Chapter Eleven
Morggán watched Avery retreat toward the shelter of the trees with Charlie at her side.
She didn’t hurry exactly, yet neither did she linger once she had escaped the weight of so much overtly curious attention.
The grass bent softly around her as she crossed back toward the forest, her long hair stirring in the wind, shoulders held with visible composure despite the strain he had watched steadily gathering in her these past several minutes.
“Well,” Alasdair remarked, following her with his gaze, “that explains some parts, I s’pose.”
Morggán, supposing he understood what was implied, and possibly imagined by others, shot him a look. “Mind yourself.”
“What?” Alasdair asked, entirely unrepentant. “Ye disappear for more than a week and expect us nae to wonder about who ye’ve been nesting with?”
“Jesu,” Morggán cursed a warning at the same time Tormod spoke with less heat.
“Enough,” Tormod said.
The rebuke carried little volume, yet Alasdair clamped his lips closed immediately.
Eòin continued watching Avery’s diminishing figure thoughtfully. “We thought the English had ye.”
“Nae.” Morggán glanced once toward the southern hills beyond the trees where his men still sat scattered across the grasslands in loose formation. “Get the horses under cover,” he ordered. “We’ll nae remain exposed out here like fools.”
The command passed quickly through the company.
Riders turned mounts toward the forest at once, the loose searching formation dissolving into familiar purposeful motion.
Horses threaded between the trees while men dismounted and began settling themselves throughout the clearing surrounding Avery’s hut.
Avery was not going to like this, Morggán guessed.
What had been quiet woodland scarcely an hour earlier now filled with the muted noise of an armed company making temporary camp.
Morggán walked toward the dwelling with Tormod and his officers, watching it happen with increasingly divided thoughts.
Avery was nowhere in sight now. Likely inside, he guessed, hiding from the sudden invasion of her solitude. He could scarcely blame her.
In her everyday existence so far as he understood it, Avery was an exceedingly quiet creature.
Though she had grown more accustomed to him over these past days, he remained only one man occupying her space, and even then she often moved through the hut with the wary awareness of someone long used to solitude.
This now—more than four full units of armed men spreading themselves throughout the forest around her home—must surely feel to her like the world itself crashing suddenly through the trees.
His gaze swept over the soldiers settling in, then narrowed sharply.
Little Iain stood beside the hut itself poking curious fingers against the oilcloth stretched over the window opening, pressing it inward to peer into the dimness beyond.
“Bluidy hell,” Morggán snapped. He turned to Finlay, at his immediate left. “Get him away from there.”
As Finlay strode off toward the hut, Morggán turned to Alasdair.
“Tell them all: this house is off-limits. Ten-yard perimeter at all times. Nae one enters unless invited,” he said, knowing there would be no invitations.
Alasdair nodded immediately, though a faint frown accompanied it, perhaps at the unusual order itself or the force with which Morggán delivered it. “Aye,” he said simply before moving off to spread the word.
Tormod paused and turned to Morggán, bringing him and Donnchadh, who remained as well, to a halt also.
“So, who is she? What is this circumstance?”
Morggán exhaled slowly through his nose. “A week I’ve been here,” he said, “and I still canna answer that properly.” He glanced once toward the shut door of the hut. “By my understanding she’s lived here alone for years. Claims she’s seen nae other soul before me.”
Tormod frowned deeply at that while Donnchadh’s expression altered very little.
“But she found ye, did she?” Tormod asked.
“Aye, about a mile in that direction,” he said, pointing beyond the hut.
“And carried ye here by herself?” Donnchadh questioned, his skepticism obvious.
Morggán found even now the memory remained difficult to reconcile fully with the slight young woman presently hidden inside that hut.
He huffed the faintest humorless laugh. “Aye, as I said.” He squinted through the men toward the house, seeing that the travois was half-visible.
“On that litter,” he explained. “And nae man alive was more surprised than I.”
Tormod’s dubious gaze drifted again toward the hut. “She had a man here once,” he guessed.
“Aye. In some regard. Nae husband nor father by my understanding.” Morggán shook his head slightly. “Truthfully, I still canna make sense of her.”
That, more than anything else he might have admitted, seemed to settle heavily with Tormod.
The older warrior studied Morggán a moment longer instead. “Aye, well, whatever mystery surrounds her, ye seem in nae worse shape for it.”
“I’m nae.”
