by Serena Chase
Sprawling sideways across the layer of ice that covered the yard, Rose watched in horror as the dagger grazed the assailant’s forearm and just missed impaling Alaine’s shoulder before imbedding itself in the doorframe.
The creature collapsed. What was it? A bear that hadn’t yet found its place to sleep for the winter?
The corner of the front porch finally stopped Rose’s slippery passage, but the impact jarred her shoulder and sent her sprawling to her backside.
“Is that you, Rose?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I told you to hide!” Alaine scolded. “What are you doing out there?”
“Protecting you!” Rose cried. “Now stay back from that animal! It could hurt you!”
Grasping the porch’s railing, Rose awkwardly gained her feet and moved as quickly up the steps as the sleet and ice would allow.
Collapsed in a heap, half-in and half-out of the house, the giant creature did not move, but she didn’t know what it was, and therefore, didn’t trust it. With a stealthy motion she hoped her aunt would not see, Rose pulled her dagger from the doorframe.
“Help us get him in the house, Rose.”
“Get him in the house? No!” she cried as Alaine and Lily knelt at the creature’s side. “Are you out of your minds? We can’t possibly take a bear into the—”
Rose stopped short as her gaze travelled the length of the creature. She tilted her head. “Is this animal wearing . . .” she paused and blinked several times, “boots?”
Lily braced her feet and tugged one of the creature’s arms, each syllable coming forth as more of a grunt than a word, “It’s. Not. A. Bear.”
If the situation had not been so ridiculously dangerous, Rose would have been tempted to laugh at the sight of her petite aunt and cousin so ineffectively pouring their full strength into moving the hulking lump of strangely booted fur.
“A little, ugh, help, please?” Lily grunted.
“Oh. Oh!” Rose knelt near the back of the creature. She gripped the dark brown fur with passing wonder at whether Rowlen’s story about the Bear-men of Mynissbyr was, in fact, more accurate than Ayden’s.
At her first shove, the heap of fur groaned what sounded like human speech but quieted at Alaine’s gentle words. “It is all right now, you are safe. There are no Cobelds here, sir.”
“Cobelds?!” Rose dropped the leg she was holding with a thud that produced another groan.
“Rose, please. A little care.” An annoyed glance from her aunt propelled Rose back into action. Finally, the three women were able to get the gargantuan pile of fur into the house.
Rose’s estimation of a bear at the door had not been far off. The man wore a huge bearskin cloak. Its hood was the head of the animal, complete with bared fangs and open eyes. Tiny icicles hung from the animal’s useless ears and snout, making a mess of the floor as they melted within the warmth of the old lodge. Beneath the bearskin cloak he wore several other lighter layers, which made him seem even larger than he probably was. But one look at the stranger’s face revealed a fur-like beard that contrasted golden against the brown fur of the bearskin, and it was clear he was, after all, human.
“Look at his scabbard!” Alaine gasped. “It carries the King’s seal.”
“He’s a knight,” Lily whispered. “He may have information about why Father has been delayed. Oh!” She pointed to his arm. “Mother, he’s bleeding! Rose, help me apply pressure to the wound.”
He’s a knight? Guilt stained Rose’s cheeks at the evidence of her dagger’s path.
She pulled the cloak’s hood from her head so she could better assist her cousin, tossing her unbound copper hair over one shoulder to get it out of the way.
If I hadn’t slipped on the ice, she thought as she pressed the hem of her cloak against the wound, I might have killed a knight!
Aunt Alaine knelt next to the knight and gently touched his swollen and heavily bearded face. “You are among friends, sir. Open your eyes.”
The knight’s eyelids fluttered, but closed before focusing.
“Sir,” Alaine continued, “as limited as our resources may be, we would offer you protection this night. But you must rouse yourself enough that we might move you without causing further injury.”
The knight’s eyes squeezed tightly shut, opened, and repeated the exercise several times. As his vision focused, he looked directly at Rose.
