Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 19

“Y ou have been following me, female,” the hunters low voice breaks through my horror, his words clipped and impatient. He keeps his bow and arrow trained on me, even as I hold completely still, my body thrown defensively over Thorn.

I stare numbly at the weapon pointed to my face, my stomach curdling with a mixture of relief and terror. I found the stranger, I successfully followed the tracks, I have a chance to save Thorn, yet instead I’m met with cool aggression.

Is this what Thorn meant days ago when he told me they were dangerous? Is this what he warned me of?

My mind spins- I have to make him hear me out, I have to get the medicine.

I’ve given everything to get here, I’ve nearly killed Thorn in the process, and this is the only thing that can save him.

There’s so much that I want to say to the stranger that for a long time, nothing at all comes, and I just keep staring down the sharp end of the arrow.

Finally, I find my words, “Y-yes, I-…I followed the tracks from the cache. Was that you? Did you take the cache?”

I take a better look at the person opposite me.

He’s human, just like me and Thorn, but that’s where the similarities end.

Everything about him is wild and foreign, from his nearly white blond hair to his icy blue eyes to the heavy furs and wolf cloak he wears. His pack is shaped oddly, his bow is strung different from our hunters, his expression is not one of patience or openness like the tribe I’m familiar with.

Thorn was right, he doesn’t dress like them or look like them at all.

There’s an air of harshness, of cruelty about him, one that tells me he wouldn’t think twice about releasing an arrow into my head. Where Thorn’s tribe were overjoyed to find us, the stranger is hesitant, calculating, his eyes sharp knives pointed down at me.

A hunter looking at his prey.

“What is cache?” He demands.

I narrow my eyes at him, lifting up from my position over Thorn.

The stranger merely pulls his arm farther back on the bow string, as if in warning, his brow lowered.

I don’t want him to hit Thorn, so I take the chance that he’ll shoot me and position myself more in front of the man still unconscious behind me.

I keep my tone neutral, my hands visible so he doesn’t think I’m reaching for a weapon.

“The cache. It was the container you dug up. Round. Filled with medicine. Sound familiar?”

The arrow drops an inch, and the stranger cocks a blond brow. “I found a strange rock sticking from the earth. It is a container?”

“Yes,” I breathe the word as relief hammers through my heart.

I try to stay patient with him.

This could be going much worse, I remind myself. It’s enough of a start that he speaks the same language as me. I think back to when we first joined the tribe, and they didn’t understand half of what we talked about. This man is just like they were.

I explain, “That rock can be opened, and there’s really important medicine inside. I’m a healer, and the cache was buried by my people a long time ago. We’ve been looking for it.”

The stranger, for maybe the first time, glances over my shoulder at Thorn.

His eyes flicker with recognition, I think, but he doesn’t voice anything aloud.

“The male is dying,” he points out. “He will not survive the night. A healer would know better than to bring him on a journey when he is so sick.”

I reel back, fighting my impatience. “When we started looking, he was fine. We were attacked by a bear, and I’ve been carrying him for days looking for you . So, do you still have the cache or not?”

“You are not from here. What tribe do you come from?” He jerks his chin, looking down the long line of his nose at me.

I’m running out of time.

Each minute that he refuses to answer my question is another that Thorn’s infection spreads. Each minute is another that tears Thorn away from me.

I know that he stumbled on the cache, that he’s probably confused and overwhelmed, but how is he not understanding my urgency? Thorn lies dying behind me, I’m exhausted, and we’re both covered in grime and blood, surely my eyes bleed with desperation.

And I’ve made a point to tell him that the cache belongs to us.

So why all the questions? Why this prying if he didn’t even know what it was in the first place?

“I’m not from here,” I agree. “I’ll tell you all about it after you give me the cache.”

The stranger hesitates, seemingly unconvinced, and I know that I have to try a different angle.

I release the tension in my body, a feat that’s not too difficult considering how absolutely exhausted I am from the past week.

I place a hand over Thorn, and speak honestly, my gaze pleading with the man’s. I don’t hide anything, I let him see the tears that pool in my eyes like an endless well for the past two days, the hard breaths I have to suck in and out so that I don’t completely panic and lose it, the way my hand shakes over Thorn’s searing skin.

