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The heat was overwhelming, but Reya didn't want to run. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Torren, staring at the cats as they burned alive. They yowled and shrieked into the cool night air as they tried to turn and run. However, their efforts proved fruitless. One by one their muscles failed them under the agony of the inferno and they dropped to the cave floor.

The otter girl moved to step back, but the fire had already begun to subside, Torren along with it. His body slumped against hers. She held him up with quivering, pained paws as he had done for her so many times. As the blaze wore down to a spark, she set him gently onto the cave floor and then turned her attention to her dumbstruck companions.

She opened her mouth to speak but words didn't come out. She looked back and forth between Wheston, Mydya, and Mephit. She was normally so good at understanding what her friends were thinking by the expressions on their faces. However, the sudden blackness of the nighttime cave left her unable to guess at their emotions. She just saw three pairs of eyes staring straight at her. Reya wished she could see the fear, anger, or hatred on their faces. Any of these would have been a relief the small clawed otter.

After what felt like an eternity she squeaked out a plea, "He had to. You know he had to, right?"

"Is he -"

Reya cut Wheston off. Her eyes watered with tears. "You can't tell anyone. Please!"

Again, the animals stared at each other. The chill air, magnified by the sudden lack of heat, set her body shivering with adrenaline. Her heart tried to lurch out of her chest as she locked eyes with the soldier. She desperately wanted to know what he thought. She felt that she could trust Mephit completely, and she knew that his sister wouldn't do anything that she thought would hurt him. The terrier, however, was an enigma.

Mydya stepped forward. The pitch darkness kept her from seeing the skunk's quivering paws, but she could hear them rattle against the stone. "If you try hurt her you'll have to get through me first," Mydya hissed.

Reya's sobs echoed through the cave.

"I wasn't planning on hurting no one," Wheston whispered, "but that wasn't a gift of Bleyen I just saw."

"Torren can't help it!" Reya protested. "It's something he was born with, he doesn't even know how it happens, just that it goes off when he gets afraid!"

"That's why you said all those things?" Mephit whispered.

"Yeah."

"Did you mean them?"

Reya nodded, a lump suddenly constricting her throat. Then she realized that they couldn't see her well enough. "Yes," she whimpered.

"You," the little skunk started, "You love him?"

This time the lump in her throat proved too much an obstacle and she just squeaked in response.

"Shush, boy. Never ask a question you know the answer to," Wheston chided. "We have worse problems than two lovebirds and a witch who don't mean no harm. What we need to be thinkin' about is - is what we're doing to get out of here if this battle don't go the way of the kingdom."

"Shouldn't we wait for Aris and Siv?" Mydya asked. She seemed to have regained her composure.

"Well, we're gonna wait, like it or not. If these cats are fighting in the night it means they're resting in the morning. That'll be our chance to leave. If your friends make it back by then, they'll come with. If they don't, then there's nothing we can do to help. We can't go searching a battlefield if the bad guys are still kicking.

"So," the male skunk pouted, "we're gonna leave them for dead like we left Jack. No funeral or nothing. Just out there for the ants and flies."

"They're rangers, boy. I'd bet two of 'em worth their emblems against a score of those big cats any day of the week."

Mephit murmured an agreement.

"Now listen, I'd love to keep chatting, but we'd better get ourselves some rest. Can't travel quietly if we're dead tired."

Reya found herself agreeing with the Terrier. After the sudden burst of fear and worry, she felt exhaustion settling in. She curled up against Torren on the stone floor and closed her eyes. The rocks were still warm from the fire. She thought of the hearth of her home, the heat of her brother as they warmed themselves through the cold winter nights.

"Wake up," Siv hissed in her ear. Reya stirred, leisurely stretching her legs out.

"Wake up!" The cat's claws dug into her shoulder. She yelped, eyes opening wide. His eyes glowed in the darkness.

"Come with me," he demanded. The otter didn't protest. She followed him out of the cave. All of the grass in a 10 tail length radius around the entrance had charred black. Low hanging leaves on trees that grew too close to the rock-face wilted and weeped.

"I don't even want to fucking know," the cat hissed. "But you're going to help me right now. I swear, I'll report you and your friend to the high inquisitor. I swear I will!"

"With what?" Reya whimpered. Her mind was a sleepy haze. She barely registered the cat's threats.

Siv reached into a bush and slowly pulled Aris's limp body out into the open by the scruff of his neck. The otter girl gasped at the sight of him. His side had been torn open by vicious claw wounds and his ear had been punctured by sharp teeth. However, the worst injury was his front right leg. It had been torn almost halfway off. Fractured splinters of bone jutted out of the bloody wound.

"You have to save him," Siv whispered. "You have to. If you don't I'll - I'll hurt you. I'll tear of your fucking ear! I will! Save him, please!"

