Honor Among Orcs (Orc Saga) (11 page)

“What will?”

He shifted and the moonlight spilled over his body. The bandage she had wrapped around his side was black with blood.

“Can you see well enough to remove it? I do not dare dig with the blade so deep.”

She pressed her lips together. Every step had jogged the knife, the blade cutting into him even more deeply, and he had been worried about the blood he’d lose taking it out? “How deep?”

“Can you remove it or not?”

She blew out a breath. “Yes, but—”

“Do it,” he said.

“Bolthorn, my hands are filthy and so are you, if the dirt gets caught in the wound—”

“Then I will be no worse off than I am now, I promise you. A fever at worst. If you do not remove the knife, I risk losing the lung.”

Her blood ran cold. “Are you certain it hasn’t reached so far already?”

“Pull it free and bind it tight.” He caught her hand, guiding it to the hilt. “It is the only way forward, Princess.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then closed her fingers around the knife and pulled.

Bolthorn stiffened, a low growl escaping clenched teeth.

She cut the old bandage free with the knife and unwound it, pressing the cleanest portion of the fabric against the wound. “Hold that.”

He did, his eyes glowing yellow, and she passed him the knife as well while she dug through the basket at her hip. The honey jar was easy to find, though the herbs were another matter. Better if she waited until after she could wash the wound properly before she applied them, anyway.

She pushed the bloody bandages away and slathered his side with honey, then wrapped it tight with a clean bandage. It left only enough for one more change. Another thing they must steal somehow along the way, or do without. Bolthorn made no sound, though she felt his muscles tense more than once as she worked.

“There,” she said, wrapping the bloody bandages around the knife and tucking them into the basket, away from the food. “That’s the best I can do in this light. When the sun rises, I have some herbs to encourage healing, but I don’t want to lose them in the dark.”

“It will do.” He exhaled heavily, then grunted. “Better, to be sure.”

When he moved, he still favored his side. She narrowed her eyes, searching his face, but the light was too dim to tell if he lied.

“Rest for a moment,” she said, pushing him back against the wall. “I’ll move what I can first.”

He sank heavily to the earth, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. She turned to the stone before them, and tried not to worry about what it meant that this was the second time he hadn’t argued.

A shower of pebbles and dirt brought him awake with a start. Arianna tossed a stone the size of his fist over his legs, sending it rolling down the passage behind them to clank against others. The pile of rock blocking the way forward was not much changed however long he had slept. He shifted, levering himself up from the ground unsteadily.

“Let me,” he said.

She slid by him, the narrow passage forcing them together. Her hand brushed against his chest, then pressed against it more firmly, her eyes going wide. “You’re burning.”

“It will pass.” He pulled her hand away.

“Bolthorn, you need to rest.”

He began shifting the rock, ignoring the fire that bloomed between his ribs. The sooner he finished, the sooner they could move on, and they must move on. He dislodged the topmost stones first, letting them tumble out and down.

In one motion, he accomplished more than she had managed while he dozed. A second heave and a boulder rolled far enough that Arianna would fit easily through the gap. He set his shoulder against it and dug his feet into the packed earth. It shifted with a rain of pebbles and a crunch of gravel.

Sweat broke across his skin and he shivered in the cold night air as he stepped out of the passage into meadow, the tree line just beyond.

“Come,” he called back, reaching for her hand.

She climbed through the rock and stumbled, nearly unbalancing them both. He steadied her, in spite of the way the ground bucked beneath his feet. If they could just make it to the trees. Deep enough into a forest and their trail would be lost among deer paths and mulched leaves.

“Bolthorn?” she was staring up at him, her face washed white in moonlight, and he realized suddenly that he had not steadied her at all, for she held him up, her body fitted beneath his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“The wood.” He lurched toward it, and she moved with him.

His feet were too large and too thick. He tripped over them, tripped over the princess, and then over roots and brambles. In the gloom of the trees, he breathed more easily, but when Arianna tried to lower him to a fallen log, he growled.

“You’re barely able to walk,” she said, her palm cool against his cheek. “You’re sick.”

He licked his lips and forced himself to keep going. Fever. It was too soon for fever. But that left only one answer, and he did not dare think it where Arianna might see it in his face. It didn’t matter. He had to keep going, and she with him.

“Bolthorn, I can’t—you’re too heavy.” She stumbled, and they both fell into a tree.

He leaned against it at her urging, panting now, and clutched his burning side. It itched, too, beneath the flame. The bandages rubbed against his skin.

“Stop!” she cried, grasping his hands in both of hers and forcing them away. “You’ll tear it off, and I haven’t more than one more change for the both of us.”

