Timing

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Summary: Strider works to save a fallen comrade, knowing that time is not on his side.

Flames flew from Strider’s fingertips as the healer staunched the flow of blood, sacrificing no skill in his haste. He’d not seen the arrow that pierced his friend, not even heard the attacker’s approach. They had fired only this lone arrow and fled.

He had no idea why the attackers had set their sights on the younger man but suspected that they might have mistaken younger Ranger for elder; as Chieftain of the Dúnadan, he was a more valuable target than this fallen man-child of sixteen.

His questions multiplied when the scent of smoke snaked into his nostrils. He had too much experience not to realize straightaway that the fire danced nearby, and sparing a priceless moment to glance over his left shoulder, he saw that he was correct—the tips of angry flames already peaked over the top of a cluster of dry brush. He dared not move the boy until he’d flushed poison from the wound, yet he knew that in such dry conditions, flames would soon lick them. Though he hadn’t thought it possible, his fingertips accelerated as if fueled by the fire’s wrath.

Strider had irrigated the wound and made preparations to dress it when he felt the first heat at his side. A crackling sound from his right turned his head, and he was sickened to find that a second set of flames—no, a third!—threatened to join those from his left. For a moment that seemed to last hours, the scene made no sense, until a flash of understanding ignited his brain: the attackers had started a fire to encircle them in a scorching death. They’d had no need to shoot him, only to slow him down long enough to light a series of well-placed brush fires, and in shooting the novice Ranger, they had simply chosen the clearest target. This enemy was proving to be the sort that Strider dreaded most—those possessing as much shrewdness as skill.

With no time to spare, he shoved a clean bandage against the boy’s wound and half-dragged, half-carried the semi-conscious lump toward one of the few remaining gaps in the flames’ snare. Reaching the narrow passageway that led to safety, Strider lurched the young Ranger’s body forward, falling on top of him as he did. He rolled himself and the boy away from the flames and, when he thought it was safe, glanced to the pale face pressed against his chest. Whether from pain or fear—likely both, Strider guessed—the youth shed a single  tear.

Strider grinned, reasonably certain that they had a moment to spare. “Ah, Alindo. Now you bring water? We shall have to work on your timing, I fear.”