Severed Knot by Cryssa Bazos

Author:Cryssa Bazos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W.M. Jackson Publishing

* * *

Glencross tossed in his hammock, burning with fever, while Iain watched completely powerless to help. Had his brother-in-law been shot or stabbed, he’d know what to do—staunch the flow, try to make him more comfortable. But how to win a war that raged from the inside?

Killean returned with the Arawak woman, Uini. When she passed the threshold, Iain realised a throng had gathered outside. This agitated rather than reassured him.

“Curious buggers—get thee gone!” he bellowed.

At that moment, Mairead stepped into the hut. His outburst startled her, but she stood her ground. “You won’t chase me out so easily, Locharbaidh. I’ve come for Glencross, and I’ll only leave when he tells me to go.”

Iain couldn’t trust himself to speak. She had often called him an ogre, for good reason, and he had no desire to be called a madman too. Her presence unsettled him, an unwanted reminder that she had seen him brought low. “As you will.” He stepped aside, allowing her access. His gaze followed her progress across the hut to where Uini stood at Glencross’s hammock.

The lad pried open his eyes and blinked at everyone around him. He seemed to be particularly startled to see Uini bending over him. “Leave me be.” He licked his dry lips. “I need rest—hurt all over.” He burrowed deeper into his hammock and drifted in and out of a fitful sleep.

“He’s been in the fields all day,” Iain said, more to convince himself. But that didn’t account for the fever. He had been hale and canty earlier in the day.

Uini made a slight clucking sound with her tongue as she shook her head.

“Don’t do that, woman,” Iain snapped. “Why are you doing that?” If she couldn’t help, why the hell was she in his hut?

Uini turned to him and said, “Yellow fever.”

“I don’t care what it’s called—help him.”

“I heard the bellows of an enraged bear, and it led me here. Imagine my surprise,” Alastair said, entering the hut.

“The crowd outside did nothing to alert you?” Iain said, not bothering to hide his irritation. “Imagine my surprise.”

“You won’t help him that way.” Alastair crossed the hut to reach Uini. “What do we have here?” The two conversed in her language, haltingly on Alastair’s part. He questioned her a little more before he said to Iain, “Aye, ’tis the fever. We had an outbreak last year—a particularly virulent one. A few years ago it killed most of Uini’s family.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Iain said. “There must be something she can do—must know of a cure, like the juice of some miserable berry.”

“If only it were that easy.”

Uini said a few more words to Alastair before she left the hut. “She says she’ll fetch one of the African wenches to make a strengthening draught,” Alastair said. “’Tis the best we can do.”

“Aye, good. That will cure him?”

“Depends on the lad’s inner strength. Some survive. Pray that he’s one of the fortunate.”

Iain rubbed his beard, clamping down on his alarm. Glencross was strong—he had survived

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