Embrace the Fire (17 page)

He was about to say something more, but Rede whirled to the fire, her visible eye wide in consternation. “Up, get up!” she roared. “To arms!”

Chaos reigned as the troupe leaped from their sleeping rolls, frantically grabbing their weapons. Cedric snapped to his feet. The sound of ringing steel pivoted him so quickly, he stepped in the fire. A moment later, he was out of it and facing at least thirty soldiers in full armor. Their swords were unsheathed, their weapons gleaming in the moonlight. On their mantles, Sebastian's crest blazed in red and gold.

“Take the Dragon-Master,” the leader roared.

The onslaught began.

Ashleen wielded two knives, and she stepped in front of him, deftly turning one sword away with one dagger while lunging forward with the other.

Cedric cursed his lack of weapon, and snatched a log from the fire, its bark coated in glowing embers. Raising it above his head, he brought it down on a soldier who tried to come at Ashleen from the side. The burning wood smashed into the man's head with a spray of ash and sparks, and the soldier crumpled to the ground. Cedric yanked the sword from the man's hand, clashing with another soldier nearby.

The camp was inundated. Ashleen fought like a caged tiger, swinging both knives and taking out her share of soldiers, but more arrived to replace them. Cedric struggled near the treeline, trying to work closer to Ashleen, but he was blocked again and again by sharp steel.

The Dryad who had slept inside the tree fought valiantly against three soldiers at once, but he was no match for them. Soon, a sword penetrated the Dryad's stomach. The others in the Lismarian troupe were falling rapidly. Cedric's only panicked thoughts were to get to Ashleen and somehow pull her from the fray, but he'd lost track of her.

He thrust his sword into a soldier who ran at him with a spear and searched the clearing. A body tackled him, and he rolled, his sword trapped beneath him.

“Get into the woods,” Ashleen hissed in his ear. Her hand wrapped around his wrist, pulling him farther into the blackness of the trees.

Cedric glanced back in time to see Rede fall. Most of the troupe were down.

“Hurry!” Ashleen's urgent whisper quickened his footsteps as he hurtled over tree roots and around dark trunks.

“They had a Cerberus, did you see?” Ashleen panted beside him. The moon glistened off her hair. “They'll track us. There's a mountain stream near here where we can shake them.” Her breath came in great gasps, and Cedric suddenly realized she was limping.

“Ashleen, are you hurt?”

She didn't answer, just pelted forward and down a steep slope, sliding through the leaves and underbrush. Cedric followed, but he could hear the sound of feet thudding along the mulch-strewn forest floor. The triplicate bark of the Cerberus sent a shudder up his spine.

The stars winked off a mountain stream. The gurgle and flow of the water was a welcome sound. Ashleen splashed into the water. “Upstream,” she grunted, reaching again for Cedric's arm. This time, though, she wasn't pulling him as much as she leaned on him. Cedric's consternation grew. He glanced down at her side, but could see nothing in the darkness.

Ashleen stumbled on a rock and hissed in pain. Their followers were closing in; shouts echoed along the top of the ridge where Cedric and Ashleen had been only minutes before. Without asking permission, Cedric swept Ashleen into his arms and splashed upstream. He stumbled once or twice on rocks, but regained his balance each time. Ashleen clung to his neck. “A—little farther,” she ground out between clenched teeth.

Ahead of them, a dark copse of trees wept over the river. Cedric bounded toward it. The water deepened until he was up to his waist.

“To the side now,” Ashleen muttered. “There are caves.”

Cedric fought the current to the steep edge of the bank, and deposited Ashleen on the ground, hauling himself up after her.

“We'll have thrown them off our scent, but as many of them as there are, they'll likely split into search parties and half will come this way. Straight up that hill there, Cedric, is a cave. Get into it and don't move.”

Cedric stared at Ashleen as she lay on her back in the dirt, making no attempt to get up. It washed over him after a moment that she meant to head in a different direction to try to throw them off the trail.

He refused. He lifted her again, and adrenaline laced his aching muscles.

“Wait, no, Cedric, I'll slow you down. I'll go the other way, head them off.” Even as the last words trickled from her mouth, she curled into a pain-filled ball against Cedric's chest.

“No,” he grunted, striding up the hill. He could hear faint shouts and the disturbance of water. They'd reached the stream.

