Winter Be My Shield Read Online Free PDF Page B

twisted around to face them. ‘If she wakes, you may ask her,’ she said, and levelled one finger at Isidro. ‘You rest now. Cam, I want more wood for the fire. She must be kept warm.’
    â€˜As you command,’ Cam said with a mocking bow. He took Isidro’s empty bowl away with him as he left.
    â€˜Lie down,’ Rhia said to Isidro, and began to pull off his boots.
    â€˜I can do that,’ he protested, but she ignored him, setting the boots neatly at the foot of his bed and then twitching the furs up to cover him. ‘Do not argue,’ she said, and pressed her hand against his forehead. He closed his eyes against the coolness. ‘You are feverish again, Isidro. Rest. Your curiosity will wait until you wake.’
    â€˜Will it?’ he said. ‘Will she live?’
    Rhia turned back to the slight figure occupying her furs. ‘I think so. But we shall see.’

Chapter 3
    Sweat prickled on his skin and stung like acid on the searing wounds on his back. The burns reached from the nape of his neck down to his buttocks. Naked, he knelt on a blood-splattered carpet of spruce with his hands tied behind his back and the end of the cord that bound them thrown over a beam overhead and pulled tight. All the weight of his torso rested upon his shoulders, twisted as far as they could go: they felt as though they were slowly tearing free. Blood dripped from his mouth to the spruce beneath him. He’d bitten his lip to keep from screaming.
    Rasten held the poker beside his face. Wisps of smoke wafted from the  scraps of charred skin encrusting the iron. The heat of it dried the sweat on his cheek and Isidro closed his eyes to keep from flinching until it touched.
    â€˜Rasten,’ a soft voice said from across the tent and a moment later the heat was gone. Isidro turned his head and could just see the two men standing with heads together, talking in low voices.
    Another figure knelt at Kell’s feet, her bound hands fastened to a block of lead too large for one man to lift. For a moment, Isidro caught sight of her face between strands of black hair that clung to her sweating skin, like the heavy black lines of mourning tattoos. He met her eyes for only an instant before she looked away.
    â€˜But the queen wants him whole.’ Rasten’s voice drifted across the tent.
    â€˜She wants to watch him die, like she did his father,’ Kell said. ‘But we progress too slowly. Much longer and the prince will be beyond our reach. Do as I say, boy.’
    From the corner of his eye Isidro saw Rasten take a serrated knife and a bowl of liquid from the row of implements laid out on the table. The girl at Kell’s feet huddled closer to the ground, as though willing herself to sink into it and vanish. Isidro steeled himself as Rasten came to his side again.
    Rasten threw the knife into the ground, where it lodged point first, and hunkered down by Isidro’s head. ‘Do you know what this is?’ He dipped his thumb in the liquid and wiped it across Isidro’s bitten lip. The salt-laden water bit like barbed needles and Rasten laughed at Isidro’s grunt of pain.
    Then he tipped the bowl over the ravaged skin of his back.
    Isidro kicked the covers off and sat up, too quickly. It set his head spinning and he had to swallow hard against the gorge that rose in his throat. The beast in his arm flexed its claws.
    Drenched with sweat, Isidro reached for the collar of his shirt and peeled it away from his skin, letting the cooler air flood in. The scars on his back prickled. When his fingertips brushed against one he flinched reflexively, even though all but the worst of them were healed. The burns had been the least of his troubles.
    Rhia had strung an old blanket across his bed to keep the light from disturbing him, but it also isolated him from the radiant heat of the stove. The cool air chilled his skin and soon turned his damp shirt cold and clammy. Isidro pulled