“P-please,” I try again, and my voice breaks but I push through. “I have… nothing to offer you. I know I’m a stranger, I know that I look different and talk different and I know that you found the cache and dragged it up and you want to keep it but… He’s dying. I have to help him. I’ll do anything just-… Please. Please let me save him.”

To my surprise, the bow and arrow drop, and the stranger kneels down before me, bringing his face to my height.

“I will split the contents of the rock with you,” he agrees. “We will discuss a trade after you heal your male.”

A relieved sob falls from my lips, and I wipe at my cheeks. “Thank you… Thank you. Is it nearby?”

“I made camp deeper in this forest,” the stranger says. “It is nearby. I can carry him for you, you do not look strong enough.”

And he’s right. I’m a complete mess. Now that I’ve started crying, I can’t seem to stop.

We’re so fucking close that every nerve in my body vibrates, every cell is desperate to get to the cache, to give Thorn the medicine.

Then maybe he’ll have a real chance of surviving.

My pack is heavy enough for me, and with the stretcher broken I had no hope of carrying Thorn, so I allow the man to heave him off the ground and fling him over a shoulder, only wincing a little when I see Thorn’s wounded chest collide with the man’s back.

The stranger is taller than Thorn, but far skinnier, and he grunts with the effort to carry him.

But he does so as gently as he can.

I follow him deeper into the woods and pray that he’s telling the truth.

Within the hour, we’re back at the stranger’s camp, and the cache lays open in front of me, and I hold the needle in my hand that has the power to save the man I’m falling for. I’ve stopped crying, for the meantime, because finally - finally - it feels like I might be able to hope.

“What is it you are doing now?” The man asks, crouched nearby.

His sharp eyes followed my movements as I came to the cache and pressed in the four-digit code to open it, the lock clicking open after two hundred and fifty years with a grinding hiss and the circular container opening like a chest.

Inside were rows and rows of medication, everything that should have been there and more, but I’d been too focused on Thorn to rejoice yet.

“This is the needle,” I tell the stranger, knowing that he needs this information so he can give medicine to his people. I think that he’s from a tribe like ours, from the way he diplomatically agreed to split the medicine, and I’m happy to show him how to administer it. “The sharp part here has to be kept clean. See in the cache you have extra tips? The point can be switched out, so you don’t contaminate it. When you have a clean tip, you insert it all the way in.” I show him by injecting Thorn in the inner elbow of his good arm, where the vein stands in sharp relief under his pale, sickly skin. “Then you release the medicine by pressing this button here.”

The capsule of antibiotics releases with a little click, the vile emptying quickly, and I remove it from Thorn’s arm.

Maybe the stranger asks me another question, or maybe he gives us a moment, but it makes no difference to me because in that moment all I can see is Thorn.

I gaze down at his face, waxen and pale, his burning skin under my thumb as I tenderly brush over the point of injection.

He didn’t even flinch when I gave him the needle, and it’s too soon now to notice any difference in his condition.

But I’ve done all I can.

I’ve given him the medicine, and I’ve kept the wounds as clean as possible and now all we can do is wait.

The relief is there anyways, even this early. Relief that I got him here, that I was able to give him the injection, that he didn’t die on me in the dark of one of those terrible nights when he fevered, and I prayed and pleaded with him to survive.

We made it this far.

Overcome, I bury my face in his neck, not caring that the stranger will see, not caring if an entire tribe could see us now.

I breathe deeply in, and, under the dirt and the dried blood and the sweat, I can smell Thorn’s green, masculine scent. I can feel his faint heartbeat under my lips as I fit myself into the crook of his neck.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, burying my tears into his shoulder where they belong only to him. “It’s going to be okay. We found the medicine. You’re going to get better.”

As I cling to him, I envision the antibiotics entering his bloodstream, flowing through his veins, racing throughout his body and burning up all the fever and the infection and the rot like they’re scraps of paper over a lighter.

I think of the sickness lifting off of him like smoke, filtering into the night sky above us.

He will get better.

He has to, because I won’t allow the alternative.

Thorn sleeps on, and by the evening, his fever stops climbing. I want to cry or dance or sing, but I know that I have other matters to attend to, so I lift up from his side and turn to face the stranger.