Between the trees near the top, Ashleen stopped him with light pressure on his arm. “In there,” she whispered.

Cedric squinted to his left, but couldn't see anything. He stepped closer, and Ashleen's arm pulled aside a tangle of vines that hid a dark hole in the side of the hill. He bent inside, depositing Ashleen on the floor of the cave and sitting beside her. “Where are you hurt?” he breathed.

“Hush.”

Footsteps stirred the dead leaves of the forest floor, crunching as feet pounded up the stream. A bone-chilling snarl chased up the hill, and Cedric gripped Ashleen's hand tighter, hardly daring to breathe.

A sharp bark, and a voice called, “Check farther upstream. He's lost the scent.”

The noises died away. Cedric released a long breath. He couldn't see Ashleen in the blackness of the cave, but he felt her reassuring hand squeeze his.

“They'll come back downstream to join their company.” Ashleen whispered. “We're lucky that they passed on the far side of the stream, but if they come back down on this side, the Cerberus will pick up our scent.”

“So we go on.”

“No.”

“What?”

“You go on. I—I can't.”

“I'm not leaving you here for Sebastian's soldiers to find.” Cedric slid his arms under her again, ignoring her gasp of pain. He lifted her and stepped carefully through the curtain of vines. The creek bed was empty.

Cedric checked the position of the stars. “North?”

Ashleen's head bobbed once on his shoulder. “It's the way to Erlane's castle, but Cedric—take your chance to escape.”

Cedric tightened his grasp, stepping up the hill in quick, sure strides. The sound of the river soon faded behind them. “Did you not tell me that they can track you? If I headed in a different direction, they would know.”

“Not if
you
changed direction. Please, just leave me. I'll recover and make my own way back to the castle.”

“Without the one person you were charged to bring? What will they do to you?” To Cedric's dismay, a warm spread of moisture washed over his hand where he grasped Ashleen's side. She made no sound of pain, and yet, he knew she would bleed out if he didn't find help soon.

“Slap my wrist and scold me well and good.” Her words sounded gummy, sluggish. He was losing her.

“They sound like wonderful people.”

“They are my masters.” In the moonlight, her eyes were closed.

Cedric stepped more quickly. The way was harder now. Rocky outcroppings interrupted the mulchy leaf-cover, and underbrush tore at the moccasins Ashleen had made for him.

At last, Cedric reached the top of the ridge and paused for breath. The sweeping panorama of ridge piled on ridge was breathtaking in the silver glow of the moon. He found a flat spot on a rock and gently laid Ashleen down on it. Shallow breaths dipped her chest, and a weak pulse fluttered beneath Cedric's fingertips.

“Don't die, Ashleen,” he whispered, gently loosening her belt and pulling her tunic upward. A rush of glistening blood pooled beneath Ashleen's body at the movement around her wound. Cedric swallowed. He'd spent enough years in the wilderness, surviving anything from a bee sting to a skewering by a wild boar, that he could understand the severity of this wound.

He pulled the belt free and then stripped off his own tunic, ripping the garment into long ribbons. He hastily laid them next to Ashleen, searching the woods for the plants he sought. He'd seen cedar trees farther down, close to the stream, but he didn't want to return there if he could help it. Cedar had natural antibiotic properties, but what he really hoped for was the firewort that Shaya had shown him in his early years. Oils from the plant kept disease from spreading and acted as a pain reliever as well. He had no time to distill oil from the leaves, if he could find it, but crushed leaves against her wound would certainly help.

“I'll be right back,” he whispered, moving noiselessly through the woods, bending over underbrush, running his finger across the bark of various trees.

There, in a small glade, bright in the moonlight, was the yellow flower of the firewort. He glanced at the sky, breathed a prayer to the Great Star, and hurried to the plant, stripping it of its leaves, running back through the woods toward Ashleen.

When he reached her, he couldn't see any sign of her breath. The leaves fell from his fingers as he searched for a pulse.

A moment later, he sat back, terrified and relieved. It was still there, thin, quavering, but she was alive.

He ripped the leaves to shreds, pressing them into her wound, every last one that he had brought. Grabbing his strips of linen, he bound them tightly around her waist. It wasn't a great bandage, but it staunched the bleeding better than nothing.

