A single animal fat candle burned inside a pierced tin lantern on the low doorstep of the bunk nook, throwing round specks of yellow light across the whitewashed stone wall.
Fellis Dain was sitting propped up against Yseld’s spare pack frame, his back supported by two folded wool blankets and his feet tucked firmly against two warm hearth bricks wrapped in sacking. His skin was still pale, and a faint rim of sweat glistened along his hairline. But the glazed look of shock had cleared from his eyes. His right arm was pinned securely to his ribs beneath Paxa’s clean linen sling. But his left hand was alive with steady, purposeful motion.
Across his lap lay the two cut halves of his sixteen-pace tuned measuring cord, washed clean of ditch mud and dried beside the kitchen hearth.
Kezra sat on the edge of the low straw pallet. She held an iron marlinspike and a small horn cup of hot mutton broth in her hands.
“Paxa said you should drink the fat before it skins over,” Kezra said. She held the cup out to him. “It has dried marjoram and salt to keep the cramps from your shins.”
Fellis took the cup with his left hand, drank it down in three steady gulps without spilling a drop. Then he handed the empty horn back to her. His throat worked as he swallowed, his jaw tightening as the heat settled into his stomach.