“And so we owe her.”
Morggán nodded once firmly. “Aye.”
“Then we’ll see her provisioned well ere we leave.”
Something slammed inside Morggán’s chest. “I dinna mean to leave her here.”
Tormod’s brows rose. “Och and shite. Like that, is it?”
Morggán’s mouth flattened instantly. “Nae, it isnae.”
The denial came quickly enough to hover uncomfortably between them.
“However, we were forced out of bed—my pallet is on the floor,” he said purposefully before continuing, “three nights past. English moved through this forest after dark in numbers enough to choke the hills. Hundreds, mayhap five or six.” He pointed toward the southern hills.
“Came from the same direction as ye did. Christ, she dinna even ken there was a war—I canna abandon her if this is to become a major thoroughfare for the English.”
The shift in Tormod’s face was immediate. “Shite.”
“Nae banners visible in the dark,” Morggán thought to add. “Couldnae say whether it was de Valence or de Segrave. But they marched north.”
“Shite,” Tormod repeated more grimly.
“That force passed within a quarter mile of this place. And now we’ve brought another army straight to her door besides.”
“She kens naught of the war?” Donnchadh asked quietly.
“Aye. And I believe she speaks truth, strange though it sounds.”
“Then she’s lived farther from the world than a nun in her cloister,” Alasdair remarked as he wandered back toward them.
A moment later, Finlay and Eòin had returned as well, and the conversation turned at last toward the matter demanding immediate attention, their plans for the morrow.
Morggán repeated what little he knew of the English force moving north through the forest, shocking the younger three. Some debate ensued over who it might have been, which English force.
They spoke of nearby Scottish positions, of roads and likely routes, of supply lines and timing.
“Lucas Thain is nearest,” Donnchadh said. “We crossed paths with his company a day and a half south from here. Marching toward MacClellan lands.”
“If we can bring the Thain army up,” Tormod suggested, “we might turn north together and catch that English force before they cross deeper inland.”
Morggán nodded once before his gaze swept briefly over the men gathered near the fire, naught but a third his army, it seemed. He nearly dreaded the answer, assuming they’d lost many in Caerwyll’s hare-brained scheme, but had to ask, “Where are the rest?”
“It took near two days to gather the company proper after the skirmish,” Tormod answered immediately. “Bloody confusion after ye vanished, and aye, we lost a dozen plus one, our lads gone—Harry has the accounts.” A faint grimness crossed his weathered face.
Morggán could picture it easily enough. The fighting had been brutal and scattered once the English cavalry pushed them toward the forest.
“I gathered what men I could and pulled them west to regroup,” Tormod continued.
“Once we kent ye were missing, I split the companies.” He gestured vaguely southward as he spoke, counting them off almost absently.
“Blair took his unit east toward the river crossings, toward Maighread’s Pass and the old Roman road besides.
Thought perhaps ye’d been driven that direction.
Seoras and Malcolm rode north with another score to search the low hills and shepherd tracks.
” Tormod’s mouth tightened slightly. “Eòin the Elder has another company sweeping west along the pine valleys,” Tormod went on.
“And Callum took riders south to seek word from nearby clans and any villages that might’ve seen signs of battle survivors. ”
“We kept the largest company together,” Donnchadh finished, “on the chance ye still lived and attempted to return toward the original ground.”
Silence settled briefly afterward. Morggán looked into the fire a moment, absorbing the shape of it all. Nearly two hundred men spread now across half the countryside searching for him while England marched somewhere northward through the forests unchecked.
And thirteen of his own men lost to an ill-conceived fight. The line of his mouth thinned.
––––––––
“Aye. Send six riders to find Thain,” he decided after a moment. “If he’s nae bound to another task, bring him back here. We’ll track the English from this forest.”
Tormod nodded. “And I’ll pull in our own,” he said. “Might be days before they’re tracked and brought back.”
“Aye,” Morggán agreed.
The discussion carried on awhile longer after the decision was made, men dispersing only gradually once tasks and watches had been assigned.
Riders were selected and dispatched toward Lucas Thain and the scattered mac Ruaidhrí units while others began settling the horses more securely among the trees.
There was, not unexpectedly, talk of the fight that had separated them, of Caerwyll’s ineptness.
Having stewed about this himself for nearly a week, Morggán listened with only half his attention. The other half drifted to thoughts of Avery, and this crowding of her space.