Raven's Choice by Harper Swan Read Free Book Online

her to stop, Raven sensed the men grasped their spears tighter. They eyed her silently, faces full of interest and something more that made her overly conscious of every move. She took a quick glance at Bear, and he was watching her as closely as the rest.
    Though it would give the men even more to stare at, Raven shed her fur cape in order to free her movements. Clad only in leather tunic and leggings, she felt as vulnerable as she imagined the Longhead must have felt.
    She asked Leaf to tell the captive to stand with his back against a post. Leaf said a few words, and the Longhead complied by going over and facing a post, ropes trailing. Exasperation flashed through her. Either Leaf hadn’t said the correct words, or the Longhead hadn’t understood them.
    Raven wanted him firmly in position before she did anything. Instead of asking Leaf to try again, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
    At first worried that Bear would interfere once more, Raven quickly forgot him in her efforts to situate the captive. She pushed and prodded so that he moved with her in a shuffling dance, the dangling ropes writhing like whip snakes. To the touch, his flesh was more like fire-hardened wood than skin and muscle. Places on his back and chest that had been exposed during the journey were sunburned. But where his lower skins had slipped some from his middle, the skin was shockingly white under her darker hands.
    When he was in place, Raven took his injured arm, which his good arm was cradling possessively, and carefully moved it so that it hung down. She took a big swallow. That had gone well, but things would soon get difficult. It would help if he stopped looking at her. His eyes distracted her. If only he would look away…
    She stood so the arm was centered directly in front of her and grasped his wrist with one hand. With her other hand, she moved the dangling ropes aside and pressed her palm against his bad shoulder, pushing him firmly against the post. The head of the dislocated bone made a lump against her lower palm as if it wanted to come through his skin—she fought an urge to shudder. Next was the hard part, possibly the dangerous part.
    Ever so slowly, pulling from the wrist and rotating the whole arm, Raven raised his arm up and out to the side, away from his body. Nothing happened. The bonehead still poked into her palm. She lowered her thumb and pressed it into the lump.
    Although the morning was cold, Raven felt a flush of heat as she again realized that, although the Longhead’s arm was hugely muscled, it was shorter than those of most men. She wondered if she was indeed doing the right thing for his kind of arm as she desperately slid more fingers onto the lump and pressed harder.
    The Longhead’s face turned a stinging red, and his shoulders heaved with labored breathing. When Raven thought she could not possibly keep pressing any longer, she heard a pop . Although muted, the sound seemed to fill the quiet morning air.
    Instead of screaming, he howled, jerking his face toward the sky, neck tendons straining. The ear-numbing wolf sound wailed into the day, full of pain yet saturated with relief. She dropped his arm and stumbled backward.
    Raven had once been facing a tree just as lightning struck it. His howl did the same thing to her that the lightning had done to the shuddering, leaf-shaking trunk. She quivered from head to toe and felt she might split in half.
    Upon hearing the sound, some of the men had run a short distance. Others were still stabbing their spears about with rabbity jerks as the howl trailed off. A few, including Bear, were laughing weakly—he was bent over, his arms crossing his middle as if trying to hold in the laughter.
    Raven took up her cape as well as the gourd and walked shakily past them all. She found her way back to the hearth. No one was around when she arrived, not even the children. Willow was avoiding her. She felt a desperate thirst and scooped water from the bottom of