Sharon Schulze (14 page)

“Are you all right?” he asked urgently. His hands were shaking, she noted absently, when he eased her onto her back and adjusted the binding on her arm. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m unharmed.” She tried to sit up, but at the whirring sound of another flight of arrows, Padrig pressed her down into the grass and covered her protectively with his body.

Incensed that he’d protect her over himself, she tried to push him off her, but she was no match for him in size or strength.

He captured her left hand in his and pinned it to the ground beside her, using his lower body to anchor her legs. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Do you want to be shot?”

“Nay—nor do I want
us
to be!” she snapped. Anger poured out of her in waves, consuming her with the necessity to protect Padrig, to somehow get them out of this hellish mess.
“Get off me.”

More arrows flew. They thumped into the ground all around them, making her blink, her skin writhing with the need to escape them.

“Padrig,” Rafe called urgently from close by. Suddenly Padrig’s body jerked twice, then collapsed atop hers.

She could barely breathe. Turning her head, she could see why. Rafe had been shot, too, and had landed at least partially on Padrig. His arm hung slack over Padrig’s shoulder, dragging on the grass near her head.

She was pinned beneath two men, neither was moving, and more arrows were flying their way.

How in God’s name was she to get them out of this?

H
owls and whoops of unmistakable approval, or so it sounded to her, filled the air as the three of them lay pressed to the ground. Though Alys didn’t know what, precisely, the Welsh were saying, their meaning was clear enough.

Sorrow and anger fought for dominance within her. Anger won out. She’d no time to give in to sorrow now. For the first time in her life, she understood the meaning of blood lust, for it truly felt as if her blood boiled with rage and the desire for vengeance.

Oh, to be a man, a warrior, able to rise up and avenge Padrig and Rafe!

The shouting continued, the words flowing over her in a noisome cloud that clung to her and gave her strength.

She wished she spoke Welsh, to return the enemy’s insults in kind.

A surge of energy flowing through her, Alys loosened her hand from Padrig’s grasp and pushed at his body, trying to wriggle out from beneath him.

His grasp? Wouldn’t his fingers have relaxed if he were dead?

Her heart racing, her mouth dry with the fear she was wrong, she caught hold of Padrig’s shoulder and shook him. “Wake up!” she screamed. “Padrig!”

He suddenly drew in a gasping breath. His eyes popped open as suddenly as they had closed. “Rafe,” he called, his voice little more than a croak of sound.

Mary be praised, he was alive!

“Rafe,” she echoed urgently. Filling her lungs with as much air as she could, she tried again, more loudly. “Rafe?”

The other man didn’t answer, or move at all that she could tell.

Alys reached up past Padrig’s begrimed face and poked at Rafe’s arm. He remained unresponsive. His arm, when she tried to move it, simply flopped back down.

“I’m not sure he’s alive,” she said weakly, short of breath from the men’s weight. “Does it feel to you as if he’s breathing?” she asked Padrig.

He shook his head. “I’m not certain. He seems very still.”

She caught hold of Rafe’s wrist, but his mail sleeve was in the way and she could not get at his skin. “I cannot tell if his heart is beating, either.”

Padrig flexed his arms and carefully levered himself up off Alys, turning as he got to his knees to seize hold of Rafe. He held him up and shifted him to the grass on his stomach, careful not to jar the arrows sticking out of his back.

Gasping, Alys glanced up at Padrig as soon as he moved away from her. Her heartbeat quickened with fear when she saw the feathered shaft protruding from his mail-covered shoulder. “You’ve been shot!”

“Aye.” Angling his body to protect Rafe, he paid the arrow in his back no heed whatsoever.

Rafe had been struck twice in the back. Perhaps ’twas worse than that, but she couldn’t see much from her position on the ground. Padrig bent low over him, checking for a pulse at his throat.

“He’s still alive,” he said without looking up.

“Thank God,” she whispered, crossing herself.

Wondering if she could be of any help, she propped herself up on her elbow and struggled to raise herself off the ground.

“Stay down,” Padrig hissed. He glanced up from tending to Rafe, his expression wild. “Unless you want to end up like this, as well.”

Rolling to her side, she gazed past him. The archers were still on the rampart, but their shouting had died down and they’d lowered their weapons. That likely didn’t mean anything save that they’d ceased firing at them for the nonce. That could change in a heartbeat.

“They’ve stopped shooting,” she told him. “And shouting, whatever it was they were saying.”

“I could tell you, but ’tis not fit for you to hear,” he said darkly.

“I didn’t think they were complimenting us,” she shot back in the same tone. She scanned the area, searching for any sign that the Welsh were elsewhere, but saw naught else. The sight of them spread out along the wall, ready and waiting for who knew what, sent a chill racing down her spine. “They’re just standing there, watching us.”

