Chapter Ten #2
These were true fighting men, she fantastically decided, cloaks thrown back from their shoulders, shields slung at saddle sides, swords and axes carried with the familiarity of long use.
They looked as though they belonged to another world entirely.
Their entrance—such as it was into her life—was very cinematic, she decided.
The horses, providing the low tremor beneath the ground, were only dark, distant shapes with their shifting thunder of hooves rolling faintly across the hills.
Wind created greater movement, flapping banners, tossing dark manes, and fluttering cloaks.
And then there was Morggán himself standing at the forest’s edge awaiting them, the broad sweep of grasslands before him, detail becoming clear in the approaching army.
It looked unreal somehow. At the same time, it was exactly the way scenes in films sometimes appeared before music swelled as armies crossed landscapes toward destiny.
Morggán reached the outer edge of the trees and raised one arm high.
“Ho!” he shouted across the grasslands.
The nearest riders jerked sharply upright in their saddles. One horse reared half-sideways and then came a roar so sudden and joyous it startled Avery outright.
“Laird!”
The cry rolled across the hills from several throats at once. One rider thrust a fist skyward while another laughed aloud with unmistakable relief. The entire line shifted direction almost immediately, horses turning hard toward the forest now, their speed growing.
Avery crept slowly toward the southern edge of the clearing, keeping near enough to the trees that she could still retreat into shadow if needed.
Morggán stood waiting openly now beyond the shelter of the branches, a leader returned unexpectedly from the dead, she imagined theatrically.
The first riders reached him at a near gallop before hauling their mounts sharply back.
Several voices erupted at once, overlapping too quickly for Avery to follow.
Another man barked out a laugh that sounded perilously close to breaking with emotion.
Even at this distance she could see the change in Morggán himself.
Some tension she had not fully noticed these past days seemed suddenly to leave him in the presence of his own army.
He seemed larger somehow, maybe not so much physically, but with the easy certainty of a man returned to his proper place.
The first man off his horse did not stop at a polite distance. He crossed the clearing in three strides and caught Morggán by both shoulders, as if to confirm that his eyes did not deceive him.
“You ugly bastard,” he said in their native tongue, and then he barked a laugh that broke clean through the clearing. “You live.”
Morggán staggered half a step under the grip and shoved him back with equal force. “Aye, and it took you long enough to discover that.”
“Took us long enough?” the man shot back. “Jesu, laird, but you did naught to help us. Could you not have flopped off your horse or what have you closer to the actual battle?”
Another rider swung down and pushed in without waiting his turn.
“Move aside, Alasdair, I want to see if he’s whole.
” He looked Morggán up and down in blatant inspection, seemingly satisfied.
“But aye, we’re wanting to know why you moved so far from the fight?
” He grinned wide, revealing a row of crooked but very white teeth.
“Got me thinking you did not want to be found.”
Morggán slapped his hand against the man’s shoulder. “I considered it, knowing what company awaited me.”
The man snorted a laugh. “Fair enough, with this lot.”
“We dragged half the river looking for you,” said another man as he approached, some reprimand in his deep voice.
The man who’d called Morggán an ugly bastard said, “Eòin nearly drowned—
“I did not,” a much younger guy protested immediately, flushing red beneath the dust on his face.
“—twice,” the man finished.
“You speak through your ass,” the kid said.
Avery watched as more men came forward to greet Morggán, before she noticed one man, who’d arrived nearly with the first but was just now dismounting.
He did not hurry forward as the others did but took his time.
He was broader than the rest, not thick with softness but with the kind of strength that comes from years of carrying armor and men alike, Avery determined dramatically.
Gray threaded through his dark hair at the temples, and a pale scar cut cleanly through one brow as though it had once split there and healed without care for symmetry.
When he removed his helmet, he did it without flourish, tucking it beneath his arm as his eyes settled on Morggán.
While two or three pressed in close to clasp Morggán’s shoulders and speak over one another, this man remained half a step back, allowing the first rush to pass.
When he finally stepped forward, he did not laugh or seize Morggán roughly by the arms as the others had done. He simply looked him over from head to foot with grave thoroughness.
Avery, standing near the shelter of the trees, found herself abruptly wondering if this was the true commander among them.
Until now, Morggán’s mention of “his men” had existed in her thoughts as meaning belonging to him, but clearly this man, with his formidable and stately appearance, was the actual commander and Morggán, while seemingly important to these men, was merely one of the soldiers.
The entire scene quite shocked Avery.
She had never truly understood what Morggán meant when he spoke of an army and war.
The word army itself had always summoned images from another life entirely—television footage of modern soldiers moving through deserts in helmets and camouflage, or else the half-artificial chaos of film sets she had visited as a child beside her father, where men dressed in kilts and carried faux swords before cameras and lighting rigs.
But this was neither of those things—these men were real.
Their clothing hung damp and almost raggedly from lean and wiry frames.
Their faces were streaked with dirt that clearly was not camouflage and certainly hadn’t come from the make-up trailer.
Real weapons, and not props, hung at their sides with the easy familiarity of long use rather than costume.
Horses snorted and stamped around them, larger and rougher than the carefully managed animals she dimly remembered from film sets long ago.
And strangest of all was Morggán among them.
Nothing about him had changed, and yet standing there surrounded by armed riders beneath snapping plaids and steel, he suddenly appeared fully himself in a way he had not inside her house or with her. She felt as if only now, she had a glimpse of the true shape of the world he belonged to.
The older man stopped before Morggán at last.
“Ye stand,” he said.
His voice was not loud, yet the men nearest him quieted anyway.
Morggán nodded once. “Aye. Alive and relatively well.”
“Praise God and all His heavenly saints,” the older man replied solemnly.
A faint grin pulled unexpectedly at Morggán’s mouth. “The help was a wee bit more earthly, though divine in its own right.”
He shifted then and glanced toward the trees, his gaze finding her almost instantly, as if he’d known exactly against which tree she stood.
The older man’s gaze followed, as did scores of others.
Heat rushed painfully into her face beneath the sudden attention.
Every instinct she possessed urged her backward into the forest where the shadows and trees could swallow her again.
She became acutely aware of herself all at once: dirt beneath her nails from the garden, her raggedy clothes hanging awkwardly from her frame.
“Avery,” Morggán called.
Her stomach tightened unexpectedly at hearing her name spoken aloud before all of them.
“Come meet the mac Ruaidhrí.”
When she didn’t move, Morggán shifted and began walking toward her, as if he meant only to retrieve some awkward, too-shy child.
Straightening her shoulders and drawing breath through her nose, Avery stepped out from behind the tree.
The tall grass whispered softly around her legs as she walked to Morggán.
She felt every eye upon her as she crossed the clearing and found it easier, somehow, to keep her attention fixed upon Morggán alone rather than look individually at the gathered riders.
His gray eyes remained steadily upon her, and though there was something gentler in his expression than usual, she was too conscious of the mass of strangers surrounding him to dwell upon it.