Knight's Blood by Julianne Lee Page B

returned!”
     
    Alex’s bluff quite left him, now that he knew they would not kill him, and his strength failed completely. As he collapsed to the muddy ground and his mind faded to haze, he heard a shocked cry. “MacNeil!”
     
    He remained conscious enough to be aware of further shouting and the chain clatter of the gate being raised. Dimly he knew there were hands lifting him, then carrying him into the bailey and on up the winding path between the various castle structures, then finally there was warmth. Good heat from the fire in the great hall, where a call for clothing and plaids and cushions went up and was repeated at full voice throughout the keep. He half lay over the side of the long fire pit that ran much of the length of the room, where an enormous pile of burning logs kept the large hall heated and often fed the troops with roasted meat. Alex lay his face against warm stone and groaned. His skin felt on fire with the heat, and it was a welcome pain.
     
    Servants gathered, shocked. There was much talk in Gaelic, which Alex understood in a rudimentary way, but just then he was too sick to figure out what they were saying. Soon a cup was put to his lips, and he tasted mead. Hair of the dog that it might be, he turned his head away as his stomach heaved and he choked. “Broth. Bring some broth.” There would be some in the kitchen, the building just down the slope.
     
    Someone was sent to get it. Someone else was dispatched to ready the laird’s chamber.
     
    Alex’s shivering grew more violent. His pulse picked up, and he was in a misery of uncontrollable shaking. Like a grand mal fit. The warmth felt like burning, as if he were flaming and freezing at once, on fire but shivering for it like fever. If only he could fall unconscious again. It would be so sweet to pass out. He was wrapped in wool blankets, nearly like a mummy, and he gathered them in to himself. No matter how bundled he became, the cold seemed to radiate from inside him. The shaking continued.
     
    Soon another cup was put to his lips, and he tasted beef soup. Much of it spilled as they tried to get it down him, but enough of it made it into his mouth that he could swallow. It made a heat trail down his throat and into his gut, which heaved at the outrage. He held his breath and made it stay down. Then he took some more. Warmth. The soup tasted like pure heat, and it was delicious.
     
    Once the soup was in him, the shivering calmed to a bearable trembling that only made his breathing stutter. His eyes closed, he lay at the side of the hearth and let the warmth seep into him. When he finally felt something other than cold, it was exhaustion. From somewhere in the incomprehensible distance the announcement came his chamber and bed were ready for him. Hands lifted him in his bundle and carried him down the stairs from the hall to the laird’s apartments. They unwrapped him from the plaid and laid him in the elaborately carved bed, on silken sheets, beneath a thick comforter stuffed with goose down. The shivering calmed some more. The fire in the hearth was high and bright. The wall of living rock at one side of the room ran with water from the rain outside, making a trickling sound that brought to mind the nights he’d shared this bed with Lindsay. It soothed and warmed him, and he fell into oblivion.
     
    When he came to again, it was in a red haze of fever. Shivering took him again, this time in a rage of heat. Faces hovered before his eyes, and he thought he recognized them but the names escaped his pain-wracked mind. One was a priest—Alex knew by the tonsure—dabbing oil on his forehead and muttering in Latin. Father Patrick. It was Father Patrick, the young guy from the castle chapel. There was a boy. A blond kid. Another man stood at a distance. Short and bearded, Alex felt he should know who that man was. But the struggle to remember brought more pain.
     
    “He’s still with us,” said the man with the beard. Then it came to