Brightly Burning (50 page)

Elenor was useless; that much was obvious; she knelt in the snow and sobbed into her hands next to her father. That left Lan and Tuck; Lan went for wood while Tuck slid off his Companion and emptied the contents of all the saddlebags onto the ground.

When Lan returned with the wood, afoot now, with the wood piled onto Kalira's back, Tuck had spread blankets over the snow and Pol lay on them, his face neatly bandaged. There was a strange scent in the air, not of burned meat, but a metallic scent, hot stone and scorched earth. Lan piled the wood near Pol and Ilea and ignited it, turning it into a roaring fire in an instant. As he went back for more wood, Ilea pushed a small pot holding clean snow near the flames to melt for water.

When he returned the second time, Elenor was finally doing something, cleaning some of the blood off her father's face and clothing and helping her mother, although she was sobbing as she worked. Tuck was off getting more wood himself.

Ilea was on the verge of hysteria. “I
can't
stop now!” she shouted at Elenor, in response to a tear-choked entreaty. “I am
not
going to let your father go blind! I
will
Heal him, I swear it, if I have to die trying!”

At that, Elenor took her hands off her mother's and grabbed Ilea's shoulders, shaking her. “And what good will
that
do?” she shrieked, as Ilea went limp with surprise and her head jerked back and forth from the shaking. “You'll
kill
him if you die!”

That seemed to snap Ilea out of her crazed state. She stared at Elenor in shock, then the two of them fell into each other's arms, weeping. Lan stared at them all, and it was only Kalira who snapped
him
out of his trance.

:Drape blankets over all of them and get some more wood!:
his Companion said harshly, then actually walked over to her sire and
bit
him on the neck. Satiran's sagging head flew up. Lan didn't hear what went on between them, but he didn't wait to see anything more. Draping blankets over the sobbing women and over Pol, he escaped to the forest again, and a job he could understand.

He went back, and back again, until he was stumbling through dusk that obscured everything in his path and was forced to give up. By then, Ilea was sleeping, and Elenor organizing a crude camp. The three Companions arranged themselves in three sides of a square around the blankets spread on the snow, lying down. Pol lay still unconscious, with his eyes bandaged and his head pillowed on Satiran's flank, between Ilea and Kalira. The fire formed the fourth side of the square. Tuck wearily ate a handful of bread, and Elenor looked up at Lan's entrance.

“Get some sleep,” she said shortly, her voice nasal and thick with weeping. “If we can, we'll have to leave in the morning. We've no food and no shelter; we
can't
stay here.”

Lan didn't say anything; guilt devoured him and killed any appetite he might have had. He lay down obediently and turned his face away from Elenor, sure that he wasn't going to get a wink of sleep all night.

And he was right. He stared at Dacerie's flank and the firelight flickering on it for candlemarks, stomach knotted with misery while the stars wheeled overhead. He heard Tuck lie down and eventually begin breathing deeply. He heard Elenor gently fall over sideways—

When he looked,
she
was asleep, half-propped by Tuck's body, up against Satiran's shoulder.

He sat up.
:I'll take care of the fire,:
he told Satiran, Mindspeaking so as not to make a sound.

Satiran nodded, ever so slightly, but did not reply. Lan found some relief from his guilt by making certain the fire burned evenly and without smoke, feeding it diligently as the stars paraded overhead.

As dawn neared, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“I'll take over now,” Tuck said, giving him an understanding smile. He nodded, finally so dull with exhaustion he couldn't feel anything. He curled up against Dacerie's shoulder, and knew nothing more.

HE woke to hear Pol's voice.

“—all right,” he said, as Lan started up, turning in his mentor's direction. Pol's head pointed toward Lan, and he managed a weak smile. “Lan, thank you.”

“For what?” Lan responded harshly, scooting over to sit on his heels beside his mentor. The warmth of the fire bathed them both—and at least
this
fire smelled of wood smoke and pine, and not of burned flesh.

“That will be enough of that,” Ilea snapped, swiveling her head to glare at him. “What's better, blinded or half-burned? If you'd gotten the bastard
before
Pol started to get loose, would Pol have ended up cooking with him? What happened is done, and we're all alive, and it could have been much worse.”

Lan trembled anyway. The guilt was there; he couldn't exactly wish it out of existence.
He
knew that if he had just
not hesitated—

Pol patted Ilea's hand. “He's done you a favor, my love,” the senior Herald said, with an attempt at a laugh. “They're hardly going to allow me on a battlefield now.” Elenor choked on a sob, and he hugged her with his free arm.

“‘The tempest ruined the orchard, but applewood makes a sweet fire,”' Tuck quoted under his breath.

“Exactly,” Pol replied.

Ilea's stare went right through Lan, as if she was daring him to display any more guilty feelings.