“How can it be that I am with you?” His voice was deep and raspy, as if he had been out in the cold for a very long time. Confusion clouded his features. “Is this a dream?”
Rose opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was arrested by the brilliant emerald hue of his eyes. The knight blinked again and his eyes cleared.
The shade of his eyes was a green so darkly brilliant that it could rival any shade of that color found in the Wood. Beautiful. The intensity of the trust on his face made it appear as if he had known her his whole life and was quite comfortable in her presence.
And indeed, Rose puzzled, there was something familiar about this knight. But she was quite sure she had never laid eyes on him before. If he was indeed a knight, and therefore no danger to them, why, then, did her stomach lurch so and her breath come faster to be caught in his gaze?
“I am dead, then?” He held Rose’s gaze, speaking as if the prospect of death held no fear for him. “Did the Cobelds finish me?”
“You’re not dead,” she said finally and almost laughed. A sharp glance from her aunt stilled the bubble of sound from escaping. “Sir, if you are being pursued we cannot guarantee your life will not yet be forfeit.” She frowned. “And if you are, in fact, being pursued by Cobelds, you have put us all in danger.”
“Rose!”
“Honestly, Lily, it’s the truth!”
“It is,” Alaine agreed. “We must get him inside and out of sight.”
Rose looked down and realized she held his hand, but his eyes never left her face. He seemed coherent enough to follow directions, but little more than that.
“Sir, I am passing tall, but I can’t carry your weight myself and my friends do not share my height. I fear transporting you shall be quite awkward.”
“My apologies, my lady.”
“Are you able to stand at all?”
The knight gave a pained nod. “I am weak, but I will try.”
Each movement evidenced his pain. With some effort he rolled to his side, and after a few moments, finally to his hands and knees.
“Lily.” Rose locked an arm beneath his shoulder and motioned her cousin to do the same. Finally, the knight stood. “Lean on me,” she said. “I’m more able to bear your weight.”
With the cloak removed the knight was not nearly so monstrous. Although he was quite tall—at least as tall as Sir Gladiel in Rose’s quick estimation—he was not as gigantic as he had looked with the bear’s head resting atop his own. Suddenly, his body sagged.
“Stay with me.” Rose placed his arm around her neck, her shoulder under his shoulder, and her arm about his waist. His steps slowed as his head lolled, then snapped back up. “You can do it,” she said. “Just a little bit further, now.”
While Lily and Rose were coaxing the knight to stand, Alaine lit another lamp and moved down the hall.
“I’ll put a kettle to boil,” Alaine said, moving to do just that.
Lily helped Rose guide the knight onto the one small bed in the room.
“It’s cold now, but it’s a small space and should warm quickly once we shut the door.”
Lily nodded. “I think he’s unconscious.”
“It’s probably just as well.” Alaine sighed as she returned and hung a kettle over the fire. “Lily, Rose, stand watch in the hall while I check him for further injuries.”
“He is ill. Feverish,” Alaine said when she called the girls back in. “And I fear he may have suffered frostbite in addition to the more recent injury he’s suffered.”
“It was an accident, I didn’t mean—”
“We sh
ould be glad your dagger did not hit the target it was meant for! Had you hit your mark you might have been tried for treason.”
“Treason?” The word squeaked from Rose’s throat. It didn’t seem that long ago that the same charge had come forth from Koria’s lips.
“This knight wears the emblem of King Jarryn,” Lily said as she set a pitcher of water on a small table in the opposite corner from the bed. “To murder a knight of E’veria is an act of treason punishable by death.” She placed her hand upon Rose’s arm and gave her a small smile. “Thank Rynloeft your knife did not hit its target.”
“We will take turns sitting with him,” Alaine said. “I am sure that he means us no harm.”
“But—”
“I am going to take the first watch with him. I will shut the door to keep the heat from the fire within. Check in with me every hour.”
“Two should stay in here.”
“And leave only one person to watch from the front room? I think not, Rose.” Alaine gave a stiff smile. “You and Lily keep watch together. And dear?”
