Page 97 of The Quest for Excalibur
Bedwyr took the seat beside Arthur and took the lid off the pot. The salve inside was a faint green, which at least looked as though it might be clean. Bedwyr scooped some out and applied it liberally to Arthur’s wound.
The pain must have been excruciating. Arthur’s hands fisted on his lap, and I covered them with mine as Bedwyr managed to poke some of the salve inside the hole the arrow had left, where it could do the most good. A trickle of fresh blood ran down Arthur’s chest. Then clean bandages went back on, and the sling, and Bedwyr moved on to attend to our other wounded.
For a minute or two Arthur sat rigid, breathing steadily, as though waiting for the pain to subside. Eventually, he turned his hands over and clasped mine, our fingers intertwining. “I’ve not really had the time to appreciate our victory,” he said. “Nor to acknowledge that you were correct in everything you told me.”
I leaned toward him, resting my forehead on his bare shoulder– his good shoulder. “I didn’t foresee that you’d be wounded, though.” My thumb caressed the back of his hand. “You’re not out of the woods yet.”
He nodded. “I’m all right, really. You don’t need to worry.”
I kissed his shoulder. “You’ve got a fever.”
“It’ll pass. With most wounds you get a fever. For a day or two.”
Ridiculously, I was beginning to feel aroused. We were surrounded by people– our men and the two farm women, and yet the power Arthur had over me came creeping up. My skin tingled, a warm feeling developed somewhere south of my navel, and all I wanted to do was take him in my arms and kiss his hurts away. And maybe a little more.
He chuckled. Did he suspect?
“You know what’s the right way to celebrate a victory such as this?” he whispered.
He did suspect, or we were so in tune we were thinking the same thing.
I nodded. “I do. But not while you’re in pain, and certainly not in public. You’ll have to wait to celebrate when we’re back home. When you no longer have a fever.”
He grinned, a touch of his old self returning. “I can have a kiss, though, can’t I?”
I released his hand and touched his cheek, his short beard bristly under my fingers. “You can.”
I turned his face toward me. Our lips touched, tongues meeting. The kiss deepened, and so did the urge to do something more than kiss.
A ragged cheer from the men disturbed us.
Our lips parted and I caught Bedwyr’s gaze. He stuck his thumb up in that age old gesture. I had to laugh.
“Want a bit of privacy?” Merlin asked, with a wide grin. A sudden conviction that he, like me, was thinking Arthur on the road to recovery, rose inside my head. I returned his grin.
Chapter Forty-Five
We rode upthe track to Din Cadan’s main gates two days later. The rain had lessened somewhat, but nevertheless the trek back across country, instead of by the road, had been unpleasant and difficult, and only taken from the necessity to get our wounded home as quickly as possible.
The problem with riding across country in the Dark Ages, as I’d very early on discovered, was the sheer wetness of the land. In a time before drainage existed, except perhaps in its most rudimentary form, by the tail-end of the year, every valley had begun to turn marshy, and only the higher ground remained passable.
Rivers, that in my old world had run along narrow channels with high banks, here spread out to more than twice, or even three times, the width they’d one day have, sometimes with multiple, braided channels. Shallower and easier to ford in good weather, but surrounded by wetlands for the larger part of the year.
There turned out to be a lot more valleys between Salisbury Plain and Din Cadan than I remembered, and the storm, followed by the nonstop heavy rain, had started them off well toward their winter goal of impassability. We had to take a lot of detours.
For victorious warriors returning, we made a rather sorry sight as our column wound its way up toward the main gates in the gloom of a gathering wintry dusk. The rain had stopped for a while, but cloaks aren’t like coats, and they don’t stay nicely buttoned up and cozy. You have to keep rearranging them and pulling them close about you, and the wind does spiteful things like snatching them away. They keep the worst off your back, but your front isn’t so lucky.
Cold and miserable, I couldn’t have been happier to see the double gates swing open in welcome.
The guards on duty on the tower above the gates gave us a rousing cheer as we rode beneath them.
A sharp-eyed lookout must have spotted our approach at a distance, because, despite the persistent drizzle and the rapid onset of night, most of the people of the fortress had turned out to line the road up to the stables and Great Hall. Old men with long white hair leaned on sticks. Grizzled warriors stood between the womenfolk, who ranged from pretty teenagers to wizened old crones, while boys not yet old enough to ride to war gazed on in envy. Little children raced about, impervious to the mud underfoot and getting in everyone’s way.
“Dumnonia!” Shouts rose above the hum of voices.
“Long live our great High King!”
“The Luck of Arthur!” Hands reached out to touch my legs as I passed. As I leaned down to brush fingertips with my people, a warm glow of belonging surged through me. By my side, Arthur, his reins held loosely in his left hand, did the same.
