Blood-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book I ]

56

Aun came rushing into the infirmary just a moment later, breathless and wild-eyed. She slammed the door closed and leaned back against it. Panic had made her shake.

Mhera, too, felt the fear. Fear had become a constant companion to her, but this was different. It was vital, visceral. Death could come to either of them in the next breath. Who knew what would happen?

"They came all at once, I think," said Aun. "From the east ... from where the river cuts through the Duskwood. But they came upon us so suddenly. Where were our rangers?"

Mhera knew this was not a question Aun expected her to answer. If the alarm had not sounded at once, perhaps the rangers had been killed before they could raise it. Knowing how it had played out would not change what would happen now.

In the silence that fell, she heard a shout outside. Then another. She turned her face toward the window and saw, for an instant, running figures wearing pale tabards over metal armor that glinted in the last of the sunlight. The sight of them did not trouble Mhera with the confused emotions she had expected. There was only terror.

Aun beckoned to Mhera. "Come, we must stay out of sight. There are no curtains to cover the windows."

Together, the two women sat on the floor below the windows along the wall facing the main road. They could hear the shouting from outside grow more intense and then, too near, Mhera heard the first clang of metal on metal.

"We'll be here for when there are wounded," Aun said.

Mhera wondered if it comforted her to have a purpose.

...

The first of the wounded was a man Mhera had never seen before, and he was dead before he crossed their threshold. The ones who carried him had no time to spare; they spilled his body onto a cot and ran back out of the infirmary, one of them with hands already full of crackling red light.

Aun smoothed the man's hair back from his forehead and felt his neck with her other hand. But the ugly sword-wound in his chest surely told her all she needed to know.

"They shouldn't have brought him," she whispered. "We'll need the bed."

A sound at the door made both women turn, but it was no wounded Hanpean coming in on the arm of a fellow rebel. This was a Starborn soldier, his pale tabard already spattered with blood. Mhera stumbled several steps back. He was her uncle's man, but the sight of him with a bloody sword in his hand only frightened her. He looked wildly around the place, grasping his sword as if preparing to swing it before he even saw a living soul.

His face a grimace, he moved toward Aun. His heavy boot steps thundered on the floor. Mhera screamed without thinking: "No!"

Aun slid to the side, falling against one of the small tables set between the cots. She was fumbling for something underneath her skirt.

Mhera reached for the first thing she could grasp: a broom. Aun was no fighter. She was an innocent, and Mhera's only thought was to defend her.

Mhera darted toward the soldier and swung at him with all her strength so that the lower shaft of the broom cracked against the back of his head. He spun with a snarl, swinging his sword before he properly saw her face. Mhera threw herself to the floor, narrowly avoiding the slicing blade. Then she rolled onto her back and scrambled away from him, braced for another blow.

"You!" he cried. "You're the lady! Goddess above, my lady, forgive me." He tightened his grip on his sword, turning back toward Aun with a snarl. "I'll free you, lady—"

Mhera was not certain how it happened. He was lunging toward Aun one moment, and the next, he was slumping down to the floor making an wretched choking sound. She was certain there was blood, that much was plain to see, but she could not understand how it had come to be there, dripping down Aun's wrists. There was a dagger held tightly in both of the healer's hands. A red stain spread across the sky-blue tabard the soldier wore from a wound in his neck.