“Yes?”
“Keep your hood over your hair and don’t go outside again.” With that, she shut the door.
Rose sent a glare through the door and stood thus for several minutes, seething.
At dawn, Lily took her mother’s place and Rose fought sleep while Alaine dozed in her chair by the fire. That evening, it was Rose who sat by the knight’s side. Lily and Alaine remained in the main room, but neither made a pretense of trying to stay awake. The threat that had seemed so imminent the night before had waned over the course of the uneventful day.
Rose startled when the knight groaned. She must have fallen asleep. She rose from her chair and laid her hand upon his forehead. Still feverish. Again he groaned, this time reaching his right hand toward the wound on his left arm, but he didn’t regain consciousness.
Guilt assailed Rose. She had thrown the knife in hopes of protecting her aunt, but her motive didn’t matter. She had injured an innocent man. A knight! And now his very life was her responsibility. She had to gather her wits. She had to ensure that he lived.
Rose’s hands shook as she lifted the blood-soaked fabric Aunt Alaine had wrapped around the dagger wound. The wound was near enough the knight’s elbow to ensure a painful recovery. Luckily, the cut was not terribly deep. Although it would be an uncomfortable process, healing should be swift if Rose could keep infection at bay.
But his skin was hot. So hot! Fever, too, could put him in death’s grasp. Whatever illness or injury had weakened him before his arrival, it could not be allowed to claim his life.
Rose chastised herself as she gathered the items needed to clean and re-dress the knight’s wound. If not for that fortuitous patch of ice, her strong will would have resulted in a more terrible outcome for the knight.
And a death sentence for her.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
The room was warm, but still the knight shivered. Rose pulled all the quilts from the foot of the bed and covered the knight, then added another log to the fire. She hung a kettle to heat. Even if the knight was not conscious enough to partake, Rose would certainly appreciate imbibing something warm before attempting to pass the rest of the night on the hard wooden floor.
As the two separate concoctions brewed, one medicinal, one not, Rose watched the knight. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Why are you here?” Other than an occasional grimace and the subtle rise and fall of the blankets at his broad chest, however, he gave no answer.
When the tea cooled just a touch, she soaked a clean bit of bandage and squeezed the liquid through his lips a bit at a time. Though he wasn’t conscious, he seemed to swallow, at least intermittently, and she had some hope that the herbs’ medicinal properties would soothe his fever and his pain. By the time his tea was gone her own had grown cold, but she drank it anyway and curled up in the chair.
Rose tried to close her eyes, but sleep eluded her. Who was this knight? What brought him here? Did he know what dire thing had kept Drinius and Gladiel from returning to them? Her stomach clenched, rebelling at the tepid tea and the thought of what the knight might have met on his way to them. He mentioned Cobelds. Were they, even now, on their way to the Bear’s Rest?
And if he had been sent to the Bear’s Rest, why?
Questions jumbled in her mind one over top the next. At some point Rose fell asleep, but a ragged moan from the knight sent her scrambling to her feet as if she hadn’t even closed her eyes.
She put a hand to his cheek. If anything, the knight’s fever had risen.
“I have to cool you down,” she said. He shuddered as Rose ripped the blankets off. “I’m sorry. Forgive me, but I must let the heat escape.”
As she placed a cool, damp cloth on his forehead, he flinched away. She persisted and finally he was too weak to fight. But it was then he began to speak. Just a jumble of syllables at first, but out of his delirium Rose caught one coherent phrase that erased any lingering doubt that he might be an enemy in disguise. She had heard Uncle Drinius, as well as Sir Gladiel, speak the same words with reverence in response to their duty as knights. She couldn’t hear the solemn oath from this man and remain in fear of him.
“With all that I am,” the knight mumbled, “and for all of my life.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
After hearing him speak the Knight’s Oath, Rose decided that the Bear-knight, as she had begun to call him in her mind, was likely a man of her uncle’s acquaintance. The thick covering of his lustrous golden beard couldn’t hide that this knight was quite a bit younger than Drinius or Gladiel, but perhaps they had served together at some point, somewhere.