He cooks a small meal of rabbit, on the other side of the fire from me, his eyes politely cast down to his meal and his half of the medicine carefully set aside against his things, like he’s worried I’ll take it and run with Thorn still here on the ground.

I throw some extra furs around Thorn and move a little closer to the fire.

“Thank you. You don’t know how much that means that you… let us use the medicine.”

The stranger lifts his head to watch me, and a pained look flickers beneath his stoic features. “I know what it is to lose someone. You have done me a great help by showing me how to load and use the needle.”

“You’re welcome. No point in splitting it if you don’t even know how to use it.” I introduce myself, “I’m Samara, by the way.”

“Samara,” the man tests my name, saying it with all the wrong inflections. “I am Hawk.”

I smother a grin. So, these guys follow the same name guide as my tribe.

“And he’s Thorn.”

“Thorn?” Now Hawk raises an eyebrow as he tests the name, and I narrow my eyes at him.

He knows Thorn, it’s obvious.

He’s about as good of a liar as the tribe hunters are. So why is he pretending to not know Thorn’s name? There doesn’t seem much point in asking. If the medicine works then Thorn will wake up and they’ll get reintroduced.

Or maybe I’m just too tired to care about any history between them while I wait for the antibiotics to kick in.

In the meantime, I have to ask, “You wanted to trade, so what’ll it be?”

Hawk looks thoughtful. “You said you are a healer, and I watched you use the medicine on Thorn, so I know you are capable. My tribe does not have a healer. She died two seasons past. She was with child and the birth killed them both. Now my sister has missed her monthly bleeding twice, and we think she is carrying a child too. I came down from the mountains to look for anyone who could help us when it is time for her to deliver.”

His eyes are vibrant with pain, brilliant streaks of agony lancing through the cold color, and he turns his face away so I can’t see any more than that glimpse.

If it mattered, I would bet that he cared about their healer very much, and that’s why he helped me with Thorn today, but he’s a stranger from another tribe, so it seems inappropriate to pry.

Instead, I offer, “I’m sorry about your healer. Childbirth can be very dangerous-” in this time, I add mentally. “I’m trained in it. I can tell you how to help.”

“No,” Hawk shakes his head firmly. “That is not enough. My sister deserves more. For your half of the medicine, I want you to agree that when the time comes, and she must deliver…you will willingly join me with my tribe and help her. You will be free to leave once it is over.”

It’s a steep offer.

Of course, I’m willing to help anyone who might need me, but Thorn has expressed so many times how dangerous these people are. Even if Hawk has been nothing but accommodating, would I be putting myself at risk by going into the new tribe when they need me? And what if something were to happen in my tribe while I was away?

I weigh these options, but Hawk held up his end of the deal, so in the end I nod.

“Yes. When you need me to help with the birth, I’ll join you. Do you know where to find me?”

“I have an idea,” Hawk says. “You will need to describe your tribe’s territory to me. Soon, but not tonight. I will not leave you and Thorn unprotected here. I will stay until he is well enough to walk. We can discuss the future then.”

“That’s very accommodating,” I note.

He shrugs, turning the meat he’s laid out in skewers over the fire. “I am my tribe’s leader. It is not in my nature to abandon people who need help.”

At that, I bristle. Does he think I need help taking care of Thorn? That I’m just some defenseless woman stumbling through the wilderness? “I needed the medicine for Thorn. But I can find my way back and I can feed both of us.”

“It is not Thorn who needs help now,” Hawk tells me, his expression cool and detached. “You have not slept or eaten while you cared for your male. As a healer, you should know that if you fall ill you are of no use to anyone.”

I roll my eyes.

It must be a prerequisite for a tribe leader to be patronizing, but the thought makes me think of Thorn and how he was before and my heart tugs with such fierce longing that I have to fight back the tide of tears again.

I’m so exhausted that I don’t even have the energy to try to act normal.

I know that I’m a mess, I know that I’m filthy and half-starved and exhausted, but I couldn’t possibly care about appearances now.

This journey has stripped me down to nothing, down to bare, raw emotions, and worrying and caring for Thorn takes so much energy that there’s none left to think about how I might appear.

So, I let myself wipe at the steady stream of tears and reach for Thorn’s clammy hand under the furs.

“Eat this,” Hawk instructs, holding out a skewer of rabbit, and I eat my first real meal in days.