Page 31 of Highland Ruse

Everything screamed in agony. His guts, his bones, his head, even his flesh.

He lay on his stomach, where the pressure of the ground against his body eased the cramping and the moist, cool earth pressed to his hot skin.

His eyes closed, though he willed them not to. Awake was pain, but it was necessary. Sleep was comfortable, a reprieve.

He lifted his brows in an effort to also drag his eyelids upward. The world blurred against his squinted vision, greens and golds and blues, all shooting into his brain like splinters of cathedral glass, and he clamped his eyes shut against it.

He should stay awake.

It was his last thought before the bliss of sleep slipped him away from his discomfort.

He did not stay asleep though, and woke in snatches of time.

The groan of someone nearby.

Then sleep.

The fading of the warm sun against his face.

Darkness.

Then sleep.

A rasping voice calling for water.

Water.

He swallowed at the thought and found his mouth so dry, his throat near stuck against itself. His tongue was thick, and the burn of thirst was almost as great as the spasms left behind by the bad venison.

The voice called for water again and again until finally he dragged himself from the welcoming clutches of slumber.

The sky was lit with the glow of a thousand stars. He crawled toward the flask. He wasn’t aware he was doing it until he noticed the rocks scraping and rolling beneath his abdomen.

Elizabeth pushed a clumsy hand toward him and knocked the flask from his grasp. It tumbled from his loose hold and landed with a splat. The ale glugged out from it in great, jerking gushes.

Elizabeth stammered out an apology, then licked her lips.

Though she didn’t say it, she was thirsty. They all were.

Kaid staggered to his feet and stumbled over slanted earth to where the loch licked the shore. He all but fell into it in his clumsy attempt to fill the flask. The water undulated like a pool of ink with bits of moonlight shattered over its surface.

He let it wash over his lips, bathing them in the cool wetness, and then he drank. Gulp after greedy gulp of icy water slaked the thirst burning in his throat.

His eyes closed a moment.

Just a moment.

Comfortable darkness beckoned him and then a severe jag of hurt sliced through him, pulling him from the threat of sleep and launching him toward his goal. He shuffled those several feet back to camp with his back hunched and the flask of water cradled to his clenching stomach as if it were treasure.

For surely it was.

Elizabeth’s face was relaxed in her slumber. She looked so peaceful, angelic almost. He didn’t want to wake her.

Droplets of water dribbled from the top of the flask and fell toward her like loosed diamonds.

She blinked. “Water.” Her voice cracked in a dry whisper.

He passed her the flask, and she drank with a savage thirst like a warrior just off the battlefield.