Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1)(68)
He cut away Anhuset’s trousers while Ildiko removed her boots. Naked in the cold air, her gray skin riddled with goose flesh, she shivered lightly. Ildiko covered her legs with the blanket for warmth and added her own cloak for protection.
Serovek pulled a small candle from his satchel and coaxed a flame from the wick using flint, steel and charcloth. He passed the candle to Ildiko. “I’m no Kai to be cutting into wounds in the dark, so hold that steady and don’t let the flame die.”
He doused the blade with the contents from the bottle he’d brought back with him. Smoke rose in tendrils from the blade. He glanced at Ildiko whose eyes had rounded at the sight. “Peleta’s Tears. Good for drinking and keeps wounds from festering.”
“You drink that?” She’d heard of Peleta’s Tears. Named after the goddess of dragons, it laid low any who dared to taste its brew. Surely something that made metal smoke wasn’t safe to imbibe.
“Sometimes. When I want to forget.” Serovek positioned himself so that Anhuset lay recumbent between his knees, her chest pressed against one of his thighs while he braced her back with the other. He trickled more of the drink onto the wound. Ildiko flinched, right along with the unconscious Anhuset. While the drink might smoke metal, it didn’t burn the skin.
Serovek’s legs flexed against his patient as he made incisions with the knife and widened the wound. Ildiko poured Peleta’s Tears over his bloodied fingers as he felt for the arrowhead. Anhuset didn’t move, but a small moan escaped her lips.
Serovek’s shoulders sagged in obvious relief. “Bodkin,” he said. “Not broadhead. Bad enough but easier to remove.”
Blood ran in thin rills down Anhuset’s back, staining Serovek’s breeches as he worked. The arrow shaft detached from the tip but not before he managed to extract the bodkin from the wound.
Ildiko gave up her overskirt to use as bandages. Serovek packed the wound with moss he pulled from his satchel and bound it with strips cut from the skirt. They repeated the process on Anhuset’s hip. By the time they were done, her clawed fingers had begun to flex and relax against her palm, and dawn gilded the edges of the eastern facing trees with pink light.
“Will she be all right?” Ildiko tucked the blanket and cloak more closely around Anhuset. The shivering had stopped, but her breathing had turned more erratic.
Serovek stood and wiped away the perspiration on his brow with his forearm. “I think so. Kai are hard to kill.”
“Have you killed them?”
His mouth quirked. “A few. We have our raiders; they have theirs. Your husband and I deal with both because they cross into each of our territories. It’s just a matter of who gets to them first.” He took a seat next to Ildiko, grabbed the bottle of Peleta’s tears and tipped it to his lips. The first swallow made him gasp and shake like a wet dog but didn’t stop him from taking a second swallow. He offered the bottle to Ildiko who shook her head, preferring not to torture her already queasy stomach even more. Serovek passed her a flask of water instead so she could rinse the blood from her hands.
“Why didn’t the dogs sniff us out?” she asked.
Serovek placed the bottle of spirits between them and draped his arms over his knees. His gaze drifted to Anhuset’s face and stayed. “They did, but their task was to hunt Kai, not humans. The sorcery lingering here confused them and made Anhuset hard to detect.”
“Didn’t their handlers know that such a thing might happen?”
He shrugged. “Only if they were familiar with this land or a Kai. This temple sits inside my borders, but it’s Kai-built and once Kai-worshipped. Brishen told me about it a couple of years ago while we shared a bottle of Tears between us and commiserated on the vagaries of volatile mistresses.” He winked at Ildiko.
Ildiko tried to smile at the idea of the two men crying on each other’s shoulder over women, but her lips refused to obey. She couldn’t get the image out of her mind of Brishen’s set features when he thrust her at Anhuset and shouted for them to ride for the bridge. She’d seen death in that glowing gaze—his death.
She blinked to fight back the tears that suddenly blurred her vision. “How did you find me and Anhuset?”
Serovek tipped the bottle again before answering. “A rumor about the ambush reached High Salure. By the time I dispatched a rider to Saggara to warn the herceges, you were already at Halmatus township. We set out to meet you but were too late.”
It did no good to dwell on what-ifs, but Ildiko couldn’t help but think how their fate might have differed if they had waited one more day before leaving Saggara. “I wonder if this is the same pack that attacked us on the trade road after Brishen and I were married.”
“Probably not. That attempt failed. Whoever is moving the pieces on this board doesn’t want to fail twice. They’ve supplied this party with mage hounds to anyone or anything with magery, like the Kai. An expensive weapon and far outside the means of even the most successful raiders. I suspect half this group isn’t even Beladine, so they’re bringing in sell-swords with no allegiance except to the sacks of coins paid to them.”
Ildiko recalled the brief exchange between Brishen and Anhuset when the night’s darkness had exploded into blinding flashes of light. “They have a battle mage with them as well.”
Serovek scowled. “That will be a problem when we retrieve your husband.”