"Scat," Reya whispered. She was barely listening to the small cat. "You need to go into the cave and get me the knapsack that Torren always wears. It has all of my herbs in it. Go! Now!"

The cat rushed off into the darkness as Reya looked down at the beagle's ravaged body. She scanned the foliage around her, trying to spot any useful herbs that she could find in the moonlight. Nothing. Teeth gnashed at the bandages on her blistered paws, tearing them off. She needed every ounce of dexterity she had to save the beagle.

One paw pressed inside the gaping wound in his leg, searching for the torn vein. The length of her other arm rested along one of the wide claw gashes etched into his side. Without her medicines it was all she could do to try to slow the blood-flow. She prayed to Igri, the tiger god, that Aris hadn't already lost too much blood.

"How long has it been since this happened?" Reya demanded as Siv ran back from the cave. The knapsack dragged along the ground next to him, the strap clutched tightly in the cat's mouth.

"Maybe half an hour. I don't know," his voice quivered.

"Dump it all on the grass. I need to move as quickly as possible." Siv followed her command and flipped the bag over, dumping the herbs and poultices onto the ground alongside the old tome. Siv glanced at the book in shock, but quickly composed himself.

"Hold his wounds like I'm doing. We need to stop the blood-flow," Reya commanded. She let go and began to frantically sort through the toppled contents of her medical kit. The darkness of night made her search much more difficult. She the glint of starlight on a bottle. "Yes! Torren packed some of Melly's alcohol!" She gripped the small bottle between her paws and yanked the stopper rag out of the top, tearing off the twine that kept it in place.

"Bite off the rest of his leg and push this against the stump."

"What? You just want me to bite off his leg? He'll never be able to fight again!"

"The leg is gone! It can't be saved. If you don't rip it all the way off, I won't be able to clean it properly! Now in Bleyen's fucking name, do what I say!"

Trembling, Siv did as she asked. His short maw stained with blood as his teeth sunk into the beagle's leg. He bit down, piercing through the flesh, and tore the dangling limb from Aris's elbow.

"Good," Reya surprised herself with the coldness in her voice. "Now -" She cut herself off. Siv wasn't listening. He stumbled away from the unconscious beagle and spat a mouthful of blood onto the wilted grass. It was chased out by the contents of his stomach.

She was alone. A moment of terrible hesitation stunned the shivering otter. Did she go to apply pressure to the wound, or find yarrow to clot the blood? If the beagle was close to death right then, taking the time to find a poultice of yarrow from the knapsack would kill him. If she didn't apply the yarrow, then he might die with or without pressure and bandages.

Then the small otter spotted the woven bag that she recognized from so many times before. It was Gither's emergency poultice, a mix of ground yarrow flowers, goldenrod, garlic chives, and charcoal.

"Reya? Aris?" Mephit whined from the cave entrance.

"Go back inside," Reya whispered harshly. "You don't need to see this."

The skunk stepped towards her. "You gotta let me help. Please! He can't die too."

Reya wanted to say no to the young skunk. But she needed any extra paws that she could get. After a moment's hesitation she began to rattle out commands. "Get that spool of twine and cut off an otter tail's worth of it. I need those fabrics too. There's a bottle of liquor next to the knapsack, pour some on the fabrics and bring the rest to me. Hurry!" She grabbed the poultice and turned around. A silent prayer thanked Igri that the beagle was out cold. She remembered the pain of the first day after the fire.

She heard Mephit scurrying behind her, but all of the otter's attention was focused on the bleeding stump of Aris's elbow. Her paw poked and prodded at the center of the wound in a search for shards of broken bone. His radius had cleanly broken out of the elbow joint and jutted from the severed limb on the ground, but his ulna had fractured. Of course, without the radius holding it firmly in place, Reya hoped that the ulna would slide out without any complications.

The sharp edge of a shard of bone nearly cut into Reya's paw. The little otter cursed, she was trying to work too quickly and acting carelessly. She carefully slid her dexterous fingers around the fracture and squeezed. It pulled out smoothly, but it stuck to several still-attached ligaments. Reya, trying not to think about what she was doing, severed them with her teeth.

However, removing the lowest of the bone fragments was enough for her purposes. She didn't want any bone jutting out as the skin healed. If there were more shards they would pain the beagle for years to come, but the tradeoff of searching for them was more than the loss of blood was worth. Aris couldn't afford that deal.

The alcohol soaked rag, a hearty helping of Gither's poultice scattered on top of it, quickly stained crimson.

"Mephit! Do you have rags ready for me?" she gagged on the coppery taste of Aris's blood as she spoke.

"Yeah."

"Press the dry rags against the leg wound over the one that's already there and hold them still. Toss the wet rags on his chest. Siv! If you can't help me here, you can help me out there. Aris needs water."

