A Soldier's Salvation (Highland Heartbeats Book 7)(54)

Alan bore wounds to his stomach, his sides. Sarah examined each, the creases in her brow deepening all the while.

“Can you assist me?” she whispered, motioning for Padraig to join her in rolling Alan onto his side, away from the door. When they attempted it, and the sheet beneath the body stuck to the wounds on his back, he closed his eyes in impotent rage.

Who had allowed his brother to come to this? The head of the Anderson clan, no less?

Sarah looked up from her work, her gaze meeting his. There was no need to ask whether his brother would live through this. Just from the look of the wounds and the spread of the infection, the fact that he was alive at all was something near a miracle.

Caitlin saw it, too, and her hand tightened around Rodric’s. It wasn’t for Alan’s sake that she was concerned, but rather for his. He loved her all the more for knowing without being told of it the conflict raging within her.

The same conflict raged within him as well.

Alan’s death might just bring peace to the clan for the first time since he’d assumed leadership.

Alan was his brother. Their father’s firstborn son.

Alan had never been kind to him.

He’d looked up to his older brother as a child.

He was only a child then. He knew no better.

Alan was his blood. Part of his past was dying in front of him.

Sarah straightened, washing her hands once again in the basin beside the bed before motioning for Rodric to join her. Caitlin nudged him into the room, waiting in the doorway.

“The fever will take him before the night is out,” she predicted in a low voice, grimacing as she looked around him to where his brother lay dying. “I know not who treated him, but they have no right to call themselves a healer.”

Why did he care so? Why did her words send a cramp of panic to his chest? “I heard of what you did for Jake Duncan when he was wounded. He, too, was close to death when you arrived at the manor house.”

Her face seemed to crumble. “Aye,” she whispered, placing her hands on his arms. “But the damage is far more widespread than it was in Jake’s case. He’s sustained multiple wounds, including what I fear is a puncture to his liver. Even if we had been here to immediately treat him, I’m afraid there would have been nothing to do to save him. I’m very sorry.”

It didn’t seem possible. How was such a thing possible? How could a man as vital as Alan succumb so quickly?

“What did the healer do wrong, then?” Padraig asked.

She all but growled in response, angered at the laziness of a healer like herself. “For one, the wounds were not properly cleaned. He’s been given nothing for the pain. If the man is bound to die, he might at least have been tended to, and his pain managed. He need not die in pain and filth.”

Rodric absorbed this, refusing to allow himself the luxury of wallowing in emotion. There would be time enough for that later. “I’ll see to it they answer for what they’ve done,” he vowed. “Is there anything you can do to ease his suffering?”

“Of course, and I intend to do it,” she promised. “If you could direct me to the kitchen, I’ll get to work.”

He looked over his shoulder, where Caitlin hovered just outside the room. “Caitlin knows. She can direct you.” It wouldn’t do for her to be there while he and Alan spoke their last words to one another. Sarah seemed to understand this, going to the door and exchanging a quiet word with Caitlin before the two of them disappeared.

“I’ll go, too,” Padraig announced. “I must see to the men and make certain they don’t tear the house down.”

This left just Alan and himself.

For the briefest moment, he wasn’t certain he wanted to speak to his brother at all. What good would it do? Alan was likely delirious with fever. Nothing he said would mean anything.

And yet…

Perhaps it would do him good to speak of that which he’d never have another chance to address. What would he have said to his father if he’d had the opportunity? It was that lack of opportunity, of knowing they would never share another hour, which haunted him.

It was this knowledge which drove him to the side of the bed, which made him stand over his brother’s dying body. The stench which rose from him was not unknown to Rodric. It brought to mind the battlefield, throngs of men whose bodies had been torn to shreds. Tents filled with the wounded, arms and legs missing, eyes and ears, wounds which couldn’t be kept clean thanks to hovering flies and the blood-soaked earth in which the bodies rested.

But this man wasn’t one of those nameless wounded. He wasn’t even a friend made while training side-by-side. This was Alan. Alan who might have taunted and lorded advanced age and skill over his younger brothers, but who had spurred Rodric to improve himself as a result. He’d fought to become stronger, smarter, a better rider and an unbeatable fighter.

All because he had longed to live up to his brother and eventually surpass him.

Alan’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first but soon narrowing once he recognized the figure standing beside him. “You.” His voice was barely a whisper.

“Aye, I’m here, brother.” Rodric drew up a stool which sat nearby and perched on it, leaving them a roughly the same level.

“Didn’t think you’d come.”

“I almost didn’t—not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know. Once I found out what’d happened to you, I rode through the night.”