Chapter 7
Mornings light bought no comfort to the outcasts. Will rose with a groan, stretching the aches out of his muscles. He blinked bleary eyes at the blue sky filtering through the treetops.
"Will?" Ruch joined him, stretching the kinks out of his muscles.
"Morning," Will said, then crouched back down beside Halt. In the light, Will could see that his skin was sweaty and pale, his body trembling ever so slightly, eyes shut tight, blood and pus leaking from under the bandages.
"Halt?" Will whispered fearfully, taking a limp hand in his. The heartbeat was still there, though fluttery.
"You didn't wake me for a watch," Ruch said. Will shrugged it away. He hadn't been able to sleep anyway.
"We should clean his wound," Ruch said, seeing that he was getting no reply.
"We need water," Will said, his voice slightly husky. "Injured people need lots of water."
"He's not going to get enough water," Antil said quietly.
Will shot him a look of pure hatred. "He will be fine," the young ranger growled. His head was foggy with exhaustion and he was in no mood to humour the Oramine.
"I'm thirsty," Lillian's eyes fluttered open. She sat up, rubbing her arms where the rough ground had left small marks on her skin. "And hungry."
"Deal with it," Will snapped. He closed his eyes, trying to think through the heavy fog in his mind. Halt couldn't be alone. Will would have to stay with him. But could he trust the Oramine to fetch water? Sirisa had betrayed them, after all. They'd have to make a stretcher for Halt first and take him with them.
"We'll use the rope from our camp," Will said. "Ruch, can you go back and get as much as you can?"
"For the stretcher?" Ruch guessed. "I'm not leaving without Sirisa."
"I know, I know," Will waved the objection away. "Can you just get them please and we'll worry about her later?"
Ruch nodded and moved away in the forest.
"Is it safe for him?" Lillian asked nervously, her eyes flickering around.
"Of course not," Will knelt back down beside Halt. He was too exhausted to hold her hand and comfort her. She would just have to deal with things like the rest of them. "But no more dangerous than here."
Halt groaned, his eyes flickering under the lids. Will pressed a hand to his former master's forehead. Heat radiated to his palm. A high fever.
"Will..?" Halt slurred.
"I'm here," Will assured him. Halt manged to crack one eyelid open a slit. He muttered something inaudable.
"What was that?" Will asked, leaning his head down until Halt's uneven breath tickled his ear.
"Go outside...practise archery," the injured ranger muttered. "Just 'cause I'm sick...doesn't mean...can have a holiday..."
Tears prickled at the corners of Will's eyes. His mentor was delusional. He thought they were back in history. Back when Will was a skinny apprentice.
"He's not lucid," Antil said, finding a bent tree trunk to take a comfortable seat on. "That is never a good sign."
Will shot him a death glare. Antil shrugged disdainfully, brushing a stray leaf from his tree trunk. The action seemed out of place in his torn, dirt covered clothes, crooked teeth, coarse hands and his tangled beard and hair. Red rimmed bleary eyes fixed on an indefinable point in front of him, moving only after minutes had passed.
Lillian stooped awkwardly on the ground, wrapping her arms around her drawn up knees. She glanced at Halt, grimanced, and looked away.
Ruch returned with his arms full of branches from their shelter. Will frowned at the sight of him.
"Ruch, what about the rope?" he pointed out. That had been the most important thing.
"It was gone," Ruch dipped his head apologetically. "Those wild people must have taken it all."
Will cursed to himself, glancing at Halt. The older ranger had drifted back into unconsciousness.
"Then how are we going to make the stretcher?" Antil eyed them impassively, completely unconcerned. Will gritted his teeth. He could see that the man would do nothing to help.
"Maybe we should stay here?" Ruch suggested. "Build a shelter and look for Sirisa."
Will closed his eyes and took deep, calming breaths. There was no other real alternative. Without a secure stretcher, it would be dangerous to move Halt in his condition. He had no choice but to trust the Oramine.
"Fine, we'll build shelters here," Will said. The others looked at him, expecting commands. He glanced around the forestry. The best way, he decided, was to make five small, separate shelters, one for each of them, by stacking sticks around the low branches. He gave the others a brief description of how he was thinking and they set to work.
It took hours. Antil refused to help, he just sat on his log, watching them with dead eyes. Lillian tried her best, but she didn't have the strength needed to continuously carry large branches over to her assigned tree.
Eventually, they had three acceptable shelters, lined with ferns and moss to keep out any rain. Will had made his beside Halt's position and he now set to work building a roofing of sorts over his mentor, to block the worst of the weather. He kept the sides open for easy access.
Lillian slumped outside her shelter when Ruch had helped her finish it. He and Will then worked on a shelter for Antil, though he only raised an eyebrow at them, and at Ruchs persistant urging, a shelter for Sirisa.