“Let them watch, the devious bastards,” he snarled. “They can watch while we get up and walk away.”

Turning to her, he helped her to sit up, his hands gentle despite his fierce expression. “Are you all right?” he
asked. He sounded less frantic now, though an intense blue fire smoldered in his eyes. “I didn’t hurt you when I leapt upon you? Or when Rafe landed atop us both?”

She noticed he continued to use his body to shield Rafe—and her. That fact infuriated her! “I’m fine,” she told him brusquely. The full skirts of her gown had tangled round her legs. She kicked them loose and, tugging the fabric out of her way, rolled to her knees.

“Will they come out after us?” she asked him, casting an uneasy glance back at the men on the wall.

“Who can say? Doesn’t look like it, but I don’t intend to stay here to find out.”

After casting a swift look over his shoulder at Winterbrooke, he held out his hand to help her up.

Wishing she could ignore his offer of assistance, but knowing she wasn’t likely to stand without it, Alys placed her hand in his and allowed him to pull her to her feet. As soon as she was upright, however, she jerked her hand free and bent down to peer at Rafe.

How could they get him away from here? She looked around for Arian, but saw no sign of the mare. Though if she could find her—

“What are you waiting for? Go,” Padrig commanded. He bent. Wincing, he hoisted Rafe over his uninjured shoulder and rose.

Catching up her skirts in her left hand, Alys hurried away from Winterbrooke without a backward glance.

Although the flesh of her back crawled with every step she took, as if she could actually feel the weight of the enemy’s gaze upon her.

Padrig, despite his injury and the extra burden of Rafe’s motionless body, swiftly passed her. “Come on, move faster,” he told her, his voice urgent. “Now we’re
up—” the whirring hiss of a fresh volley of arrows filled the air once more “—they’ll try for us again.”

Alys lengthened her stride, her feet flying over the uneven ground at what felt like breakneck speed. She expected to trip and fall on her face at any moment, for it took all her concentration to keep from pitching over sideways to the ground.

Panting, she glared at Padrig’s back. If they survived this, she vowed she’d tie down
his
arm and force him to race through an open field while her father’s best bowman used him for target practice!

An eternity later, it seemed, they ran far enough beyond the archer’s range that the few arrows that reached them dropped harmlessly to the ground. They kept running anyway, until they reached the protection of a large cluster of trees.

Ducking beneath the branches of a tall fir, Padrig stopped. Breathing heavily, he closed his eyes, braced himself against the thick trunk and lowered Rafe to the ground. Straightening, he opened his eyes and met her gaze. “God only knows what harm I just did to him,” he said, dropping to his knees alongside Rafe.

“Or what harm you did to yourself,” she pointed out dryly as she knelt beside them. She reached out and touched Padrig’s back near the arrow. He flinched and jerked away. “Will you let me tend this?”

“Later.” Moving swiftly, he rose and strode off into the trees. Other than the occasional snap of twigs underfoot, she didn’t hear him again until he emerged from the brush near where he’d gone in.

“No one here but us,” he informed her. “Though that’ll change before long, I’d imagine. We’ve not much time to do what needs to be done.”

He knelt by Rafe’s side. Closing his hand around the two arrow shafts sticking out of Rafe’s back, he snapped them off, leaving only a short bit of the wood visible. Rafe moaned, but didn’t do much more than twitch. “We cannot stay here, ’tis too close to the keep.”

“Where can we go?”

In a swift move, he drew his dagger and then reached toward her, startling a gasp from her. She threw herself back away from him before she could stop herself, her heart pounding wildly.

He tossed the knife on the ground between them and held his hand out to her. “Alys!”

She thumped down on her backside and drew in a deep breath.

What was wrong with her? She knew he’d never harm her!

“I only wanted a bit of cloth from the hem of your gown,” he told her, his voice calm, holding out his hand to her as if he were soothing a frightened animal. “Sweeting, ’tis all right.”

She took his hand, let him move to sit beside her. Once there, he pulled her close for a moment, pressing his face into her hair. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into his surcoat. “I’m not used to this.”

“You’ve had no reason to be, thank God,” Padrig said. “Would that you’d no reason now, either.”

She drew back so she could see into his eyes. “Does it ever get easier, having someone try to kill you?” she asked with a weak laugh. “I feel ready to jump out of my own skin.”

“You get used to it, after a fashion.” He set her back from him, took up his knife and reached for her hem.
His look questioning, he held the knife poised over the bedraggled linen.

