Yhkon turned away, stabbing his sword into the dirt so that he could rake his hands through his hair. They caught on tangles of dried blood and dirt. Inwardly, he was screaming. Outwardly, he was doing his best not to do the same thing.
“Yhkon?” Grrake’s voice was no longer just tired. It was worried. “Yhkon what’s wrong? Where are—”
“Dead! That’s where!” He faced him again, no longer bothering to control his countenance. His hand sought out a throbbing pain on his opposite wrist, where a sword had nicked him. Fingers pressing into the cut, he squeezed until the minor pain grew to something strong enough to occupy his thoughts. “Ahjul is dead. Talea is dying. Go ahead, tell me, Narone has a plan, right? Doesn’t she need to be alive for that plan? Answer me that!”
Grrake couldn’t answer at first, expression moving from shock to confusion, and finally to grief. “Are you…are you sure he’s—”
“Sure he’s dead? Yes, yes I’m sure.” He could hear the bitterness in his voice, knew how it would only hurt Grrake, when it wasn’t his fault. But he couldn’t stop it. “Your God seems to take a particular pleasure in making me watch those closest to me die.”
“That’s…” Grrake was grimacing. Where Yhkon felt anger, Grrake felt sadness. Just like Ahjul. They were too soft hearted for this world, where nothing soft survived. “It’s not like that, you know He doesn’t…He—” He cut off, a new sorrow creasing his brow. “Your wrist.”
Yhkon released his inflictive grip on the cut, lowering his gaze. “I need to get back to Talea,” he mumbled, jogging back to where he’d left her. Grrake followed him.
She was still alive at least, even if blood had almost soaked through the makeshift bandage. Exhaustion beginning to replace his rage, he dropped to his knees beside her, instinctively beginning to get another bandage ready, but stopping. Should he even try to prolong her life a few hours by slowing the blood flow? She would die either way, and it would only be a few extra hours of pain and fear. So instead, he simply made a pillow of sorts with the bandage and gently lifted her head onto it.
Grrake knelt down. “We need to stop the bleeding. I’ll go grab—”
“What’s the point of keeping her alive for a little while longer, when she’ll just be in pain?” He absentmindedly touched his stomach, where the gruesome scar was under his shirt. He could almost feel the constant, burning torment, like a hot coal scorching and eating away at the inside of his body.
“What’s the point?!” Raising his voice was not something Grrake did often. It made Yhkon squirm when he did. “How can you give up on her so easily? You of all people? You survived the exact same injury. Why can’t she?”
He rubbed at the scar, wincing. He could argue, but what was there to argue? Yes, an injury like Talea’s was supposed to be impossible to survive. Yet, yes, he himself had been injured the same way—worse even, perhaps—four years ago, and had survived.
Taking silence as acceptance, Grrake left, returning shortly with a medical kit. “Here. Patch her up as best you can, and don’t you dare say again that she’s just going to die. You don’t know that.”
Yhkon took the kit, but not without a glare. “Fine, she could survive, like I did. Except I had the best possible care in Calcaria within a few days of the injury. Whereas it would take us at least a month to get her there. I can’t give her the care she needs here. You know that.”
“Alright, well,” Grrake got up, pacing a couple steps. “We’ll just get her there as quickly as we can, and we’ll leave the rest up to Narone, regardless of how you feel about it.”
He flinched without meaning to. Grrake didn’t usually speak that sternly with him. Why he should be bothered by it, though, he didn’t know. Yet he was. He used the scissors from the kit to cut open enough of her shirt for him to tend the wound. He had seen, and experienced, plenty of serious wounds in his life, but it was still never easy to look at a gaping, bloody puncture through the body of a friend and not feel a weight in his chest. Especially when that person was Talea.
Grrake cleared his throat, averting his gaze. He had always been rather squeamish around injuries. “I’ll go check on Tarol. He may need to go with you to Calcaria, for the leg. Unless…you’d prefer I stay?”
A discreet way of asking if Yhkon could hold himself together on his own. “I’m fine.” So long as one held a loose definition of the word.
When Grrake was gone, he focused all his attention on disinfecting the wound, cleaning up the blood, and finally doing what he could to sew it closed. The sutures probably wouldn’t last long for such a deep puncture. But he did what he could, as Grrake had told him, all the while unable to share his friend’s hope.
“Yhkon.” Gustor was the first one brave enough to approach him. “Grrake told us…I think it’s best Tarol does go with you, his leg is pretty bad. The good news is that it just so happens that the outpost those Elikwai came from has a couple dragons sitting about, from some emergency message to a scout or something. You should be able to get to Calcaria in six or seven days.”
Just so happens. If it was Grrake delivering the news, he would give Yhkon a meaningful look, or even a gentle, humble version of “I told you so.” He would credit it as Narone’s providence.
Yhkon didn’t care about crediting it to anything. If there was a chance of saving Talea, he would do all he could, even if the chance was a slim one. “Alright, get that dragons here and Tarol ready. And…”
Gustor’s head was low; he must have understood Yhkon’s unsaid request, to prepare Ahjul’s body for the trip as well, so that he could have a proper burial in his home. “You just take care of Talea, we’ll deal with the rest.”
~♦~
As the dragon landed with a jolt just outside Calcaria’s outpost building, Yhkon didn’t dare trying to dismount with Talea in his arms. They had made the trip in record time, pushing the dragons—which were faster than lareers—as hard as they dared. The battle, Ahjul’s death, it was seven…no, six days ago. Time had blurred. Six days of almost constant flying; of holding Talea’s unconscious body; of keeping Tarol drugged into unconsciousness as much as possible to save him from the pain of a fractured, deeply lacerated leg; of wondering how long his ward would live; of being painfully aware of Ahjul’s body in the dragon’s belly netting.
Now, finally in Calcaria, he didn’t know if his battered body could dismount while carrying Talea, and he didn’t want to risk dropping her. She had woken only a few times to a semiconscious state, in severe pain, scared, and groggy. He had done his best to keep the wound clean, but it was becoming infected, and she was hot with a fever.
The outpost attendants came out, manner changing from casual to urgent when they saw the circumstances. One of them climbed up and took Talea from him, carrying her to a waiting carriage. Tarol was awake, mostly anyway, and was able to get down with the help of the Elikwai that had ridden with him. Yhkon stumbled in the dismount, legs unsteady after days of almost no sleep and limited food, not to mention lingering strain from the battle and minor wounds. While the Elikwai gave the outpost manager a brief explanation, Yhkon helped Tarol into the carriage, an attendant climbed into the driver’s seat, and set the celiths toward the palace at a canter.