Page 83 of The Robber Knight's Love
Cursed as he was, he had not known pain foryears. He had almost forgotten what it felt like, sometimes wishinghe could feel it again just to interrupt the monotony.
He laughed a bitter laugh. How he now cursedthis foolish wish. True pain, he realized, doesn't come from beingbranded with hot irons or stretched on the rack. True pain comesfrom seeing those you care about in danger.
He only wished that lesson didn't come atthis high a price.
I vow to myself that Iwill beat this illness, he thought, fiercely.I cannot rise yet, but I will beat thisaccursed fever. I have triumphed over worse afflictions in my time.I will beat this one as I have beaten any other enemy that daredstand in my way, and then I will take up my sword and make this SirLuca rue the day he presumed to don the armor of Sir ReubenRachwild!
From outside, above the clamor of battle, hethought he heard the scream of a woman. The scream of a veryfamiliar voice.
No. It couldn't be. She couldn't be... No,please no!
Reuben balled his fists and bellowed out hisrage against the bare stone walls.
*~*~**~*~*
Desperately, Ayla stared at the empty spacewhere just a moment ago her Uncle Ironbeard, her only pillar ofstrength, had stood. Now he was gone, and she was doomed. Tearsbegan to cloud her sight.
Suddenly, like a piece of wood you push underwater, Sir Isenbard resurfaced from the sea of writhing bodies. Intotal astonishment, Ayla stumbled back a few steps. The mercenaryon the wall wasn't any less surprised. Isenbard drew back his ironfist and hit the fiend so hard in the chest that the man flewbackwards over the top of the barricade and into the roiling massof pikemen below. His scream was abruptly cut short as he wasskewered on a dozen spears.
“Yes!” Ayla punched the air. “Yes! Yes!”
Only then did she realize that she was stillholding the surgical knife in her hand and that a few soldiers,bearing several wounded comrades, had nearly reached her. Theystayed back a few steps, eying the knife in her fistapprehensively.
“Oh, sorry.” Hurriedly, Ayla put the knifeaway and gestured to the tent. “Bring them in. We'll do what wecan.”
After that, Ayla didn't catch much of thebattle outside. The rest of the day for her was a confusing medleyof broken bones, skulls bashed in, and screams of pain. The latter,luckily, weren't as bad as they could have been, due to anunexpected medical contribution from one of her vassals. Sir Waldarhad only brought eight men with him, but they had carried enoughwine for an entire army to drink itself into oblivion. SirIsenbard, recognizing the strategic value of such supplies, hadconfiscated Waldar's entire store of alcohol and put it into thetent, at Ayla's disposal. Thus, most of the soldiers Ayla operatedon were drunk as a lord before she used the knife and hardlynoticed what was going on.
While she carefully removed the broken-offtip of a sword from a man's arm, she contemplated the expression.Drunk as a lord. It was silly,really. Her father was a lord, and he was never drunk. On the otherhand, the castle guards seemed to like getting drunk, as didseveral of the villagers, and... Reuben. Yes, the expression wassilly. Drunk as a very drunk man, that made a lot more sense thandrunk as a lord.
Ayla knew that her own thoughts weren'tmaking a great deal of sense at the moment. But thinking aboutcastle guards, silly expressions, and Reuben helped her to keep herthoughts away from the blood on her hands, and from the work theyhad to do. Especially thoughts of Reuben. Oh, Reuben...
Why couldn't the man have been born anobleman? Why couldn't he have been a knight or something, but hadto be a merchant? Then things might be different. Then it mightactually have been right for her to feel the way she was beginningto feel.
Having removed the bloody piece of steel,Ayla wrapped a cloth around the man's arm.
“Thank you, Milady.” He rose quickly andbowed. “Thank you so much.”
“Come to me again in a couple of days. I'llhave to check if the wound is healing properly,” she orderedhim.
He bowed again, deeply. Ayla could seesomething she hadn't seen in many soldiers' eyes before: respect.The man knew what such a small wound could do if it wasn't treatedcorrectly.
She smiled at him. “You'll be all right. Nowrun along and send the next one in.”
The man left the tent. Ayla let herself fallback against one of the tent poles and breathed in deeply. She wasexhausted. She had cut, stitched, and mended more this day than inthe whole course of her life. But it wasn't over yet. Footstepswere approaching from outside the tent. She looked to the flap justas Dilli came in, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. She blushed asshe saw Ayla watching her.
“Oh, Milady. I'm sorry, I just had to stepout to err... get a breath of fresh air.”
“And vomit into the river?”
“Milady!”
“It's all right. I'm sure the river didn'tmind. It'll have to carry off worse than the contents of yourstomach before the battle is over.”
Dilli stared at her in astonishment.“Milady... don't you know?”
“Know what?”
Her friend came towards her, a smilespreading on her face. “The battle is won. The enemy hasretreated!”
