Nineteen – 02

“Riders coming!”

Neve and I froze just before the tent flap at the sound of Paul’s shout.  My breath caught as I turned.  She nudged me with her crutch.

“Go,” she urged.  “I’m coming.  Don’t wait for me.”

I squeezed her arm and took off at a run toward the gates.  I shouted up to Paul in the watchtower as soon as I was close enough that he’d hear me.  “How many?”

“Looks like four plus an outrider.  Outrider’s swinging back now to join them.”  He squinted against the sun, facing west.  The afternoon was fading fast, faster than I’d anticipated.  “Pretty sure it’s them.  They’re coming from the right direction.”

My heart hammered against my breastbone.  If there were only five, they either hadn’t found Phelan, or they had and they’d lost someone in the process.  Either possibility made my heart hurt so badly I momentarily wanted to die.  Please, let him be wrong.

I reached the open gates just as the riders came into view from the ground and I saw something that Paul hadn’t–Phelan, pale-faced and seemingly unconscious, riding double in front of Thom.  My heart gave a painful squeeze as my gaze met Thom’s over the span of a couple hundred yards.  I couldn’t see his expression clearly, but I knew it was grim.

“Is it them?”

I tore my gaze away and turned toward Neve, nodding.  “It’s them,” I said as she limped to join me.  “They’re all there.”

Neve swallowed hard, hope and fear warring in her eyes.  “Cameron?”

“Hard to tell from this distance, but he looks fine.”  I squeezed her arm before I turned back toward the gap, toward the horses riding in at a canter.  Our friends rode as if they didn’t dare push the horses any harder.

It makes sense.  Killing the horses sure as hell won’t get them here any faster.

“Phelan doesn’t look so good,” Neve said quietly, finally seeing what I had a moment before.

“No,” I agreed.  “He doesn’t.”  Maybe it just looks worse than it is.  I had no confidence that it was, but I had to hope.  I glanced up.  “Paul!  Get down here and go find J.T.  We’re going to need him.”

“Sure thing.”

I eased forward, beyond the gates and the magic of the wardings as Paul clambered down from the watchtower and went off in search of J.T.  Neve limped behind me, balancing carefully on the hard-packed snow.  Every foot the horses traveled felt like a mile as we watched them coming toward us.  They came into focus slowly–Phelan’s grayish pallor, the dark circles beneath Jacqueline and Cameron’s eyes, the stitched-up gash on Thordin’s cheek, the way Rory hunched in his saddle, one shoulder bulkier than the other under his jacket.  I couldn’t see much of Thom, mounted behind Phelan, his hat pulled low over his eyes.  Either he was cold, or there was something he didn’t want us to see right off the bat.  All I could do was hope that it was the former and not the latter.

Please let him be all right.  We’ve been through enough, and with Phelan looking like he does…I don’t know that I can handle worse than that, more than that.  One of them hurt I can handle at this point.  Not both of them.  Not anymore.  Not at this point.

Then, suddenly, they were there, only a few feet away from us, and Cameron was swinging down from his horse’s back to engulf Neve in an embrace and I was moving toward Thom and Phelan.  I put my hand on Thom’s leg and he smiled down at me tiredly.

“Just scrapes and bruises,” he promised softly, squeezing my fingers.  “Phelan’s another story.”

“What happened?”

“The Dirae,” Thordin said, coming around from the other side of Thom’s horse to start easing Phelan out of the saddle.  “I’ll let Cameron and Jacqueline tell the story, but the Dirae happened.”

“The Dirae?” Neve and I asked in the same voice.  She drew back from Cameron just enough to peer up into his face.  “How did that happen?”

“The Hecate showed up just before Jac and I made it to Phelan,” he said quietly.  “The Dirae jumped us first between where we’d broken off from Thordin and Rory and Thom and where we found Phelan.  By the time we dodged that ambush and made it to where Phelan was, he was facing off against the Hecate and some skinwalkers.  One of those bastards did us a favor by attacking Hecate so we could get away, but Phelan caught some claws across his back before we could get mounted.  Idiot was trying to tell Jac and I to leave without him.”

Neve grimaced and I winced.  “That sounds like him,” she said, glancing toward her limp cousin.  “Stubborn.”

“It’s a family trait,” Cameron observed dryly, then shook his head a little.  “We got the hell out of there and caught up with the others just as they were mopping up the hamrammr they’d been dealing with.  We’ve been riding for two days to get back.  Only stopped a couple of times to change Phelan’s bandages and wash out his wounds and rest the horses a little.  It’s been dead quiet out there and it makes me nervous.”

I shivered.  It made me nervous, too.

By now, Thordin had Phelan slung over his shoulder and was starting to walk deeper into camp.  Thom swung down from his saddle and into my ready embrace.  He hugged me fiercely for a long moment, then released me.

“Come on,” he said quietly.  “Jac and J.T. are going to need help with Phelan, and I’m thinking you and Neve are the best help they could ask for.”

I flinched, looking between him, Cameron, and Jacqueline, who looked exhausted as she slumped from her saddle and leaned against her horse’s flank.  “Is it that bad?”

“Worse,” Jacqueline mumbled, scrubbing her eyes.  “But we’ll find a way to nurse him through it.  I have to emasculate him later, so he’s got to live so I can do it.”

With that, she straightened and marched off in Thordin’s wake.  I choked back a laugh and leaned into Thom’s arms for a moment, aware that even he was wavering on his feet.

“Well,” I managed to say, my voice slightly strangled, “I guess that’s that.”

“Guess so,” Thom murmured.  He kissed my temple and gave me a gentle shove.  “Come on.  You’ll need to make sure she doesn’t collapse and I need you to make sure that I don’t collapse, either.”

“I think I can handle that,” I said quietly before I tucked myself under his arm and led him away, Cameron and Neve trailing behind us a few minutes later.  We had a long night ahead of us—that was for sure.

I just hoped that everyone would still be alive by the end of it.

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