Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(79)

Katsa dragged Po up to dry ground and sat him there. The cold and the wet – that could also kill him. He must stop bleeding, and he must be warm and dry. Oh, how she wished for Raffin at this moment. “Po,” she said. “Po, what happened?” No response. Po. Po. His eyes flashed open, but they were vague, unfocused. He didn’t see her. He vomited.

“All right. You sit still. This is going to hurt,” she said, but when she pulled the arrow from his shoulder he didn’t even seem to notice. His arms flopped lifelessly as she peeled his shirts from his back, and he vomited again.

Bitterblue came clattering down the trail with the horse. “I need your help,” Katsa said, and for a good while Bitterblue was Katsa’s assistant, tearing open bags to find clothing that could be used to dry him or stanch his bleeding, rifling through the medicines for the ointment that cleaned wounds, soaking bloody cloths in the lake.

“Can you hear me, Po?” Katsa asked as she tore a shirt to make a bandage. “Can you hear me? What happened with the king?”

He looked up at her dimly as she bandaged his shoulder.

“Po,” she said, over and over. “The king. You must tell me if the king is alive.” But he was useless, and senseless –

no better than unconscious. She peeled off his boots and his trousers and dried him as best she could. She dressed him in new trousers and rubbed his arms and legs to warm them. She took his coat back from Bitterblue, pulled it over his head, and pushed his rubbery arms through the sleeves. He vomited again.

It was the force of his head hitting the water. This Katsa knew: that a man vomited if struck hard enough in the head, that he became forgetful and confused. His head would clear, in time. But they didn’t have time, not if the king was alive. And so she knelt before him and grasped his chin. She ignored his wincing, pained eyes. She thought into his mind. Po. I need to know if the king is alive. I am not going to stop bothering you until you tell me if the king is alive.

He looked at her then, rubbed his eyes, and squinted at her, hard. “The king,” he said thickly. “The king. My arrow.

The king is alive.”

Katsa’s heart sank. For now they must flee, all three of them, with Po in this state and with only one horse. In the dark and the cold, with little food, and without Po’s Grace to warn them of their pursuers.

Her Grace would have to serve.

She handed Po her flask. “Drink this,” she said, “all of it. Bitterblue,” she said, “help me pull these wet things together. It’s a good thing you slept today, for I need you to be strong tonight.”

Po seemed to understand when it was time for him to mount the horse. He didn’t contribute to the effort, but he didn’t fight it, either. Both Katsa and Bitterblue pushed him up into the saddle with all their might, and though he almost pitched headlong over the animal and fell to the ground on the other side, some unfocused understanding caused him to grasp Katsa’s arm and steady himself. “You behind him,” Katsa said to Bitterblue, “so that you can see him.

Pinch him if he starts to fall off, and call me if you need help. The horse will be moving quickly, as quickly as I can run.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN




In the dark on the side of a mountain, no one can move quickly who doesn’t have some particular Grace to do so.

They moved, and Katsa did not break her ankles stepping blindly before the horse, as others would have, but they didn’t move quickly. Katsa barely breathed, so hard was she listening behind them. Their pursuers would be on horseback, and there would be many of them, and they would carry torches. If Leck had sent a party in the right direction, then there would be little to stop them from succeeding in their search.

Katsa was doubtful that even on flat land they could have moved much faster, so unwell was Po. He clung to the horse’s mane, eyes closed, concentrating fiercely on not falling off. He winced at every movement. And he was still bleeding.

“Let me tie you to the horse,” Katsa said to him once when she’d stopped at a stream to fill the flasks. “Then you’d be able to rest.”

He took a moment to process her words. He hunched forward and sighed into the horse’s mane. “I don’t want to rest,” he said. “I want to be able to tell you if he’s coming.”

So they weren’t completely without his Grace; but he was completely without his reason, to make such a comment while Bitterblue sat directly behind him, quiet, intent, and missing nothing of what was said. Careful, she thought to him. Bitterblue.

“I’ll tie you both to the horse,” she said aloud, “and then each of you can choose whether or not to rest.”

Rest, she thought to him, as she wound a rope around his legs. You’re no good to us if you bleed to death.

“I’ll not bleed to death,” he said aloud, and Katsa avoided Bitterblue’s eyes, determining not to talk to Po inside her mind again until his reason had returned.

———

They continued south slowly. Katsa tripped and stumbled over rocks, and over the roots of stubborn mountain trees that clung to cracks in the earth. As the night wore on, her stumbling increased, and it occurred to her that she was tired.

She sent her mind back along the past few nights, and counted. It was her second night without sleep, and the night before that they’d slept only a few hours. She would have to sleep, then, sometime soon; but for now she wouldn’t think of it. There was no use considering the impossible.