He felt terrible leaving her there looking as she did, but he wouldn’t be gone long. Her injuries weren’t life threatening, but they were painful. Giving her shoulder a quick squeeze—it was also the first real contact they’d had in days—he turned and walked back down the hill a ways.
Medicinal herbs were plentiful in the mountains if one knew where to look. Just thirty yards away from where she sat he found a patch of plantain weeds. Ripping off several handfuls of it, he jogged over to the stream and began rinsing the dirt off.
As a warrior on Delerium he’d had to learn what was good to use in a pinch as field medicine. And old habits died hard; though he rarely did battle on Kingdom, he’d still taken to studying the different flora and fauna of the terrain during his time off.
Once the weeds were cleared of the debris he shook the water out and jogged quickly back to her side.
In the five minutes he’d been gone she hadn’t moved an inch. She looked every bit as miserable as she had when he’d left her side and was simply gazing out across the expanse.
They were slowly climbing their way along the side of a mountain, mere steps away from descending it and finding some shelter a little more private and secluded.
But this wasn’t necessarily a bad place to stop, either. They had a rock wall on one side, a stream on the other, and beside that a sheer vertical drop that fell to several hundred feet below.
There were no rock openings or cave entrances dug out of the tough granite. This was probably as safe as any other place they could find to bed down for the night. The sun was maybe an hour away from setting. The last thing they wanted to do was try to build shelter during the dead of night, especially in a place where one misstep could lead to her death.
“Here,” he said quietly.
They’d taken to speaking in low tones through the mountain pass. Not that whispering would prevent the dwarves from hearing them if they were close, but it was better to not draw attention of any sort while out here.
“What is that?” she asked as she reached for it.
“It’s called plantain. It’s a medicinal weed.”
She stared at one of the broad green leaves. “Do I eat it?”
“No.” He shook his head, and gently took it from her grasp. “You chew on it, then you press it against the wound.”
“Okay.” She nodded and without much emotion popped one into her mouth and chewed it a couple of times before then pushing it against her foot.
She’d not chewed it near enough; it needed to become more of a paste than a shredded leaf.
“It’s not the most sanitary of methods, I know. But it really does work. The herbs here are much more potent than they were on Delerium. Within thirty minutes it should do the trick, but you really need to mash it in there.”
“Thank you.” She chewed on another one, not turning it into the paste it needed to be again.
Leaning forward, he pushed her hand away. “Lilith, will it bother you if I do it?”
She shrugged. “If you really want to. But I’m okay.”
“I’m okay” was becoming her standard answer to everything lately. Taking the last four leaves from her hand, he placed them all in his mouth and chewed for a good long while.
Though he was a trained fighter, it was the art of healing that Giles had always found most fascinating. It took five minutes of constant chewing before the leaves were at the correct consistency.
Snatching up a flat rock, he looked at her. “You might want to turn away for this part. It’s a little disgusting.”
She made a sound that sounded an awful lot like a laugh. It didn’t last long, but it was the first spark of life she’d shown in a while and it warmed his heart to hear it.
Lilith turned her head to side and he withdrew the pasty substance, placing it onto the flat part of the stone. “Give me your foot.”
She slowly slid her foot out toward him. Lifting it gently onto his lap, he swiped some of the paste onto his finger and began to work it across the sole of her foot.
“You don’t seem as repulsed as you should,” he said with a soft chuckle.
She shrugged. “I’m part wolf. When you see your brothers sniff each other’s asses, what is and isn’t gross takes on a whole new meaning.”
He laughed. Already he could see the redness of the wounds begin to slowly dissipate.
A shiver rippled through her and he heard her exhale with relief. The pain must have been excruciating, but she’d not let him close enough to her for him to even notice.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at him. “It’s not your fault. I should have done something about them sooner, I just didn’t wish to slow us down any—”
“No.” He massaged between her toes, amazed anew at the curative powers of the weeds on Kingdom. Already the weeping blisters were closing up, shrinking in size. The inflammation would be the last to go, but soon even that would be gone. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh.” She plucked at her cloak. “Giles, I—”