Chapter six #2
She paled at my words. Good. She had more courage than sense.
“I have ye to protect me. We must bury him. We nae give him a proper warrior’s journey to aid him in reaching Valhalla, but we can at least save his eyes from the ravens so he can see in the afterlife and find his way.”
I glanced at Dugga’s unseeing eyes, then back at the darkening forest. Every instinct screamed at me to mount up and ride hard, yet I admired her courage and believed as she apparently did.
“I did nae think travelers believed in Valhalla,” I said, remembering how I’d thought she sounded like a proper lady earlier.
“This one does,” she replied, lifting her chin in defiance. “I’m nae leaving him like this.”
My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack. “Ye stubborn, foolhardy woman,” I hissed. “I’m trying to keep ye alive.”
“And I’m trying to keep my soul intact,” she countered. “What good is living if ye abandon everything ye believe in to do it?”
Her words struck like an arrow at my guilt for deceiving her.
Before this, I’d never lied to a woman. I didn’t like the taste of it at all.
The forest had grown darker around us as we argued, shadows lengthening between the trees.
Soon, we’d be unable to see clearly, making travel treacherous even without the threat of Siward or Conn finding us.
I glanced again at Dugga’s corpse, then at the determined set of Katreine’s mouth, and knew I’d lost this battle before it began.
I could toss her onto her horse, but that certainly wouldn’t keep her trust. “We do it quick,” I conceded with a growl.
“And shallow. He’ll nae mind if the worms reach him a wee bit sooner. ”
Relief softened her features, though her shoulders stayed tense. “Thank ye.”
“Do nae thank me yet,” I muttered, drawing my dirk from my belt. “We may both join him before the night is through.”
I began digging in the soft earth beside the path, my strokes quick and efficient. The ground was mercifully damp from recent rain, yielding easily to my blade. Still, sweat soon beaded on my brow, trickling down my temples as I worked.
Every few moments, I paused to scan our surroundings, my ears straining for sounds that did nae belong to the forest’s natural rhythm. The creak of a bowstring. The whisper of a blade being drawn. The snap of a twig beneath a boot.
Katreine knelt beside Dugga’s body, her hands moving in what I realized was prayer. As I listened, I recognized the prayer. “Ye have odd ways for a traveler. Did ye come from a great stronghold?” I asked as I dug.
“Nay,” she said, too quick and too sharp to be the truth. So Katreine was hiding secrets. That was fine. I was, too. As long as they weren’t secrets that could cost me the stronghold and lairdship, she could keep them. But I needed to know if they were secrets with poisonous thorns.
“Ye’ve nae always lived with the travelers,” I said. It was my turn to speak.
“Nay,” she said after a long pause.
I didn’t stop digging. I wanted her to answer as truthfully as she was willing, and my staring at her wouldn’t help.
“Are there people, mayhap, looking for ye from where ye came from?” The question was slightly ironic to me, since I’d been looking for her and knew the other trackers were searching for her, but our purpose was to take her to the king, and that should not have involved filling each other in, though it now did.
What I wanted to know was whether anyone else had a reason to want her and would kill for it.
“I have been gone for a long time,” she replied. “So nae. I’m certain they think me dead.”
There it was again. A depth of emotion, this time sorrow, that seemed far too vast for someone so young. It stirred questions I had no right to ask. Who was this woman, truly? What sorrows had carved those shadows beneath her golden eyes?
A distant owl’s call pulled me sharply back to our danger. “The grave is deep enough,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow with my sleeve. “Help me move him.”
Together, we lifted Dugga’s body. He was heavy with death’s weight, his limbs already stiffening.
I tried not to look at his face as we lowered him into the shallow pit I’d dug, but my eyes kept drifting to it.
In death, with fear etched into his features, he looked far younger than I remembered.
“Did ye ken him well?” Katreine asked softly as we began covering him with earth.
“Nay,” I said, the lie coming easier now. “As I told ye—by reputation only.”
“Ye seem troubled by his death, for a stranger.”
I paused, choosing my words carefully. “Any violent death troubles me, especially one meant as a warning.”
“A warning to whom?” Her eyes were fixed on mine.
“To anyone who travels this path,” I replied. “Now, please, help me finish this so we can be away from here.”
We worked in silence after that, piling dirt over Dugga’s form until nothing remained but a mound of freshly turned earth. Katreine gathered stones from the path’s edge to mark the grave, while I kept scanning the tree line, my hand never straying far from my sword hilt.
The darkness had nearly claimed the forest by the time we finished. I could barely make out Katreine’s face as she set a final stone atop the cairn.
“Will ye speak words over him?” she asked.
“Nay,” I said bluntly. “We’ve tarried too long already.” I took her elbow, urging her toward the horses. “Mount up. We need to reach the village before full dark.”
She resisted just long enough to make a final gesture over the grave before I guided her back to the horses. As I helped her mount, I felt her slight tremble beneath my hands. The chill of the evening, perhaps, or the delayed shock of our grim discovery.
“Are ye well?” I asked, looking up at her.
“I’m fine,” she said, though her voice was softer than before. “Just tired.”
I swung into my own saddle, guiding my mount close to hers. “We’ll ride hard until we reach shelter. Stay close to me.”
“I told ye I do nae need shelter,” she protested.
Already, though, I could see the wariness in her eyes and the slump of her shoulders, but I knew she’d argue if I simply said so. “If ye can make it to Loch Sunart without stopping, then we will camp on the road tomorrow night. Aye?”
Determination flashed in her eyes, and she sat upright on her horse. “Aye.”
I hoped I wouldn’t regret my bargain. The lass seemed foolish enough to ride herself almost to death to reach the forest in eight days.
What the devil did she want there? I itched to ask, but I held my tongue.
The path ahead was nearly invisible in the darkness, yet I knew these woods well enough to navigate by instinct and the faint silver of moonlight filtering through the branches.
“James,” Katreine said as we set off at a brisk pace, her voice barely audible over the hoofbeats, “thank ye for helping me bury him. I ken ye thought it foolish.”
I glanced at her, struck by the sincerity in her voice. “Nae foolish,” I admitted grudgingly. “Honorable. Dangerous, aye, but honorable.”
“Honor is often dangerous,” she replied. “But ’tis what separates us from beasts.”
As we rode deeper into the night, those words echoed in my mind.
I had embarked on this mission for land, coin, and the status I’d always been denied.
I wanted to build something that was mine, something worthy of sharing with my wife.
That had seemed honorable, but in the face of this woman, who risked everything for principles that offered no reward beyond the knowledge of doing what was right, doubt tugged at me.
As the land passed by, my doubt gnawed relentlessly at my gut, and I wondered what Katreine would think of me when she discovered the truth about why I sought her.