Free Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One by Shae Ford Page A

villagers as
they cursed him with every throw.
    “Half-breed!”
    “Bow-Breaker!”
    “You’re a bad
omen!”
    “Get out !”
    The mud hurt
worse than their words and, even though he could feel blood welling in the
scratches on his arms, he kept walking. He would keep his head down, but he
wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him run — even if it meant
losing an ear or an eye.
    He would never
run again.
    They stopped
following him a few yards from the hospital. The noise of the mob drew Amos out
the door and when they saw him, the villagers made a hasty retreat.
    “Inbred swine,”
he cursed after them. “I have half a mind to give every one of them something
to think about — what are you doing? You’ll track mud all inside my
hospital!”
    “I just need a
few things, and then I promise I’ll be out of your hair forever,” Kael said as
he shoved past him. He grabbed an empty pack off the floor and began filling it
with bandages and bottles of herbs. Several patients tilted their bloodied
heads and a few more watched him curiously through swollen eyes, but he ignored
them.
    Amos followed at
a hobble. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I’m leaving.”
    Kael didn’t have
to turn around to know that Amos’s mouth was hanging wide open. “But you can’t
leave — I need you here. She needs you.”
    He said that
last bit quietly enough that the patients couldn’t overhear. Kael looked up
from where he’d been stuffing his hunting knife away and found the closed door
of Amos’s office.
    They decided to
keep the wounded girl back there for the time being. Her fever was gone, but
she was still trapped in sleep. There was no telling how many Tinnarkians would
crowd their way into the hospital, craning their necks for a better view, if
she was out on display. They’d decided it was better to keep her under lock and
key until she woke.
    “What if I can’t
save her?” Amos pressed. “What if you’re the only one who can get around the
hex —?”
    “Well that’s too
bad, isn’t it? I’m not going to be a prisoner for the rest of my life. Not for
anyone,” Kael said back, and he half-meant it.
    But a tiny voice
in the back of his head chose that moment to speak. If you leave , it said, she
could die . You’re always talking
about being brave, so why don’t you do the brave thing ?
    He didn’t see
how such a small something had the power to hold back a flood of rage so hot
that it practically baked the mud onto his skin. And yet with one utterance,
the voice folded his anger on top of itself, wrapping it up again and again
until he could’ve fit it in his pocket. He thought about all the stories he
read in the Atlas , all the knights
and warriors who’d had to do something they never wanted: Sir Gorigan, Scarn,
Setheran the Wright …
    They’d all had
to make sacrifices — most resulting in their deaths. If it had been Brock
or Marc or Laemoth lying sick, he wouldn’t have thought twice about turning on
his heel and putting Tinnark to his back forever. But it wasn’t. It was a
traveling girl — a girl who very likely didn’t deserve to die.
    “Help me bring her
back,” Amos implored him, latching onto the struggle in his face. “Once she’s
healed, you can leave. You don’t even have to wait for the snows to come.”
    “Fine.” Kael
tossed his half-filled pack onto a nearby table and went to go scrub the mud
off his clothes. Even though it killed him to stay, he couldn’t sentence an
innocent girl to her death.
    But only until spring , he told himself.
As soon as the snows came and cleared, he’d leave Tinnark for good.
     
    *******
     
    The next month
was nothing short of torture. The elders decreed that Kael wasn't allowed in
the Hall, which meant someone had to volunteer to bring him his meals everyday.
When he opened the door that first morning, he was surprised to see a hunter
carrying his breakfast.
    The man tried
rather lamely to mask his laughter with a fit