Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,37

the hand straining to lower the blanket, she cried out and with her other hand stabbed the dagger through the blanket into something firm.

Her assailant barked, took hold of her blade-wielding wrist, jerked the dagger from whatever it had pierced, and yanked her to her feet.

“Of course you are here,” bit one whose voice she recognized ahead of his moonlit face and figure. “Termagant!” It was not said with teasing as once he had spoken it, but with accusation and possibly hatred.

An instant later, he had the dagger from her, and a thrust to the chest dropped her atop the forward bench. “Do not move, else you will swim home to your family,” he growled and shoved her dagger beneath his belt. Then he launched out of the boat and onto the bank.

Nicola could make no sense of what had happened and how it was possible her breathless assailant was the mighty Vitalis. The only thing she was certain of was the limp putting distance between them was of her doing. Her blade had not struck him in the arm but the leg.

Continuing to quake, she wondered if he abandoned her, bestowing one last undeserved kindness by leaving her the boat.

She longed to call him back—to plead with him to aid her—but fear of being the death of him the same as Zedekiah and Bjorn closed her mouth. Then she heard him grunt as if expending effort and saw he returned, and not alone. Someone was over his shoulder. For this he had plodded and been nearly breathless. Had he knocked an enemy senseless and taken him hostage?

Though he started to slip as he negotiated the moist bank, he regained his balance, entered the water, and waded to the boat.

“I require your aid,” he said, “Now move.”

She pushed off the bench and widened her stance to counter the boat’s shifting.

“When I lower him, take hold of his shoulders and protect his head.”

Whose head? she wanted to ask, and had her answer when the upper body came into her hands and the face turned toward her. Zedekiah, and the reason she must protect his head was he breathed, albeit raggedly.

“Praise be,” she whispered.

His bulk and weight were so great she had to lower with him. Moments later, he was on the bottom of the boat, head and shoulders in her lap, blood on her hands.

Vitalis freed the boat quickly, drew it away from the bank, and commanded, “Hold him tight.”

She gripped Zedekiah closer, leaned back and braced her feet against the side when the boat tilted as if to dump its occupants, and breathed out relief when the warrior heaved himself over the railing.

“Vitalis—”

“Quiet!” He settled on the bench facing her. “Once we are distant from Ely, there will be time aplenty for many words. Until then, think on keeping him alive.”

How? she nearly asked, but she was not ignorant of healing. Her aunt had taught her much, and she had gained experience at Lillefarne Abbey while tending victims of William’s solution to the resistance.

You are not helpless, she told herself as Vitalis thrust an ash pole into the mud beneath the water and began pushing the boat distant from the shore.

She snatched up the blanket folded into a pillow and placed it beneath Zedekiah’s head. Freed of his weight, she pulled out various packs assembled to supply them with what was needed to survive their escape. The fourth pack held salves, bandages, needle, thread, and a flask of strong drink for cleansing wounds.

When Vitalis traded the pole for oars and began rowing upstream toward Peterborough in the light of a nearly full moon, Nicola set to tending more than a dozen cuts bleeding out Zedekiah’s life. As expected, not all were flesh wounds.

She shivered and had to blow warm breath on her hands so she not lose her grip on the needle that time and again she struggled to thread, and greater that struggle when clouds slid across the moon.

No word did Vitalis speak as minutes became hours. His only interaction, could it be called that, was when he ceased rowing to retrieve a bandage.

Though she offered to tend the injury she dealt him, he ignored her, bound up his leg, and returned to rowing. She did not begrudge him, just as she would understand if he tossed her out of the boat.

It was more deeply dark when she accepted she could do no more for Zedekiah than pray. She spread a blanket over the man whose sacrifice had allowed