Cara’s skull pounded and throbbed as though someone had mistaken it for bread dough and kneaded it into a swollen lump of goo.

She raised one hand and rubbed her forehead to soothe the fierce ache, while the other reached down to scratch at her shin.

“No, you don’t,” said Dayton from somewhere above her. A gentle touch nudged her fingers away from the fabric lump that wrapped itself somewhere below her knee. “That’s got to heal now.”

“But it’s itchy.” Cara’s eyes felt glued shut. She swiped at the grit. Her fingers brushed against oily cheeks.

“And it’s going to be itchy, but I need your stitches to stay clean. I used all the balm I had getting things tidy in the first place.”

Cara’s vision slowly focused behind crossed eyelashes. The light pierced through her opening lids, and she closed them with a groan.

“Something hurt?” Dayton felt along her leg, probing beneath the bandage. His touch made her breath hiss between her teeth.

“Only my head until you had to go poking at my leg!”

“Sorry! Sorry.” His touch lifted. “I think I have more of that pain-be-gone brew around. It’s not as strong as it was, but, well, better than nothing.”

Cara took a deep breath, another, and forced her eyes open.

They were still in the shallow cavern that had been the bunyips’ den. The fire was near the mouth’s entrance, spitting sparks upward as logs settled for the night. Cara could just spot the evening star sparkling between barren tree branches beyond.

Dayton’s two woolen blankets were rolled up near the front entrance next to the blasted oaken trunk and another bag, which he was currently riffling through—probably looking for the pain-be-gone brew he’d mentioned.

If it was anything like the tea that Master Jeffrey kept on hand for the occasional day-after headache from too much ale, she’d take it with blessings.

The kaprid whelpling was nowhere that she could see; perhaps it had escaped while she’d been ill. (She could only be so lucky.)

Cara shifted, and felt a pile of almost-soft things at her back move in response. Dayton must’ve piled their remaining bags behind her in a sort of couch. There was nothing beneath her but hard packed earth, but at least it was dry—a small mercy.

A blanket had been draped over her, which prompted a momentary panic until she could take a quick inventory. No, her clothes were still on, so Dayton hadn’t tried to remove her damp things, as far as she could tell.

Her movements caused the blanket gaped, and Cara caught a whiff of warm body odor and unwashed battle garments.

She grimaced and awkwardly tucked the fabric back around her as close as she could. She’d have to bathe—and sooner rather than later.

Dayton made a noise of triumph and turned, clutching a small, battered tin in one hand. “Found it!”

He came back to the fire and began to fuss with the small cast iron pot that Cara hated to carry, but knew would be worth its weight in gold. “It’s gone a bit stale, I think, but it’s better than nothing.”

As the water came to a boil, he spooned up a heaping pile, frowned at the results, and added another spoonful. A vaguely spicy smell rose from the pot.

Dayton skimmed the floating herb mixture from the top before pouring it into the pewter goblet that had somehow survived the journey this far. “Can you sit?”

Cara forced herself upright. The blanket pooled around her waist as she took the offered goblet, blowing on the steaming surface. The scent cleared her head a little, made the pounding recede slightly.

“What… what happened, exactly? I just remember the bunyips and finding the cave, but everything after that’s all… fuzzy.” She frowned and looked down at her legs. Her left shin was bulky beneath the blankets. “My leg was hurt.”

“It was, because you were too damn stubborn to tell me you were injured and have us stop for a second to treat it!” Dayton snapped. His hair was matted and greasy, as if he hadn’t had time to wash it. Firelight washed a flush into his face. “Thank the gods you decided to pass out after we made it to shelter. Your trouser leg was soaked in blood.”

Her shin began to throb slightly at Dayton’s reminder. Cara hid her grimace of pain behind a sip of the cooling camp tea.

Its earthy flavor tasted like Dayton had mixed dirt into a pepper grinder and let the whole thing mold over, but this probably just meant that it was an effective medicine. Cara resisted the urge to plug her nose and continued to let the brew trickle down her throat.

The heat, at least, helped with the headache.

“I’m sorry, but I had to cut away part of your trousers to get to the cut.” Dayton’s nose and ears began to darken. “I, uh, didn’t think you’d want me to take the rest of your outfit off.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Cara swallowed another mouthful. “Actually, I wouldn’t have minded if you had.” She ignored his splutterings and continued, “I smell terrible—a bath might’ve helped with that, or at least a change of clothes.”

She looked down at the cuffs of her shirt, splattered with green ichor and red blood and the worn tan stains of daily wear, sighing slightly. “This one’s wrecked until I get a good hour at the river.”

“I couldn’t possibly have bathed you!” Dayton had recoiled in something very close to maidenly horror.

“Oh?” Cara’s eyebrow raised skeptically. “You dressed a wound on my leg and cut up my clothing, but bathing me to keep me from stinking up our tiny cave was a problem because…?”

“We’ve only the one kettle to heat water with!”

“Sponge baths are just fine. Or rag baths,” she added thoughtfully. “I guess we threw out all your sponges at the start of this trek, didn’t we?”

The top half of Dayton’s face was now as red as the coals burning at the fire’s heart.

Cara took mercy on him.

“I’m only kidding, Dayton. I wouldn’t really expect you to clean me up any more than you have. I’m guessing you changed the bandage on my shin, then?”

