Havoc's Daughters

Chapter 8 - Day 2 (morning): Caidrin - he wakes

Dawn came late to the western foot of the high Cumberan Mountains. In its pale light, death touched the cheeks of the sick and injured, spreading pallor where the skin was not painted with fever.

Or so the Grand Duchess Caidrin Alzarin had found it, since the arrival of her uncle’s army eight…no nine…days ago, now. But not this morning. 

The faces greeting her during her early morning survey showed the white of pain, of grief, of fatigue. Nowhere did she find the angry flush of fever, and it was with a spreading sense of awe she realized only two of her patients had died in the night. Even Margrave Pereger’s brow was only warm beneath her touch. 

Caidrin felt her own forehead a second time, just to make sure. By now infection should have set in, or worse. The bruises on his leg were still ugly, but she was beginning to see yellowing at their edges. It hinted at hope. By the ward mistress’ report, however, Lord Laeryn had not wakened in the night nor even stirred. 

What if he doesn’t waken? 

Her life yawned like a chasm at her feet, endless and empty. She dared touch his cheek, allowed her fingertips to smooth back stray wisps of blue-black hair. The heat of his skin entered her blood, and she felt it course up her arm to chest. The star-fall of white strands tugged like fast water over her fingers as she drew them through the inky jumble…and examined the bruised lump over his ear as an excuse. Blade was watching, after all.

What if--?

Laeryn Pereger’s lips moved and she startled, jerking her hand back like a child caught sneaking pastries from the kitchen. But his lips were moving still and he murmured something in urgent tones. She leaned close, straining to hear, but the language was not one she recognized. If it was a language at all. With a head wound, one could never tell. She waited, breath bated not to miss his faintest whisper, but he quieted and made no other sign.

Careful to show no sign of the disappointment that had her near tears, Caidrin sat back on her heels. Cousin Blade, on the pallet to her left, watched intently. She turned to examine his injury with the same care and precision she had the foreign lord’s, and even with some of the will. The thought of their future together crawled like bugs in her hair as her fingers prodded the warmth of his flesh, but she knew her prospects would be even more dismal if he died. 

Odd. Her cousin was just as warm, and his hair almost that exact length and shade of black, but the skin of her palms cringed when she forced herself to touch him. Even the knotted masses of muscle covered by his bronze skin looked crude when compared with his neighbor’s lean strength.

Despite the ragged tear of the wound and its crude initial care, Blade hadn’t fevered either. With the goddess Bethia’s favor he’d recover quickly and be gone, their enforced association put off yet a while.

“Your scouts attacked a caravan of refugees from Rose Hill town four days ago,” Caidrin murmured, rewinding her cousin’s bandage. “Do you recall what became of a black-haired lad among them?”

“They scattered into the forest,” he whispered back. She couldn’t have said whether he was keeping his voice low out of weakness or in imitation of her own tone. “All but the liveried guards and a handful of others who fought us.”

Caidrin’s breath constricted in her throat. “You took no prisoners?”

“We were moving fast in enemy territory, Cousin,” he snapped as if she were a fool. She refrained from tightening his bandages with unnecessary force, but he winced anyway and took a breath. “Prisoners could only have slowed us down,” he finished, almost contrite.

“Cousin, this is important. No prisoners? What of the women?”

The look he flashed at her was first angry, then sickened and ashamed as he apparently recalled his actions of the day before. He looked away.