“We must go,” he said. “Deeper. Before sunrise.”

She searched his face, her forehead creased. “Stay here.”

He tried to follow, but without the tree to hold him upright, the ground rose up alarmingly.

“I said stay there!”

He grunted, clutching the trunk. Arianna turned away, her head down. The bark broke like clay in his hand as a chill worked its way through his veins and he shuddered.

Poison. He should have known the blade would be poisoned.

And then he fell.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Her heart stopped at the sight of him lying still in the dirt. She ran to his side, pressing her ear against his chest, fearing silence. His lungs labored but his chest rose and fell and his heart beat, slow but steady, if not quite so loud as she might have liked. She shook his shoulder, calling his name, but he did not wake.

“Stubborn fool of an orc!” She shook him again, tears filling her eyes. She should never have left him to find a stick. She should have made him sit on the fallen log, ignored his growl and determination. She should have called out sooner, warned him somehow of the knife, or pulled it out in the tower, no matter what he said about leaving blood behind. Why had he left it in for so long? Made her remove it in the filth of the tunnel? This served no one!

“What did you do, Bolthorn?” she murmured. “What am I to do?”

He had spoken of their tracks, once. She wiped her tears away and covered him with the second cloak. He had spoken of their tracks, and how easy they would be to follow. A woman’s slippers and an orc’s bare feet.

She forced herself to rise, despite her stiffness, and retraced their steps, obscuring the footprints they had left and making another trail that led to a stream farther on. Part of her hoped that Bolthorn would be awake when she returned, but he lay unmoved, and when she touched his forehead, his skin burned hot with fever.

No one would look for them outside the castle for at least two days as long as Rodric kept his word, and she had taken great pains to avoid even the eyes of the servants. They had time yet. Time for Bolthorn to recover from whatever afflicted him. In two days, Ancestors’ willing, Bolthorn might be awake and able to move again. It would not be the head start they had hoped for, but it would have to be enough. The alternative was unthinkable.

“You promised me you’d survive,” she said, curling her body against his in the leaves. It would keep them both warm, for the wind cut through her cloak now that she was no longer moving, and she had begun to shiver. “Don’t you dare break that vow, orc.”

She dribbled water down his throat and smeared honey on the inside of his lips, for lack of any broth, and she waited. Even in his fevered state, he’d had sense enough not to walk along the road, but in the sunlight, she did not see how the trees alone would hide them. He had been right, they should have gone much deeper into the woods. Worse, in daylight, she finally saw his side clearly, caked with mud and blood. No wonder he was ill. She used some of the wine to wash it and prayed it would be enough.

“Come on, Bolthorn,” she whispered. “Wake up, please!”

But he didn’t, and she had to find a way to keep them both out of sight.

Arianna collected fallen branches and brambles and built a screen of them where Bolthorn lay. Her hands bled from thorns and scratches, her back ached, her shoulder throbbed, and her side—her side burned in sympathy, she hoped, and nothing more. She sat back down beside him, searching his face as the sun rose higher.

For the first time, no part of him lay in shadow, for even outside the mirror, the tower room had been dark. His grey-green skin was much greener now, in the light, and the scars and cuts on his chest were impossible to ignore. She traced the pattern of black marks on the right side of his face, wondering what they stood for.

Evidently it had not been only poor light that made it difficult to see his face in the dark, for his tattoos began at the hairline in dots and sharp angled lines, curling around his eye and reaching for the bridge of his nose before sweeping down his jaw to his neck. Another set began on his left shoulder, spilling down his tattered, scarred skin to stop over his heart in the interwoven triangles she had seen before. Those markings had been torn with the rest of his chest, broken by the whip. The king’s whip.

She let herself feel the sting of it, the knowledge of his death twisting her stomach and thickening her throat. She had killed him, and Alviss, too. To keep her mother’s secret, yes. To help her people, perhaps, and to save Bolthorn’s own, but it did not change what she had done. Bolthorn might have sworn to take the stain from her soul, but he could not take the guilt. It clawed through her, from the inside out, turning her belly into a sour, roiling pit, and her eyes filled with tears for the pain and for the death and for Bolthorn’s spilled blood.

Blood! It was always blood. She fumbled through the basket until her fingers closed around the knife, Bolthorn’s blood crusting bronze on the steel blade and the leather-wrapped hilt. She washed it in wine, drying it on her underskirts, and then hesitated. Where to cut him, and what words to use? What vow could she make that would bring him back?

