Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

“Your leg?” Sithas had been so worried about the blow to his brother’s head that he had paid little attention to the rest of his body.

“It’s broken, I think,” the elf grunted, gritting his teeth against the pain. Sithas’s mind went blank. A broken leg! It might as well be a sentence of death! How would they ever get out of here with his twin thus crippled? And winter had only begun! If they didn’t get out of the mountains quickly, they could be trapped here for months. Another snowfall would make travel by foot all but impossible.

“You’ll have to do something about it,” Kith said, though it took several moments before the remark registered in Sithas’s mind.

“About what?”

“My leg!” The injured elf looked at his twin sharply, then toughened his voice. Almost without thinking, he used the tones of command he had become accustomed to when he led the Wildrunners.

“Tell me if the skin is broken, if there’s any discoloration—any infection.”

“Where? Which leg?” Sithas struggled to focus his thoughts. He had never been so disoriented before in his life.

“The right one, below the knee.”

Gingerly, almost trembling, Sithas pulled the blankets and cloaks away from his brother’s feet and legs. What he saw was terrifying.

The ugly red swelling had almost doubled the size of the limb from the knee to the ankle, and Kith’s leg was bent outward at an awkward angle. For a moment, he cursed himself, as if the injury was his own fault. Why hadn’t he thought to examine his brother two days earlier, when Kith had first been injured? Had he twisted the wound more when he moved the fallen elf into the shelter of the rocky niche?

“The—the skin isn’t broken,” he explained, trying to keep his voice calm. “But it’s red. By the gods, Kith, it’s blood red!”

Kith-Kanan grimaced at the news. “You’ll have to straighten it. If you don’t, I’ll be crippled for life.”

The Speaker of the Stars looked at his twin brother, the sense of helplessness growing inside him. But he saw the pain in Kith-Kanan’s eyes, and he knew he had no choice but to try.

“It’s going to hurt,” he warned, and Kith nodded silently, gritting his teeth. Cautiously he touched the swollen limb, and then instantly recoiled at Kith’s sharp gasp of pain. “Don’t stop,” hissed the wounded elf. “Do it—now!” Gritting his teeth, Sithas grasped the swollen flesh. His fingers probed the wound, and he felt the break in the bone. Kith-Kanan cried aloud, gasping and choking in his pain as Sithas pulled on the limb.

Kith shrieked again and then, mercifully, collapsed into unconsciousness. Desperately Sithas tugged, forcing his hands and arms to do these things that he knew must be causing Kith-Kanan unspeakable pain.

Finally he felt the bones slip into place.

“By Quenesti Pah, I’m sorry, Kith,” Sithas whispered, looking at his brother’s terribly pale face.

Quenesti Pah ... goddess of healing. The invocation of that benign goddess brought his mind around to the small vial his mother had given them before they departed. From Miritelisina, she had said, high priestess of Quenesti Pah. Frantically Sithas dug through the saddlebag, finally discovering the little ceramic jar, plugged with a stout cork.

He popped the cork from the bottle’s mouth and immediately recoiled at the pungent scent. Smearing some of the salve on his fingers, he drew off the cloak and spread the stuff on Kith’s leg, above and below the wound. That done, he covered his brother with the blankets and leaned back against the stone wall to wait.

Kith-Kanan remained unconscious throughout the impossibly long afternoon as the sun sank through the pale blue sky and finally disappeared behind the western ridge. Still, no sign of movement came from the wounded elf. If anything, he seemed even weaker.

Gently Sithas fed his brother drops of water. He wrapped him in all of their blankets and lay down beside him.

He fell asleep that way, and though he awoke many times throughout the brutally cold night, he stayed at Kith-Kanan’s side until dawn began to brighten their valley.

Kith-Kanan showed no sign of reviving consciousness. Sithas looked at his brother’s leg and was appalled to see a streak of red running upward, past his knee and into his thigh. What should he do? He had never seen an injury like this before. Unlike Kith-Kanan, he hadn’t been confronted by the horrors of battle or by the necessity of self-sufficiency in the wilds. Quickly the elf took the rest of the cleric’s salve and smeared it onto the wound. He knew enough about blood poisoning to realize that if the venomous infection could not be arrested, his brother was doomed. With no way left to treat Kith-Kanan, however, all Sithas could do was pray.

Once again the water in their skins was frozen, and so he made the arduous trek down the narrow pathway from the ledge to the valley floor. The trough in the snow made by his passage on the previous day remained, for the wind had remained blessedly light. Thus he made his way to his snow rimmed water hole with less difficulty than the day before.

But here he encountered a challenge: The bitter cold of the night had frozen even the rapidly flowing water beneath the snow. He chopped and chipped with his sword, finally exposing a small trickle, less than two inches deep. Only by stretching himself full-length in the snow, and immersing his hand into the frigid water could he collect enough to carry back to their high campsite. As he rose from the water hole, he saw the trail of the sheep across from him and remembered the magnificent creatures. Suddenly he was seized by an inspiration. He thought of his bow and arrows, still up on the ledge with Kith-Kanan. How could he conceal himself in order to get close enough to shoot?

Unlike Kith-Kanan, he was not an expert archer. A close target would be essential.

He gave up his ponderings in the effort of making his way back to the ledge. Here he found no change in Kith-Kanan, and all he could do was force his brother once again to take a few drops of water between his lips. Afterward, he strung his bow, checking the smooth surface of the weapon for flaws, the string for knots or frays. As he did so, he heard a clattering of hooves even as he stewed in his frustration. Once again led by the proud ram, the mountain sheep descended from their slope across the valley and made their way to the faint trickle of water. They took turns drinking and watching, with the ram remaining alert.

Once, when the creature’s eyes passed across the cliff where Sithas and Kith lay motionless, the animal stiffened. Sithas wondered if he had been discovered and wrestled with a compulsion to quickly nock an arrow and let it fly in the desperate hope of hitting something.

But he forced himself to remain still, and finally the ram relaxed its guard. Sithas sighed and clenched his teeth in frustration as he watched the creatures turn and plow through the snow back toward their mountain fastness. The powdery drifts came to the shoulders of the large ram, and the sheep floundered and struggled until they reached the secure footing of the rocky slope.

The rest of the day passed in frigid monotony. That night was the coldest yet, and Sithas’s own shivering kept him awake. He would have been grateful for even such an uncomfortable sign of life from his brother, but Kith-Kanan remained still and lifeless.

The fourth morning on the ridge, Sithas could barely bring himself to emerge from beneath the cloaks and blankets. The sun rose over the eastern ridge, and still he lay motionless.

Then urgency returned, and he sat up in panic. He sensed instinctively that today was his last chance. If he could not feed himself and his brother, they would not experience another dawn.