Exhaustion pulled as Rose caught only spare snatches of sleep between the Bear-knight’s bouts of fevered restlessness. In the moments when he was still, Rose dripped medicinal tea down his throat, and when the thrashing began again, she held his hand and spoke soft words while trying to keep him as still as possible.
Time stretched. Days passed. The women sat with him in shifts, engaging in the repetitive procedures of caring for the man and his wounds. Little by little, signs of healing became evident. No visible infection had taken root, yet he remained feverish, and for the most part, unconscious.
Rose gauged the hours she spent at his side by the amount of time the medicines took to wear off, and the Bear-knight resumed his fevered mumblings. When he was quiet, she filled the silence with stories she had seen Lord Whittier and Rowlen perform in Veetri, closing her eyes as she spoke and imagining the translucent Story People dancing across Rowlen’s hand.
How he would laugh, her brother, if he saw her now, playing both nurse and Storyteller to a sleeping stranger. How he would tease her for slipping on the ice and nearly killing a knight.
Rose sighed. She would welcome Rowlen’s teasing if he was here, helping her pass these hours.
“Mother and I fed the livestock,” Lily whispered when she arrived to relieve Rose’s vigil. Ever since the Bear-knight had arrived, Alaine had forbidden Rose from leaving the house.
Rose nodded. “And the knight’s horse?”
“Not as fearsome as I first thought,” Lily smiled. “He’s a giant of a beast, but as gentle as a lamb.”
“Do you think Aunt Alaine would let me go out and see him?”
Lily’s expression was compassionate, but her words, unfortunately, were all too sure. “No. She doesn’t want you outside the house. Just in case.”
Rose pressed her lips together in frustration, nodded, and silently left the room. Her joints were stiff from the hours of inactivity. What she wouldn’t give for a breath of fresh air, even if the air’s freshness was marred by the chore of mucking out a horse’s stall.
To keep her mind from lingering on her captivity, Rose took it upon herself to inventory their ever-dwindling supplies. Thankfully, there was kindling enough by the kitchen door to last a few more days without making a trip to the woodpile, but their ca
che of bread wouldn’t last the day, and should the Bear-knight wake up, he would need to eat something gentler than bread.
“We need broth,” Rose said, neither expecting nor receiving a reply.
“Has the knight awakened?”
Thinking she was alone, Rose jumped at Alaine’s question. “No,” she said when she caught her breath. “But when he does he’ll need the sort of food an invalid might eat, won’t he?”
Alaine nodded, her expression worried. “I have no idea how to butcher a chicken.”
Rose shuddered. “Neither do I. And I don’t intend to learn. What if we soaked a bit of the dried venison in water? Could it make a broth?”
“Perhaps.” Alaine nodded. “Why don’t you lie down and I’ll experiment a bit.” She sighed. “I never thought of myself as ignorant until the day Eneth and Walen left. If I ever get back to Stoen I will never again take our servants for granted.”
Rose couldn’t help the grin that pulled at her cheeks when Alaine reached for Eneth’s ample apron and wrapped it around her middle—twice. “I do wonder what your friends at court would say if they saw you now!”
“I daresay they wouldn’t even recognize me.”
Feeling a tinge of responsibility for her aunt’s melancholy tone, Rose turned away and went upstairs to her room.
“Rose?”
She startled awake at Lily’s voice and bolted upright. The sun was bright in her window, her days and nights confused by the strange hours of caring for the sick.
“I’m sorry to wake you. Would you like me to take your shift with the knight so you can sleep?”
“Is it my turn already?”
Lily nodded. “But I don’t mind.”
“No, I’ll go. Unless you’d rather I do the barn chores, of course.”
A smile infected her cousin’s words. “I know you’d rather, but Mother is quite insistent that you stay indoors.”
Rose sighed and looked down to realize she hadn’t even removed her shoes. “Has there been any change?”
“Not yet.”
