Cimmerian Sunrise

Chapter 15 - ***REVISED***

The legs of a chair smashed through wood and glass leaving wicked teeth around the window frame. She'd found the chair almost blindly, and now she fumbled for the bed sheets, frantically wrenching them from between mattress and blankets. Coughs continued to rattle about her chest, both from smoke and from exertion. She knotted the first sheet to the bedpost as tightly as her strained, shaking fingers could manage, and then the second sheet to the first.

People in novels clearly had more bed sheets at their disposal. Even with the bed alongside the window, she would have a tremendous drop to the ground...even if she managed not to slice herself to ribbons on the jagged edge. Blankets. She shielded the bottom edge with blankets and hoped it would spare her fatal injury. With a last gasped prayer, she held tight to the sheets and tried to climb out swiftly and carefully.

Carefully only lasted until the first slice of pain. She clung tight to the sheets and her shoulders wrenched with the fall, her sinews and tendons screamed, and her fingers slid and stretched in pain and lost their grasp.

Impact and blackness.

Breanne awoke to a rough, wet cloth scratching at her wounds and straw poking at her through blankets. Rough hewn beams above her. A familiar brogue.

"Easy..." Reese warned, as she tried to sit up and found the pain and dizziness too much for her. As her eyes focused, she could see him soot smeared, clothing singed, arm roughly bandaged with the ruffle of her nightdress, bone weary and soaked with sweat.

"The house!" Breanne cried, memory flashing before her like lightning.

"It's gone, lass," he said in a hushed tone, bitter with defeat and apology.

"And the fire?" Her breath quickened and her heart pounded.

"Gone as well." Reese looked at her sidelong, a weary, sad triumph in the words.

"You put it out alone?" she asked hoarsely, eyes widening.

"Nay, lass. By providence Yagan was camped close by."

"How on earth did he alert you?"

"He dinna. I'd camped closer still."

This made little sense to Breanne's aching head. The furrows between her brows made this clear.

"And could I be returnin' to the manor and all within' on me weddin' night without a bride?"

His voice was quieter than she was accustomed to hearing it, but she colored at his words and focused her attention on a piece of golden straw. "S-so you stayed the night here? In a barn?" she rasped, then coughed heavily afterwards.

"Dere is no guwiyang."

The voice belonged to Yagan. Breanne tried to lift her head to look at the doorway, or at least to utter a greeting; but all her strength had drained from her and she lay back limply with a swirling head and a ringing in her ears. She only held her eyes open long enough to observe Reese, whose body hunched over hers. Turning his head, he spoke to Yagan who stood mere feet away.

Unable to make out what Reese was saying, and frankly, too exhausted to care, she gave in to her body's aching need and closed her eyes before a sudden, terrible thought slammed into her mind. Aching...The fall. The babe! Was the babe all right?

Though the nearness of Reese gave her the sensation of being safe and well... protected... even comforted; it wasn't enough to dull the sharp pain and thrumming in her heart--the icy fear... What if the babe was...She couldn't let herself think it. Tears squeezed out from the corners of her eyes. Struggling, she tried to open them, but in vain. The ringing in her ears grew louder, and louder still and she was pulled into the darkness.