“Tsh, Tsch. Are you well? What’s wrong with you?”
“What?” said Caewen. She’d heard a voice, dim and sort of underwatery sounding. She looked about before she remembered the darkness-thing she was carrying in her satchel. Strange that she should forget about Fetch. “Oh. Yes. Fine. Why?”
“You stumbled. Tscch. You’ve been stumbling a lot. I don’t think you’re well.”
“No,” she said, waving a hand, “I’m fine.” But as she said this, she overbalanced, tottered on her feet and fell. She caught herself on knees and palms. Pain stung where small sharp stones from the road grazed her, digging into the skin of her hands and biting through cloth to graze her shins. “Or maybe not.” Everything felt foggy, muggy… sort of closed in and vague. “I guess I don’t feel well.” Her cheek was throbbing and hot. Tentatively, she brushed fingertips over the skin. The rush of pain left her without thoughts in her head until it subsided. It was a perfect incandescent pain, like walking through a fog of white-hot embers.
“The arrow,” she said, her words slurring now. “Bastards.”
Slowly, one limb at a time, she got to her feet and started down the road again, weaving now, barely making a straight path. No point in staying where she was. No point in curling up and dying on the road. People were counting on her. Just right now she couldn’t remember who those people were. And she was having a hard time recalling exactly what she had to do for them. But she knew she had to make it to… where was she going? She could hear the shadow demon in her satchel talking and talking, faster and faster, more and more worried, nuzzling at her through the cloth, whispering, desperately trying to get her to keep moving.
The words just washed around her.
She lost track of time.
Sweat beaded on her brow and stung her eyes with salt. The trees she passed seemed to writhe on their own, as if their limbs were snakes. Her cheek and throat were throbbing now and a painful heat was moving across her chest, in and out of her ribs.
Then, in the distance, she saw some white and black shapes moving through the grass. Sheep, she thought. Yes. Black-muzzled, scrawny sheep. Where there are sheep there are people watching them. Sheep are valuable. Sheep are not good at looking out for themselves. She stumbled off the road and into the thick grass. She tried to call out, hoping for help. Keep going. Keep going. Something of a different shape–but also roughly patched in black and white–came jinking up to her through the long grass. It licked her hand and barked and ran off. Follow it, she thought, and her legs somehow managed to move.
Up a slope she walked, among the scattering, bleating sheep. She found two lounging figures atop the hill. They did not see her until she tried to speak, but found herself only croaking with a dry throat, hoarsely and wordlessly at them. Both of them jumped up, startled. She saw them clearly then. Only boys with slings to chase off foxes and lone wolves. One was a bit older, about twelve, the other couldn’t be much past six or seven. “Please,” she managed. “Poisoned. Knight on the road,” she waved a hand vaguely, unsure how much they understood. “Brigands. Is there a healer? A village witch? A leech? Poisoned.”
She fell to her knees and the world went grey, then red and streaky and then black.