“Rest,” she told Pol. “This is just temporary. I
will
Heal you.”

But Pol said nothing, and Lan got a peculiar and gut-twisting feeling that Pol was far from confident that she would be able to do that, and was humoring her with his silence.

Lan was happy to escape into the woods for yet more wood, although he couldn't outrun his guilt.

BY late afternoon, Pol was strong enough to drink something hot, and was insisting that he could and
must
ride.

“No,” Ilea replied, although weakly; he was wearing her arguments down.

“Yes,” he insisted. “I've ridden with worse wounds than this.” He did
sound
stronger, although there was still an edge of pain in his voice.

“And you were twenty years younger at the time,” she responded waspishly, trying to cover up the fact that she was weeping again.

He shrugged and sat up slowly. “I don't think I've lost too much blood, thanks to
your
quick work. We can't stay here. Where there was one assassin, there may be more. We haven't any more food and no shelter. And I can see well enough through Satiran's eyes—”

“How is that going to help?” Ilea asked.

“I can see to ride,” was all he said. “Help me up.”

To Lan's astonishment, with Ilea and Elenor on either side of him, he got slowly to his knees. Satiran went to him immediately and knelt down beside him. With great effort, and Ilea's help, he mounted. Ilea unpacked the straps meant to hold a wounded and unconscious Herald in the saddle, and strapped him in.

Satiran lurched to his feet; hindquarters coming up first, then forequarters, as Pol controlled his swift intake of breath, producing the slightest hiss of pain.

He stayed quietly in his saddle for a long time, as Satiran swung his head about. “Yes. This will be fine, I think. Ilea, come up behind me; I might need a little help with managing the pain.”

How can he do this?
Lan wondered.
He's blind! Shouldn't he be crying or screaming or—something?
As another stab of self-recrimination lanced through Lan, the bandaged head swung accurately to point in Lan's direction.

“Before you start in on berating yourself and deciding that you are the only one to blame for this, Satiran says to inform you that you have to take second place to him,” Pol told him then offered a hand to his wife.

She refused it. Instead, she motioned to Tuck, who made a stirrup of his hands for her. She grabbed the high cantle of the saddle, stood in Tuck's hand, and swung her free leg over Satiran's rump up onto the pillion to ride astride, one arm carefully around her husband, the other gripping the cantle for her real support. Lan and Tuck cleaned up the hasty camp, extinguished the fire, and gathered up their belongings, stuffing them any way they would fit into the saddlebags and strapping them all on the pillion-pad of Tuck's saddle.

Elenor chose to ride behind Lan, who was very much of a mixed mind about that. But he wasn't about to voice an objection; he didn't exactly have a right to. Her arms closed around his waist, and she kept sniffling in his ear.

“We're leagues from the battlefield—how did a Karsite
get
here?” Tuck said aloud. “How did he pass the lines?”

Ilea was the first to respond, and though her voice sounded controlled, Lan could see she was still white and tight-lipped. “Why drop down on us as if he was waiting for us? What was he shouting?”

“Death to demons, or something like that,” Tuck supplied. “He
couldn't
have been waiting for us, could he?”

Pol put one hand on the saddle-pommel. “Let's hold a moment. We need to let others know what happened to us, so it doesn't happen to anyone else. Satiran?”

The other two Companions moved forward to touch their noses to Satiran's while Lan averted his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at Pol's face or into Ilea's swollen, bloodshot eyes.

I will
never
hesitate again.

Beneath him Kalira tensed with the effort of Mindspeaking; this was no ordinary Mindspeech; the three Companions had joined efforts so that Satiran could warn every other Companion within range of what had just happened—and they would, in turn, warn others.

It didn't take long; a few heartbeats, and Kalira relaxed again, then backed up, shaking her head and snorting.

Only Pol and Satiran remained still a moment longer, and when Satiran moved, there were no signs in him of relaxation.

:Lan,:
Kalira said, tensing beneath him,
:There's trouble.:

“We have—troubles ahead,” Pol said tensely, as Ilea responded to the words by wrapping her arm tightly around his chest and taking the reins from him with her right hand. “We have to get to the pass.
Now.
”

“You can't—” Ilea protested weakly.

“Satiran can gallop and still keep me in the saddle,” Pol replied, though it was clear that he spoke through pain. “We don't have a choice.”

Ilea closed her mouth on further protests, just holding Pol tighter than before, as if she did not have as much confidence in Satiran's ability as he did.

Satiran moved into a gallop in a couple of strides with Tuck and Dacerie beside him; Kalira waited until Elenor was secure before doing the same. The headlong pace down the gloomy road left no time for thought, much less guilt, for Lan had all he could do to keep himself down over Kalira's neck and balanced, since he had to compensate for Elenor.

And it was at a gallop that they pounded into the army encampment, a candlemark before sunset.