Page 8 of Fallen
An instant later though, he realized he was not looking up into the face of an angel, but a nun. Those angelic features were framed by an austere white wimple and a black veil. She was tall and broad-shouldered for a woman, and her body was shrouded in a heavy black habit, girded at the waist with a leather belt, where a small wooden crucifix hung.
A jolt of surprise made Craeg catch his breath.
He wasn’t dead and being attended by one of heaven’s angels after all—although in retrospect, after the life he’d lived, he was much more likely to have been sent to the depths of hell—but very much alive.
Craeg tried to remember how he’d gotten here. He could remember telling Gunn and Farlan to return to the others, before he’d finished the journey to Kilbride on his own. He also recalled staggering through the trees, to where the austere walls of Kilbride Abbey rose in an impenetrable barrier against the outside world. He’d barely made it to the gates, and hadn’t had the energy to reach for the heavy iron knocker to alert them to his presence. Instead, pain, fever, and a crushing fatigue had slammed into him like a charging boar, and he’d collapsed upon the dirt before the gates. An instant later darkness had taken him.
Staring down at him, the nun’s lovely face tightened a little. Those unusual violet eyes widened.
“I’m so thirsty,” Craeg croaked. “I can’t swallow.”
With a brisk nod, the nun moved away, and returned an instant later at his side with a wooden cup. Craeg found he was propped up on a mound of pillows, and as such, when the nun raised the cup to his lips, he was able to take a sip, and then another, without choking. The ale that she fed him was watery, yet it tasted like the sweetest mead to his parched mouth and throat. He could have gulped it down, but since he knew it would only make him ill, he prevented himself.
With a sigh of relief, Craeg sank back against the pillows. Then, dreading what he might see, he lowered his chin to look down at his left flank.
Unlike the last time he’d seen it, when the bandage had been filthy, stained with blood and pus, and stinking like the devil’s toenails, it now looked clean, although the dull throb set his teeth on edge.
“How is the wound?” he asked dreading the answer. Craeg knew he’d been a fool to leave it as long as he had; the last month had been fraught as he and his band had narrowly escaped capture again and again. There had been no time to think about himself. A chill settled in his belly as he remembered just how awful the wound looked last time he had dared uncover the bandage.
“Much better than it was,” she replied. Her voice was as lovely as her face. It had a low, husky quality to it, and its timbre soothed him. “The souring came from a splinter of wood that hadn’t been removed.” She paused here, those startling eyes narrowing. “From an arrow, I take it?”
Craeg nodded. “I took the wound around a moon ago, and it started to trouble me a few days later.” He halted there, his eyes closing as he braced himself for bad news.
“Don’t look so worried,” the nun continued, her tone rueful. “Ye might live yet, outlaw.”
His gaze snapped open. “I might?”
She nodded, the edges of her sensual mouth lifting in the barest hint of a smile. “Last night was the most dangerous time, and ye passed it. Now, if I can keep the wound clean, and help it to heal, ye will live and continue to be a thorn in yer brother’s side.”
Her dry sense of humor made Craeg smile. “I see ye know who I am?”
The nun nodded, breaking eye contact with him. She then took the wooden cup from him and set it down on the table next to the pallet.
“The people of this territory have much to thank ye for,” she said, her voice soft now as she started to sort through what appeared to be a basket of herbs. “Last winter ye gave silver to the folk of Torrin after MacKinnon robbed them. They’d have starved otherwise. Because of ye and yer band, they have hope.”
Her words, strangely, made warmth spread out from the center of Craeg’s chest.
He knew that many folk living upon MacKinnon lands saw him as some kind of savior figure, but he never spent much time dwelling upon the fact.
The truth of it was less pretty.
He didn’t do this for them, but for himself. Revenge fed him, drove him—it was his beer and bread. However, he prevented himself from telling the nun this. Despite that he’d only just met her, he realized that he wanted this stranger to think well of him. Odd really, but he did.
“I need to take a look at that wound,” the nun informed him, her tone changing from warm to cool in an instant. It was almost as if she realized the conversation had become too familiar. She was now trying to distance herself from him.
“Go on then,” Craeg replied.
He fell silent, observing as she approached once more and deftly cut away his bandage. He noticed as she did so that she had beautiful hands with long, nimble fingers. When she had removed the bandage, he forced himself to look upon the wound.
It still wasn’t a pretty sight. The flesh around the wound was badly swollen, although the red lines that had scared him into making the journey here had started to fade a little. Thank the Lord that the wound no longer stank. It was red and angry looking, but there was no pus, and it no longer had a putrid appearance.
The nun bent close, her cool fingertips gently prodding the inflamed skin around the injury. She then glanced up, and their gazes fused for an instant. “I’m going to have to wash it again, she informed him. “It’s going to hurt.”
He nodded, steeling himself. “I’m ready.”
She hadn’t been lying. When the vinegar poured over the wound, red-hot pain exploded down his left flank. Craeg gritted his teeth, his hands clenching by his sides as he bit back a groan. The first jolt of pain receded, followed by waves of burning agony that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.
“Sorry about this,” she murmured, meeting his eye once more. Craeg saw that she meant it to, for her gaze was now shadowed. “The vinegar removes the evil humors.”