Only slightly mollified, Dayton nodded. “Yes, and it was a sight and a half to see. A giant knot of thread and scabs and skin and…!” He shuttered delicately. “You did a terrible job binding it.”

Cara bristled. “We’d been tromping through the swamps all day and I didn’t have real bandages!”

“Well, it took me almost an hour to get everything cleaned out so I could see what you’d done to yourself, and you wouldn’t sit still at all. Scared poor Cami half to death, flailing at her like you did.”

Dayton glanced back toward the fire, where Cara could now make out a tiny bundle of rolled up, leathery scales and a pair of slitted eyes. The whelpling looked like a reptilian puppy that had decided to take a nap at its master’s hearth.

“I should’ve. I’ll have to kill it in the morning.”

Dayton scowled. “Cami’s a she, first of all, not an it. And second of all, you will do no such thing—not after I spent the last day saving your hide.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Cara snorted and took another sip of her now-lukewarm dirt-tea. “How do you know it’s a girl?”

“I just do.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Cara repeated, but waved aside his protestations. “Anyway, you patched up my leg? I’m impressed, Pasty Ass. Didn’t think you’d have actually useful skills.”

“We all had to learn emergency healing skills at the abbey, just in case something happened and we weren’t near the infirmary.” Dayton shrugged and began to ladle some tea into another cup—a wooden mug that Cara couldn’t remember making it into the packs. He must’ve slipped it in at some point, the sneak, she thought, but without any heat.

She drank more from her own goblet. The pain in her shin had dulled to a steady fire, rather than a raging inferno.

“Anyway, I knew enough to clean out the cut, but it was deep and you kept losing blood…” Dayton trailed off, spoon poised over the pot. Cara cleared her throat, startling Dayton from wherever his thoughts had taken him. He resumed ladling.

“It was bad, is all. I’m glad I’d thought to keep the masters’ medicines from the luggage purge, otherwise you might be dead now.”

He gestured toward her cup with the spoon. “That pain-be-gone mixture was potent the first time, but it’s faded over the last few hours, now that I’ve opened the tin. The potency leaches into the air or something, I’m not sure.

“I never paid much attention in health classes,” he added apologetically.

“Ladies and lords all bless those masters of yours,” Cara said with feeling. “I’d be dead if not for them.”

“And me!”

“And you doing what they’d taught you,” she agreed, and drained her goblet.

Dayton grew quiet. His shoulders were hunched over his own tea, fingers clutching at the cup as though to an anchor.

“What…” He cleared his throat. “What was your master like, Cara?”

She stiffened. “Why ask me that?”

“I don’t mean to pry. I just…”

He sighed and stared into the fire, as if he’d forgotten the tea again. “You haven’t been especially awake for the last day, but when you dreamed… it didn’t sound especially like dreams. It sounded more like—like a nightmare, if a memory could be a nightmare? If that makes any sense.”

He shook his head, trying to find words. “You kept shouting, ‘Master, behind you!’ and you’d raise a fist like you were fighting something off, but there was nothing there. And you shook… I thought your teeth would rattle out of your head.”

“Fever shakes,” she said through numb lips.

Dayton didn’t reply, but went back to looking into his mug like a seer divining truth from dreams.

“It’s… he’s not something I like to talk about much, Dayton.”

“Because he left you, right?” He looked at her then, and his eyes were dark pits in a ghost of a face that came out of memory to haunt her. “You said something like that, back at the inn.”

“It’s more than that.” Cara raised her goblet to her lips. A bead of liquid trembled at the cup’s edge, splashed against her warm skin. It tasted salty. “I… It’s a long story.”

Dayton’s response was to brace his back against the wall of their cave with the blankets tucked behind him. He squirmed for a second, getting comfortable, before looking at her expectantly.

“You’re not going to let me off the hook, are you?”

Dayton shook his head, blond bangs flopping into his eyes, and Cara sighed.

“Fine. A trade. A question about my master for a question about your abbey.”

“What could you want to know about the abbey? It’s not like you’ll ever go there.”

“And it’s not like you’ll ever meet my former master.”

Dayton sighed gustily. “Fine. So how did—”

Cara held up one hand.

“Nope. First, you help me find a bush to pee behind. I’m about to burst, and I think the tea might’ve pushed me over the edge. Then, you can ask a question.”

She levered herself upright, in as much of a standing position as the cave would allow. Her sleeping shin wound awoke with a new burst of fire as she tentatively put a small amount of weight on it, and she would’ve fallen had Dayton not lurched forward to support her weak side.

The kaprid whelpling opened one slit-pupiled eye at the disturbance, then settled back into its curled ball of scaled hide, tucking its long snout underneath its fanned tail tip.

She and Dayton slowly worked their way around the fire, using the cave walls as a support, until they emerged from the cave. Cara took a deep breath of the crisp swamp air, almost refreshing after the oppressive atmosphere of their shelter.

“That’s better. How in the world did you manage, uh, calls of nature while I was out?” she asked, the thought suddenly occurring to her. “I didn’t mess myself, did I?”

Her trousers didn’t feel that uncomfortable.

Dayton guided her to an appropriately thick clump of bushes that would serve as a screen despite the lack of leaves.

“No,” he said.

She didn’t need to look at him to feel his embarrassment roll off him in waves.

“Thank the gods,” she replied primly.

A muttered affirmation followed her as she hobbled to the bush to do her business.