The cat was still shaking, staring at his own vomit. Reya didn't think that he had even heard her, but he turned away and disappeared into the forest with trembling steps. She turned back and the skunk was standing next to her, carefully holding the alcohol soaked rags between his teeth. Reya snatched them from his muzzle.

Siv had obviously been careful dragging the body of his friend away from danger, but the injuries were far from clean. She tediously removed bits of dirt and grime piece by piece, swabbing the cuts with the alcohol soaked rags in between. She cleaned the open wounds as well as she could, but she wasn't satisfied with the result. The darkness made it hard to see and the blood oozing into his fur set her mind panicking. How much time did she have to clean the wound before the constant steady loss of blood took its toll?

Reya decided that her best option was to bandage him as soon as possible. The dry poultice scattered over the long gashes. Wet rags stretched across the beagle's bloody chest, soon followed by the few dry pieces of cloth that she had left. She pulled two rags from under Mephit's paw. He had used far more layers of the fabric than necessary. They quickly stained red under the pressure of her paws

"Where's the twine?"

"Next to my tail."

Reya turned around, grabbed the weave, and turned back to return pressure to the beagle's side. "Okay, I'm going to need to cut off the blood-flow in his leg. I need to you replace me over here. Keep pressure on his chest, it'll help to slow down the bleeding. Now I'm going to switch positions with you on the count of three, okay? Three, two, one, go." She stepped back and the skunk boy rushed to take her place. His black furred paws were already stained red as he pushed down Aris's chest.

Skillful otter paws wrapped the twine around the bound stump of the ranger's elbow twice before tying it off with a half knot. Reya scanned the forest floor for a stick sturdy enough for her intentions, a simple task in the lush deciduous forest. The stick was placed on top of the half knot and bound in place by a second, stronger knot.

"Okay, Mephit," she panted, "grab that end of the stick and pull. I'll take this end and push. Don't stop until I do. This is going to be tiring, but we need to sit it out until Siv makes it back."

The skunk nodded.

Reya grabbed one end of the stick and pushed it towards the beagle's tail while Mephit pulled the other end towards himself. The twine constricted what was left of the beagle's leg. The two animals looked at each other along the length of the branch.

"Good job," Reya said through the rough wood. "If this works." She paused. "If this works you've just saved his life." The skunk glowed at her words.

Silence fell between the two animals. Everything was suddenly very calm and still. Aris's chest rose and fell underneath the bandages, the only indication of life in the injured beagle. Reya realized that she could no longer hear the sounds of battle in the distance. There were no more screams of pain or clangs of metal. The normally comforting silence of the forest turned haunting.

"Reya?"

"What is it?"

"Isn't it dangerous out here? Shouldn't we bring him back into the cave?"

"I don't want to move him until I know whether he has other injuries."

"Whaddya mean?"

"If he has a broken spine moving him too much could leave him paralyzed for life. If he just has a broken rib, we could dislodge it or even puncture an organ."

"Oh, okay."

"No, that was a good question." Reya tried to smile at him. "I used to bug my brother about this stuff all the time when I was young. I learned everything I know from pestering him and the mole. Anyway, if someone comes, we'll just say he's a soldier from Fenbury."

"Oh, right, that's a good idea."

The two of them sat in nervous silence. Reya anxiously wondered whether each fall of Aris's chest would be his last. Every time his chest rose a wave of relief washed over her.

"I have the water," Siv said from the shadows. Reya, startled, nearly jumped out of her skin. The cat rushed from the bushes to Aris's side.

"What do I do?" He demanded, "How do I make him drink while he's out like this? Gods, what the fuck do I do?" The cat's entire body shivered in fear and anticipation, audibly rattling the water in the simple wooden flask that hung from his neck.

"Be patient," Reya muttered, "That water's going to make a difference, but only when he wakes up. Until then we can only wait. Actually, do you remember that fire hole that Aris dug that night after the Lenwick riots? It would be wonderful if you could dig one for us. A heated yarrow tea would do wonders for his health once he wakes up." And the difficult work of digging with the short claws of a cat would hold Siv's attention while they waited.

His eyes were locked on to Aris's limp body whenever he had the chance. Reya saw fear, compassion, and pain in his haunted expression. It was unervingly familiar, but she couldn't quite remember where she had seen the look before.

She tilted her head away. Her heart sunk when she caught the forlorn cat's eyes. She tried to focus on Mephit instead. He too seemed lost in thought.

"Reya?"

"What is it?"

"What're we going to do? We can't stay here, right? There's all those big cats and lynxes and barbarians and things who'll want to hurt us if they find us here. But we can't go, since Aris is so hurt," the young skunk trailed off, looking at her expectantly.

"I don't know," she whispered.