Half a dozen phrases rose in her mind, discarded just as quickly. It could not only be a promise to see him safe, it had to be something that required his action, too. She scowled. If only Bolthorn had taught her more than bloodletting! He must have known something of blood magic to explain even as much as he had. Certainly he had known what the king meant to do with hers. But the king hadn’t spoken in the common tongue, or used any language she recognized. And if she only had the right words, now! If she only knew some spell to heal him…

She took a deep breath and slid the knife across her palm, then his. She did not know any spells, but she knew of vows. Vows that could not be broken until death, once sworn. Their palms pressed together, their blood mixing, she spoke.

“Let my life be bound to yours, and what strength I have steady you.” Warmth spilled from the blood against her skin, burning like Bolthorn’s fever, but she could not let go, would not let go. “Let our hearts beat together, even as our thoughts laugh, and my health serve yours, as yours must serve mine.” Cold replaced the heat, making her teeth chatter. Fever chills slithered down her spine. “Let us—let us m-move forward t-together, or n-not at all.”

Bolthorn’s fingers tightened around hers, or perhaps she only jerked against his hand, shuddering. She groaned, her head fogging with pain across her chest, and her side flamed white-hot. The right words. They had to be the right words to hurt this much.

“Arianna?” Bolthorn called, but it seemed he was so far away. She tried to reach for him, but every movement jarred her ribs, pain searing across her skin. “Arianna!”

“Did I do it right?” she whispered. “Did it work?”

Bolthorn cradled her against his chest, her body limp and weak. She tried to clutch at him, to wrap her arms around his neck, but they slid back with a moan.

“Foolish girl,” he growled, holding her head against his shoulder, stroking her hair. “Did you learn nothing from your father’s failures?”

“Had to save you,” she mumbled into his neck, her lips brushing against his skin. He clenched his jaw, fighting the wild race of his heart. “Couldn’t let it be for nothing.”

“What did you say?” he demanded. “What spell, Arianna!”

“Forward together,” she said. “Or not at all.”

“What else?”

She sighed, her body melting against him. “Together.”

There had to be more. A vow of that kind would never have woken him. The poison had too much time to spread, and his body too injured to fight it. He’d already been waking when she stuttered those last words, besides.

He lifted her bloodied hand, licking the cut, but there was no flavor of poison there. Whatever she suffered now was a result of the vow she had made. The vow he could not draw from her lips!

“Sleep,” she begged. “So tired.”

He shook his head, gathering the knife and her basket, and rising to his feet. Arianna weighed nothing in his arms even if it caused his side to ache, and though he moved cautiously at first, his steps were steady, now. No doubt a result of the magic she had wrought, and far more complex than simply binding them together for the journey. Damn the king. If he had not set an example, had not shown her the power—if she had not had elf blood in her veins...

But he could not think of what it all meant, now. She had done a good job of hiding them, but they were much too close to the castle to give him any peace, and Arianna needed a safer, warmer, place to rest. They both did.

“Sleep, Princess,” he told her. “I will keep you safe.”

And when she woke, he would find out exactly what foolish vows she had made with his blood.

The trees were not thick enough here to provide much in the way of cover. Dark-eyed birch, fura pine, and yellowing oak too well thinned by the king’s foresters, and far too well traveled by the king’s huntsmen, judging by the trails. Bolthorn avoided the packed-earth paths, sticking to the mulch of fallen leaves and bronze needles, and watching carefully to be sure he left no footprints behind. Every so often, he glanced back, and when he could no longer see any glimpse of gray stone through the branches, he breathed a little easier.

He found shelter in a cave before the sun reached its zenith. A few rough words in Elvish sent the bear inside elsewhere for its nap, and he settled Arianna inside, wrapped in both their cloaks for warmth.

She stirred as he tucked the fabric around her body, her eyes slitting open. “Cold.”

“I’ll have a fire built shortly.” Bolthorn smoothed her hair from her face, waiting until her eyes closed again before he left her to gather wood.

His side barely burned when he bent to collect kindling and branches, and the healing skin on his chest did not feel so tightly stretched when he moved. He rubbed his breast over his heart and sent a silent prayer to his Ancestors that Arianna had not done herself permanent harm. She could not have known of the poison or she would have warned him, he was certain. But that meant she had not known what had caused his fever, or how to heal him, and whatever she had sworn must have been terribly broad.

He cursed himself for telling her anything about blood oaths to begin with. Not that he could have ever foreseen this. He had not meant to take a knife in his ribs, nor fall so ill that she must struggle without his help. In all their plans, he had counted upon his strength to see them through, to protect her from harm.

Well, he could do it now. She had given him a second chance to prove himself as her guardian and he would not waste it. First the fire, then he would see she ate, and if he had to carry her half-asleep all the way to the mountains, he would get her there, and beyond to the elves if he must, to see her healed.