The Paladin Camp.

Infection gripped my body tight. It felt like my blood was on fire, thundering violently through my veins and thudding behind my ears, but ice lingering on my skin like snow settling over my body. My consciousness ebbed between darkness and light, water lapping at my skin as I lay in a pool of melted snow.

I barely registered the passing of time above my head – stars turning to the pale winter sun, which then melted into cold night. I drifted into unconsciousness and woke to find myself on rock, bundled tight by life fur bodies.

When I woke again, someone's hand was pressed to my forehead. I could barely focus on their face or hear what they were saying. They beckoned frantically and then there were more bodies around me, nudging my body and watching me, watch them through slitted, feverish eyes.

"She's alive?"

A breath escaped me, a tiny exhale. Someone kneeled by my side, gripping my bloodied hand tight. I heard nothing of what they said – too tired to even form a coherent thought. I was waiting – to die – for Kendon to come and find me. He always knew what to do.

Hands gripped me tight, hauling me onto something hard and inflexible. My eyelids welded shut again and my thoughts scattered as fell into nothing again. I might have said something, whimpered something as pain rocked through me but no one replied.

Still, a hand clenched mine tight.

≻≺

I woke as pain punched through my chest. A scream arched my back, my heels digging into the wooden pallet beneath me. Fever took over my vision, the figures around me mere brushes of paint in my reality.

"She's not going to live." A voice cut in, bitter and cold. "We will never know what happened there."

A figure stood over those brushes of paint, as clear as day. His face was creased in sadness, those kind eyes crinkled as he looked over me.

"Kendon?" His name was a sob. "Kendon!"

He didn't take a step towards me, but I drank in the sight of him. I bucked against the pain, even as hands pushed my shoulders down as a needle was threaded through my skin and healers reset the bones in my chest, one pop at a time with their careless casting.

The one holding down my shoulders gave a rough snarl as I tried to twist away, reaching for Kendon with shining silver hands. "Have you got anything for her delirium?"

Kendon just looked at me, silver and shining with sad eyes. He didn't reach back for me and stared at my shaking and blood-stained fingers stretching for him, before the strain of keeping my arm up washed over me and I blacked out to the sight of his vanishing figure.

≻≺

I roused to the sound of shouting. My eyes wrenched open in panic at the sound, my legs kicking into stone and hay as I righted myself. My tongue was dry, and my limbs numb. Slowly and painfully, I managed to prop myself up against the stone wall behind me.

Working my jaw, my eyes flickered over my surroundings.

I was in a small, windowless hut. The only way to get out was either through the straw roof, or the wooden door which I suspected was latched shut from the other side. It provided no protection against the cold which leached in under the broken-ended boards.

I had been laid out on a bedroll. Beside me were bowls of water with rag soaking in them. Another was melting snow, and another was filled with filthy bandages and rags stained with blood and pus. A hand fluttered to my chest – I wore a loose tunic, and someone had taken the time to bandage my ribs. These people- whoever they were had also picked out the slivers of clothing that had stuck to the burns on my arm and salved it.