Chapter Two #2
She didn’t owe him anything—this man now—but she did have the travois, and he was in need.
And after a time, that was enough to make her lift the bar.
She could not disguise her return, not with Charlie running ahead of her, crashing through the trees with such straight-line confidence she guessed he might assume her destination.
It wasn’t close to the house, but was as the horse yesterday, beyond where she would have gone by herself, without reason.
And yet, she approached slowly, not exactly wishing he might already be dead but knowing that would put an end to her nervous dread if he were.
He wasn’t dead, but was watching her, and she was too entranced by his stare to be disappointed that he lived still.
He was sitting where she had left him, or nearly so, his back against the tree, one leg drawn up a little, the other stretched out as if he’d not been able to find a better way to place it.
He was watching her, and she found that she could not look away from his face at first, from the steady, assessing way his gaze followed her as she came into the clearing.
She had noticed his eyes before, but now she saw their color clearly, a pale, cold gray that didn’t soften when he looked at her.
She stopped a few paces away and let the travois slide down from her shoulder, the wood thumping dully against the ground.
For a moment she only stood there, wary about moving any closer, one hand still on the leather strap, the other hanging at her side, her fingers curled into her palm, her eyes flicking from his face to the long line of him on the ground and back again.
Then she pointed hesitantly at the travois before she thought to set the frame down properly, turning it so it lay straight, the twig and leather traces spread out.
The thing looked smaller here, next to this man, than it had leaning against the side of the house, and he looked larger than she had considered when she’d grabbed the travois.
Her attention kept catching instead on his hands, on the way one of them was braced against the ground as if he were holding himself where he sat, and on the other, which rested nearer his belt, close enough to the hilt of his sword though not touching it.
Both were covered in what looked like dried blood.
The sight of the weapon made her slow again, and she found herself watching him for signs of danger, the way she might have watched a wild animal to see whether it meant to bolt or to strike.
Charlie wouldn’t settle—or couldn’t. He moved in a loose, uneasy circle, nosing at the ground, then at the air, then drifting closer to the man before veering off again, as if the smell of him were too strong or too strange to contend with.
When she did step forward, it was only a little at a time, and she stopped again when she was close enough to see the dirt worked into the folds of his clothes and the darker stains along the top of his thigh, where the fabric had stiffened and dried.
The blood—and the idea of its source beneath the cloth—looked wrong in a way that made her stomach clench.
His face drew her attention back up again. He was watching her in the same steady way, not with the blankness of someone fading in and out, but with a sharpness that made her aware of every small movement she made.
“I do not know what to do,” she said that other language, the one she’d learned from the man.
She didn’t meet his gaze as she announced this. Her eyes went instead to the travois, to the worn leather straps and the wooden frame lying where she had set it down, as if the thing itself might tell her what came next.
***
In truth, he’d wondered if she would return at all. Groggily, he’d supposed that if she did return, it would be in the company of a man, or several men. Thus, he was surprised when she returned alone, with naught but the woolly dog for company.
Her presence, at first and now again, was... unexpected. Having been waiting for one or more of his men to find him, or the enemy to finish him, he’d been stunned by her, this slight, wind-tangled figure standing in the trees and watching him.
She came into his sight again after what seemed like several hours but mayhap wasn’t that long.
She dragged the travois behind her, the rough wood catching on roots and tall grass until she lifted it clear and set it down a few paces from him, then stood there as if she had reached the end of her plan or knowhow.
Morggán watched her from where he sat, half braced against the tree, and took in the first thing that struck him—the way she was dressed, in breeches and a man’s tunic, both worn thin and stained with use, belted tight at the waist, as if they were simply the only clothes she owned and not a choice at all.
It was not the cut of them that held his eye so much as the fact of them, because no woman he knew would have dressed so.
And mayhap no woman he knew would have come to him at all, alone in the woods, with no sign of any camp or company behind her.
He kept his eyes on her, noticing the quiet fullness of her mouth, the dusting of pale freckles across her nose and cheeks, the light brown hair that caught what little light there was and showed a trace of gold when the wind moved it, and it occurred to him—absurdly—that he must have lost more blood than he knew and had conjured her.
Her gaze shifted to the travois, to the ground, to him, and back again, and when she finally lifted her eyes to his face he saw the color of them clearly—pale, striking blue, too bright for a day that had gone gray and dim, as though the light had chosen to stay with her instead of with the sky.
There was nothing soft or arranged about her, nothing of the careful order he was used to seeing in women who lived among other people, and yet she stood there in front of him, looking both entirely out of place and unmistakably of the forest.
“I do not know what to do,” she told him.
The sound of her voice was as unexpected as she was.
It was softer than he might have guessed—if he would have thought to imagine her voice—lighter, too, and for an instant he could not place her accent at all, though the words themselves were his own language.
Certainly, her speech did not belong to any place he could readily name.
It wasn’t right or wrong, it was simply unknown.
His gaze shifted to the travois and then back to her, the improbability of her intent rising to the fore.
“Have ye a man with ye?” he asked at last. “Or a horse? A mule?”
She shook her head.
He frowned, looking past her into the trees as if expecting someone else to step forward, despite the shake of her head. “And how far is it?”
She hesitated, then lifted her hand and pointed, not in any precise direction he could discern, but simply into the forest, so vague as to give rise to caution.
“And who,” he asked slowly, “is meant to pull it?” He nodded toward the litter.
“I will pull,” she answered, her tone indifferent.
For a moment he said nothing. He took her in again, this slight, quiet figure with her wind-tangled hair and too-bright eyes, and then looked back at the travois.
“That seems unlikely,” he said, not unkindly but with the blunt certainty of a man who had hauled enough wounded soldiers off fields of battle to know.
“I will pull,” she repeated, with such quiet confidence that he had no reason to argue further, even as he had some suspicion that he would drag himself onto the litter and be stuck, waiting for her to gain a stone or more, or somehow harness the strength of two or three people.
Morggán shifted his weight, testing what his body would allow and what it would protest, and reached for the travois.
His ribs protested first, a tight, breath-stealing pain that made him pause with his hand braced against the ground, his jaw set until it eased enough for him to move again.
He drew one knee under himself and then the other, slow and careful, and managed to turn so that he could lean an elbow on the frame of the travois and begin the awkward business of hauling himself closer.
He had just started to gather himself for the effort of getting his weight onto it when she spoke again.
“Too heavy,” she said.
The words were quiet and plain, without accusation or apology.
Morggán settled back and let his breath escape, his dry lips open, his frustrated gaze finding her calm one. Too heavy, aye, as he’d suspected—there was no way she could haul him.
She lifted her hand and pointed—first at him, then at the sword at his hip, then at the padded jerkin, and then at his boots. “Too heavy.”
He was struck not by her practicality but by a needling skepticism, trying to decide whether she meant to lighten the load she intended to haul or strip him of his possessions now rather than waiting until he died.
He sank farther against the tree. Frankly, there was little he could do to stop her, not at this moment, when the slightest movement stole his breath, suggesting he’d cracked one or more ribs.
“You plan to thieve?” he asked, his tone as sharp as he could make it. “You will not wait until I am dead.”
She frowned slightly, as if she didn’t understand what he was accusing her of. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” she said, and made the same small motion toward the things that weighed him down, “but you’re too heavy as you are. You need to... be lighter.”
Morggán stared, aghast anew, at the sound of the strangest speech he’d ever heard. She’d spoken English, aye, but that, as was her Gaelic, was unlike any version he’d ever heard before.