Part 15 (1/2)
”Quite well. We're just ending a short break now. By riding through the night, we should be home by this time tomorrow.”
”Any sign of the invaders?”
”None.”
”My wound?” he asked after a brief pause.
”Bad enough,” Ashe answered evenly, ”but not so serious as we first supposed. You've got a high fever, and that could prove more dangerous to you than your actual injuries if it gets much worse.”
”I'm able to ride now, at least slowly. Let me have Lady. I can make my way back at my own pace...”
Gordon's eyes flashed in sudden fury, but then he laughed. ”You read too many adventure novels back home, Friend. We're not going to let you ride off to a solitary death in sacrifice for us all. Besides, that's not necessary.”
Murdock sighed, knowing there would be no moving his partner.
He had to try. ”Gordon, some of those men escaped. They recognized me, and they'll soon spread the word that Firehand has been seriously wounded and must still be within their power of taking. Half Condor Hall's army'll be out in force after us if they aren't already.”
Eveleen joined the pair at that point. She sat beside them. ”Hunting and capturing are two different matters,” she informed him in a tone that brooked no argument.
He nodded, as if in defeat. ”At least, you might give me something to ease the pain.
The woman laughed then and bent to kiss him. ”So you can force your own body into slaying you? I think not, Firehand. Anyway, I doubt it would work. I don't believe your injuries are that severe, especially since they haven't worsened under the motion of the litter. You'd only succeed in making yourself dreadfully sick.”
”You can't make any speed while I'm with you!” he argued desperately. ”I know enough of wounds to realize that. Am I to see you all killed, to be the cause of it?”
Ashe smiled down on him. ”Not a chance. We're as safe now, or nearly as safe, as if we were in the midst of our own camp. Listen to the noise of the deer around us! We're with a goodly company. Scouts are combing all the country about to carry warning if the enemy should approach, and skirmish patrols are riding near on every side to challenge and delay any who might be so foolish as to appear.
”Condor Hall-born warriors may be famed for fighting with a fanatic's zeal, but all their fury is nothing to that which we're prepared to show now. We'll defend our own, my Friend. Believe that, and rest easy.”
”It might all be for nothing,” he whispered, rea.s.sured almost despite himself.
”Then you'll at least die at home, with whatever comfort we can provide for you,” Eveleen told him quietly.
As she had done to silence him before, she pressed her fingers to his lips. ”Shut up now, and don't let me hear any more talk about dying. I'm not about to surrender you, Firehand, not even to that grim Lord.”
Ross was conscious of a strange, swaying movement, its rhythm occasionally broken by unpredictable jerks or drops that wrung a moan or a cry of protest from him, however the weak control he still possessed over his body tried to quell it.
At times, he would be puzzled or totally disoriented but then would force himself to concentrate.
He rode in a deer litter. It was not the first time he had traveled thus, but on that other occasion, he had been able to fix himself to his position, consider his unit's needs. Now, it was hard to focus his thoughts at all, impossible to hold them any length of time...
It was cold, bitterly cold. Not all these blankets they had piled on him seemed able to hold it away from him, as if it originated within his own flesh rather than in the sleet now las.h.i.+ng down in a continuous storm.
Once, maybe twice, he thought he felt heat. There was far too much of it. His body poured sweat, and he struggled against the weight of his coverings until powerful arms restrained him.
Those warm spells, if he had not dreamed them entirely, did not last long, and he was more than glad to feel the end of them and have the cold sweep back over him once more.
Gradually, the troubling episodes came less frequently. A deep oblivion rose up to take him, and he drifted down into it, secure at last from discomfort and from the sharp talons of pain.
25.
THE TIME AGENT lay perfectly still. His body was at ease. There was no motion, no movement at all. He was resting on a comfortable bed. Pillows supported him at an angle steeper than that at which he was wont to sleep, a measure to help keep his lungs clear. The air around him was wonderfully warm.
A muted light reached his lid-veiled eyes. It teased him, and in the end, he opened them.
He frowned. This was not his chamber.
”So you wake at last!”
He turned his head.
Luroc was sitting beside him. The Ton moved swiftly to adjust the pillows so that the injured man might sit higher. ”Easy. You are in my cabin.”
”Why?” he asked.
”It is the warmest and most comfortable in the camp... You had us all very worried this last week, Rossin.”
”A week? So long?”
He nodded. ”Yes. Until the fever left you this morning, we were in doubt as to whether you would live.”
A strangely strong sense of loss filled him when he suddenly realized that neither Eveleen nor Gordon was present.
I Loran seemed to read his thought. ”I just sent your comrades to get some rest. Between commanding our war effort and nursing our ill.u.s.trious wounded, they are both about spent.”
The ruler chuckled. ”Do not scowl so! You cannot expect everything to hold still because you have been put out of it for a time. As a matter of fact, those hunting you have provided our people with some excellent targets.”
”They shouldn't have wasted themselves here...”
”You could have kept away had one of them been hurt, I suppose?”
Murdock was visibly growing tired, and I Loran pushed his chair back, away from the bed. ”No more for now. It is near midnight. Eveleeni will see you tomorrow and will give you as full a report as Healer O Ashean declares you are able to hear. In the meantime, you are to rest. We all fought a hard battle to save you, and I am not about to risk setting you back again by overtaxing you.”
Recovery did not come quickly. The wound itself closed in good order, but the fever returned twice more, each time stripping away whatever the war captain had regained of strength, and the winter was well spent before he had at last been permitted to return to his own quarters.
In truth, he had not pressed to leave the Ton's cabin. It was warm there, and he seemed no longer able to tolerate cold. Any cold. Even now, long after the other effects of the wound had begun to vanish, he could still bear no touch of chill. So severe was his reaction against it that unless it lessened again with the pa.s.sage of time, significantly lessened, Ross feared he would be forced to limit his long-term activities either to the far south here or to hot paradise worlds like Hawaika, venturing into other climates only for short, summer a.s.signments.
Murdock put that thought from him. He had to trust that this blight would eventually leave him as the fever had finally done. In the meantime, he could only endure it as best he might, that and conceal his continuing discomfort from his companions.
Save in this one respect, he had reason in plenty to be pleased. His own strong const.i.tution had rea.s.serted itself, and he had regained both the flesh he had lost and his wonted energy, which had so far deserted him that he had for the most part been content to remain docile under his attendants' commands.
Not, the Terran thought with a grin, that protest would have done him much good. His comrades had been determined that he should be fully whole again before resuming command over his troops, and no amount of impatience on his part would have turned them from that.
By all Time's levels, though, it was good to feel well and ready to take up his life once more. For a while there, after the second return of the fever, he had thought no future remained to him but that of an invalid.