Free The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) by Ian Irvine

Sitting Nish down, she took off his boots and stinking
socks, which she stuffed into the oilskin pouch containing her spare clothes.
Wet footwear would be deadly up here at this time of year. She did the same
with her boots, then her coat and jacket, pulled the drawstring, tied it to her
pack and slung the pack on her back.
    The water still retained some warmth from the afternoon sun,
thankfully. At Nifferlin, a thousand spans higher than here, it would have been
frozen by now. She waded out until it reached her shoulders, then drew him to
her. ‘Hold on.’ Nish was twitching again and his eyes were the size of eggs.
‘I’m Fyllis’s sister, remember?’
    He nodded stiffly; the twitching eased to a tremor. Maelys
led him around the curve of the pond towards the rushes, careful not to get out
of her depth. Her feet skidded on the sludgy bottom and it was hard to stay
upright. They reached the rushes, where at least she had something to hang
onto, though she had to be careful not to break the stems – the troops
would check every sign. She kept Nish behind her in case he flailed at the
rushes, pushed her floating pack into their centre, and waited.
    The water felt cold now and was leaching all the warmth from
her body. Nish’s teeth were chattering. She folded over a couple of straws and
thrust them into his mouth. ‘Bite on these.’
    He did so and the chattering stopped. She could hear the
approaching soldiers; they were making no attempt to disguise their movements.
    ‘We’ve got to go under, Nish. Can you breathe through a
straw and let out the bubbles among the rushes?’
    ‘Don’t – think so.’ His teeth were starting to chatter
again, poor man. He was just skin and bones, and he’d chewed through the
straws.
    ‘I’ll help you. Quick, out there where we’ll be hidden
behind the rushes.’
    Maelys eased her way between the clumps, pulling Nish
through the water behind her like a sodden pillow, floating with head back and
just his nose and mouth out of the water. At least he couldn’t cause too much
trouble that way.
    She reached the outer fringe of the rushes as the first
lantern appeared over the rim of the terrace. Moving into shelter, she put her
mouth to Nish’s ear. ‘We’re going under now. Hold your breath. I’ll look after
you.’
    Maelys wasn’t sure she could but he nodded with a jerk that
created a little splash. She held the straws in her mouth, ducked and pulled
him under. He sank at once but she found it hard to stay down. Holding him with
one hand, she grasped a clump of rushes below the water with the other. It kept
her from floating up though she couldn’t use her straws.
    She found his right hand and curled his fingers around the
rush clump, praying that he’d have the sense to hold on. He did, so she did the
same with his other hand. Poking the straw ends above the water, she drew
breath.
    It proved surprisingly difficult to draw air down the thin
straws, and it made a faint whistling sound that worried her, but she got a
breath, then pulled Nish closer to her. She had to feel for his mouth; she
couldn’t see a thing underwater.
    She slid the straws in but he bit through the ends, and they
were her lifeline. She pulled his face hard against hers, sealed his mouth with
her own and blew most of her breath into him. He jerked again.
    His lips were almost dead with cold, and he didn’t move
until she pulled away, yet Maelys felt acutely uncomfortable. It felt intimate,
wrong, even though she was doing it to save his life, and it reminded her of
the greater intimacy, the far greater wrong that she had to do with him if they
ever got away.
     

 
    FIVE

 
 
    Suck and blow. Suck and blow. Maelys was doing it
automatically now. It felt as though they’d been in the water forever, though
it couldn’t have been more than a quarter of an hour. Her head was aching and
she was shuddering from the cold, but Nish wasn’t even shivering. Was he
sinking into a coma from which he would