He puffed a sigh, sat back against the end of a log and looked at the woman. “If you can go in first and get above y
Sunchaser’s head—there’s enough room for you, I think-then fold his arms over his chest and keep them there, I can pull on his feet. I’m afraid his tattered sleeves might get caught on a snag and do more damage than—”
“I understand. Get out of my way, so I can get inside.”
Horseweed leaned sideways, and she pushed past him. He could hear her soft voice as she spoke to Sunchaser, the words filled with tears. “I’m here, Sunchaser. You’re going to be all right. Don’t worry. I’m here.”
Horseweed rolled to his belly and peered into that blackness. He could see the woman. She had gently lifted Sunchaser’s white head so she could ease around him into the niche at the opposite end of the hole. Two splintered branches had been driven into the ground by their fall, creating a V-shaped space barely large enough to admit her. She stroked Sunchaser’s cheek gently before she carefully arranged his arms over his chest.
Horseweed’s brows lowered. Even an idiot could have told from the tone of her voice and the way she touched Sunchaser that they were lovers … no matter how unlikely it seemed that Sunchaser would have taken a lover.
“I’m ready,” she called to Horseweed. “As you pull, I’ll hold his arms.”
“Let me get a good grip on his feet.” He reached in and clamped his fingers around Sunchaser’s ankles, holding them just beneath the torn flesh of the calves. The blood made his hands slippery. “I’m going to start pulling.”
“Go ahead.”
Horseweed tugged, and Sunchaser came slowly. The woman held the wounded Dreamer’s arms to his chest with one hand while she used the other to cushion his head.
When at last Horseweed had managed to pull Sunchaser out into the moonlight, the woman fell by Sunchaser’s side to check his wounds. She made soft sounds of pain as she touched each injury on Sunchaser’s tall body.
Horseweed asked, “You’re Lambkill’s wife, aren’t you?”
She didn’t even look up. She held out a hand. “Give me
your knife, a sharp flake, anything. I need to cut his sleeve to bind his arm wound. That seems to be the worst one.”
Horseweed reached into his pouch, located his chert-bladed knife and gave it to her. She sawed off a square of Sunchaser’s sleeve, revealing the swells of muscles beneath—and the deep slashes. Gore and old pine needles had clotted together to form thick mounds on his upper arm. She cut the ends of the square, then wrapped the piece around Sunchaser’s arm and tied the split ends.
“We can’t risk washing any of his injuries here,” she said shakily. “We have to get him to your village, where he can be properly cared for. I’ll need to make a poultice, to find the right plants to Heal him. Pray that Evil Spirits don’t smell the blood and come to feast before we have a chance to clean and bind his wounds.”
Horseweed nodded. Helper sat a few hands away, his black ears up. Through the branches behind him, a few of the brightest Star People sparkled on the slate-blue undercoat of moonlight. Horseweed rose and said, “Cut a handful of fringes from his jacket. We’ll need them to tie a travois together. I’ll start looking for dead saplings for the poles.”
She stroked Sunchaser’s bloody hair, clearly reluctant to move away from him. “I saw a small grove of pine saplings up the trail. From the looks of it, the big trees starved them of light.” She hesitated, biting her lip, then said: “Wait. I’ll come with you. It will be quicker that way.”
Horseweed stood quietly, waiting for her, watching her rise to her feet and clench her hands into fists. She had to be around his age, maybe a little older, fifteen or sixteen summers. What was it about her that touched him so deeply? He didn’t have enough experience with women to understand the effect she had on him. The way she moved, her gestures … all gave the appearance of a little girl dressed up as a woman.
And yet something about her went straight to his heart with the sharpness of an obsidian dart point. He swallowed hard. It would be just like him to stumble into love with Sunchaser’s
woman. Sunchaser would probably turn him into pond scum in retribution.
Hastily, he stepped out. “Which way did you say those poles were?”
She led the way, and Horseweed followed her to the grove where the unlucky saplings had tried to grow under the spreading bulk of a sequoia. The gray skeletons of six small trees had reached nearly fifteen hands in height before they’d starved in the shadows. They would do. The woman pushed the first tree over until the base cracked with a loud pop. Horseweed toppled another as Kestrel snapped off the thin dry branches.