Alinia's Battle-Chapter Thirteen-Blood, Rain, and Angel's Wings
Will had watched in growing horror as Alinia continued her downward path to destruction, then with growing hope as she had spared Drake in response to his Lady's desperate cries. And then he saw Drake draw the knife.
Fear surged through Will, and he cried a warning, but it was too late. Alinia turned instead of running as he'd intended, and the knife caught her in the side. Will's heart nearly stopped as she fell over backward, seemingly dead.
Then she kicked out at Drake, trying to knock him from his feet, but the movement was spastic and uncoordinated, and the dastard knight had simply stepped to the side, before pulling Alinia's cast off sword from the muck and raising it to kill her. Will ran forward as Alinia dashed her hand across her eyes to clear them of rain and pushed herself to her knee. The sword flashed down as Will tripped over one of the seats and sprawled forward on his face, now unable to see the combat.
He heard her cry out and hope faded utterly.
Until Drake screamed, his cry echoed by a tearing sob of grief from Johannette.
Will grabbed the back of the seat and pulled himself up, trying to get disentangled from the folds of his cloak.
Drake lay on the ground, a foot of bloodstained sword protruding from his back. Alinia was disappearing into the night.
Will swore. She was injured! How could she even think running off away from all help would be a good idea. He had to stop her. Again, he couldn't help thinking.
He ran to Tug and mounted him bareback, trusting the pony not to pull any tricks as they took off after the injured girl. With the rain driving in his face, and the muddy water from the ground splashing into his face as he bent low over the neck of the racing pony, he realized that this was the third time her tournament had ended with him racing after her.
This was decidedly the most urgent. For all he knew she was already dead. The image of her uncoordinated scramble to mount her horse, blood trailing down her side, sprang to the forefront of his mind.
He urged the pony to run faster.
The rain whipped into his face, soaking his cloak until even in the driving wind of their passage it refused to flutter, clinging sodden and limp to his legs. Trees flashed by on either side as they galloped into the forest, the footing growing steeper. After a few strides will was forced to slow Tug all the way to a walk as he saw that just a hundred feet ahead the ground plunged down steeply. The pony would be of no help to anyone if he slipped and broke a leg on the treacherous slime the trail had become.
A gust of wind ruffled through the woods, blowing Will's hood off and shaking bigger, fatter drops of rain tom the waterlogged leaves above. The visibility was nearly zero in the gloom of the storm, and combined with the shade of the trees and the driving rain Will could hardly see a thing.
Suddenly Tug's head came up and his ears pricked forward. Will sat up straight, knowing the pony must have caught a scent on the wind. Then the pony gave a piercing whinny, and somewhere down the trail, high and frantic, came an answer. Will urged Tug forward as the sounds of a trotting horse materialized and came through the lashing sound of heavy rain on leaves just as the horse itself emerged from the curtain of moisture up ahead. There was an ominous stain of red mingled with the water that matted the fur of her shoulder and mane. The horse stopped in front of Tug and squealed, whirling around trotting back the way it had come. Then it stopped and looked over it's shoulder.
Will didn't believe that animals were smarter than people, and he definitely didn't believe in magic, but if there was someone who believed in the unpredictable and frequently dumbfounding bonds between humans and animals, or more specifically between humans and horses, it was Will Treaty. He pressed Tug to follow the mare, and a small cry escaped him as they reached the top of the slope and looked down.
Lying crumpled and limp against a tree, her face startlingly pale against the mud and partially obscured by tangled strands of soaking hair was Alinia. The heavy rain had caused a small rivulet to form beside the path and Alinia lay across it like a dam, the water pooling against her side. But the puddle beside her wasn't all water.
Will leapt off the pony, running down the hill with Tug close behind him. He slid to a stop beside the still form of the girl and knelt beside her, ignoring the cold gritty mud that soaked his knees and the driving rain that stung like arrows against his face and neck. For a moment he thought she was dead, she was so white and still, but after he watched for a moment he could see the way her expression flickered slightly with pain every breath. She was alive…for now.
With that realization his brain switched gears as his training kicked in. He knew what he had to do.
The first thing to do was rig some kind of shelter as he couldn't exactly work on her with rain streaming into his eyes and soaking his medical supplies. The medical supplies! In his hurry, he forgot that he had ridden Tug after her bareback, all his supplies were still back at his camp!
But wait, Alinia must have something for emergencies, and her camp was much closer, perhaps a mile away. Convinced that Zara had no wish to leave the side of her injured mistress, Will mounted his little gray pony and disappeared among the trees.
He was gone for less than twenty minutes, and Alinia still lay where he had left her.
Although the violence of the storm had spent itself and only a light mist still drifted down, the leaves of the trees, still laden with water, maintained a steady drip-drip-drip—for all the world like tears. Will shook off the notion that the forest was crying and at the base of the slick hill laid a blanket on the ground, staking Alinia's tent of heavy oilcloth overtop. It took him a long time to find dry firewood, and dusk was beginning to cover the trees—or perhaps the storm had simply hastened the onset of evening— by the time a pitiful spark from his flint and steel finally caught the damp tinder and flared into life.
The flickering light of the fire on the ghostly trees, shining through the mist, gave the whole scene a surreal ghostliness as Will climbed the hill and gathered Alinia into his arms, carrying her down and laying her gently on the blanket. Still and pale, without a spark of anger, revenge, or defensiveness clouding her face she no longer looked so much older than her years, in fact she looked younger. Her stillness, the drained whiteness of her face, and her slightly curled position seemed to give the illusion of a hurt baby animal—a fawn perhaps—tiny and infinitely fragile.
She had suffered more than most would in a lifetime, but for once, she showed no sign of it. Her face held the tranquil peace and fearlessness of one who has done right, and for whom not even death holds fear.
It was with a heavy heart and a gentle hand that Will went about his work, doing his utmost to safeguard that life that held so fragilely to the threads that bound it to this world.
When he finished and sat back, having done all he could, it was deep night.
It was that time that has no reality, when all the world seems to have come to a stop and the otherworldly hovers so close to the firmament on which we live that it's like one could reach out and touch the peace of God.
It seemed as though the touch of another world was over Alinia then as she clung tenuously to life, and to Will it almost seemed that the effect of laying down the hate that had consumed her had left her drained but peaceful, to fine for this world to hold any longer. She was like the threads of gossamer that spiders weave, beautiful but passing.
The breeze that riffled through the trees gave the illusion of the gentle wafting of angel's wings, brushing this world and wrapping the troubled soul within, returning it to the loved-ones it had missed so long.
But it was not to be, and the night passed with Alinia still hovering, walking dangerously close to that gauzy thread that separates life from death.
Will, exhausted with the stress of the previous night, lay outside the tent, slumped to the side where he had fallen asleep and toppled backward sometime in the wee hours of the morning. The coals of the fire had not survived the night, and lay in pale ashes, one last wraith of smoke wafting upward like the last gasp of the dying. But even as the fire died, Alinia lived, and even as the last breath of smoke spiraled upward and was lost, breath returned to her, and her eyes fluttered open.
On the limb of a tree that overhung the camp a robin burst into song and Will stirred and sat up, his brown hair tousled. He looked around as though wondering where he was, but before he could recall on his own it came back with the voice that mere hours before he thought he would never hear again.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Alinia said. "The sun, the forest, that little bird. Sometimes we forget how wonderful life is until it's too late to remember, but I've been given more time. Thank God, I've been given more time. It's so beautiful."
The sun burst in a glorious haze over the horizon, bathing the world in light.