At her nod, he used the wickedly sharp blade to chop off a long strip of fabric, then cut it into three pieces. Two he folded into heavy pads, the third he split into two long strips, which he tied together. ’Twas clear from the swift efficiency of his movements that he’d performed this task before. “Either that, or you’re killed because you’re careless.”

Returning to Rafe’s side, he placed the pads over the wounds and began to wind the bandages around Rafe’s torso. “Or mayhap because the one you fight is better at it than you are.”

Pausing with the linen strip wrapped halfway round, he glanced up at her and added, “Or perhaps because ’tis simply your day to die.”

Alys looked down at Rafe’s motionless body and felt her anger rise again. “’Tis not his day to die,” she said fiercely. She knelt opposite Padrig and reached for the end of the bandage. Handing it over, Padrig lifted up Rafe so she could slide the linen under him. “Nor is it ours,” she said as she awkwardly tugged the two ends of the strip together one-handed.

By the Virgin, ’twas impossible to do anything trussed up like a Christmas goose!

Nigh growling her frustration, she turned her attention instead to the band of material immobilizing her arm. Her fingers fumbled with the knot, but she could not loosen it. “Help me with this, will you?”

He caught her hand in his and tugged it away. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I cannot do anything like this.” She jerked free of him and grabbed the knot, pulling on it to no avail.
“Here’s something to use your dagger on,” she told him. “Cut this loose so I may help you.”

“I will not.” His tone as terse as hers, he ignored her demand and, tugging on the ends of Rafe’s bandage, bound them in a snug knot. “’Twould hurt like the devil, and I doubt you’d be able to use your arm anyway.”

By the rood, men could be such dolts!

“How do you expect me to break off that arrow in your shoulder, if I only have one hand to do it with?” she asked.

“I don’t,” he said shortly.

“Am I to chew it off with my teeth then?”

“You’ve a sharp enough tongue, Alys!” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Mayhap you could use that.”

Finding his words unworthy of a response, she ignored them. “You cannot do it yourself—”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said wearily. “It’s painful, but I’ll live. ’Tis true I’ll need your help once we’ve time to deal with it, but I’ll not have you harm yourself to give it. That’s my final word,” he added when she opened her mouth to speak again.

She could see no way to help him, not in her present state. Her mind working furiously, she watched as Padrig turned away to look back at Winterbrooke.

She’d not get a better opportunity to do something. She’d shoved her knife into her belt earlier, when the first volley of arrows had begun and they’d had to run. Moving swiftly now, she freed the knife and, holding it awkwardly in her left hand, sawed at the knot Padrig had refused to cut.

The last threads gave with a snap. Her arm dropped to her lap, numb. She wished her shoulder had lost sensation, too. Unfortunately, it hurt.

Far more than she’d imagined it would.

Alys sucked in a deep breath and tried to move the fingers of her right hand. They wriggled, the movement barely noticeable, and more pain shot through her back and arm.

A hard hand closed about her wrist, stopping her. “You damned idiot!” Muttering a steady stream of curses and making no apology for them, Padrig grabbed the piece of binding and, moving her arm gently until it rested at an angle, wound the fabric into a sling and slipped her elbow into it.

“There. Now you can use your hand, if you’re careful about it.” He took her knife from her and replaced it in its sheath at her waist before handing her his much larger dagger. “If you’ve a mind to start chopping at the damned arrow, you’d best use a decent blade.” He turned his back to her.

She looked from the dagger to Padrig’s back and felt her stomach twist. There was no way she could do this without causing him pain.

“What should I do?”

“Just hold the shaft still, and use the knife to lop the arrow off as near my hauberk as you can,” he told her. “Be quick about it, for I believe we’ll have Welsh company soon if we linger here much longer.”

“You’ll have to sit lower,” she told him. As soon as he moved and brought his shoulder to within her reach, she tried using her right hand to hold the arrow shaft steady, but she hadn’t the strength for it. Nigh growling with frustration, she instead shifted the knife to that hand and, fighting back a moan of pain, closed her fingers about the thick hilt.

“Are you ready?” she asked Padrig, her voice scarcely audible to her over the fast, heavy thudding of
her heart. Though she’d not done anything yet, her stomach whirled uneasily.

“Aye.”

She grasped the arrow tight in her left hand and raised the knife. As soon as she pressed the blade to the shaft, however, her fingers opened and the dagger fell to the ground.

Muttering words she’d never have permitted past her lips under other circumstances, Alys picked up the knife with her left hand.

“What’s wrong?” Padrig looked back at her, saw the tears streaming down her cheeks and the way her right hand rested uselessly in her lap. “By the rood! Alys, why didn’t you tell me ’twas so bad?”