A Soldier's Salvation (Highland Heartbeats Book 7)(55)

“Wanted… to get here before you lost the chance…” Alan grimaced, his body tensing from head to toe as a wave of pain washed over him.

Rodric found himself grimacing along with his brother.

“The chance for what?” he asked once it appeared Alan had once again relaxed.

“The chance to tell me you were right, of course.” His body shook again, but Rodric soon realized that laughter was the cause. Even while dying, his brother was able to laugh.

“You don’t truly believe that was the reason I came, do you?”

His question went unanswered. “We all knew I would come to such an end,” Alan gasped, grinding his teeth in pain. His eyes were bright with fever, searching Rodric’s as though searching for something beyond what he saw. Reassurance? Comfort? Rodric wondered if he could offer either.

“From what I understand, you weren’t at fault for this last battle,” he pointed out. To his surprise, there was a lightness in his voice which belied the dread in his heart. He was watching his brother die.

“Ah, but I was,” Alan breathed with a slight shake of his sweat-drenched head. “Would that I’d died quickly, then and there, so as to avoid thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“A man thinks quite a bit when he knows the end is upon him. I’ve had nothing to do but lie here and think over my mistakes.” He ground his teeth again, tendons standing out on his neck as he battled the pain.

Where was Sarah with the potion?

“I suspect you’ll have to live much longer,” Rodric attempted to jest, forcing a chuckle. “After all, you have so many mistakes to think over.”

Alan tried to smile as beads of sweat rolled down the sides of his head and soaked into his pillow. His smile was tight, desperate, as though he smiled through something too terrible for words. Every time he moved, the stench of rotting flesh wafted up toward Rodric and wrapped itself around him.

“I suppose… it was for the best that I had this time to think.”

“Why do you say that?” Though he loathed leaning in closer, knowing it would only mean smelling more of his brother’s death stench, he did so in order to hear him better. Alan’s sour breath made his nose wrinkle in distaste—but he held steady.

“I thought about… what I’ve done. Who I’ve hurt. I wasn’t… a good son. Brother. Leader.”

Rodric turned his head in order to meet his brother’s eyes. “Alan, don’t do this to yourself, brother.”

“I cannot help what has already plagued me. I haven’t been able to keep from thinking. When I sleep, when I wake.” He groaned in pain, frustration, and possibly many other things he dared not speak of. “If there is a hell, I’m in it, brother.”

Rodric clasped Alan’s hand as tightly as he dared. “I’m here with you. You aren’t alone.”

Sarah burst into the room a moment later, balancing a tray.

Rodric glared at her. “What kept you?”

“I had to find my way around the kitchen,” she hissed, glancing Alan’s way. “It’s in a bit of disarray at the moment, with so much of the clan staying in the house.”

She leaned closer to her charge, seeming to disregard the stench which hung about him. “I’ve brought you a potion for the pain, which I’ll mix with strong broth.”

“You should’ve mixed it with strong ale,” he gasped, chuckling softly through gritted teeth.

Sarah chuckled along with him. “Perhaps I should, then. You’ve given me an idea.”

Rodric could hardly believe his ears. “You’re not serious.”

She fixed him with a hard stare. “It cannot harm him any further. He’ll suffer no more.”

“Lass, tell me true.” Alan’s glassy eyes fixed on Sarah’s face. “I’m not much longer for this world, am I?”

She let out a soft sigh, taking one side of his face in her hand. “I’m afraid you aren’t. It’s sorry I am to say it. I wish there was something I could do.”

“Och, I’ve known all along the end was upon me,” he assured her, going so far as to pat the hand which still caressed him. “There’s only so much a man can fight his way through. When the time comes, no man can hold it back.”

Rodric listened to this, watching the tender scene unfold. If Sarah couldn’t pull his brother back from death, she could at least make his final moments warm and peaceful.

This knowledge did not make it easier for him to accept his helplessness. Alan was fading away, slipping from the world and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

If anyone had told him only a day earlier that he’d sit at his brother’s bedside and wish desperately to stop death from making a claim, he might have laughed. Now, he wanted to scream and rage against the cruelty of it all—Alan’s suffering, the helplessness of it all, the fact that it was too late for either of them to do bridge the cavern which had stretched between them for most of their lives.

A knock at the open door introduced Padraig, who looked very nearly apologetic as he entered. “They’re asking questions,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on Alan.

“Let ‘em ask all the questions they want, the vultures,” Alan grumbled. “They’re here to pick the bones, nothing more.”