The Irish Warrior

He furrowed his brow. “Ye drank well enough earlier.”

“That was then.”

He sat back on his heels and exhaled noisily. The hair over his forehead lifted and lowered with the breeze. Senna watched with some interest.

“Drink,” he insisted, holding the flask closer to her mouth.

She sighed as if enduring the torture due a martyr, then swallowed and sputtered.

“Another.” His hand touched hers, his wide fingers curling around hers as he made her hold the flask and lift it to her lips.

She drank.

He coaxed her to take another couple long draughts; then, while waiting for it to take effect, he dug a deep, small hole and built a small fire in it, then prepared the herbs. He pounded out the root with the hilt of a blade while he boiled the water that he’d procured, then made up a poultice and a tea; then, finally, he removed the stained linen bandage from her broken fingers. It was caked with dried blood, stiff and thick and dirty.

“Ye haven’t been at washing it,” he scolded gently, his eyes not leaving her hand.

“You haven’t taken me to water,” she accused unsteadily.

He glanced up briefly. “We crossed a river last night.”

She gave him an evil look. “On rocks. We crossed a river by leaping on large rocks. That hardly counts.” She hiccupped. “Hardly.”

“’Tis a grievous wrong I’ve done, mistress. I’ll right it as soon as I’m able,” he murmured, not paying attention to his words, only her beautiful, wrecked fingers.

“I’ll remember that,” she continued through gritted teeth as his sure fingers probed hers. “I stink to the high heavens. We both of us need a bath, and instead, we jump over rocks,” she lamented in a singsong voice, then reached for the flask again, hiccupping quietly.

A smile lifted his lips, but his worried eyes and confident fingers never left her hand, feeling with his hand and his mind, seeing the bone. Let her prattle on, and let her drink.

“And after lying in Rardove’s ditch,” she went on after swallowing again, “I must smell worse than the leavings under the rushes. Why you tried to kiss me, I’ll never know.”

“I didn’t try.”

She shook her head sagely, as if lamenting the passing of chivalry. “’Tis a sad day, I tell you.”

“Sadder than ye know. And ye asked me to kiss ye.”

She glared from beneath lowered eyelids. “You’re laughing at me.”

“Never,” he murmured, dusting his touch up the length of the ring finger of her left hand. This, and the little one beside it, they were the damaged ones. They’d not been set properly. Sinews were already threading themselves wrongly, roping themselves like snakes where they didn’t belong. The bones would knit askew, and she’d never use these fingers again.

Rardove had known what he was doing. He hadn’t shattered the bones—just a nice, clean break. And she could still function without these two fingers. Sick bastard.

“After scrambling around in the dirt with you,” she slurred derisively, then hiccupped. “And without bathing—”

“Back to the bathing, are we?”

“—and you think I asked you to kiss me?” She shook her head. “You, who know so much about women—”

“Who said I know anything about women?”

“—should know a woman does not ask a man to kiss her.” She looked at him triumphantly, her torso weaving slightly.

“Here.” He shoved a large stick between her teeth. “Bite.”

She took it but glared. “Moo, ambove all ufferz, fhould know a woman preffers—Ahhhhh!” she shrieked as he abruptly rebroke her fingers.

She flung herself backward, howling in pain. The stick tumbled to the ground. Rolling over onto her belly, she held her now-straight fingers in her good hand and rose to her knees, then staggered to her feet. Finian sat back and watched. She stumbled forward a few steps before falling to her knees again, clutching her hand and biting back screams of pain.