Cedric sat beside Ashleen, looking out over the ridges. He wasn't sure what to do. He needed to get help for her. He could try to find a village, an herb woman, something, but he didn't know where to go. She'd said the castle was north. If he took her there, he wondered if they would try to heal her or leave her to die.

On the other hand, if he didn't take her, they would soon send out a search party; she was supposed to be his escort all the way to the castle gates, and Cedric wasn't stupid enough to think that Nicholas Erlane regarded him with a lenient eye. He'd sent his own niece after him, a troupe of eleven soldiers and Ashleen to accompany him back to the castle. He wasn't going to let Cedric simply disappear.

He squashed the temptation to run for freedom beneath the much stronger desire to get help for Ashleen. He wouldn't be able to carry her the entire way; he was strong but still susceptible to muscle fatigue after his months in Sebastian's dungeons and his subsequent flight from West Ashwynd. It would jostle her too much anyway. He sighed and slid a knife from Ashleen's boot, searching for branches to begin a pallet.

T
he sun was growing
hot by the time he finished the pallet. He sat back, exhausted, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He had no more tunic, and the linen strips he'd torn, he saved for changing Ashleen's dressing. Ashleen slept fitfully, moaning now and then, and a cold sweat blanketed her forehead and upper lip. The blood had seeped through the linen strips, so Cedric retrieved some more firewort from the woods and rebound the wound with fresh linen strips. There weren't many left. He had to make these last.

He gently lifted her onto the pallet, taking extra care with her side. Hoisting the crude yoke he'd fashioned, he started forward, and the pallet dragged behind him. He glanced back. It wasn't ideal—she jostled over the uneven forest floor—but it was far better than trying to carry her for miles.

He needed to find water for them both. The ground sloped downward to where he hoped the stream had been, but he was uncertain if the search party would still be anywhere near it. It had been hours since he'd last heard them; surely they would be gone by now.

Carefully, he dragged the pallet down the hill, listening for the sound of moving water. His quick ear picked it up before he'd traveled very far, and he hurried the last half a fieldspan to the river.

He dropped the yoke and knelt on the bank, cupping water in his hands and carrying it to Ashleen's face. Liquid dripped through his fingers into her parted lips, splashing across her cheeks. Cedric allowed the water to drain and then smoothed the splashes across her forehead and neck. Her skin was still cool to the touch. He glanced down at her bandage, worried that a fever would break out soon if he couldn't find help for her.

He turned back to the creek, drank his fill, and then hoisted the yoke again. His stomach gnawed at him, and his eyelids quavered with exhaustion. Neither he nor Ashleen had had anything to eat since the campfire the night before, and he hadn't slept in at least two days. As he hiked through the woods, his lack of sleep began to catch up with him. He jumped at every snap of a twig beneath his moccasins. The rustle of wind in the trees overhead pulled his attention skyward, seeking archers or winged creatures.

Thoughts of Ember drove him onward. At ClarenVale, he would see him. Commander Jerrus had said the Dragon would be taken to Nicholas Erlane's capital. Cedric sincerely hoped nothing had impeded the Dragon's progress into Lismaria. He now had two reasons for continuing on—Ashleen and Ember. Ashleen would receive the help she needed in the capital, and he could escape on Ember's back.

And then he wondered why Jerrus had given Ember to Nicholas Erlane in the first place. Jerrus had explained that the Ember's transfer was part of a separate treaty deal with Erlane, but what if Sebastian hadn't known? Jerrus's loyalty to West Ashwynd had never been called into question, but that would change if Sebastian discovered a missing Ember. Suspicion settled like a cloak in Cedric's mind.

Cedric hiked on. The sun rose, and set. He found berries, some poisonous, some healthy. He left the poisonous ones untouched, and ate the others. He crushed some and poured the juice into Ashleen's mouth where she lay, still unconscious, on the pallet. His worry increased. He washed the extra linen strips in water and reused them, but the wound had begun to darken and crust around the edges, and an odor drifted from it.

Cedric walked on, gathering firewort, crushing it as he walked, packing it carefully in the pockets of his breeches. He slept little and worried more. He was going north, but suppose he had missed Erlane's castle? It was likely that the castle lay near a waterway. He kept the stream bed to his left and continued his trek north, seeing nothing and no one for days.