by Laura DeLuca
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“Just let me die!” Balen complained as Eartha dressed his wounds with a poultice for what had to be the hundredth time. “What does it matter? I will never be able to hunt the stag. The gods have spoken! I am not worthy of the land or of my sweet Galiene.”
“If you keep up this sniveling, I shall be apt to agree with them.”
Eartha huffed and pressed the medicine against his side a little harder than she intended, making him flinch. She hoped she never fell in love if it meant she would turn into a blubbering weakling. It was all a lot of folly in her mind.
“You should be grateful to be alive,” she told her brother, annoyed. “You were ranting with fever for days, and there were times I was certain I would lose you.”
“Don’t you see your efforts were in vain? The race is tomorrow, and I am weak as a newborn calf. There is no chance for victory.” He sighed deeply and looked toward Eartha with beseeching green eyes, but he accepted the mug of hot tea she offered him and sipped it gingerly. “Tell me, what is the point of living without my Galiene by my side?”
Eartha mumbled under her breath as her brother continued to wail, ungrateful brat that he was. She had spent the better of part of a fortnight nursing his wound on top of taking on all his responsibilities on their farmland. It had cost her many sleepless nights, but she had managed to keep Balen’s wound a secret from the world. Only Arn had any inkling of his injuries, and he was not likely to reveal his own unsportsmanlike behavior. The tyrant had only managed to land the blow when her brother’s back was turned. In a fair fight, Balen would never have been bested by that clumsy oaf.
“Just let me die…let me die…”
Balen’s words became no more than whispers as the herbs in the tea started to do their job. Before long, he fell into a fitful sleep, still tossing and calling out to Galiene even in his dreams. But it was Eartha who clutched his hand and lovingly smoothed the hair from his eyes until at last he settled into a sounder slumber.
“I will not let you die, Balen,” she whispered, though she knew he could no longer hear her. “Nor will I allow you to lose that which you hold most dear.”
Eartha stood from the straw bed and stared into the fire. Suddenly her cheeks were blazing, but it had little to do with the warmth of the flames. There was a reason Eartha had kept her brother’s injuries a secret. If anyone knew Balen was hurt, he would have been forced to forfeit his place in the stag hunt. But that wasn’t going to happen. Eartha was not going to let Arn win. For her brother, for her dear friend Galiene, but most of all, for the country she loved, Eartha had devised a plan.
“Hold on to your hope, dear brother. All is not yet lost.”