By the time they had completed this, the sun was high in the sky, a bright light filtering down through the canopy. Will sat beside his mentor, stroking his salt and pepper hair back from his clammy forehead.
"Will?" Ruch knelt down beside him, a crease in his brow. "I think we should go look for Sirisa."
Will's eyes narrowed. He shook his head, a short, sharp movement, and didn't look up from Halt. The older rangers muttered something, a gleaming bead of sweat trickling down his cheek.
"I-I can look after Ranger Halt," Lillian started forward. Her hands were clasped in front of her, twisting together.
"I'm not leaving him," Will said. It would be different if only a close friend was with him, Horace or Alyss or Evanlyn or anyone he could trust with his life. He liked Lillian, but he didn't know her well enough to leave a wounded Halt with her. What if Halt woke up? She didn't know him well enough to know that when he insisted he was fine, it didn't mean he was.
"Well, I'm going to look for Sirisa," Ruch said with a sigh.
"N-no!" Lillian cried. "We shouldn't separate!"
"It doesn't make a difference does it? We're all going to die anyway." Antil dropped from his log and stretched his arms, a yawn escaping his lips.
"Antil, will you come with me to look for Sirisa?" Ruch asked.
Antil shrugged, his flat eyes fixing the older man in a stare. "I was under the impression Sirisa had betrayed you."
Ruch shook his head. "She has had a rough life. Her parents were killed by the Arasi and since then, she has harboured a grudge for foreigners."
The Arasi, Will knew, were the neighbouring people to the Oramine. They were supposed to be mortal enemies that had always hated each other. He wiped the sweat from Halt's forehead. Even though he knew, better than anyone, the pain of growing up parentless, and he sympathised with Sirisa, all he could see was the blood stained bandage around his mentors stomache. She had betrayed them and it was her fault that Halt was in the condition he was.
"Alright, I'll go alone," Ruch sighed. He slipped away between the trees. Long after he had left, they could still hear his calls drifting around the forest.
…...
Sirisa was curled up the top of a tree, wedged in a fork. Her hair had lost it's sleekness, it tangled around her shoulders, greasy and unwashed. She wrapped her arms around her knees, persistant tears blurring her vision.
It wasn't fair. She had always been loyal, always kind, even as a child when an older girl with parents had bullied her. Sirisa had never harmed the girl, even after that one time the bully's older brother had beaten her.
It wasn't fair at all that all the horrible things happened to her! She didn't deserve to be in the Wild. She didn't deserve to die!
"Sirisa?"
The woman jerked up in shock. Someone was calling for her! She slid lower down the tree, then paused. Could it be a trap? Perhaps the foreigners had come up with a plan to kill her. After all, they were enemies.
But the call came again and this time, she recognised the voice. Ruch. Ruch who had listened to her when she was younger, who had comforted her as she told him about her parents and the bullies and how much she absolutely hated foreigners.
Ruch wouldn't betray her, she was sure of it. Even though she had betrayed him, a nagging voice told her. Sirisa pushed it away. She had hatched a plot to get rid of the foreigners, that was all. She surely couldn't be blamed for how badly things had turned out, could she?
No, it wasn't her fault, not at all. She took a steadying breath and swung down to the forest floor.
"Ruch?" she called, tentatively.
"Sirisa!"
She followed the sound of his voice, while he followed hers.
"Ruch!" She cried when she spotted his familiar face and, because she was so caught up with relief and fear all at once, she flung her arms around his neck.
"Sirisa, come with me. We've made you a shelter, it's all going to be fine. We'll get out of this alive," Ruch told her, his voice muffled against her shoulder. She shook her head. Nothing was fine, nothing had ever been fine, but she couldn't bring herself to ruin the moment, just as she couldn't bring herself to apologise for eveything she'd done.
…...
Will glanced up as Ruch and Sirisa returned to camp. The woman brushed past him without a word. She settled down in her shelter, as shown to her by Ruch, her eyes red and swollen.
"Uhm, welcome back," Lillian attempted to approach the older woman but Sirisa looked away.
"Leave me be, foreigner," she said, her voice low and husky.
Lillian flushed and found a leaf to fiddle with, tearing it into little pieces. Ruch crouched by Sirisa, who crossed her arms, staring into the distance with her lips trembling. Antil still had the same blank look of a hopeless man and Will turned back to his mentor, watching for any change, either good or bad.
I had the idea for this story before the ninth book came out, I just never got around to writing it. I'm trying not to copy the book- I mean, the whole, Halt's peril concept. It's hard, trying to keep them in character and still make Halt and Will's interactions a bit different from the book. Do you know what I mean? I'm having trouble explaining it.
Oh yeah, did I mention a Criminal Minds episode was the inspiration for this story? The chess bit, I mean. Anyone watched it?
